Bagehot, the Economist's political editor, cannot stop writing about Brixton since he bought a house in our road.
Let's hope the powers-that-be at the Catholic school his children attend do not read down to his admission of agnosticism!
Here's today's article:
While shepherds watched
The age-old ties between church and state are gradually coming asunder
ON THE third Sunday of Advent the worshippers at St Matthew’s, Brixton, were bracing themselves for the annual
Christmas influx of unbelievers. “Help us persuade a few of them”, they
prayed, “to keep coming.”
Like many London churches, St Matthew’s is enjoying a slight revival. Over
the past decade its weekly congregation has doubled—to 65 on this Advent
Sunday. That is chiefly because of an influx of young middle-class families,
driven to one of London’s poorer parishes by high house prices and to church
in the hope of winning coveted places at the local Church of England primary
school. “I recognise their self-interest,” says the church’s vicar, the Rev
Stephen Sichel, wearily.
Yet secularism has not spared St Matthew’s. The church is a south London
landmark, a vast neo-classical monument with room for 1,800 worshippers,
built in 1822 to commemorate the victory at Waterloo. Since the mid-1970s,
however, when plunging congregations made it unaffordable, the church has
operated from a small portion of the building. Some of the rest was leased out
as a nightclub, “Mass”, which became well-known for hosting bondage parties.
“The walls aren’t insulated so there was a lot of noise,” recalls one
parishioner. Now the nightclub has closed; some of the building is being turned
into a pub.
It is unclear who were more representative of British society, the worshippers
in England’s established church or the sado-masochists next-door. Around 3%
of English people attend an Anglican service at least once a month. Perhaps
more significantly, according to the 2011 census, only 59% call themselves
Christian, representing a drop of 13 points in a decade. By comparison, two in
three young women, according to a poll by More! magazine, claim to have
experimented with bondage or spanking. The concept of Christendom, a
Christian realm that has endured since the time of Constantine the Great, is
dying in Britain. In the most godless continent, it is one of the most secular
countries.
That is especially traumatic for the established church, which claims a
prominent role in public life. Anglican bishops are rubber-stamped by the
prime minister and occupy 26 seats in the House of Lords; their head, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, is the spiritual leader of the country. If Britain’s
secular drift continues, that position may be untenable. And, in the light of two
recent controversies, involving women and sex, it looks especially vulnerable.
In November the House of Laity, a chamber of the church’s governing synod,
blocked a proposal to let women become bishops. This decision was as
surprising to most members of a church in which a third of the clergy are
women as it was illogical to everyone else. It also encouraged Britain’s
coalition government to ignore church opinion altogether when it launched a
campaign this month to legalise gay marriage, which the church opposes
(though some liberal clergymen do not). Without even consulting the church,
the government announced that to protect it from anti-discrimination suits,
legislation would make it illegal for gays to marry in the Church of England.
The synod was aghast at being ignored. This was not the first time a
government has set aside the wishes of the church: it did so, for example, over
the introduction of divorce courts in the mid-19th century. Yet the open
disregard for the church’s views is new. In response, church leaders seem torn
between panic and complacency. They rightly divine that the church cannot
claim indefinitely to speak for a society that disagrees with it. The incoming
Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has therefore intimated there will be
a fresh vote on women bishops in 2013 and, though he disapproves of gays
marrying, he has promised to reflect on the issue. Perhaps he will somehow
find a way to bend the church to society’s will; shaped by centuries of
cohabitation with the state, the Church of England is naturally accommodating.
Yet many in the church are unwilling to be bent, including a growing minority
of particularly conservative evangelicals, who were partly responsible for
blocking women bishops. They would fight harder against gay marriage; as
would the African members of the 70m-strong Anglican communion that
Bishop Welby will also lead.
The end of Anglican Christendom
The church’s task is to reconcile the traditionalist views of some of its most
devout and opinionated members with those of a society that is fast
abandoning it. That looks impossible. So the prevailing view of churchmen,
that disentangling church and state would be too complicated for any
government to attempt, appears complacent. Indeed, Mr Cameron’s
government might seem to have made a start on it. On whether or not that is a
good idea, your columnist, like so many Britons, is agnostic. In a godless age,
an established church that can accommodate the values, if not the beliefs, of
the increasingly liberal mainstream could provide an appealing historical
continuity and space for discussion of ethics in public life. A church doggedly
at variance with public opinion will already have removed itself to the
margins. The rest of the disentanglement process, booting the bishops out of
Parliament and so forth, would be almost a formality.
It would also have little impact at St Matthew’s. One of four “Waterloo
churches”, the church was built partly to head off a rising threat from the
nonconformists. But these days the church seeks common cause with all its
Christian neighbours. After their Advent service, some of the congregation
were off to enjoy a spot of multi-denominational carolling to raise money for
charity. Their first Sunday service after Christmas will be held jointly with the
local Methodists. In this inner-city parish, the high politics of church and state
are distant and almost meaningless. St Matthew’s receives little support from
the diocese and hardly anyone ever gets married in the church. “We’re
effectively disestablished here,” says Mr Sichel.
costing £1.75 a can no less.
