Home Op-Ed The threat to the Church of England comes from within

The threat to the Church of England comes from within

The current set of rotten Bishops need to go – they are theologically unimpressive, devoid of political nous and pastorally moribund

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Believe it or not, the Church of England has been in worse straits than this. 376 years ago today the beheading of King Charles I ushered in a period of oppression, disestablishment, violence and extremism that made it look to many as if the English Church was finished. 

That said, the nature of the Church of England’s travails in 2025 is fundamentally different. It is now threatened most from within. A maelstrom of scandal, a Pandora’s box of failures and a rotten managerialist culture has rocked the ship. The Archbishop most responsible for that culture has gone. As I write, another bishop has resigned, accused of sexual misconduct.

More departures are likely. All of it obscures and threatens the genuinely good work done by the ordinary people of God on the ground in parishes.

What is worryingly different in the crisis of today from that of the mid 17th century is the Church’s leadership itself. Then the Church was sustained by wise and holy leaders. One such good shepherd, Jeremy Taylor, preached a sermon in 1660 at the first consecration of bishops to occur since the Charles’s death in 1649. In it he described what bishops are called to do as ‘to be busy in the service of souls’.

By contrast, our current bishops are not serving souls. They are theologically unimpressive, devoid of political nous and pastorally moribund. Worst of all is the visceral contempt in which they seem to hold the ordinary people of God. It is everywhere: from reports which brand them racist, via mission plans which wish them away in favour of imaginary new and trendier converts to the denouement of thinking they can be hoodwinked over abuse scandals. 

There are exceptions- I marked the anniversary of Charles’s death by hearing perhaps the best sermon I have ever heard preached by a retired Bishop of Exeter. My bishop, of Dorchester, is supremely hard working, dignified and pastoral to his core. As anyone following the life of the Church in the last few months will know, these are, alas, exceptions.

Indeed the quality of the bench is so bad that it threatens the Church itself. There are Jacobins- of left and right- who use this latest scandal to argue for its destruction. Everywhere this has happened before- France, Russia and even in the awfulness of Puritan England itself- attacks on the Church have been precursors to restrictive and evil regimes. 

Despite history’s worrying precedent there are those who are beginning to accept arguments for the Church’s disestablishment. The paucity of the Bishop’s bench is no longer just a matter for internal ecclesiastical grumbling but becoming a matter of the Church’s survival.

Read it all in The Telegraph