It has now emerged in the current Church Times correspondence from various Church of England clergy about their retirement provision that a Clergy Pension Action group has been launched.
The new group is campaigning for the reversal of the Church Commissioners’ decision in 2011 to reduce pensions from a two-thirds stipend (salary) to a half.
The Revd Malcolm Liles, a retired clergyman in Sheffield, wrote in the March 7th edition of the paper:
‘The letters headed “The English clergy’s pensions and retirement housing” (28 February) reflect accurately the current groundswell of concern among both stipendiary and retired clergy about stipends, pensions, and housing.
‘A new Facebook page has also emerged, “Clergy Pension Action group”, with a swiftly recruited membership of 1000-plus.
‘What has to be recognised by those of us who want to campaign for improvements in stipend, pension, and housing is the need for strategic planning to bring about change. Last year, the diocese of Sheffield passed a resolution calling for more investment in retirement housing, after a debate in this deanery.’
Canon Rachel Taylor also had her letter published. She wrote:
‘I have served 29 years as a stipendiary priest, but my pension, cruelly slashed by the 2011 changes, will, after tax, not be enough to cover the rent of a modest Pensions Board house, let alone the council tax and other bills. Is it any wonder that clergy are desperate for the Church of England to reinstate the pension provision that we were promised at ordination and to look again at retirement housing for those who have lived in a vicarage?’
She put the boot into the Church Commissioners, declaring that ‘the pension was slashed in 2011 to protect the coffers of the Church Commissioners, who now have more than £10 billion in reserves, while more than one in five of working clergy have had to turn to charities such as the Clergy Support Trust to manage.
‘Yet the response of the Commissioners is not to look to improve the conditions of clergy, both working and retired, but to donate £2 million to the very charity that the clergy are forced to rely on.’
The C of E’s Bishops also got a pen-lashing:
‘If we were a commercial business operating like this, the Bishops would quite rightly be calling for justice; but, it seems, justice doesn’t grow well in the Church’s own backyard.’
Whatever the merits of the arguments these correspondents are advancing, the launch of the Clergy Pension Action group raises some issues for the clergy involved, engaged as they are in public Christian ministry in local communities. There is a housing crisis in the UK and many millions of people are living in rented accommodation with no prospect of being able to buy their own home.
To such people the clergy package of a tied house with council tax and water rates paid for by diocesan boards of finance and parochial church councils, a national average stipend of around £29,000 and a guaranteed pension with a five-figure lump sum on retirement must look pretty privileged.
The clergy in the Pension Action group might find their sob stories being interrogated by some of their parishioners were they to find out that their vicar was involved in the campaign.
The second issue is the fact that some clergy have second jobs providing extra income. This is facilitated for parish clergy by the fact that they work from home with the resultant tax relief on their heating, lighting, cleaning and gardening expenses.
In some cases, such clergy will have come clean with their parishes and dioceses about the fact that they have second sources of income; other clergy may not have been quite so transparent.
But rough figures from dioceses on how many stipendiary clergy have second jobs, if that data could be gathered and published, would arguably inform the debate in the Church about clergy pay and conditions.
One final reflection on the Clergy Pension Action group arises from the Book of Common Prayer’s Epistle reading for the first Sunday in Lent – Paul’s defence of the integrity of his apostolic ministry in 2 Corinthians 6v1-10:
‘We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain;(for he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation;) giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned,by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.’
In the light of this passage, is it not rather difficult to imagine the Apostle Paul joining the Clergy Pension Action group?
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in the UK.
