Inequality in the Church, and Shifting the Balance of Power

Martyn Percy (Editorial, Modern Believing, Volume 42:4, October 2001)

This editorial article is based on a short extract from Martyn Percy's new book, The Salt of the Earth? Religious Resilience in a Secular Age ( Sheffield Academic Press), available in paperback and hardback.

These days, one cannot travel far in the Church of England without encountering some serious concerns over finance. Pension costs, diocesan quotas, ministerial expenses and the bills for the repairs and upkeep of churches are placing a considerable strain on the clergy and laity alike. It has not always been so. Consider, for example, this description of a father's hope for his second son, and a career in the Church, during the eighteenth century:

Dr Darwin, a confirmed freethinker, was sensible and shrewd. He had only to look around him, recall the vicarages he had visited, and ponder the country parsons he entertained at home. One did not have to be a believer to see that an aimless son with a penchant for field sports would fit in nicely. Was the Church not a haven for dullards and dawdlers, the last resort of spendthrifts? What calling but the highest for those whose sense of calling was nil? And in what other profession were the risks of failure so low and the rewards so high? The Anglican Church, fat, complacent, and corrupt, lived luxuriously on its tithes and endowments, as it had for a century. Desirable parishes were routinely auctioned off to the highest bidder. A fine rural 'living' with a commodious rectory, a few acres to rent or farm, and perhaps a tithe barn to hold the local levy worth hundreds of pounds a year could easily be bought as an investment by a gentleman. 1

Times have, however, changed. The wealth of previous centuries has all but gone, and clerical stipends are now rationalised and equalised. But perhaps more significantly, parishes (or rather congregations) within the Church of England are now being made to shoulder the burden of responsibility for funding local ministry in new ways.

The post-war years have seen a rapid decline in the amount of income provided from central sources (i.e. the Church Commissioners) to individual dioceses, with the responsibility for financing being increasingly devolved to the dioceses, who in turn have passed on that burden to the parishes. The Church Commissioners are one of the largest landowners in the country, and their assets are currently valued at (estimate) £4,400 million. 2 Much of the income derived from these is engaged in funding the pensions of clergy. Even as late as 1975, many dioceses within the Church of England had all the pension contributions of their clergy met from central sources, and up to three quarters of the actual stipend. By the year 2000, that equation had almost reversed, leaving individual dioceses with the bills for the stipends and most of the pension contributions. However, it is not a level playing field when it comes to dioceses meeting these new demands. Of the 43 dioceses 3 in the Church of England, some have considerable historic resources in terms of finance, whilst others do not.

In order to flesh out the contours of the dilemma a little more, it is perhaps useful to offer a comparison between two very different dioceses. I have deliberately camouflaged these diocese, calling the diocese from the Province of Canterbury 'Southbury', and the diocese from the Province of York 'Northfield'. However, the figures quoted are based on two actual dioceses. Southbury Diocese is close to London, and is mainly suburban in character. There are 1.8 million people living in the diocese, with the average Sunday attendance being in the region of 36,000 people per week, representing 22 people out of every 1000. The diocese has an income of almost £10 million per year, with individuals contributing an average of £4 per week. There are sufficient historical resources to provide almost £2 million per year towards the £10 million cost of running the diocese.

Northfield Diocese couldn't be more different. Created in the twentieth century, it is primarily urban, the region having suffered substantially from its loss of industries in the post-war years and a subsequent rise in unemployment. There are 1.2 million people living in the diocese, but weekly church attendance is almost half that of Southbury. Only 19,000 people attend church each week, which is about 16 people per 1000. Furthermore, the diocese of Northfield has almost no reserves or assets to generate income, 4 and is therefore heavily dependent on the weekly giving of those who are on the electoral roll or part of parochial stewardship schemes. Like the diocese of Southbury, the average weekly giving is £4 per individual per week; this helps produce an annual income of £5 million per year - half of the sum that Southbury can generate and spend.

The lack of parity between the two dioceses has some profound effects on the ways in which the dioceses operate. Generally, Southbury has sufficient monetary resources to fund a deeper and richer diocesan infrastructure than Northfield. Yet the average weekly giving per member across both dioceses is virtually identical. However, Northfield, which has high rates of unemployment and enjoys a lower standard of living, is giving proportionally more from itself and getting proportionally less for its £4 per week per 'member' than Southbury.

The changes in the financing of Church of England parishes since the 1980s have led to a profound cultural shift in parochial and ministerial self-understanding. 5 Increasingly, it is the congregations who are now paying directly for 'their' parish priest, and correspondingly they are becoming more demanding of their ministers. The move away from the centralised funding of ministry to local funding can be likened to asking local political parties or individual constituencies to provide the funds to pay for their member of parliament (MP). It does not take very long for those who engage in such benefaction to begin to exercise the power that accrues to them through financial giving. Thus, an MP might count it a privilege to be invited to serve as a junior minister in government whilst also sitting as an MP, but the local party or constituency could easily veto the invitation, arguing that this means they will get less value for their money, even though they might gain a degree of prestige by the elevation of their MP. Similarly, it is already becoming difficult for some dioceses to fill a range of voluntary or advisory posts, because congregations (as distinct from parishes) are demanding that they get some value for their contributions first, which are of course given voluntarily. 6

So, the gradual changes in funding may have lead to a rather ironic result: power in the church is beginning to be delivered to the laity, because the leaders of the church are, in effect, making congregations 'own' their local ministry. The changes in these contours of power and in the culture of ministry are only just beginning to emerge, but it would be reasonable to assume that the revolution will be relatively profound within a decade or two. The financial policies of the Church Commissioners in respect of their relation to parish support are creating a creeping congregationalism within the Church of England. 7 Parish ministry is being corroded by a set of pecuniary rationales that effectively shape congregations into units of funding who in turn are educated into 'understanding' that it is their job to support their minister. In short, the danger of the policy is that it will lead to parish ministry being neglected in favour of congregational maintenance. 8 It will be interesting to see how the balance of power shifts within the Church of England during the next decade. Will centralisation increase, with more power accruing to bodies such as the Archbishop's Council? Or will local churches begin to flex their muscles, and take a greater stake in deciding how their funds are spent, through Diocesan or General Synod? One thing is sure, for whoever succeeds Dr Carey, the task of leading the Church of England in the first decade of the twenty-first century is as unenviable as leading it in the last decade of the twentieth century.

1. A. Desmond and J. Moore, Darwin (London: Penguin, 1991), p. 47. [back]

2. Report: The Church Commissioners Accounts for 1999 (London, 2000). [back]

3. This figure excludes the Diocese of Europe/Gibraltar. [back]

4. It manages to produce about £600,000 per year - less than a third of the sum that Southbury Diocese produces. [back]

5. See R. Harden, 'C of E: in the red and using up reserves', Church Times , 16 February, 2001, p. 1: 'during the past ten years . . . the total diocesan share from the Church Commissioners has dropped from £50 million to £15 million' per year. [back]

6. The Victorians built a number of churches by levying local taxes on the entire population of the parish. When payment of the church rate was abolished in 1868 by Act of Parliament, it led to the present anomaly of all residents having the right to use their parish church, but only the congregation paying for the maintenance of the building. [back]

7. C.f the correspondence on this issue in Church Times , 2 February, 2001, p. 9. [back]

8. Within ECUSA, new churches (or 'mission parishes') can be established within communities using grants from central or diocesan resources. However, the new church normally has five years to become self-funding, after which central subsidies are withdrawn. [back]

Modern Believing, MCU, October Vol. 42, No. 4, October 2001