A mood shift seems to be suggesting brighter days ahead

I feel hope. For the first time in a long time I think I can honestly say that I feel hopeful about the Church of England and its future. I’m currently writing from the front line, from General Synod, and I can’t begin to tell you how different the mood feels.

For a start, people are discussing major issues with each other openly and publicly and disagreeing with each other openly and publicly. For all that the C of E has a reputation for washing its dirty linen in public, in reality for about ten years this has only been true about those ever-exhausting issues of sexuality and the ordination of women.

On everything else there has been the sense that to disagree with the centre is somehow unspeakably rude and for a bishop to do this is tantamount to open rebellion. Not now. Now, all of a sudden, they are disagreeing with each other and with the centre, and it is glorious to behold.

But the really delightful thing is that they’re disagreeing with each other well, without the rancour that came when somebody was seen as breaking ranks.

The other big difference is what is being said and what is being done. After years of shouting from the margins that more of the money left by previous generations should go to fund the ministry — the cure of souls — of the poorest parishes, they’ve finally done it.

Bishop Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London, was put in charge of setting the Church’s budget for the next three years and, having asked Save the Parish (the grassroots campaign I’m involved with) what we thought should happen, actually listened to us — and more than doubled the money going to the Lowest Income Communities Fund. This would have been unthinkable three years ago.

Similarly, the tone of the Archbishop of York’s address, which opened synod, was one of the most theologically rich and pastorally-minded speeches I’ve heard from a bishop in a long time. At the centre of his speech was the parish.

Even better, he’s noticed something correspondents on the pages of The Critichave also noticed. “Recent research,” he said, “like The Quiet Revival encourages us and challenges us in equal measure, since it appears to be those churches that offer a depth of tradition that are noticing new people in their midst.” Hallelujah!

There is a real sense of that moment in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when the White Witch’s rule started crumbling and the nightmare of it being “always winter and never Christmas” was crumbling around them, “the whole wood passing in a few hours or so from January to May”. Now I would never like it to be suggested that I am comparing any former Archbishop to the White Witch, but there is a feeling of spring.

In the midst of this spring came a hugely important motion in this July’s General Synod: to direct £100 million each year from the income from the Church Commissioners’ £11.1 billion directly into Diocesan Stipends Funds. At a stroke this would eradicate the deficits which 83 per cent of diocese now suffer under and would ensure the long-term stability of priestly positions.

It would allow bishops to recreate positions which have been abolished under the swingeing cuts imposed by the old regime. It would stop the centre from making monkeys out of desperate parishes, getting them to dance to their tune in order to win the money they are entitled to.

It would also have stopped mind-numbing sums being spent on failed schemes, such as the £176 million earmarked for Strategic Development Funding which only brought in 12,500 out of a promised 89,000 new members (and half of those were found to be transfers from other churches).

Read it all in The Critic