Letters to the Editor

Is — and, if so, why is — the C of E ‘ailing and failing’?

From the Bishop of Blackburn

Madam, — Words have enormous power. If you speak anxious words over any body of people, that anxiety feeds itself and drags everyone down into a pit. In contrast, if you speak words of joy and hope over that same body, transformation is possible.

As Christians, we can speak words of joy not because of anything we have achieved ourselves, but because of the saving work of Jesus Christ, which is the source of all joy. That’s why the main mistake that the Revd Professor Paul Avis makes in his gloomy New Year article (Comment, 2 January) is to suggest that the Church should place ethics rather than Jesus at the heart of its life.

An equally grave problem, however, is that Professor Avis’s pessimism is simply wrong. Church attendance has been on an upward curve for four consecutive years. Clergy in Lancashire have been reporting massively increased numbers over Christmas as a new generation explores the mystery of Christ. National grant-making is allowing unprecedented levels of investment in parish-based youth ministry and church growth.

Churches in our urban areas are now often the only voluntary groups left to offer love, service and a listening ear to the vulnerable. And, while we have been deeply shamed by safeguarding failures, the work done (mostly by volunteers) to ensure that local churches are safe for all is heroic.

My concern is that the doom-mongering of commentators such as Professor Avis not only misrepresents reality, but undermines the morale of the outstanding clergy and laypeople who run our parish churches with such faithfulness and courage. Their work matters too much to be dragged down by such tiresome negativity.

He ends with the claim that “The Good Shepherd looks for the Good Church.” But there is much better News than that. The Good Shepherd has called us sinners into his Church, and despite everything, is still using us to his glory.

PHILIP BLACKBURN
Blackburn

From the Revd Dr David Heywood

Madam, — The Revd Professor Paul Avis has made it clear in previous writings that he agrees with the Roman Catholic Church’s official definition of the diocese as the local church. So, it is perhaps not surprising that he should look to the dioceses as the panacea for the problems of the Church of England. An alternative view is that its division into 42 hierarchically structured dioceses is the source of many of the Church’s ills.

In a recent article on chaplaincy, the authors describe their experience in these words: “Some bishops take chaplaincy seriously, others do not; some want complete control and license them as if they’re Readers, others shun chaplains for fear of something going wrong and being blamed. It is a postcode lottery as to whether you get support, apathy or even hostility.”

What this reveals is the lack of any commonly agreed standards of good practice across the Church as a whole, the lack of any mechanism by which standards of good practice could be agreed, and perhaps even the lack of any concept of good practice; or, to put it another way, a complete absence of joined-up leadership. And the experience of chaplains could be applied to almost any other aspect of ministry: team ministry, lay ministry, focal ministry, pioneer ministry, and self-supporting ordained ministry.

Just over ten years ago, the report Senior Leadership summarised the effects of the development of monarchical episcopacy in the Early Church as the disabling of the Church’s ministry: “Ministry tasks that had once been undertaken by a variety of church members came to be regarded as the preserve of a growing clerical elite. Eventually a concept of local monarchia began to emerge, which in time marginalised all other forms of spiritual authority within the bishop’s provincial.”

The tendency of monarchical episcopacy to disable the Church is magnified when bishops lack accountability. Some weeks ago, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, was quoted in your pages as follows: “In the NHS I was clear to whom and for what I was accountable, and I was supported, challenged, and appraised by them. I have tried to find the same accountability in the Church, but it does not seem to exist.”

The lack of accountability of its leaders might plausibly be seen as the source of most of the Church’s problems. It has certainly contributed to the poor handling of so many incidents of clerical abuse. Although the General Synod paper Trust and Trustworthiness generally avoided pointing fingers, it reported that “Some perceive a manipulation of the process or communications concerning Living in Love and Faith within the House of Bishops.”

There is no suggestion here that bishops are personally deficient. Most bring considerable experience and the best of intentions. But they are caught up in a dysfunctional system in which each is expected to act as an autocratic king or queen in their own diocese. As the Ven. Dr Malcolm Grundy laments: “It has been part of the sad and challenging experiences of my life to see good and well-meaning people appointed as bishops only to see them changed almost beyond recognition within months rather than years of them taking up office.”

Add to this the research finding that dioceses and bishops are virtually invisible to anyone other than the clergy. In his research for the Church’s Vision and Strategy, the Very Revd Dr Stephen Hance discovered that, “While many people shared their perception of the Church of England based on an experience of the local parish, not one single person made any reference to their bishop or diocese, good or bad. This was true for Anglicans as much as for non-churchgoers.”

It makes entire sense to centralise both the administration and financial resourcing of the Church. The much greater challenge is to devise a way in which episcopacy could be redesigned to provide the leadership the Church requires.

DAVID HEYWOOD
Quedgeley, Gloucester

From Prebendary Stephen Cook

Madam, — I read the Revd Professor Paul Avis’s assessment of the woes of the Church of England with interest.

I went to an Evangelical theological college, where the prevailing belief was that the C of E was insufficiently Evangelical. If only the bishops believed something, if only we preached the true gospel instead of some watered-down sop, then the nation would be converted, and all would be well. The proud boast of that college was that no one from there had ever become a bishop. Several decades later (including a Decade of Evangelism), with many Evangelical bishops (some from that college) and countless initiatives, strategies, and radical restarts, we are where we are.

The idea that if only we could get the institution right then growth would follow and we would find our way back to the imagined glories of the past is what is tying us up and weighing us down. Maybe it’s time to stop blaming ourselves and recognise that the nation has taken its share of the inheritance and headed off to a foreign country, and our task is to be there when it decides to return home.

I don’t think people have turned away from the Church because of safeguarding failures; the decline was happening way before that came to light; they have simply ceased to see the the relevance of organised religion to their lives, and they have come to be sceptical about all things supernatural. It wouldn’t take much for that to change, but I don’t think the Church can change it, no matter how hard it tries.

Up and down the land, there are little groups of faithful people who are heroically keeping the flame burning: praying hard, keeping the churches open, maintained, and insured, making the coffee, manning the fetes, making those who do come welcome, and all the time scanning the horizon in hope that one day they will see the wayward son on his way back home. When that happens, we need to still have a coat to put around his shoulders and a fatted calf to kill. That is where we are at the start of 2026.

STEPHEN COOK
Crediton, Devon

From Canon Brian Davis

Madam, — The Revd Professor Paul Avis ignores the situation that we find ourselves in today. We live in a very secular society, in which most people, most of the time, don’t seem to need organised religion. So “ailing and failing” is mostly not to do with the sexual abuse of minors, dreadful as that has been. The numbers of those attending church has plummeted not just in the Church of England, but in most denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church. With poor numbers in church come financial problems. Several of our dioceses are nearly bankrupt.

I believe that, instead of worrying about the Church that has been, we need to face up to the Church as it could be and should be. “Religion, as we have known it in the Western world, is dying. We are in a time of transition, not only religiously but politically and ecologically” (John Philip Newell, The Great Search (Books, 2 May)). The ecological transition is the biggest challenge to us all. The future is frightening.

We should carry on building the new Church, with “faith, hope, and love” wherever we can. But it may often be made up of small groups of committed Christians, and open to others who want to share their life. And I believe that most of our bishops, along with their teams, are doing their best to build a Church fit for the 21st century.

With the apocalyptic era, our churches need to be ready to support and help those who are struggling with the many ways in which we will be affected by the climate crisis. For instance, there are already many churches helping the hungry with foodbanks. There will be many more people desperate to move from the Mediterranean to cooler climates.

It will be a much smaller Church, but maybe a Church much nearer to what our Lord originally meant it to be and wants it to be today.

BRIAN DAVIS
Market Harborough, Leicestershire

Women’s rights and trans women’s rights: responses to Paul Vallely

From Sue Pascoe

Madam, — I am writing to express my profound distress regarding Paul Vallely’s column (Comment, 2 January). In the spirit of a “theology of grace”, I offer the following response to ground this conversation in the law of the land, international treaty obligations, and the pastoral heart of the Church of England.

In the current debate regarding transgender rights, there is a risk that we allow “biological essentialism” to override both the law of the land and the gospel of grace. As Christians, our primary command is to “love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mark 12.31). To love a neighbour, we must first honour who they are, respecting their lived, legal, and spiritual reality.

At the heart of our faith is the doctrine of imago Dei — the belief that all are created in the image of God (Genesis 1.27). We must remember that God, in his infinite and transcendent nature, is neither man nor woman. If the Creator transcends the human binary, then the diversity of gender identity is not a “deviation”, but a reflection of the vastness of God’s creativity. To reduce a human being to a “biological” label that they have legally and medically moved beyond is to limit the image of God to our own narrow definitions.

The narrative that women’s rights and trans rights are inherently in conflict is increasingly challenged by women themselves. The “Not In Our Name” movement has seen more than 70,000 women sign a declaration stating that they do not see their rights as being under threat by the inclusion of trans women. This community rejects the use of their identity as a tool for exclusion, demonstrating that the path to true equality is found through solidarity, not segregation.

The law of the land across the UK recognises that sex is not static. In Great Britain, the law defines gender reassignment as a process of “reassigning sex” by changing “physiological or other attributes of sex”. While specific statutes vary in Northern Ireland, the overarching legal principle remains: the state acknowledges the validity of transition and the reassignment of sex.

This domestic reality is bolstered by global consensus. The Istanbul Convention (ratified by the UK in 2022) and the UN’s CEDAW (General Recommendation No. 35) both affirm that the category of “woman” is inclusive of trans women. If international bodies and our own Parliament can recognise this complexity, the Church should be at the forefront of such recognition.

To obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), a trans person must make a Statutory Declaration: a formal, binding legal oath to live in their acquired gender until death. This is a grave legal commitment; a false declaration is a criminal offence under the Perjury Act 1911. As Christians, called to “let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’” (Matthew 5.37), we should be the first to honour the integrity of a person’s solemn vow.

There is a profound legal reality that the Church must acknowledge: under Section 9 of the GRA, a person with a GRC is their acquired gender “for all purposes”. This means that, by law, a trans woman holding a GRC is a woman and is entitled to be married to a man in her parish church.

When Church of England clergy conduct a marriage, they are carrying out a legal duty on behalf of the state. In that moment, the Church performs a public function and must follow the Human Rights Act. The courts have made it clear that a person’s gender identity is protected under Article 8, the right to private and family life. If, during a church wedding, language is used that denies or undermines her legal gender, it risks causing real harm and failing to meet the dignity the law expects during public duties.

The House of Bishops’ Pastoral Guidance (2018) provides a clear framework for affirmation. It explicitly encourages clergy to use the Affirmation of Baptismal Faith to mark a gender transition, allowing a person to be addressed by their new name and reaffirmed in their identity within the body of Christ. The Bishops state that the Church should be “unconditionally welcoming” and “generous.”

The phrase “biological male who identifies as a woman” is a lexicon crafted to undermine legitimacy — a framing that the British Medical Association has rebuked as “scientifically illiterate”. Furthermore, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention warns that using “biological” labels to strip groups of their personhood is a red flag for systematic harm.

To love our neighbour as ourselves is to call them by the name that they have chosen and to honour the life that they have built. We are all “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139.14). Let us embrace a theology that sees the person, honours the law, and celebrates the infinite diversity of the image of God.

SUE PASCOE
General Synod representative for the diocese of York
Address supplied

From Caroline Watson

Madam, — Paul Vallely asks whether trans rights and women’s rights are opposed, and indicates that they may not be. His argument appears to be a disingenuous attempt to square a circle, but I would suggest that many women, particularly older lesbians and second-wave feminists, would disagree with him.

His argument presupposes that general acceptance of “gender identity” is an established belief. To us, it most certainly is not. The concept of gender identity based on sex-stereotyped behavioural norms is antithetical to everything that feminists campaigned and fought for throughout the 20th century.

Second-wave feminism is based on the fundamental belief that the differences between male and female human beings are entirely physical and are related to reproduction, just as they are in any other mammalian species. It follows, therefore, that differences between human beings in relation to intellectual abilities, interests, job aspirations, and competences, etc., are entirely due to individual personalities and preferences and not sex or “gender”.

If gender identity, based on sex-stereotyped behavioural norms, is recognised as a concept in law and takes precedence over the biological reality of sex, the impact will go far beyond access to women’s lavatories, changing rooms, and sports teams. Every single right that women have won on the basis of intellectual equality with men, and equal responsibility to contribute to society by work and taxes, is under threat, from the vote onwards. For sex-realist feminists, therefore, there can be no middle ground.

Everyone should be free to reject sex-stereotyped behavioural norms, in relation to dress and so on, and many women do, but they should do so openly as the sex that they are. They should not be bullied or discriminated against in the workplace, for example, because of their unconventional appearance, but no one else should be compelled to pretend that they are the opposite sex. That is also bullying.

If there was no legal pretence that anyone was anything other than their biological sex, whatever their chosen form of dress or nomenclature, then issues around female-only spaces and sports teams would not arise.

That is the only logical solution to this currently unsquareable circle.

CAROLINE WATSON
Hexham, Northumberland

Supporter base for Inclusive Church open letter

From Anne Foreman

Madam, — Although the Revd Ed Hodges (Letters, 19/26 December) has every right to query whether the support claimed for Inclusive Church’s open letter accurately represents the nuanced reality of Christians worshipping alongside one and other while not in complete agreement, methinks he protests too much.

As pointed out in Inclusive Church’s summary report, this was an open letter rather than a structured survey. Indeed, they advise caution about seeking conclusions about the churches named and invite dioceses to carry out further interrogation of the data, using local knowledge.

The results of the open letter certainly paint a widespread picture of huge sadness and disappointment at this pause in the Living in Love and Faith process, particularly among the laity. As for the suggestion that the time has come “to trust our Bishops, canon law, and Synod”, may I remind Ed that one reason for the open letter was that the trust placed in the Bishops to implement the decision of the Synod was broken. There is nothing nuanced about that, sad to say.

ANNE FOREMAN

Exeter

What Larkin would do

From the Revd David Ackerman

Madam, — Do installations in cathedrals catalyse faith ()? We wait to see. They almost certainly increase entrance-fee income, whicComment, 12 Decemberh cannot be a bad thing.

I follow the example of Philip Larkin in his poem “Churchgoing”: “Once I am sure there’s nothing going on I step inside.”

DAVID ACKERMAN
London W10