The 'Parish Movement' in the CofE.
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
This is a spin-off from the thread in Purgatory on religious 'consumerism' when applied to church attendance.
I hope it can remain more 'Ecclesiantical' than 'Purgatorial.'
Does anyone know much about the 'Parish Movement' in the CofE?
If I understand it correctly, this seeks to restore an emphasis on the geographical parish as the locus for Christian activity - if we can compartmentalise it that way.
Is it gaining traction?
Is there a need for it?
Is it trying to close the stable door once the horse has bolted?
Can anyone enlighten us on how it's going?
I hope it can remain more 'Ecclesiantical' than 'Purgatorial.'
Does anyone know much about the 'Parish Movement' in the CofE?
If I understand it correctly, this seeks to restore an emphasis on the geographical parish as the locus for Christian activity - if we can compartmentalise it that way.
Is it gaining traction?
Is there a need for it?
Is it trying to close the stable door once the horse has bolted?
Can anyone enlighten us on how it's going?
Comments
A critique (2021): https://unherd.com/newsroom/what-the-save-the-parish-campaign-doesnt-understand
From within the movement: https://www.savetheparish.com/2024/04/26/the-future-parish-what-good-looks-like
The ‘Parish Movement’ is not a term I recognise fwiw.
Save the Parish on the other hand is doing some good work in at least forcing people to think through what they’re doing re funding resource churches at the expense of parishes, for example.
Also I’m not convinced you have understood it totally correctly. It’s more about trying to hang on to the parish as a thing at all, and overlaps with much longer-standing calls to spend money on more priests, because parishes struggle (and potentially die) when they don’t have their own.
There are definitely things to criticise Save the Parish for, but that Unherd critique strikes me as completely incoherent and projecting!
The most important thing I think is that attempts to dismiss the organisation have largely failed because they mostly attempted to dismiss it as a group of ‘traditionalists’, whereas it has actually proved over the last 5 years to be a vehicle that allows the hierarchy to be attacked from all sides/churchmanships, etc because the cause of parochial church cuts across virtually all lines.
Murmurs are starting to filter down that they are at least now taken seriously as a force.
This is certainly my understanding of the situation and that of many other people I know.
In order:
Increasingly, for the reasons expressed above.
Its supporters certainly think so. FWIW I do.
Hopefully not.
As per first answer, it’s increasingly cutting through.
I've not had time to look up the links @Baptist Trainfan helpfully provided but will do so before I get side-tracked onto 'resource churches' and so on.
As an aside beforehand, though, I've heard Anglican clergy talking about the role of the 'minster' on a regional level and how the concept of a 'minster' can help things at parish level, but I'm not sure how or why.
The ‘minster’ is just a rebranded resource church. It should work to support the parish (on paper) for all the usual reasons advanced by supporters of that model. Which begin with what is effectively trickle down economics, albeit expressed more as centres of excellence that will be pleased to share best practice and logistical support. While hoovering up all the money.
Meanwhile, back in reality…
BTW I don't say that I agree with the critique above, it's just something I thought might be of interest.
It will provide the same help to a concrete church in the middle of a council estate as to a grade 1 listed medieval village church. Male or female incumbent, Forward in Faith or worship band.
The point of Save the Parish is not to preserve the fantasy CofE of 1952, or a particular wing of the church, it’s to protect the parish communities (all parish communities) against the predations of the diocesan/central Good Ideas Club.
As an aside, I’m not sure how this stays in Eccles, it feels inherently purgatorial. Potentially an effect of you not quite having understood it properly, but it’s all about politics and structure (and money) rather than any particular expression of religion beyond wanting to continue to have parishes.
No, that was decades ago. The ‘Parish Movement’ so called in the OP isn’t actually a thing. Well it is, sort of, but not as described in the OP nor called ‘the Parish Movement’ - which is where the confusion is setting in.
Save the Parish is what is being driven at, and that’s linked to above. Alison Milbank’s linked article is as good a statement of what the aimed for future is as anything.
Resource church does not have to equal HTB. Nor is it specifically an HTB thing.
Equally not all minster churches are Minsters… there are minster churches that have been such for hundreds of years (like mini cathedrals) and there are dioceses designating/planning to designate Minster Churches.
Chapter and verse on the terminology here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-anglican-studies/article/whats-in-a-name-an-examination-of-current-definitions-of-resource-churches/2119B46236D6917266F4627AE7EB41D0
A retired vicar I met at an arts event recently was positively steaming about some of these issues at a senior level within the CofE. I didn't understand all the ins and outs but he knew whereof he spoke.
Thinking about it, the cleric who waxed lyrical about Minsters and 'centres of excellence' and so forth, some good many years ago now, wasn't at all an HTB-type but a female priest from a liberal catholic background.
'Follow the money,' is, sadly a thing in all churches of all traditions.
It just plays out in different ways depending on how the connections and reporting structures operate.
Ipswich? There is a confusing* additional strand of minsters that are still being designated as such in the old sense (I think there are only around 30ish old sense Minster churches in England). Ipswich is the latest and it’s sort of a recognition of profile.
That sort of minster church isn’t the same as the minster churches that are being planned for roll out on a much more numerous basis.
*because as said the term ‘minster church’ is also being used by some dioceses to mean ‘hub church’ as part of diocesan reorganisation.
Alan
Ship of Fools Admin
Actually well before then. According to the gospel of Wikipedia,
<<Early instances of weekly parish communion include W. H. Frere's services at St Faith's Stepney in the 1890s[4] and Henry de Candole's services at St John's Newcastle in the late 1920s. The movement grew from the Liturgical Movement and originated in Anglo-Catholic circles.
Early advocates of parish communion included Cosmo Lang when Bishop of Stepney in the 1900s (decade)[4] and by William Temple when Archbishop of York in the 1930s.[4] However the movement could not be regarded as a movement until the collection of essays entitled The Parish Communion was published in 1937.>>
But you are right in that it only really took off in the 1950s and 60s. It was then that most mainstream evangelicals
I've read the links @Baptist Trainfan provided and found myself very much in sympathy with the stated aims of the Save The Parish thing, even though I'm not Anglican.
I don't know whether this is misty-eyed nostalgia or because I'm a curmudgeonly old git, or because the non'conformist part of my DNA bristles at managerialism or centralised control.
Probably all of that and a lot more besides.
There must be room for a 'mixed-economy' though and perhaps that is happening in some places.
A retired vicar of very liberal sensibilities told me he was pleasantly surprised by the way an incoming team from HTB dealt with an Anglo-Catholic priest of his acquaintance.
There were more than happy to let him carry on doing his own thing while they got on with theirs under the same roof but at different times.
They treated him with courtesy and respect.
This would have been an excellent cue as to where to post the op in the first place.
You can take the boy out of Purgatory, but you can't take Purgatory out of the boy...
Apologies if I've put Hosts and Admins out by posting it in the wrong place.