Spiritual evolution

The Church, the establishment and new spiritualities: REVD CANON DR JANE SHAW considers the challenges ahead for the Church of England

The churches that are growing at the beginning of the 21st century – when church attendance is otherwise on the decline – are of two sorts. There are the big evangelical churches (“mega-churches”) that offer certain answers and vibrant worship of one sort.

And then there are cathedrals and other similar institutions such as choral foundations, which give people space to be anonymous, ask questions, and wrestle with their doubts within the framework of ordered and beautiful liturgy – vibrant worship of a different sort.

Both are at the cutting edge. Each represents a very different sort of Christianity. Taken together, they represent two poles of the Anglican church – a church currently at war within itself.

Will the church divide? Probably not. Splits have often been threatened. In the early twentieth century, Anglicans fought over whether you could have candles on altars or not. The question seems trivial to us now. Issues over which people threaten to split the church are usually “of the moment”.

But the larger issues of what we think faith is and how we go about it, represented by those two sorts of growing churches, will remain. The question for the Church of England is whether it can continue to be broad enough to contain everyone with mutual forbearance and even respect.

This question is significant, because only if it acknowledges that different people have different paths to walk to God, different ways of reaching faith, will the Church remain viable.

The Church of England does not only face challenges from within. There are numerous challenges from the broader society. While it remains the established church, and relies on that for much of its influence, its established status is gradually being eroded.

Most recently, Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared that senior church appointments should no longer be crown appointments, organised through Number 10; the Church must appoint its own. Furthermore, when the House of Lords is finally re-reformed, Church of England bishops will almost certainly lose their place there by “right”.

And perhaps they should. Isn’t it absurd, in a religiously pluralistic society, that only one denomination of one religion should have a right to be represented politically in this way? And isn’t it absurd, too, that in a democratic society which adheres to human rights, that the people who have that automatic right to sit in Parliament – bishops – have been appointed to those jobs in a context where 50% of the qualified candidates for the post were automatically excluded, namely women?

In exercising its influence in the country as a whole, amidst the realities of religious pluralism and with the gradual erosion of its established status, the Church of England is increasingly going to have to fend for itself. It will be doing that in a culture that is ambivalent about religion. On the one hand, people are hostile to, and suspicious of, institutional religion; on the other hand, they have a deep spiritual hunger that is not being met.

The popularity of the recent spate of books by atheists illustrates the point. Several have become bestsellers, but the effect has not been to convert their readers to atheism, as some of the authors might wish, but to provoke a lively debate about religion, and the nature of faith. Is faith propositional as many atheists assume? Or is it personal? Can we think about faith in the same way that we think about science?

The test will be this: can the churches take up this lively debate in such a way that people feel able to ask the questions with which they wrestle? If so, it may capture the attention of those who are searching for they know what not.

Finally, will the Church of England be credible in the future? That has yet to be seen. To be credible, it must be seen to be practising what it preaches: love. To be credible, it needs to face up to the most urgent issues that face the world, not least global warming, in its own habits of being. To be credible, it must be humble where it does not, and cannot possibly, have all the answers, and show itself willing to learn.

The future of the Church of England depends on its capacity to look outwards, engage with the world, and walk with people as they seek God.

The Revd Canon Dr Jane Shaw is dean of divinity, chaplain and fellow of New College.