Speak for England

Dr Rowan Williams, who was this week ceremonially confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury, becomes leader of a Church which is among the most mis-reported institutions in Britain. To judge from the press, one would think that the Church of England is obsessed by the issue of homosexuality, with women priests another vexatious issue, and has nothing much else to report apart from the odd vicar who absconds with someone else’s wife, these capers and controversies all taking place against a background of headlong and inevitable decline. But while it is certainly the case that an assiduous religious-affairs correspondent can always find some usually more or less obscure figure to offer a provocative opinion on these questions, it can hardly be stated too strongly that the majority of Anglicans are far from obsessed by homosexuality. Some have even noticed, after careful reading of the New Testament, that it contains more about money than about sex.

It should also be said that many parts of the Church are in a much more thriving condition than one would imagine from reports in the press. An immense amount of unglamorous, thus unreported, voluntary work takes place each week under Church auspices the length and breadth of the land. The choral tradition remains one of this country’s greatest cultural inheritances, yet it is taken almost for granted. In many unexpected places, it is possible to come upon men and women who carry on the Anglican ministry with quiet holiness and devotion, seldom seeking the world’s attention for what they do, for the world’s attention does not seem very important to them. It is even possible to happen upon such extraordinary, if potentially vulgar, phenomena as large congregations and good preachers.