Lord Bishop of Norwich
Main Page: Lord Bishop of Norwich (Bishops - Bishops)
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, we are meant to declare our interests in this House, but I think that standing here dressed like this is probably a visual declaration. Noble Lords will not be surprised to learn that I believe that the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, to take note of the importance of our parish churches, is one that I am happy to endorse. It applies in Wales and Scotland as well, of course, although I need to be a bit careful of the Presbyterian conscience and not presume any authority north of the border. Born as I was in a non-conformist manse, indeed a Congregationalist manse, I welcome the contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Griffiths and Lord Mawson, to our debate. A good deal of what I will say later about community engagement in our parish churches would apply equally to churches of other traditions.
The diocese of Norwich actually outflanks the diocese of Lincoln in all sorts of ways. It has more medieval churches per square mile than anywhere else in western Europe. In our 577 parishes there are 642 churches serving a total population of only 900,000 people. I have parishes in urban areas of well over 20,000 in population, but I also have 150 parishes with a total population of fewer than 150 people each, in which the parish church will often seat the whole village and several other settlements nearby as well. So “parish” means different things in different places, but the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was right to say that all parishioners have a right to the ministry of their parish church.
Of course, our churches are not owned by their congregations or by the parochial church councils: nor are they branches of the diocese, let alone of the national church. It is the local worshipping communities which, largely, maintain these great historic buildings, especially in rural areas.
I sometimes ask people what Norfolk might look like if you removed all the parish churches from the landscape. It would lose so much of what makes each individual community distinct and, indeed, what makes our city distinct. Norwich Union, now Aviva, has used the cathedral spire in different ways as its logo for many years. It is no surprise that a great church represents that great company’s location of origin—we should have patented it. Remove those parish churches from Norfolk or from any other county and you would also have a spiritually flattened landscape. Our parish churches are hallowed by prayer. Two-thirds of them are surrounded by churchyards: a reminder of the gift of previous generations and now, in many cases, nature reserves—too much tidiness can be destructive. They are centres of community life and, of course, the worship within them spills over into the establishment of all sorts of social action agencies, cultural events, drama, choirs, music-making and all the rest.
Before I look at the community life in our churches more fully, I will say a word or two about the buildings themselves and remind the Minister and the Government just what a good deal they get from the Church of England. I recall a survey, not many years ago, which said that 37% of the population believed that the clergy of the Church of England were paid by the Government—there’s a thought. An even higher proportion of people believed that our church buildings were maintained by the taxpayer. That continues to be true. With the increasing significance of the Heritage Lottery Fund in relation to historic buildings—which I welcome, including its repair grant scheme for places of worship—less now comes from the UK taxpayer to maintain this massive part of our built heritage. No other country in Europe has less financial support from the taxpayer for ecclesiastical heritage than England—which, ironically, has an established church.
Around £115 million is raised by congregations every year, on top of everything else, to maintain our parish churches. The tireless voluntary effort of the faithful members of the Church of England is not always adequately recognised as a massive contribution to our national heritage. As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, pointed out, even in secular France, every parish church built before 1905 is maintained entirely at the expense of the state. However, as he also pointed out, absolutely rightly, they do not see very much love. As a result, I would not argue for that, but I am conscious that the rising generation of worshipping Anglicans is much less content to take on responsibility for the maintenance of these historic buildings than their parents and grandparents were; they believe that much of what is listed and monitored by the state should be supported by state funds.
If the economic recovery is as bright as we are told, we ought to look again at the prospects for this huge inheritance of glorious medieval buildings. I echo others who say that there are ways in which we might be able to target some of the most testing and hidden parts of our buildings, such as roof repairs, where a grant scheme would be really useful. I would be very grateful for the Minister’s comments on future funding in what I believe to be a pending crisis. Even though our church buildings are in such fine condition now, I am not sure what the future holds for 20 or more years’ time.
People love churches: even excluding worshippers, they visit them in droves. Some 31 million people will visit our cathedrals and churches this year. That is worth about £350 million to the tourism industry, but these iconic buildings are often ignored or marginalised in many tourism strategies and cultural plans. Often that is down to a failure of imagination and perhaps a default secularist mindset.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned bats. Anne Sloman, the chair of the Church Buildings Council, Sir Tony Baldry, the Second Church Estates Commissioner, and I, with others, have had lots of ministerial meetings, and a great deal of work has been done with Natural England and Defra. There are positive developments, but it is always odd to me that our parish churches seem to be treated much more as barns than as houses. They are places where people gather to worship and to eat—not just the sacrament of holy communion but more socially as well, although I doubt any other eating place would be allowed to be so unhygienic.
In my remaining time I will concentrate on community engagement. We use the same word—church—for the people as well as the building, of course. I remember some years ago at a conference a bishop saying, “We must put buildings before people”. I could feel the hackles rising all around. But what he meant was that we should present our buildings to people, to place them at the disposal of the community, to do many of the things the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, spoke about—to put them in front of people.
Nowadays I spend a great deal of time, even in a diocese with a host of medieval buildings, dedicating extensions and adaptations to ancient churches to make them usable community buildings—often reversing some of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, spoke about: removing the pews and returning the nave to those community purposes that he spoke about. One of our churches is turned weekly into a cinema. In another of our churches, the nave is used as a school hall and gymnasium for a school nearby that is on such a restricted site that it does not have the space to do these things. That is precisely what a medieval church is meant to be and do, and we are discovering all sorts of possibilities. I could take noble Lords to churches with shops in them or which host farmers’ markets; there are a few with post offices, but that has proved more difficult to achieve than we expected.
Of course, it is in our churches that people gain the inspiration to serve the community around them. I think of two Christian magistrates, two women from Norwich—one Anglican, one free church—who almost 20 years ago formed a small charity to offer help, advice, support and friendship to sex workers in the city. They began by making a vestry in one of our churches an extremely comfortable drop-in centre, with voluntary and paid staff. The Magdalene Group is now well respected and widely admired for its work with sex workers and is consulted internationally for what it has done. All that would not happen if the church was not people as well as buildings—people who care for one another and have entrepreneurial spirit.
It is well known now that there are many food banks in our churches. That is true with us, too. But it is less well known how often the church has reached out to those with drug and alcohol problems or how many of our churches offer debt advice services, bereavement care and a host of other activities.
On Sunday week I will be on a visitation to one of our council estate parishes in Norwich. It is a modern church, not a medieval one. As well as visiting the morning congregation, in the afternoon I will visit a Tamil language congregation given hospitality by the local parish. That congregation has grown and integrated exceptionally well. The ethnic diversity of our urban parishes is nowadays a cause for celebration and I am proud of the way in which so many of our churches welcome the stranger and engage with the migrant worker as well as those permanently in our country. The English parish church is now typically multi-ethnic in urban areas, and increasingly so in our market towns and even our villages.
Last Sunday I was in a small Norfolk village called Bergh Apton. It is a dispersed community. It has only about 300 people. Over the past three weekends more than 60 local people, including some from nearby settlements, formed the cast of a four-act modern mystery play, “The Legend of the Rood”. It was written by a Norfolk storyteller. It was full of humour and local references. It was the story of salvation with a contemporary twist. Pharaoh looked rather like Boris Johnson. Moses was based on “Citizen Smith”, who sought the liberation of the people of Tooting which he wanted to be the promised land. I had a part. I was cast as God—typecast, I suppose. It was an extraordinary cultural event, set in and around the parish church, drawing the community together: creative, empowering, spiritual, human, educational and entertaining. It was the English parish church doing its job. Similar stories can be told everywhere.
We hear much in the media about declining congregations and the church in conflict. That narrative is much too easily accepted and fails to recognise just how fertile and creative is the English parish church. Churches are as engaged with their communities as ever, and I thank God for that.