This was my thought - the students in contact with the chaplaincy will presumably be attending other churches and being involved with what those churches are doing, if they are of a mind to be involved in the community.
Bear in mind that many students these days have weekend or out-of-hours jobs in order to make ends meet. Things have changed greatly from when I was at University!
And even from when I was. I could pay my rent with roughly half my maintenance loan. Now rent levels exceed the entire loan so term time working or subsidy from family are essential.
Yeah - KarlLBLet #2 found he had to forego his desire for an en suite room when he found the rent was higher than his maintenance loan, even with parental contribution.
University funding and student finances is another area where I find myself scratching my head and asking where all the money has gone.
This was my thought - the students in contact with the chaplaincy will presumably be attending other churches and being involved with what those churches are doing, if they are of a mind to be involved in the community.
Bear in mind that many students these days have weekend or out-of-hours jobs in order to make ends meet. Things have changed greatly from when I was at University!
And even from when I was. I could pay my rent with roughly half my maintenance loan. Now rent levels exceed the entire loan so term time working or subsidy from family are essential.
Yeah - KarlLBLet #2 found he had to forego his desire for an en suite room when he found the rent was higher than his maintenance loan, even with parental contribution.
University funding and student finances is another area where I find myself scratching my head and asking where all the money has gone.
Into the pocket of various corporate landlords, for the most part.
I suspect you are right. In my day most students either lived in Halls (run by the University itself) or in digs (an approved list with specified rates). Of course others did live in unregulated student houses.
I suspect you are right. In my day most students either lived in Halls (run by the University itself) or in digs (an approved list with specified rates). Of course others did live in unregulated student houses.
Still the case. Rents are still astronomical though.
I have a couple of points to add, and then I will give up. I'm here to express my position, not launch a quasi-legal defence of it.
One of the frightening things, to me at least, about the HTB enfranchisement of the Church of England is how much it has narrowed the range of what is considered "mainstream". The slightest variation from the full package is regarded as a fundamental difference, and proof of genuine diversity. Given the total ignorance of the sacramental tradition of thought, expression and action that they demonstrate, this impression of diversity is not backed up by the facts. Likewise, the range of theology with which they engage is minute - one is "sound" or one is simply invisible. The sort of exploratory church I joined many years ago was never the majority model, as it were, but it was a legitimate variant. Now it's regarded as esoteric, almost heretical, and is vanishing. Nothing thrives when the culture around it is so thoroughly adverse - it's like asking why penicillin isn't thriving in a petri dish flooded with bleach.
I'm very glad that the people who are helped by their programmes get that help, but my observations from the plant around me do not back up any idea that they will provide what the area needs. Here, their provision is, and always has been, also focussed on young families, in spite of the fact that new immigrants and isolated elderly people are far more numerous among the population, and likewise lacking alternative means of support. Young families bring greater potential for both income and membership, so that is where the effort goes.
Please don't get me wrong, @ThunderBunk, I think these are all very valid points.
Apologies if I come across as the Witness for the Defence.
Whilst I'm not Anglican it grieves me that so many within the CofE are exchanging their rich inheritance for a mess of revivalist pottage (and I distinguish revival from revivalism).
Some people do recover or discover a sense of sacramental tradition as they get older and that may yet prove to be the case with some of those involved in these initiatives.
From what @Pomona is saying they haven't all ditched CW (with all its good and bad points) and bowed the knee to chat-show style Baal.
I s'pose I'm still optimistic enough to expect something good to come out of developments or initiatives that don't float my boat.
I do have a lot of sympathy with what you are saying and also the observations that @KarlLB and others are making.
I really don't know what the answer is. Save The Parish sounds great until you consider the 'hows' and 'whos'.
In my own circles it's hard to get anything consistent going outside of church services as people are working shifts, zero hours contracts, juggling study with work and much else besides.
It would be nice if the money men were funding things that are broader in scope and less monochrome. But they aren't.
Is the only hope with the proles?
My hope is that that some of these initiatives will loose their rough edges over time or else broaden out in some way. Pomona seems to suggest that some are.
This was my thought - the students in contact with the chaplaincy will presumably be attending other churches and being involved with what those churches are doing, if they are of a mind to be involved in the community.
Bear in mind that many students these days have weekend or out-of-hours jobs in order to make ends meet. Things have changed greatly from when I was at University!
And even from when I was. I could pay my rent with roughly half my maintenance loan. Now rent levels exceed the entire loan so term time working or subsidy from family are essential.
Yeah - KarlLBLet #2 found he had to forego his desire for an en suite room when he found the rent was higher than his maintenance loan, even with parental contribution.
University funding and student finances is another area where I find myself scratching my head and asking where all the money has gone.
Into the pocket of various corporate landlords, for the most part.
And the variant on the theme, PFI providers. I saw this coming 20 years ago when my university was building new accommodation through PFI and turning over existing accommodation to the PFI provider. I used FOI to get hold of the contract and discovered that they'd signed up for annual rent increase of (if memory serves) RPI+3%, which is insane over the 30 years of the contract.
The main issue is that the CofE is panicking and throwing money at something that looks like success, and all Save the Parish (for example) are offering is proposing to throw money at what looks like failure. Maybe the impetus needs to come from the likes of SCM to model what a revitalised broad church looks like, and equip their members to work for renewal of existing parishes. It's not reasonable to expect congregations already well below viability to suddenly pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and the church needs some models for revival (if I may use the loaded term) that don't rely on just bringing in something entirely new, and certainly that don't require churches to cease offering a welcome to LGBT folk.
As far as HTB goes, the party line for some years has been to avoid saying anything definitive (about same-sex marriage) … up until the House of Bishops voted to commend and introduce "Prayers of Love and Faith", at which point several senior HTB leaders publicly joined conservative evangelicals in pushing back against the plans. It seems that a number of other leaders in HTB and the HTB network were rather surprised and unimpressed about this, including those who privately share their views.
I think I would describe HTB's current position as being "informally intolerant". Who knows where they go from here. To the extent that they have a policy, it appears to mean they are not able to have an open, frank discussion about it, leaving individuals and congregations to continue reaching their own conclusions.
One of the frightening things, to me at least, about the HTB enfranchisement of the Church of England is how much it has narrowed the range of what is considered "mainstream". The slightest variation from the full package is regarded as a fundamental difference, and proof of genuine diversity. Given the total ignorance of the sacramental tradition of thought, expression and action that they demonstrate, this impression of diversity is not backed up by the facts. Likewise, the range of theology with which they engage is minute - one is "sound" or one is simply invisible. The sort of exploratory church I joined many years ago was never the majority model, as it were, but it was a legitimate variant. Now it's regarded as esoteric, almost heretical, and is vanishing. Nothing thrives when the culture around it is so thoroughly adverse - it's like asking why penicillin isn't thriving in a petri dish flooded with bleach.
Welcome to evangelicalism. I find its wilfully blinkered narrowness profoundly depressing.
And as one-time, long-time evangelical, I am aware that evangelicals are almost pathologically incapable of looking in a mirror, and hate being held to account.
… And the variant on the theme, PFI providers. I saw this coming 20 years ago when my university was building new accommodation through PFI and turning over existing accommodation to the PFI provider. I used FOI to get hold of the contract and discovered that they'd signed up for annual rent increase of (if memory serves) RPI+3%, which is insane over the 30 years of the contract.
Ah - the decision-making of people who plan on being safely and comfortably retired (or dead) by the time anyone pays attention to just what a bad deal they made.
This was my thought - the students in contact with the chaplaincy will presumably be attending other churches and being involved with what those churches are doing, if they are of a mind to be involved in the community.
Bear in mind that many students these days have weekend or out-of-hours jobs in order to make ends meet. Things have changed greatly from when I was at University!
And even from when I was. I could pay my rent with roughly half my maintenance loan. Now rent levels exceed the entire loan so term time working or subsidy from family are essential.
Yeah - KarlLBLet #2 found he had to forego his desire for an en suite room when he found the rent was higher than his maintenance loan, even with parental contribution.
University funding and student finances is another area where I find myself scratching my head and asking where all the money has gone.
Into the pocket of various corporate landlords, for the most part.
And the variant on the theme, PFI providers. I saw this coming 20 years ago when my university was building new accommodation through PFI and turning over existing accommodation to the PFI provider. I used FOI to get hold of the contract and discovered that they'd signed up for annual rent increase of (if memory serves) RPI+3%, which is insane over the 30 years of the contract.
Did they not do compound interest at school? This is essentially the same maths
Although we seem to be veering off topic, I think a lot of this was done under the influence of Chancellor Gordon Brown. I have a lot of respect for him - but not in this; not only was it "buy now, pay (much more expensively) later" but it gave a false impression of national prosperity.
This was my thought - the students in contact with the chaplaincy will presumably be attending other churches and being involved with what those churches are doing, if they are of a mind to be involved in the community.
Bear in mind that many students these days have weekend or out-of-hours jobs in order to make ends meet. Things have changed greatly from when I was at University!
And even from when I was. I could pay my rent with roughly half my maintenance loan. Now rent levels exceed the entire loan so term time working or subsidy from family are essential.
Yeah - KarlLBLet #2 found he had to forego his desire for an en suite room when he found the rent was higher than his maintenance loan, even with parental contribution.
University funding and student finances is another area where I find myself scratching my head and asking where all the money has gone.
Into the pocket of various corporate landlords, for the most part.
And the variant on the theme, PFI providers. I saw this coming 20 years ago when my university was building new accommodation through PFI and turning over existing accommodation to the PFI provider. I used FOI to get hold of the contract and discovered that they'd signed up for annual rent increase of (if memory serves) RPI+3%, which is insane over the 30 years of the contract.
Did they not do compound interest at school? This is essentially the same maths
I don't think they cared that much - they got shiny new buildings to show off (at least that was the plan until Jarvis made a monumental hash of things) and it was students, not the university, who would be paying the bills. The situation at the time was that the university was academically excellent, top ten in many fields including my own (physics) but was lagging in league tables because its per-student spend was low, so it set about spending all the money it could find and driving itself up the league tables. It worked, at least as far as the league tables go, but I'm not sure all the refurbishing of lecture theatres and building new accommodation actually improved the education on offer or justified the massively increased costs. Or the VC's massively inflated salary.
It worked, at least as far as the league tables go, but I'm not sure all the refurbishing of lecture theatres and building new accommodation actually improved the education on offer or justified the massively increased costs. Or the VC's massively inflated salary.
The cynic in me wonders if a sure-fire way of significantly increasing one's salary is to preside over a significant increase in one's institution's budget.
Making at least some attempt to get back on topic, I wonder if the same mechanism works in the various strands of evangelicalism in the CofE (and the UK).
The PFI thing was a feature of the Blair era if I remember rightly.
It was one of the reasons why I became disillusioned with Labour at that time. Sorry, they've not succeeded in winning me back since, for all their blandishments and the disapproval of the Gamaliettes or Labourites on these boards.
I worked in the university sector during that period and was also a school governor. So I'm on the same page as @Arethosemyfeet on this one.
[Tangent over]
Back to the point.
The 'whoever pays the piper' thing isn't just an issue within evangelicalism, of course.
In congregationalist settings where things can be run by a small number of influential families, it's a very hot topic.
In Orthodoxy where oligarchs or other business people make sizeable donations it can be the same.
No branches of Christianity are immune to this sort of thing.
Cynics used to call 'Affirming Catholicism' Affirming Careerism, for instance. Back in South Wales when I was growing up membership of the Labour Party and the Roman Catholic Church was often seen as a ticket to special office in local government.
There was still a lot of residual anti-Catholicism about. Everyone assumed priests were on the take and there was a kind of Catholic Taffia at work behind the scenes ...
But all that aside, it is always going to be difficult to bite the hand that feeds.
The 'whoever pays the piper' thing isn't just an issue within evangelicalism, of course.
In congregationalist settings where things can be run by a small number of influential families, it's a very hot topic.
There were allegedly instances where the Minister had to go to the butcher's (aka church secretary's) shop every Thursday to be given their stipend, in cash.
One of the deeper-seated or longer-term questions for HTB (as it is for most expressions of evangelicalism) is whether its approach, and particularly its current model of funding, inadvertently works to perpetuate the inequality that is one of the root causes of poverty.
Or to link it to Enoch's point in the other thread; what happens to the 'Tory Party at prayer' part, when right wing politics in the UK becomes dominated by Reform.
Part of the role of a state church is to support the state.
ISTM the idea of the "Tory Party at Prayer" went alongside the idea of the Conservatives as the natural party of government, and it worked (with some squinting) as long as there was a 'Wet' tradition of Toryism (noblesse oblige and a sense of paternalism could stand in as care for ones fellow man), but then without that all that's left is either incoherence (Kruger) or culture war stuff (Orr). One of the more vocal Christians in the last government was Steve Baker (a Pentecostal!) and his big idea was that Christianity meant that you needed to support Free Enterprise.
Not to mention that many of their fellow travellers on the right (Peterson as an example) clearly see Christianity in the category of 'useful' rather than 'true'.
Part of the role of a state church is to support the state.
ISTM the idea of the "Tory Party at Prayer" went alongside the idea of the Conservatives as the natural party of government, and it worked (with some squinting) as long as there was a 'Wet' tradition of Toryism (noblesse oblige and a sense of paternalism could stand in as care for ones fellow man), but then without that all that's left is either incoherence (Kruger) or culture war stuff (Orr).
One-nation conservatism was conceived by the Conservative British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. … The phrase was coined because Disraeli feared a Britain divided into two nations, one of the rich and one of the poor, as a result of increased industrialisation and inequality. One-nation conservatism was his solution to this division, namely a system of measures to improve the lives of the people, provide social support and protect the working classes.
…
Disraeli justified his ideas by his belief in an organic society in which the different classes have natural obligations to one another. He saw society as naturally hierarchical and emphasised the obligations of those at the top to those below. This was a continuation of the feudal concept of noblesse oblige, which asserted that the aristocracy had an obligation to be generous and honourable. To Disraeli, this implied that government should be paternalistic.
And from the abstract to a chapter on Disraeli in Contemporary Thought on Nineteenth Century Conservatism:
Religion and the Church of England, as the Established Church, were central to mid-Victorian Conservatism. They were also fundamental to the thinking of the two most prominent Conservatives of the 1850s and 1860s, Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli. Both saw the Anglican Church as an integral part of the constitution and essential to the life of the nation.
…
A baptised and practising Anglican, Disraeli regarded the England of his day as a nation, like the Jews, blessed by Providence. England was the Israel of his imagination, its Anglican constitution shaped by its historic identity. Like the Jews, the English were a ‘chosen’ people with a sacred constitution. Land, the soil of England, and aristocracy buttressed the Providential status of the nation. The link between the Anglican faith and the soil of England was indissoluble. Land ownership, the basis of the territorial constitution, he asserted, was a form of religious inheritance. Just as the Holy Land held the key to the religious revelation imparted to the Jews, the geographic genius of place, so the soil of England rooted the moral identity of the English race. For Disraeli the term ‘race’ was synonymous with ‘people’ and ‘nation’.
For me, approaching it from that direction, the interesting question is what happened to one-nation conservatism (and when).
As recently as 2020, there was a significant (re-formed) One-Nation Conservative caucus in Parliament, which included most of the Tory MPs who lost the whip in September 2019. (It's now down to 8 members.) Those MPs had voted in favour of Bill(s) which successfully sought to extend the date of "exit day" from 30 October 2019 to 31 January 2020, "taking control of parliament" in order avoid leaving the EU without a deal. The bill was strenuously opposed by the Government of the time, led by Boris Johnson.
One (of several questions) is which group of Tory MPs were in walking in the footsteps of (or adhering more closely to) the tradition of one-nation conservatism - the Europhile One-Nation Conservative caucus, or the Eurosceptic Boris Johnson and chums?
Alternatively, regarding church and state, one question is what the relationship looks like now - the CofE as the (old) Tory party in retirement (or in the ground)? What looks like a rather more robustly evangelical CofE coming to the fore?# To the extent that there is some common interest, are/have both institutions being/been pushed by internal factions to become less "Wet", and the nature of any interaction to become rather more transactional?
# In this regard, I think the recent killing off of Prayers of Love and Faith could be significant.
For me, approaching it from that direction, the interesting question is what happened to one-nation conservatism (and when).
As recently as 2020, there was a significant (re-formed) One-Nation Conservative caucus in Parliament, which included most of the Tory MPs who lost the whip in September 2019.
ISTM that post Thatcherism they had very little influence (and were in a similar position to the SCG), even if they had experienced something of a revival on the back of Cameron's social liberalism. Certainly on the economy, the neo-liberal turn doesn't leave much room for paternalism [*]
It'll be interesting to see how well that tendency fares under a centralised membership structure.
Alternatively, regarding church and state, one question is what the relationship looks like now - the CofE as the (old) Tory party in retirement (or in the ground)? What looks like a rather more robustly evangelical CofE coming to the fore?# To the extent that there is some common interest, are/have both institutions being/been pushed by internal factions to become less "Wet", and the nature of any interaction to become rather more transactional?
Yeah, I think that's what's leading to the focus on more culture war issues (ironically at a point where at least some of the CofE evangelicals have been moving in the opposite direction).
For me, approaching it from that direction, the interesting question is what happened to one-nation conservatism (and when).
As recently as 2020, there was a significant (re-formed) One-Nation Conservative caucus in Parliament, which included most of the Tory MPs who lost the whip in September 2019.
ISTM that post Thatcherism they had very little influence (and were in a similar position to the SCG), even if they had experienced something of a revival on the back of Cameron's social liberalism. Certainly on the economy, the neo-liberal turn doesn't leave much room for paternalism [*]
It'll be interesting to see how well that tendency fares under a centralised membership structure.
Alternatively, regarding church and state, one question is what the relationship looks like now - the CofE as the (old) Tory party in retirement (or in the ground)? What looks like a rather more robustly evangelical CofE coming to the fore?# To the extent that there is some common interest, are/have both institutions being/been pushed by internal factions to become less "Wet", and the nature of any interaction to become rather more transactional?
Yeah, I think that's what's leading to the focus on more culture war issues (ironically at a point where at least some of the CofE evangelicals have been moving in the opposite direction).
For me, approaching it from that direction, the interesting question is what happened to one-nation conservatism (and when).
As recently as 2020, there was a significant (re-formed) One-Nation Conservative caucus in Parliament, which included most of the Tory MPs who lost the whip in September 2019.
ISTM that post Thatcherism they had very little influence (and were in a similar position to the SCG), even if they had experienced something of a revival on the back of Cameron's social liberalism. Certainly on the economy, the neo-liberal turn doesn't leave much room for paternalism [*]
Yup - with Maggie and the New Right, things changed, effectively signalling a new right way to think about society, as being something that doesn't exist. Which I guess leaves us with mutually-beneficial transactional individualism, grabbing the first word salad that pops into my head, which also appears to be what Kemi Badenoch has been doing.
"Social" media and the whole concept of following an individual spouting whatever pops into their head isn't so much a societal phenomenon, as anti-societal.
Back in the CofE's sphere of influencers, congratulations presumably go to Revd Dr Ian Paul for grasping this. In any period of technological change, the people who come out on top are usually the ones who grasp the way in which technology transforms society. (And their creditors.)
Some juicy comments afterwards, e.g., that antibiotics didn't exist, so non-Christian. Is she for real?
She seems determined to come across as that unattractive combination of thick as mince and combative.
I think she's just incredibly online, and mainlines a lot of American social media. [There was an interview a while back where she mentioned that her husband has to take her iPad away at times so they can spend time together as family.]
Which is a wider issue of course, both in terms of Christian Nationalism and various church growth ideas.
I have a couple of points to add, and then I will give up. I'm here to express my position, not launch a quasi-legal defence of it.
One of the frightening things, to me at least, about the HTB enfranchisement of the Church of England is how much it has narrowed the range of what is considered "mainstream". The slightest variation from the full package is regarded as a fundamental difference, and proof of genuine diversity. Given the total ignorance of the sacramental tradition of thought, expression and action that they demonstrate, this impression of diversity is not backed up by the facts. Likewise, the range of theology with which they engage is minute - one is "sound" or one is simply invisible. The sort of exploratory church I joined many years ago was never the majority model, as it were, but it was a legitimate variant. Now it's regarded as esoteric, almost heretical, and is vanishing. Nothing thrives when the culture around it is so thoroughly adverse - it's like asking why penicillin isn't thriving in a petri dish flooded with bleach.
I'm very glad that the people who are helped by their programmes get that help, but my observations from the plant around me do not back up any idea that they will provide what the area needs. Here, their provision is, and always has been, also focussed on young families, in spite of the fact that new immigrants and isolated elderly people are far more numerous among the population, and likewise lacking alternative means of support. Young families bring greater potential for both income and membership, so that is where the effort goes.
First of all, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect others to back up their arguments - that's a normal feature of Purg. I also don't recognise the rigid picture of HTB-affiliated churches being presented here when I can see churches that aren't like that with my own two eyes - it came across as you suggesting that I was somehow mistaken in simply knowing about churches that aren't as you describe. These days it's utterly normal for evangelicals (both Anglican and otherwise) to explore non-evangelical theology, look how popular Ignatian and monastic spirituality is with evangelicals nowadays - indeed, the experiential aspect of charismatic theology means that there is far more flexibility wrt theological exploration than in Reformed evangelical circles.
I'm also a bit surprised that you seemingly haven't even tried to work out why HTB is thriving without simply dismissing it as being about money. The tone of your posts makes it sound like you think people who join such churches are hoodwinked dunderheads. I'm not a member of a HTB-affiliated church and don't have plans to become a member of one, I'm just unimpressed by sweeping generalisations based on a limited personal experience. I have a lot of LGBTQ+ char-evo friends and many have found their home in HTB-affiliated churches (also, interestingly, Vineyard churches). I've had positive and negative experiences of said churches just like I've had positive and negative experiences of Society churches. I don't think stereotypes are helpful for anyone. Clearly, when it comes to local support/outreach things are variable just like for other churches.
@chrisstiles certainly I appreciate the issue of volunteer availability/suitability as well as funds, but this particular former conservative A-C church was slap bang in the middle of the main student housing area of a big student city - connecting with the uni chaplaincy would have got them all the volunteers they needed.
This seems to make number of load bearing assumptions which seem unlikely to be true.
Could you explain further?
Off the top of my head; that there were students willing to leave whatever else they might be doing on Sunday and/or have time to spare when they aren't studying or working to run activities, that the activities that need doing are the ones that generally fairly young people can run successfully with minimal help, that the chaplaincy is connected to the activities these students are actually connected to currently, and that there's an easy route for the chaplaincy to get them to volunteer.
[Bearing in mind that we are talking about a population that skews young, many of which will be encountering their own struggles, and if they are spiritually minded are probably seeking solace in another church already]
I'm sure that someone with experience and time could draw up a much more comprehensive list.
I don't think it needs to be that complicated - a church approaching the chaplaincy and asking if any of the students affiliated with the chaplaincy (I know that this particular chaplaincy has a thriving Student Christian Movement group) could help out with volunteering is surely not that weird or complicated.
Yes, and there isn't a pool of neutral volunteers at the other end, there are people with their own struggles, needs and preferences.
The fact that it's in the middle of a student area and they aren't there already says something about their revealed preference, so the "solution" can't consist of expecting people to attend a church that you wouldn't apparently want to attend yourself.
I think there are some timeline wires crossed - I'm talking about a conservative A-C church that got taken over by the local HTB-affiliated church. It is now thriving, I'm talking about hypothetical options the church could have tried in order to attract more parishoners before being taken over. I wouldn't be likely to attend either way simply because it's not in the town I live in, but I would actually be more likely to attend it now it's been taken over.
It's all very well to say "why didn't the parish church, with its three elderly ladies and a dog, call on the uni chaplaincy to help launch social programmes?" but it ignores the resources, in skills and money, required to identify a problem and organise something to address it even if you solve the volunteer problem. You can't go to the chaplains or SCM group and say "we'd like to do something useful in our community, well, we'd like you to do something useful. No, we don't know what nor do we have any money but you can use our draughty dilapidated church hall".
The main issue is that the CofE is panicking and throwing money at something that looks like success, and all Save the Parish (for example) are offering is proposing to throw money at what looks like failure. Maybe the impetus needs to come from the likes of SCM to model what a revitalised broad church looks like, and equip their members to work for renewal of existing parishes. It's not reasonable to expect congregations already well below viability to suddenly pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and the church needs some models for revival (if I may use the loaded term) that don't rely on just bringing in something entirely new, and certainly that don't require churches to cease offering a welcome to LGBT folk.
SCM isn't an Anglican organisation, it's not its job to solve Anglican problems - it's also not its job to fix the rods churches have made for their own backs. It's not like Christian students caused this problem.
Inclusive Church affiliation is not equivalent to welcoming LGBTQ+ people in general. I have lots of LGBTQ+ friends attending HTB-affiliated churches with zero problems. I don't particularly love Inclusive Church as an organisation and it's a mistake to assume that all LGBTQ+ Christians - even "side A" ones like me - would come down on their side here. My own take is that, in general, HTB-affiliated churches with a heavily female leadership team (especially younger women) have a VERY different feel to those which are predominantly male and/or older. Obviously exceptions exist!
The main issue is that the CofE is panicking and throwing money at something that looks like success, and all Save the Parish (for example) are offering is proposing to throw money at what looks like failure. Maybe the impetus needs to come from the likes of SCM to model what a revitalised broad church looks like, and equip their members to work for renewal of existing parishes. It's not reasonable to expect congregations already well below viability to suddenly pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and the church needs some models for revival (if I may use the loaded term) that don't rely on just bringing in something entirely new, and certainly that don't require churches to cease offering a welcome to LGBT folk.
As far as HTB goes, the party line for some years has been to avoid saying anything definitive (about same-sex marriage) … up until the House of Bishops voted to commend and introduce "Prayers of Love and Faith", at which point several senior HTB leaders publicly joined conservative evangelicals in pushing back against the plans. It seems that a number of other leaders in HTB and the HTB network were rather surprised and unimpressed about this, including those who privately share their views.
I think I would describe HTB's current position as being "informally intolerant". Who knows where they go from here. To the extent that they have a policy, it appears to mean they are not able to have an open, frank discussion about it, leaving individuals and congregations to continue reaching their own conclusions.
One of the frightening things, to me at least, about the HTB enfranchisement of the Church of England is how much it has narrowed the range of what is considered "mainstream". The slightest variation from the full package is regarded as a fundamental difference, and proof of genuine diversity. Given the total ignorance of the sacramental tradition of thought, expression and action that they demonstrate, this impression of diversity is not backed up by the facts. Likewise, the range of theology with which they engage is minute - one is "sound" or one is simply invisible. The sort of exploratory church I joined many years ago was never the majority model, as it were, but it was a legitimate variant. Now it's regarded as esoteric, almost heretical, and is vanishing. Nothing thrives when the culture around it is so thoroughly adverse - it's like asking why penicillin isn't thriving in a petri dish flooded with bleach.
Welcome to evangelicalism. I find its wilfully blinkered narrowness profoundly depressing.
And as one-time, long-time evangelical, I am aware that evangelicals are almost pathologically incapable of looking in a mirror, and hate being held to account.
… And the variant on the theme, PFI providers. I saw this coming 20 years ago when my university was building new accommodation through PFI and turning over existing accommodation to the PFI provider. I used FOI to get hold of the contract and discovered that they'd signed up for annual rent increase of (if memory serves) RPI+3%, which is insane over the 30 years of the contract.
Ah - the decision-making of people who plan on being safely and comfortably retired (or dead) by the time anyone pays attention to just what a bad deal they made.
The thing is from my point of view ("side A" LGBTQ+ ex-evangelical) these criticisms are valid, but very few of them are solely applicable to HTB. My lasting impression from LLF is that all of the Church of England is spectacularly bad at talking about sex and sexuality. I don't know enough about discussions in other English churches to know if this is an Anglican thing, an English thing, or something else. In my experience, non-religious English people are just as bad at it.
I think class plays a HUGE role here (as does race, but as a white person I don't feel qualified to discuss that in own-person language). In my experience as a working-class person as well as an LGBTQ+ person, the average Inclusive Church outpost isn't any more inclusive of me than a "side B" place. It very much becomes a case of "pick your poison", and most towns aren't big enough to have a unicorn church that ticks every moral box for me. No ethical consumption under capitalism and all that.
@chrisstiles certainly I appreciate the issue of volunteer availability/suitability as well as funds, but this particular former conservative A-C church was slap bang in the middle of the main student housing area of a big student city - connecting with the uni chaplaincy would have got them all the volunteers they needed.
This seems to make number of load bearing assumptions which seem unlikely to be true.
Could you explain further?
Off the top of my head; that there were students willing to leave whatever else they might be doing on Sunday and/or have time to spare when they aren't studying or working to run activities, that the activities that need doing are the ones that generally fairly young people can run successfully with minimal help, that the chaplaincy is connected to the activities these students are actually connected to currently, and that there's an easy route for the chaplaincy to get them to volunteer.
[Bearing in mind that we are talking about a population that skews young, many of which will be encountering their own struggles, and if they are spiritually minded are probably seeking solace in another church already]
I'm sure that someone with experience and time could draw up a much more comprehensive list.
I don't think it needs to be that complicated - a church approaching the chaplaincy and asking if any of the students affiliated with the chaplaincy (I know that this particular chaplaincy has a thriving Student Christian Movement group) could help out with volunteering is surely not that weird or complicated.
Yes, and there isn't a pool of neutral volunteers at the other end, there are people with their own struggles, needs and preferences.
The fact that it's in the middle of a student area and they aren't there already says something about their revealed preference, so the "solution" can't consist of expecting people to attend a church that you wouldn't apparently want to attend yourself.
I think there are some timeline wires crossed - I'm talking about a conservative A-C church that got taken over by the local HTB-affiliated church. It is now thriving, I'm talking about hypothetical options the church could have tried in order to attract more parishoners before being taken over.
Yes, and the same reasoning still applies as to why there wasn't a source of volunteering students ready to show up.
I think class plays a HUGE role here (as does race, but as a white person I don't feel qualified to discuss that in own-person language). In my experience as a working-class person as well as an LGBTQ+ person, the average Inclusive Church outpost isn't any more inclusive of me than a "side B" place. It very much becomes a case of "pick your poison", and most towns aren't big enough to have a unicorn church that ticks every moral box for me. No ethical consumption under capitalism and all that.
For the record I'm not saying that affiliation to Inclusive Church indicates that everything is perfect, only that forced disaffiliation is an extremely bad sign. You surely know that inclusion isn't a zero sum game and there is no requirement to roll back LGBTQ+ inclusion in order to improve racial and class inclusion.
...or indeed inclusion of neurodivergent people or people with mental health issues. All inclusion is authentic, as is all exclusion.
I've felt excluded by churches from most traditions at different points, but I would still say that some are more likely to exclude than others, and some are more likely to be evasive about it than others.
…
The thing is from my point of view ("side A" LGBTQ+ ex-evangelical) these criticisms are valid, but very few of them are solely applicable to HTB. My lasting impression from LLF is that all of the Church of England is spectacularly bad at talking about sex and sexuality. I don't know enough about discussions in other English churches to know if this is an Anglican thing, an English thing, or something else. In my experience, non-religious English people are just as bad at it.
I think class plays a HUGE role here (as does race, but as a white person I don't feel qualified to discuss that in own-person language). In my experience as a working-class person as well as an LGBTQ+ person, the average Inclusive Church outpost isn't any more inclusive of me than a "side B" place. It very much becomes a case of "pick your poison", and most towns aren't big enough to have a unicorn church that ticks every moral box for me. No ethical consumption under capitalism and all that.
Thanks, Pomona.
I don't doubt that these criticisms apply more widely than HTB - it was more that I've kept a closer eye on them over the years and they're better documented (and they're the focus of this thread).
Regarding talking ineptly about sex and sexuality, I think it's both an Anglican thing and an English thing, and quite possibly classist to boot. (LLF didn't stand a chance.)
On class, my recollection is that I first starting seeing this through the eyes of a close friend, in a variety of church, CofE and evangelical contexts (as well as elsewhere). We'd often talk about his reactions afterwards, and sometimes during, if it was really winding him up. As alluded to and referred to elsewhere, my perception is that it's still embedded quite deeply in at least some parts of the CofE, if not institutionally. It's also not much fun for vicars, if you've got a posh parish on your patch.
I have a lot of LGBTQ+ char-evo friends and many have found their home in HTB-affiliated churches (also, interestingly, Vineyard churches).
I don't think I'm greatly surprised. My observation and experience of charismatic / neocharismatic evangelicals (including Vineyard) is that they're more prepared to leave discernment about identifying the issues that need to be addressed to the Holy Spirit.
And I think there's a sense in which sex, marriage and gender are viewed as secondary issues, which seems to be part of the argument put forward by HTB's leadership for not talking about them. HTB's current vicar, Archie Coates comes to mind. From Anglican Ink:
In the interview published on August 26 [2022] in Premier Christianity magazine, Canon Archie Coates was quoted as saying that church disagreements on sexuality are on a par with different views among Christians about Britain’s departure from the European Union (Brexit) and the Covid pandemic.
He was asked: ‘A lot of Christians are wondering what direction the Church of England is going in, specifically around sexuality. We know that the Church of Scotland is allowing same-sex marriages, and the Church in Wales is blessing same-sex unions. Where do you stand on that debate?’
[Canon Coates replied]: ‘I can give my view…but what I prefer to say is: actually, I’m not going to say my own view, because…I want people to be able to be here and find a unity in holding different views.’
Later in the interview he reflected on his previous church, St Peter’s in Brighton, a town on the south coast of England with a high-profile LGBT presence. Canon Coates said:
‘Take a church like St Peter’s. You either pronounce from the platform a whole bunch of things: this is our view on this, this and this – in which case you produce a kind of unity. But I think there’s a more beautiful unity that happens here, because I know we’ve got lots of people who have lots of different views, not only on sexuality, but there’s Brexit, there’s views about the pandemic.’
He said that negotiating the disagreements on sexual morality ‘has been one of the most difficult, painful things in Brighton’.
I wonder if there's a generational shift going on here. It also occurs to me that you could see it in terms of a younger generation of leaders not wanting to bring it up while the senior generation is still around. (Whether these really are "secondary issues" for the senior generation is another matter.)
The acid test is turning up as part of a homosexual couple and wanting to take some part in leadership. See how they run - or don't. See how they stifle - or don't.
If the condition of keeping your home is not rocking the boat, I would say it's not really home. And I've been there.
To be clear - I'm not saying that this sort of "don't ask, don't tell, don't be conspicuous" approach is unique to HTB plants. What I am saying is that it jars with the welcoming surface, and makes me very pessimistic for the future of the Church of England, as this becomes the norm. It's not just a matter of whether LGBTQ+ people can be in positions of leadership, either. People aren't born with a perfect awareness of their sexuality or gender identity, and that awareness can evolve during one's lifetime. Exploring one's own position in these respects can be a very different experience, according to the approach taken by one's congregation and its clergy. That is another point to make - in the pews, the attitude around one is at least as important of that which is coming from the front, as it were.
The problem with "don't ask; don't tell; keep schtum" is that it, ultimately, kills people. Homophobia is so associated with Christianity in popular culture that young people growing up in church will assume their church is homophobic unless they're explicitly told or see otherwise; and for young gay people that can and has been fatal.
Comments
Yeah - KarlLBLet #2 found he had to forego his desire for an en suite room when he found the rent was higher than his maintenance loan, even with parental contribution.
University funding and student finances is another area where I find myself scratching my head and asking where all the money has gone.
Into the pocket of various corporate landlords, for the most part.
Still the case. Rents are still astronomical though.
Please don't get me wrong, @ThunderBunk, I think these are all very valid points.
Apologies if I come across as the Witness for the Defence.
Whilst I'm not Anglican it grieves me that so many within the CofE are exchanging their rich inheritance for a mess of revivalist pottage (and I distinguish revival from revivalism).
Some people do recover or discover a sense of sacramental tradition as they get older and that may yet prove to be the case with some of those involved in these initiatives.
From what @Pomona is saying they haven't all ditched CW (with all its good and bad points) and bowed the knee to chat-show style Baal.
I s'pose I'm still optimistic enough to expect something good to come out of developments or initiatives that don't float my boat.
I do have a lot of sympathy with what you are saying and also the observations that @KarlLB and others are making.
I really don't know what the answer is. Save The Parish sounds great until you consider the 'hows' and 'whos'.
In my own circles it's hard to get anything consistent going outside of church services as people are working shifts, zero hours contracts, juggling study with work and much else besides.
It would be nice if the money men were funding things that are broader in scope and less monochrome. But they aren't.
Is the only hope with the proles?
My hope is that that some of these initiatives will loose their rough edges over time or else broaden out in some way. Pomona seems to suggest that some are.
And the variant on the theme, PFI providers. I saw this coming 20 years ago when my university was building new accommodation through PFI and turning over existing accommodation to the PFI provider. I used FOI to get hold of the contract and discovered that they'd signed up for annual rent increase of (if memory serves) RPI+3%, which is insane over the 30 years of the contract.
I think I would describe HTB's current position as being "informally intolerant". Who knows where they go from here. To the extent that they have a policy, it appears to mean they are not able to have an open, frank discussion about it, leaving individuals and congregations to continue reaching their own conclusions.
Welcome to evangelicalism. I find its wilfully blinkered narrowness profoundly depressing.
And as one-time, long-time evangelical, I am aware that evangelicals are almost pathologically incapable of looking in a mirror, and hate being held to account.
Ah - the decision-making of people who plan on being safely and comfortably retired (or dead) by the time anyone pays attention to just what a bad deal they made.
Did they not do compound interest at school? This is essentially the same maths
I don't think they cared that much - they got shiny new buildings to show off (at least that was the plan until Jarvis made a monumental hash of things) and it was students, not the university, who would be paying the bills. The situation at the time was that the university was academically excellent, top ten in many fields including my own (physics) but was lagging in league tables because its per-student spend was low, so it set about spending all the money it could find and driving itself up the league tables. It worked, at least as far as the league tables go, but I'm not sure all the refurbishing of lecture theatres and building new accommodation actually improved the education on offer or justified the massively increased costs. Or the VC's massively inflated salary.
Making at least some attempt to get back on topic, I wonder if the same mechanism works in the various strands of evangelicalism in the CofE (and the UK).
It was one of the reasons why I became disillusioned with Labour at that time. Sorry, they've not succeeded in winning me back since, for all their blandishments and the disapproval of the Gamaliettes or Labourites on these boards.
I was never a member of the Party though.
And like @Baptist Trainfan as much as I respect Gordon Brown ...
I worked in the university sector during that period and was also a school governor. So I'm on the same page as @Arethosemyfeet on this one.
[Tangent over]
Back to the point.
The 'whoever pays the piper' thing isn't just an issue within evangelicalism, of course.
In congregationalist settings where things can be run by a small number of influential families, it's a very hot topic.
In Orthodoxy where oligarchs or other business people make sizeable donations it can be the same.
No branches of Christianity are immune to this sort of thing.
Cynics used to call 'Affirming Catholicism' Affirming Careerism, for instance. Back in South Wales when I was growing up membership of the Labour Party and the Roman Catholic Church was often seen as a ticket to special office in local government.
There was still a lot of residual anti-Catholicism about. Everyone assumed priests were on the take and there was a kind of Catholic Taffia at work behind the scenes ...
But all that aside, it is always going to be difficult to bite the hand that feeds.
ISTM the idea of the "Tory Party at Prayer" went alongside the idea of the Conservatives as the natural party of government, and it worked (with some squinting) as long as there was a 'Wet' tradition of Toryism (noblesse oblige and a sense of paternalism could stand in as care for ones fellow man), but then without that all that's left is either incoherence (Kruger) or culture war stuff (Orr). One of the more vocal Christians in the last government was Steve Baker (a Pentecostal!) and his big idea was that Christianity meant that you needed to support Free Enterprise.
Not to mention that many of their fellow travellers on the right (Peterson as an example) clearly see Christianity in the category of 'useful' rather than 'true'.
No, he didn't have a milkmaid but there was a small paddock alongside the chapel.
His wife will have done the milking I suspect.
Partly, but yes I'm aware.
For me, approaching it from that direction, the interesting question is what happened to one-nation conservatism (and when).
As recently as 2020, there was a significant (re-formed) One-Nation Conservative caucus in Parliament, which included most of the Tory MPs who lost the whip in September 2019. (It's now down to 8 members.) Those MPs had voted in favour of Bill(s) which successfully sought to extend the date of "exit day" from 30 October 2019 to 31 January 2020, "taking control of parliament" in order avoid leaving the EU without a deal. The bill was strenuously opposed by the Government of the time, led by Boris Johnson.
One (of several questions) is which group of Tory MPs were in walking in the footsteps of (or adhering more closely to) the tradition of one-nation conservatism - the Europhile One-Nation Conservative caucus, or the Eurosceptic Boris Johnson and chums?
Alternatively, regarding church and state, one question is what the relationship looks like now - the CofE as the (old) Tory party in retirement (or in the ground)? What looks like a rather more robustly evangelical CofE coming to the fore?# To the extent that there is some common interest, are/have both institutions being/been pushed by internal factions to become less "Wet", and the nature of any interaction to become rather more transactional?
# In this regard, I think the recent killing off of Prayers of Love and Faith could be significant.
ISTM that post Thatcherism they had very little influence (and were in a similar position to the SCG), even if they had experienced something of a revival on the back of Cameron's social liberalism. Certainly on the economy, the neo-liberal turn doesn't leave much room for paternalism [*]
It'll be interesting to see how well that tendency fares under a centralised membership structure.
Yeah, I think that's what's leading to the focus on more culture war issues (ironically at a point where at least some of the CofE evangelicals have been moving in the opposite direction).
[*] Exemplified by the latest bit of Badenoch-lore to drop: https://bsky.app/profile/matthewpb.bsky.social/post/3m6oquwa6rc2m
Yes. I heard that. And the "didn't exist in 60AD Rome so Unchristian" illogic made my jaw drop.
"Social" media and the whole concept of following an individual spouting whatever pops into their head isn't so much a societal phenomenon, as anti-societal.
Back in the CofE's sphere of influencers, congratulations presumably go to Revd Dr Ian Paul for grasping this. In any period of technological change, the people who come out on top are usually the ones who grasp the way in which technology transforms society. (And their creditors.)
She seems determined to come across as that unattractive combination of thick as mince and combative.
I think she's just incredibly online, and mainlines a lot of American social media. [There was an interview a while back where she mentioned that her husband has to take her iPad away at times so they can spend time together as family.]
Which is a wider issue of course, both in terms of Christian Nationalism and various church growth ideas.
First of all, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect others to back up their arguments - that's a normal feature of Purg. I also don't recognise the rigid picture of HTB-affiliated churches being presented here when I can see churches that aren't like that with my own two eyes - it came across as you suggesting that I was somehow mistaken in simply knowing about churches that aren't as you describe. These days it's utterly normal for evangelicals (both Anglican and otherwise) to explore non-evangelical theology, look how popular Ignatian and monastic spirituality is with evangelicals nowadays - indeed, the experiential aspect of charismatic theology means that there is far more flexibility wrt theological exploration than in Reformed evangelical circles.
I'm also a bit surprised that you seemingly haven't even tried to work out why HTB is thriving without simply dismissing it as being about money. The tone of your posts makes it sound like you think people who join such churches are hoodwinked dunderheads. I'm not a member of a HTB-affiliated church and don't have plans to become a member of one, I'm just unimpressed by sweeping generalisations based on a limited personal experience. I have a lot of LGBTQ+ char-evo friends and many have found their home in HTB-affiliated churches (also, interestingly, Vineyard churches). I've had positive and negative experiences of said churches just like I've had positive and negative experiences of Society churches. I don't think stereotypes are helpful for anyone. Clearly, when it comes to local support/outreach things are variable just like for other churches.
I think there are some timeline wires crossed - I'm talking about a conservative A-C church that got taken over by the local HTB-affiliated church. It is now thriving, I'm talking about hypothetical options the church could have tried in order to attract more parishoners before being taken over. I wouldn't be likely to attend either way simply because it's not in the town I live in, but I would actually be more likely to attend it now it's been taken over.
SCM isn't an Anglican organisation, it's not its job to solve Anglican problems - it's also not its job to fix the rods churches have made for their own backs. It's not like Christian students caused this problem.
Inclusive Church affiliation is not equivalent to welcoming LGBTQ+ people in general. I have lots of LGBTQ+ friends attending HTB-affiliated churches with zero problems. I don't particularly love Inclusive Church as an organisation and it's a mistake to assume that all LGBTQ+ Christians - even "side A" ones like me - would come down on their side here. My own take is that, in general, HTB-affiliated churches with a heavily female leadership team (especially younger women) have a VERY different feel to those which are predominantly male and/or older. Obviously exceptions exist!
The thing is from my point of view ("side A" LGBTQ+ ex-evangelical) these criticisms are valid, but very few of them are solely applicable to HTB. My lasting impression from LLF is that all of the Church of England is spectacularly bad at talking about sex and sexuality. I don't know enough about discussions in other English churches to know if this is an Anglican thing, an English thing, or something else. In my experience, non-religious English people are just as bad at it.
I think class plays a HUGE role here (as does race, but as a white person I don't feel qualified to discuss that in own-person language). In my experience as a working-class person as well as an LGBTQ+ person, the average Inclusive Church outpost isn't any more inclusive of me than a "side B" place. It very much becomes a case of "pick your poison", and most towns aren't big enough to have a unicorn church that ticks every moral box for me. No ethical consumption under capitalism and all that.
Yes, and the same reasoning still applies as to why there wasn't a source of volunteering students ready to show up.
For the record I'm not saying that affiliation to Inclusive Church indicates that everything is perfect, only that forced disaffiliation is an extremely bad sign. You surely know that inclusion isn't a zero sum game and there is no requirement to roll back LGBTQ+ inclusion in order to improve racial and class inclusion.
I've felt excluded by churches from most traditions at different points, but I would still say that some are more likely to exclude than others, and some are more likely to be evasive about it than others.
I don't doubt that these criticisms apply more widely than HTB - it was more that I've kept a closer eye on them over the years and they're better documented (and they're the focus of this thread).
Regarding talking ineptly about sex and sexuality, I think it's both an Anglican thing and an English thing, and quite possibly classist to boot. (LLF didn't stand a chance.)
On class, my recollection is that I first starting seeing this through the eyes of a close friend, in a variety of church, CofE and evangelical contexts (as well as elsewhere). We'd often talk about his reactions afterwards, and sometimes during, if it was really winding him up. As alluded to and referred to elsewhere, my perception is that it's still embedded quite deeply in at least some parts of the CofE, if not institutionally. It's also not much fun for vicars, if you've got a posh parish on your patch.
Regarding your earlier comment that I don't think I'm greatly surprised. My observation and experience of charismatic / neocharismatic evangelicals (including Vineyard) is that they're more prepared to leave discernment about identifying the issues that need to be addressed to the Holy Spirit.
And I think there's a sense in which sex, marriage and gender are viewed as secondary issues, which seems to be part of the argument put forward by HTB's leadership for not talking about them. HTB's current vicar, Archie Coates comes to mind. From Anglican Ink: I wonder if there's a generational shift going on here. It also occurs to me that you could see it in terms of a younger generation of leaders not wanting to bring it up while the senior generation is still around. (Whether these really are "secondary issues" for the senior generation is another matter.)
If the condition of keeping your home is not rocking the boat, I would say it's not really home. And I've been there.