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What about the growth of the Anglican Communion in other parts of the world?

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Originally posted by (S)pike couchant:
The thread on the loss of the religious life led to me to think about this. My own belief is that the Church of England reached a high point — arguably, the high point — of its existence in the first half of the twentieth century, in a period marked by such events as the publication of the English Hymnal, the great Anglo-Catholic conferences, the conversion of many notable literary figures (most prominently T.S. Eliot, but also W.H. Auden and Rose Macaulay), a renaissance in Church music thanks to the contributions of Howells, Britten, Finzi and Vaughan Williams, etc. All of this built on a very sound foundation left over from the Oxford Movement and the Cambridge Camden Society, which included the building of many new churches (some of them wonders of architecture, many others solid and serviceable to the needs of the country), and the establishment of a thriving religious life.

The War changed a great deal, but the decline of the Church seems to have accelerated in the generation that came of age after the War.
Now we are left with — what exactly? A dream about a shadow? Certainly, the engaged, confident, evangelistic Church seen in this video must now seem more foreign to the average Briton — whether he be a churchman or not — than the Lele Pangolin Cult.

Do other see this decline and, if so, is there any hope that it might be reversible?

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Originally posted by (S)pike couchant:
Th Certainly, the engaged, confident, evangelistic Church seen in this video must now seem more foreign to the average Briton

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1 Corinthians 14:8 -
"For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?"

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Originally posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd):
There is, in the Church of England and elsewhere, much what I would term "churchianity", which, as others have said, doesn't really challenge nor change people. It is theme park stuff performed as palliative care for the terminally lost... Somehow, somewhere, we need to engender real holiness.

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Funnily enough, referring to Mark Betts' post (edit - and quetzalcoatl's) above, I see secularism as a valuable friend in this. The more people see being a Christian as a positive counter-cultural choice that involves serious commitment, the better, I think. IMO, church attendance is pretty much meaningless if it's just social custom and there's no accompanying desire to reflect more of God's goodness in one's life, so bring on the secularism, I say!

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

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Originally posted by (S)pike couchant:
Th Certainly, the engaged, confident, evangelistic Church seen in this video must now seem more foreign to the average Briton

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IME the church (esp as seen in this video) has always been foreign to the average Briton. How does that kind of faith expression relate to everyday life - esp in the age of Pathe news?

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Originally posted by Enoch:
This is a dream of a form of Christianity which no longer has the power to convert anybody.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I recall my grandparents, born about 1880, who were totally non-religious, as were most of their friends. So the decline in working class areas may go back a long time - to 1800 maybe?

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Originally posted by (S)pike couchant:
The thread on the loss of the religious life led to me to think about this. My own belief is that the Church of England reached a high point — arguably, the high point — of its existence in the first half of the twentieth century, in a period marked by such events as the publication of the English Hymnal, the great Anglo-Catholic conferences, the conversion of many notable literary figures (most prominently T.S. Eliot, but also W.H. Auden and Rose Macaulay), a renaissance in Church music thanks to the contributions of Howells, Britten, Finzi and Vaughan Williams, etc. All of this built on a very sound foundation left over from the Oxford Movement and the Cambridge Camden Society, which included the building of many new churches (some of them wonders of architecture, many others solid and serviceable to the needs of the country), and the establishment of a thriving religious life.

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Hmmm...those of us from the evangelical end of the CofE would take issue with all of the above representing any kind of 'high point' for the CofE

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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Thank you very much for repeating my post. My innate narcissism is of course very gratified by this.

Seeing it in bold also gives it extra charisma, so probably today will go with an extra zing!

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Originally posted by Matt Black:

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Originally posted by (S)pike couchant:
The thread on the loss of the religious life led to me to think about this. My own belief is that the Church of England reached a high point — arguably, the high point — of its existence in the first half of the twentieth century, in a period marked by such events as the publication of the English Hymnal, the great Anglo-Catholic conferences, the conversion of many notable literary figures (most prominently T.S. Eliot, but also W.H. Auden and Rose Macaulay), a renaissance in Church music thanks to the contributions of Howells, Britten, Finzi and Vaughan Williams, etc. All of this built on a very sound foundation left over from the Oxford Movement and the Cambridge Camden Society, which included the building of many new churches (some of them wonders of architecture, many others solid and serviceable to the needs of the country), and the establishment of a thriving religious life.

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Hmmm...those of us from the evangelical end of the CofE would take issue with all of the above representing any kind of 'high point' for the CofE

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I recall my grandparents, born about 1880, who were totally non-religious, as were most of their friends. So the decline in working class areas may go back a long time - to 1800 maybe?

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Probably, yes. The 1851 church census indicated a level of churchgoing below 1/3rd of the population (all denominations), contra to the usual victorian claims. The pattern was far from consistent: churchgoing had a direct correlation to wealth and location - the richer you were and the more rural your location, the more likely you were to attend church. Poor urban areas had low levels of churchgoing but to what extent that reflected the poor quality of priests or simple indifference is the subject of another study.

Suffice to say, IMHO the church of england has never related to the poor. Now there supposedly aren't the poor, no one is bothered anyway.

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Originally posted by Matt Black:

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Originally posted by (S)pike couchant:
The thread on the loss of the religious life led to me to think about this. My own belief is that the Church of England reached a high point — arguably, the high point — of its existence in the first half of the twentieth century, in a period marked by such events as the publication of the English Hymnal, the great Anglo-Catholic conferences, the conversion of many notable literary figures (most prominently T.S. Eliot, but also W.H. Auden and Rose Macaulay), a renaissance in Church music thanks to the contributions of Howells, Britten, Finzi and Vaughan Williams, etc. All of this built on a very sound foundation left over from the Oxford Movement and the Cambridge Camden Society, which included the building of many new churches (some of them wonders of architecture, many others solid and serviceable to the needs of the country), and the establishment of a thriving religious life.

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Hmmm...those of us from the evangelical end of the CofE would take issue with all of the above representing any kind of 'high point' for the CofE

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
This is all splendidly postmodern. My post expressing grief at the shortening of my longer post criss-crossed with your post expressing regret at copying the whole post, and now I am posting my delight that our posts had criss-crossed! Joy!

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
[QUOTE]People used to say that Wesley saved the UK from revolution, as he evangelized the poor working class, which had basically left the C of E a long time ago.

I'm not sure about the revolution, but presumably it is otherwise correct, hence the many chapels in villages in Wales, Cornwall, etc.

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I recall my grandparents, born about 1880, who were totally non-religious, as were most of their friends. So the decline in working class areas may go back a long time - to 1800 maybe?

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Probably, yes. The 1851 church census indicated a level of churchgoing below 1/3rd of the population (all denominations), contra to the usual victorian claims. The pattern was far from consistent: churchgoing had a direct correlation to wealth and location - the richer you were and the more rural your location, the more likely you were to attend church. Poor urban areas had low levels of churchgoing but to what extent that reflected the poor quality of priests or simple indifference is the subject of another study.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:


Over on the sermon thread I've railed about my brother's experience - after some years in the wilderness - of trying to feel his way back into church life only to find - even at the 9am 'Sung Eucharist' a vicar in a tie holding his nose and making snorkelling gestures for 'He's higher than a skyscraper, he's deeper than a submarine ...'

Call me elitist, but for crying out loud ...
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I think that would have me holding my nose and making gestures too,although of a rather different kind

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I think the reality is, that just like the Labour Party at the time of Blair, the CofE lost confidence in its own identity and wanted to borrow other people's.

Look where that led the Labour Party ...

With a Via Media you are bound to get people hiving off both ends - to Rome or Orthodoxy on the one hand or to evangelical charismatic style settings at the other.

The trick, then, must be to develop a strong central core. And that is a difficult thing to pull off.

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Originally posted by (S)pike couchant:
1851 may be a significant date, though. That's immediately before the start of a massive move to evangelize the urban poor. A movement that — like it or not (and I suppose that Matt Black isn't too found of admitting it, lest it challenge his triumphal narrative of Protestant ascendancy)— led almost entirely by priests on the higher side of things. Thus, new missionary churches were built. Some of these — such as St Mary's, Bourne Street, St Bartholomew's Church, Brighton, and even All Saints', Margaret Street — are now well prominent on a national level, whilst many others continue from day to day in godly obscurity, often in areas that remain poor.

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Funnily enough, referring to Mark Betts' post (edit - and quetzalcoatl's) above, I see secularism as a valuable friend in this. The more people see being a Christian as a positive counter-cultural choice that involves serious commitment, the better, I think. IMO, church attendance is pretty much meaningless if it's just social custom and there's no accompanying desire to reflect more of God's goodness in one's life, so bring on the secularism, I say!

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Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
Most people in this country (if they thought about it at all) would probably see themselves now as being freed from the churches' cultural shackles. And rather than being taken in by the churches' counter-cultural rhetoric their suspicion would be that the churches would reimpose their cultural worldview given half a chance.

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Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
One could add, tangentially, that the ascendancy of the CofE happened to coincide with the rise, jingoist period and long gentle decline of the British Empire.

A case in point from my PoV: Many churches were planted all over the Imperial parts of the world, and other places, most of which have ceased to have any purpose, whether out in the woods in places that are no longer settled at all, or in parts of towns where people no longer live.

Quite often, there is an older gent who keeps the place tidy and mows the grass, touchingly happy to show off "his" building to the occasional tourist. Otherwise, nothing disturbs the serenity of pious Gothic Anglicanism in architecture, irrelevant to the world.*

Even the churches that were built in the flush of 1950's enthusiasm in the then-new suburbs are struggling to find a purpose, now that the generations after the builders have succeeded in avoiding church entanglement.

*That seems to be a job shared by myself and an English ex-pat at our local shack!

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
@Matt Black

I'm surprised at you:

'Hmmm...those of us from the evangelical end of the CofE would take issue with all of the above representing any kind of 'high point' for the CofE ..'

I can understand people from the evo wing taking issue with some of the Anglo-Catholic bits but some of the musical and artistic elements that were cited there - the music of Vaughan Williams, the poetry of Eliot ...

Heck, if evos are going to start dissing any of that then they are worse than I thought ...

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
...Anglicanism in Wales received a boost by being disestablished, so perhaps this is the answer, although the social and cultural circumstances weren't quite the same.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I can understand people from the evo wing taking issue with some of the Anglo-Catholic bits but some of the musical and artistic elements that were cited there - the music of Vaughan Williams, the poetry of Eliot ...

Heck, if evos are going to start dissing any of that then they are worse than I thought ...

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This evangelical newbie loves Howell and Britten. (Although Saints Redman, Townend, Beeching and Kendrick are more likely to feature in my Sunday-by-Sunday worship. My appreciation for different styles and traditions of sacred music is as eclectic as my tastes in secular music.)

The OP caught my attention because, like many others, I am exercised by this issue.

It was commented on upthread how the Anglican Church has a strong Catholic wing and a strong Evangelical wing but lacks a central core to hold these two streams together (given the inevitable tension between them). Given the Anglican Church's history, perhaps it is inevitable that its greatest strength -- the Via Media -- is also its greatest weakness.

(As an 'evo' from a rather strict Brethren background, I appreciated the room to breathe that the Anglican Church gave me, theologically. I discovered a more generous, thoughtful stream of evangelicalism within Anglicanism. )

I suspect that the CoE WILL break up, at some point. It will be very sad if that occurs, but I just don't see how the three streams can hold together, not with two such contentious issues currently threatening to tear the CoE apart: women bishops and gay marriage. I think the latter issue will be the deal-breaker. Anglicans who sincerely believe that gay marriage isn't biblical can't easily co-habit (if you'll pardon the expression) with Anglicans who sincerely believe that gay marriage is a matter of equality and justice.

And of course each stream (Anglo-Catholic, Liberal, Evangelical) contains multi-streams. E.g. many open evangelicals are pro-women bishops but not necessarily happy about gay marriage.

One of my personal high points of English Anglicanism would be the ministry and teaching of the late, great David Watson. (Can't believe he went to glory 30 years ago ... ) He was the sane voice of the charismatic renewal, and fellowshipped with Roman Catholics. A good and wise man. I wonder what he would have had to say about today's crises ...

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"I fear that to me Siamese cats belong to the fauna of Mordor." J.R.R. Tolkien

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Originally posted by Matt Black:
[Just redressing the balance of the bias inherent in the OP which, you have to admit, was very nosebleed high in its prejudice.

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Originally posted by aumbry:


The Church of England churches that are failing seem to be the ones that most avoid any sort of religious fervour be that catholic of evangelical.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
There is a thesis that rising powers, especially imperial ones, tend to develop strong religions, as a kind of supportive ideology to the political purpose. And correspondingly, as they decline, the religion also tends to decline.

It is interesting, but unfortunately, probably impossible to test empirically.

I suppose you can make predictions from it: thus the US should now decline in religiosity; China should increase, and so on. However, there are so many blasted confounds here.

I can't pin it to a particular historian, so maybe it is a sort of urban myth. [/QB]

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Originally posted by Laurelin:


It was commented on upthread how the Anglican Church has a strong Catholic wing and a strong Evangelical wing but lacks a central core to hold these two streams together (given the inevitable tension between them). Given the Anglican Church's history, perhaps it is inevitable that its greatest strength -- the Via Media -- is also its greatest weakness.

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