Time to take the Church more seriously

It is one of the most important religion stories for a decade or so. The Church of England seems to have changed its mind on church schools. A few days ago, the Bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend John Pritchard, who is also chairman of the Church’s board of education, said he wanted just 10 percent of places reserved for church attenders. It’s a total turn-around. For a decade the Church has bullishly defended the system, and dismissed dissenters as traitors to the cause.

What happened? The C of E has realized that the popularity of its schools is bad for its image. How can this be? The popularity of church schools is due to their success, and why should success be a cause for shame?

Well, in relation to the Christian gospel, success can be cause for shame. If a parish church in a mixed neighbourhood only attracts the richer, more successful types, and fails to appeal to the others, then its aura of success is actually failure. Something like that has been happening in relation to church schools. The Church, through its education policy, has been guilty of attracting a disproportionate number of middle-class families. And, even more culpably, it has tacitly encouraged such parents to come to church on self-seeking grounds. Well, so what, you may say – if the end result is more people coming to church, then doesn’t the end justify the means?

In relation to the Christian gospel, ‘the end justifies the means’ is the slogan of Satan. The business of worshipping God must be kept very pure. I was put off from attending my local Anglican church by my sense that pushy parents helped to pad the pews. Pritchard, by calling the Church to repent of a seriously erroneous policy, is enabling people like me to take the national Church more seriously.

Toby Young has voiced secular bourgeois opinion: what a blunder! The Church is alienating the pushy Christian and sort-of Christian parents who boost its schools. Many will go over to Catholicism, he suggests. I don’t care where these sort of people go, but let them go.

And by the way what does Rowan Williams think? This supposedly courageous thinker has avoided the issue very carefully for years: how about some overdue clarity?