C of E 500

 

Guest blog by T. Lester Trewscape

Four years ago I was able to reveal to you The Clergy Sabbatical Refresher Course. This is a confidential document summarising the instruction given to clergy on sabbatical. Under oath, it is disclosed to them that the Church of England is being wound up and that their task is to further this aim.

Remarkably, I have now had a view of a related but much more recent document, evidently a summary or draft outline of a longer, more detailed report. It gives a fairly up-to-date picture of the plans for the winding down process and shows that this has now been given a definite focus date. It is unclear what body within the C of E issued this, but it clearly comes from the administrative centre.

Church of England 500

Background

Research shows that, at the present rate of decline, the (lay) membership of the Church of England will reach zero by 2035.

It is our intention to adopt this as our official winding-up date, though naturally this will not be publicly divulged until a suitable time.

Providentially (as might have been said in former times) 2035 is the five hundredth anniversary of the Act of Supremacy, which was, to all intents and purposes, the birth of the C. of E. 

It can therefore be presented as eminently fitting that the era of Anglicanism in England should be brought to an end on this date. Nearer the time, ways will need to be devised of celebrating the event positively. The emphasis should be on the great contribution of the Church to national life, and in particular how this has now been absorbed into our culture and values, so that, in a sense, the Church’s mission has been fulfilled.

Establishment

It is imperative that the position of the Monarch as Supreme Governor should be safeguarded. The Church will of course continue to have an institutional existence, since the bishops and clergy, the infrastructure, church buildings, and ecclesiastical organisations will remain. Though the exact model is as yet not fixed, it is intended that some kind of ‘Continuing Church of England’ will be constituted, with the Monarch as head, ensuring that the religious side of State occasions can continue without interruption. In order to make this viable, some form of ‘privatisation’, setting the institution on a profitable basis, is envisaged. A faint parallel can be seen in the privatised ‘Royal Mail’.

Cathedrals

Cathedrals and Abbeys are of course the most popular aspect of the Church. At present they are also the most expensive plant to maintain, but the intention is that they should be placed on a secure commercial basis. All means of securing a profitable income stream to offset the cost of the musical and cultural provision of the cathedrals will be explored. The enduring presence of the cathedrals will do much to preserve the idea of a ‘Continuing Church’.

Wings of the church

The expectation, based on the demographic data, is that the lay membership of the Liberal and High Church or Anglo-Catholic wings of the C of E will virtually wither away to nothing. It is thought that the Evangelical churches will preserve a viable membership for longer. How exactly they will act during the next decade is uncertain. Some churches, perhaps even some whole church groupings, may decide to ‘go it alone’. 

However, it is felt to be more likely that some, at least, are awaiting the hour when they can ‘reclaim’ the Church of England as a truly Reformed or Evangelical Church. This will given sympathetic consideration, but only on negotiated terms. Such terms would of course involve accepting continued Establishment, maintenance of the Cathedrals, and outward tolerance of bishops and clergy of differing traditions. These would be to the advantage of both sides.

General Synod

The synodal system was, of course, introduced to facilitate the decline of the Church of England. In its early years it was not very effective in this, but over the past decade it has done much better. The current stalemate in General Synod over sexual identity has proved very successful in absorbing the energies of all participants in unproductive debate, with the consequent discouraging influence on lay people outside it, and it looks set to continue to bear fruit for several more years.  The synodal system will, of course, be terminated in or soon after 2035, as there will effectively be no House of Laity.

Safeguarding

The safeguarding scandal is the main threat to the successful orderly winding up of the Church of England. Obviously it is imperative that the Church never gets manoeuvred into a position where the claims of abuse survivors and victims of false accusations are so far recognised that significant financial obligations are incurred. On the other hand, a general acknowledgement of the misfortunes of victims must continue to be expressed, so as not to appear to be entirely unconcerned. The bishops are, on the whole, managing to perform this balancing act quite well. 

Crucially, these delaying tactics need to be continued until the Church is wound up. The setting up and abolishing of pseudo-independent safeguarding commissions, followed by lengthy explorations of alternative structures, should succeed in protracting the process for the necessary period, though it may be a close call. Once the Church has been wound up and reconstituted on a different legal basis it should be difficult or impossible for successful financial claims to be lodged against it.

Finances

Finances are, quite literally, the bottom line. The key consideration is the maintenance and indeed expansion of the Church’s funds so as to enable all bishops, clergy, and lay administrative staff to be assured of secure and generous pensions. It is imperative that the Church avoids all large-scale financial outlay. Hence the stress on the very judicious management of the abuse scandals.

The Church, of course, has a vast resource in terms of its buildings. But here again we need to tread cautiously. There can be no wholesale selling off of buildings, especially historic churches. Instead, a detailed, highly confidential, national plan will need to be worked out over the coming decade for the sensitive realisation of these assets on virtually a case by case basis, ensuring that each building has a destiny that will be acknowledged, especially by locals, as fitting. This destiny may be as a concert hall, a theatre, a community hub, or a place of worship for another religious group.

Conclusion

It has been persuasively suggested in some quarters that the winding-down of the Church of England should be marked by a National Festival. The figures of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I could be employed as part of the pageantry, given their general popularity (despite the realities of their ecclesiastical policies!). Spirituality would of course be a major theme of such a Festival.

Our Church has been sinking lower and lower

 

Has not all our misery, as a Church, arisen from people being afraid to look difficulties in the face? They have palliated acts, when they should have denounced them…. And what is the consequence? That our Church has, through centuries, ever been sinking lower and lower, till good part of its pretensions and professions is mere sham, though it be a duty to make the best of what we have received. Yet, though bound to make the best of other men’s shams, let us not incur any of our own. The truest friends of our Church are they, who say boldly when her rulers are going wrong, and the consequences; and (to speak catachrestically) they are most likely to die in the Church, who are, under these black circumstances, most prepared to leave it.

—J.H. Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, p. 274

New title from ‘Philologus’: The Wisdom of Yakob the Elder

The Letter of St James in the New Testament is a treasury of wisdom about life, ambition, wealth, desire, and tribulation, expressed in miniature episodes. 

The Wisdom of Yakob the Elder re-imagines these episodes as a series of stories about St James, aka Yakob, and his fictional well-meaning associate, Sophron son of Zakkai.

The book is beautifully illustrated by a fine artist based in North Wales.

Contents: 40 pages, six chapters, six illustrations, questions for thought or discussion.

Price £5.00. Copies can be obtained by means of the comments section of this blog. A single copy can be sent by ordinary first class mail within the UK.

The Church of England’s Clergy Sabbatical Refresher Course Revealed

Guest Blog by T. Lester Trewscape

Your Vicar is tired. They badly need a break from the parish. They go away on Sabbatical for three or six months. Lovely! No doubt they will return refreshed and rested, with a new vision of God and a new zeal for the Kingdom. But oddly, when they come back they have little to say and even lower energy. They seem subdued, even depressed. Their sermons seem to lack content. They show little enthusiasm even for the things they used to promote before their sabbatical, when they were struggling with exhaustion, to say nothing of any new projects. They avoid social contact, or just talk about the rugby. Why?

This has long been a mystery to me, but I now know the reason. I have had a sight — brief and partial, but sufficient — of the Church of England’s Clergy Sabbatical Refresher Course outlines. These outlines are not public. They are not available on the Web, and are not even in electronic form. They exist only as paper documents, and the copies that are around now look to be the descendants, through many photocopyings, of an original produced by a typist in the late 1970s or early 1980s. There are, indeed, numerous internal clues (such as the references to 1960s theologians and the establishment of Synodical Government as recent), that the course was first compiled in the later twentieth century and has merely been reproduced ever since.

It is clear that clergy on sabbatical are required to attend one of these courses. It is also clear that they are required under oath not to disclose the content. I was unable even to photograph the Clergy Sabbatical Refresher Course, let alone photocopy or scan it. To be honest, I gained a sight of it in a somewhat discreditable way, but I can’t disclose how the lucky break occurred without implicating the (entirely innocent) person who possessed a copy of the document. I had to do my best to memorize it and then scribble down notes as soon as it was safe to do so. I have a good memory, but naturally what I have reproduced below is very incomplete and probably inaccurate, becoming sketchy towards the end; but I have tidied it into a structured format.

When you read it, I think you will see why clergy returning from their sabbatical are so shell-shocked. What they are taught on the course must disappoint their more idealistic aspirations, while confirming their darkest and least optimistic suspicions.

The Clergy Sabbatical Refresher Course

1. Ecclesiology

1.1 The future of the Church of England

Unusually, this course does not begin from theology or scripture. Instead, the focus is on the Church, and specifically the Church of England.

The key fact for all clergy on this course to grasp is that the Church of England, or more specifically its membership, is winding down. This is a perfectly natural process, closely parallel to the winding-down of an elderly person's life. And just as we as individual priests see it as our calling to get alongside an elderly person as they approach the end of life, so as Anglican clergy we need to take fully to heart the fact that we are called to assist and support the Church as it approaches close-down.

1.2 Terminal care for the Parish

Once we have fully understood our role in giving terminal care to the Church as a whole, we can appreciate that this role needs to be expressed in our ministry to our individual parishes. It is a calling and indeed a stewardship which needs to be taken seriously. When you return to your parish, you will need to fix your attention on the prospect that within a few decades, or even sooner, your congregation will no longer exist. At the time when the present course is being compiled, this may still be fifty or more years away for many parishes, but during the ministry of successive generations of clergy, and as we move into the 21st century, the end will be in sight for many.

1.3. Planning for the end time.

We do not know when an elderly person will pass away, and it would be insensitive to refer to the fact that they haven’t long to live, or to suggest that they get rid of things they will soon have no need for. The same applies to your parish. You know that it hasn’t long, but that doesn’t mean blatantly running everything down. Of course not. But it’s important to set discreet priorities. In the ordinary course of events, the incumbent — yourself or one of your successors — will still be in post when the congregation reaches impractically low numbers. Let us assume for the sake of illustration that it is you. You will continue to be employed as a member of the clergy and will retain your role in the community. Equally, barring mishaps, your church will still be there as a landmark in the midst of the community. It is merely the congregation that will have departed. Hence it makes sense to concentrate on activities that ensure that the church is a viable, useful, and attractive community resource and avoid those that artificially delay the decline of the congregation.

2. Church structure and activities.

2.1. The ‘clergy line’.

It is not so long ago that Bishop J. A. T. Robinson described and analysed the marked line of division between the clergy and the laity (see Layman’s Church, 1963). His recommendations regarding this ‘clergy line’ — which were that the distinction between the two parties should be reformulated with the overall intention of weakening it — were based on an interpretation of the ‘signs of the times’ which, as he later admitted, were incorrect (see On Being the Church in the World, second edition, 1970, preface). The concept, however, is a useful one, but in almost an opposite way to that intended by Robinson. It is essential that the line of demarcation between clergy and laity be maintained and strengthened. The status of clergy as the professional guardians, interpreters, and mediators of the Faith must be upheld as a top priority, and nothing should be done that seems to breach this barrier. The emergence of any kind of organized lay leadership having the aim or effect of preserving, expanding, or prolonging the existence of the Church must be prevented as a matter of paramount importance.

2.2. The Laity.

The days of clergy ostentatiously emphasizing their supremacy are of course long gone. In any case, such explicit emphasis is not necessary, as Robinson’s study shows. Most lay people unconsciously subscribe to the idea that the clergy constitute the essence of the Church, while the laity are in a sense dispensable, and our main task is to sensitively and subliminally bolster that idea. Crucially, it is vital to head off activities which seem to cross the line, while encouraging others that help to preserve it.

2.3. Examples of broadly helpful activities and projects:

2.3.1. Choir development. 

Church music appeals right across the community, to people with and without faith. High quality music enhances the church’s reputation while giving minimal offence. A choir visually underlines the distinction between those who lead worship and those who respond, while projecting an impression of strong lay participation. It is therefore the most powerful tool we have in showing an inclusive attitude while maintaining clerical primacy. Moreover choir membership does not demand Christian commitment, and hence does not contribute to real church expansion.

2.3.2. Social care programmes. 

These are also generally well received by the community, provided of course that they are not used to proselytize. It is vital that these are under the supervision of the PCC, i.e. of the Vicar or Rector directly. Projects with the elderly are especially recommended, since increasingly the membership of your congregation will fall into that age bracket, bringing about an efficient overlap of activity.

2.4. Examples of activities that are only helpful under some circumstances.

2.4.1. Building projects. 

These are helpful in ensuring the ongoing value and usefulness of the church building after the congregation has dwindled away. It is therefore important that the modifications are of a kind that will be generally useful, such as a kitchen, toilets, general-purpose meeting rooms, etc., rather than anything too closely tied to religious activities. It is our responsibility as clergy to ensure that our church buildings, which constitute an important part of the ecclesiastical asset portfolio, should be in the most attractive and versatile condition.

2.4.2. Organ refurbishment. 

This is useful if the church is developing a top-quality choir. Otherwise it may be wasteful of resources.

2.4.3. Faith development. 

It is very important to get this right. On the whole, anything that opens a loophole for lay leadership is unwise. If you feel there is a need for faith development groups, especially where there has been a tradition of holding them, it is best that they meet on church premises. Equally, it is vital to have clergy oversight if possible, particularly if the groups meet in people’s homes.

If lay people launch a faith development project, very careful handling is needed. It should of course be accorded initial approval, but thereafter a regime of ‘benign neglect’ is recommended. This includes giving the meetings minimal publicity, avoiding enquiry about or encouragement of their progress, and ensuring non-attendance by clergy. In most cases this should result in the project running out of steam within a few months.

The content of faith development is very important. Ideally, material drawn from the borderland of spirituality and self-help is best. The recently emergent Enneagram is ideal. Myers Briggs is useful, but of limited scope. The best Christian writers to use are those with an emotionally uplifting but fairly nebulous message. Henri Nouwen (another recent gift to the Church) is a good example.

Ideally, aim to interest lay people in individual spirituality, i.e. activities which they pursue alone, rather than in group activities. If you have existing groups, such as Lent and Advent courses, they can be replaced by the circulation of inspirational messages and prayers, once you have determined that the number of parishioners demanding actual groups is too low to be viable. You can touch many more lives this way and ensure that people have the necessary devotional material ready to hand. It is then up to them whether they make use of it.

The other mainstay is opening the daily office said in church to lay participation, which reinforces the primacy of the clerical role, while building up individual adherence.

Should a lay person display a marked degree of enthusiasm for spiritual development, the best response is to recommend them a spiritual director. The advantages of this are that they will obtain expert guidance, you will not have an extra call on your time, and the activity will take place outside the parish.

A note on prayer groups.

If at all possible, distract the laity from interest in the idea of groups for prayer. Encourage solitary prayer and attendance at the office (at which prayer requests can be incorporated), as recommended above. If a prayer group is unavoidable, try to guide it towards silent prayer and guided meditation, and/or the use of the Prayer Book, repetition of the Psalms, the Jesus Prayer, etc.

It is imperative that you discourage, and aim to prevent, group extempore praise and intercession, which can have unpredictable and incalculable effects that are likely to interfere with the ongoing reduction of parish activity.

2.4.4. Children’s and young people’s work.

This is a thorny topic and must be cautiously handled. No church could possibly be seen to be actively preventing the instruction of the younger generation in the faith. On the other hand, in the longer term it is clearly counterproductive to add members, especially those with many years to live, to the institution which it is our appointed role to wind down.

If there is no budget for a children’s worker (or curate with such a role) you are in a strong position. It may only be possible to mount lay-led Sunday Schools, toddler groups, and so on. These are highly dependent on the availability of willing and qualified lay people, so in the longer term they will prove to be unsustainable.

If more professionally run children’s work is established in the parish, the key fact to remember is that most of the young people passing through it will leave the area when they go to university or start their careers and will not join the congregation. The essential thing to avoid is drawing their parents into the church. If you already have good quality children’s work you will have spotted this tendency. ‘Benign neglect’ is again the policy to follow. Welcome parents, but try to avoid involving them in any way that will develop in them a special loyalty to your parish. 

2.5. The PCC.

The PCC is a crucial tool. Here are some points for further elaboration in later sessions:

2.5.1. Ensure that you write and control the agenda. Put everything you plan to do on it.

2.5.2. Encourage open discussion. If possible ensure that there is a wide range of views on anything controversial. Bring welcome relief from the lengthy deadlock yourself by gently shepherding the PCC towards the course of action you favour.

2.5.3. Leave PCC recruitment to the laity. That way it is likely that the full complement of vacancies will begin not to be filled. (This also applies to all parish roles, in fact.) Empty PCC places are a very good sign of church decline.

2.6. A Note on Synodical Government.

The system of synods, recently introduced, has been specifically designed to assist in the winding-down of the Church of England. This system involves greatly increased lay participation, which has, generally speaking, the same aim, in a wider context, as the recommended conduct of PCC business. Expression of a wide divergence of views within the Church is actively encouraged in order to broaden and intensify, and hence protract, debate. The range of topics on which maximum discussion time is spent has already proved to consist of controversies which are of diminishing interest and relevance to most of those who are not dedicated Churchpeople, and all the signs are that this trend will continue, with the salutary effect of widening the distance between the Church and the world at large. A range of topics, now on the horizon, that is likely to have a powerful impact in this regard, is the realm of ‘human sexuality’.

3. Your ministry.

From now on, you should not view your role as that of ‘building up’ in the traditional sense. You should view it in terms of support and, in a positive sense, palliative care.

Here are some points for elaboration in later sessions:

3.1. Preaching.

Do not aim to be a teacher of doctrine or the Bible. Avoid spending time in exposition or explanation of the Gospel. Concentrate on fundamental soft-edged truths, such as ‘the Love of God’ or ‘Forgiveness’.

It is quite all right to develop your own emphases or lines of thought, as long as they are not too eccentric. The main thing to avoid is instruction in the practical application of any particular doctrine or Biblical passage to everyday life. Thoughts communicated should be left at a level where each person can take what they want — or nothing at all — from them.

3.2. Pastoral care.

Do not visit the congregation at home except in cases of sickness, dying, or family tragedy. Similarly avoid inviting parishioners into the vicarage. You need to cultivate cordial but arm’s length relationships. Intimate personal friendships with parishioners are of course out of the question.

Do not discuss matters of faith in social situations, such as over church coffee, if you can avoid it.

The key consideration here is the prevention of community building. If you keep yourself somewhat aloof, your parishioners will tend to follow your lead and keep aloof from one another.
Watch out for any signs that your congregation is developing a sense of communal identity or cohesion, outside the set times for meeting together for worship. A presentation on techniques of discouraging lay solidarity, and preventing the emergence of spurious ‘ministries’ among the laity, is given later in this course.

3.3. Services.

Remember that the essential task that you were called and appointed to do was to ensure that the daily offices are said and that the Sacraments are duly administered. These should be your absolute priority whether conducted by yourself or on suitable occasions by whatever auxiliary clergy are locally available and override any events planned by the laity. Weddings and funerals are of course of paramount importance and are likely to go on being a call on your time well after the congregation has begun to dwindle.

Baptisms will increasingly involve non-church members. Their integration within the Parish Eucharist is likely to become more and more disruptive, since the large crowds of guests will have little idea of how to behave. This is good for the inclusive image of the church and also tends to depress attendance by regulars, which contributes in a small way to congregational decline.

4. The future.

In the long run, the Church of England will be left with a large stock of churches, some of which can be made redundant but many more of which will have been well fitted out to become community amenities, such as concert venues. With expenditure on traditional activities dropping significantly there should be reasonable funds to ensure that clergy pensions are adequate, so those overseeing the winding-down process can look forward to a more comfortable retirement than formerly. At this point in time it is not possible to say what roles will be available for those still coming forward for ordination and those in the middle of their ministry, but it is anticipated that there will be institutional outlets, such as the Cathedrals (whose functioning will be maintained for the foreseeable future) and hospital and of course hospice chaplaincies. It is not anticipated that the Apostolic succession of Bishops will be interrupted.

Two Cheers for Martin Luther

I’m re-posting this from two years ago because it still seems important!

Five hundred years of separation is enough. If the quincentenary of the start of the Reformation is to be put to any use, it should be to bury the disastrous hostilities and recriminations that have riven the robe of Christ for all that time, and which are such a scandal to the non-Christian world.

I say ‘the robe of Christ’ because I truly believe that the Body of Christ cannot be torn apart—how could it be, being a temple built by God, not made with human hands? This is the ultimate tragedy of Christian disunity: it is all an illusion. In reality, in the Kingdom of Heaven, in the eyes of God, we Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, Presbyterians, Methodists, Brethren, Quakers, Independents of all shades—all who profess the name of Christ—we are all one Body, whether we like our fellow-members or not, whether we believe them to be genuine or not, whether we label them as heretics or not.

Tearing Christ’s robe in this way, to my mind, is the great ecclesiastical sin. I’m sorry, but I refuse to accept that, when different groups of Christians have formulated different statements about a doctrine, just one of those statements is precisely right in the eyes of God, and every group that holds to a different statement is heretical, disqualified from salvation, and denied entry to God’s Kingdom. I don’t think churches, or individuals, are going to be held to account or damned for getting a factual statement about God or even a rule of Christian behaviour wrong. But I do think that Christians who separate themselves from other Christians, who criticize and judge them for their statements of faith and their teachings, who wage a war of words or weapons with them, who vilify and condemn them and kill them—they, I do think, will answer to God for their treatment of people who are brothers and sisters in Christ and fellow-members of his Body.

And that’s why I don’t give the full three cheers for Martin Luther, 1517. Of course, there had been schisms before his time. The split between the Western and Eastern churches was the first great disaster of this kind. There’s bound to have been wrong on both sides, but it’s instructive that the Western Church has flourished, whereas the Eastern churches have declined and are now vanishing from the original homeland of Christianity. But to Luther belongs the dubious distinction of bringing about a church-wide schism single-handedly by dint of his own dogged (or pig-headed?) adherence to what he thought was right. Not only that, but he bequeathed a strain of schismatic DNA to his whole Protestant progeny, causing it to go on reproducing schism within itself, generation after generation, century after century, right down to the present day. He effectively taught his spiritual descendants ‘read the Scriptures and if that makes you disagree with anything that your church teaches, walk away and start a new church—and call it the true church’. So that is my first reason for not cheering whole-heartedly for Martin Luther, 1517.

My second reason is that Luther misrepresented the teaching of St Paul; with destructive consequences. Luther’s exaltation of ‘justification by faith’ (set out in only two of the Pauline epistles) over everything else that St Paul taught represents Luther’s inner spiritual struggle projected on to a scriptural canvas. Luther, in despair of ever being good enough through carrying out ‘works’, discovered the wonderful truth of salvation through faith. He thought that Judaism, out of which St Paul emerged, was a religion of ‘works’. But in fact it wasn’t, and Paul never said it was. He opposed the adoption of Jewish ritual practices by Gentile Christians; he never relaxed the requirement for moral goodness—how could he? Luther pushed Christian teaching about the Atonement, which was already badly out of kilter in late medieval Catholicism, further into the realm of the courtroom. The New Testament doctrine is well summarized in St Paul’s statement that in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. Protestantism developed the idea of the vengeful Judge who can only pardon an offender by having the just requirement of his law satisfied by the death of his Son: effectively this means that Christ was reconciling God to the world. How could Paul have held such a belief, having grown up reciting the ubiquitous verses in the Psalms and Prophets about God’s mercy and readiness to forgive? How can anyone who has assimilated the Parable of the Prodigal Father doubt that the problem of atonement lies not in God’s unwillingness to forgive, but in humankind’s unwillingness to change? But in the light of my first point about toleration, anyone who wants to can of course cling on to the courtroom image of salvation if it really helps them. For me, the battle for virtue against vice calls for a saviour who deals with our human propensity to commit sin and enables us grow into his likeness.

My third reason for giving only two cheers for Martin Luther, 1517, is simply that Luther was not a saint. If someone is going to lead thousands of Christians along a new and blessed spiritual path, I expect that person to show signs of sanctity and Christlikeness. Please don’t remind me that no one is perfect. The fact is, there have been saints throughout Christian history who have been palpably holy, and many of them have had the power, through personal contact, to change people’s lives, physically and spiritually. Generally speaking such people have not usually persuaded secular rulers to favour their movements and to take up arms against those who opposed them. Many of them have cared deeply and sacrificially for the lowliest members of society. Nor have they been foul-mouthed and judgemental. Luther’s attitudes to the rebellious peasants, and to Jews, are too well-known to need repeating. It might have been a good idea if after receiving his revelation about justification by faith, Luther had spent several years developing his personal sanctity, taking the log out of his own eye before he set about removing the admittedly large amount of timber from the eyes of the church leadership.

My fourth reason. Luther’s revolt against the Catholic Church gave a massive boost to secular ways of thinking. In some ways, of course, this was a good thing. People coming to think and act outside the box of religious conformity was a step forward for humanity. But it was probably a natural development, stemming from the changing social, economic, and political scene of the times. Luther’s role in it was disastrous for Christianity. Protestantism teamed up with so-called Renaissance Humanism to reject everything medieval. Effectively it began a process of debunking which has continued down to the present-day philosophy of postmodernism, which teaches that truth is merely a social construct. Once you begin a witch-hunt for ‘superstition’ you find it everywhere. First you clear out medieval Catholic practices which you think are out of line with Scripture. Then you clear out scriptural beliefs that you think are out of line with empirical fact. Finally you clear out empirical fact because it is out of line with what you would like to believe.

My fifth reason is roughly summed up by the word vituperation. The Protestant reformation launched centuries of ugly vilification between Protestant and Catholics. The Church should have been standing united against the immaterial adversaries—wickedness and unbelief— but instead the two parts entered into a mutually destructive internecine battle conducted by material adversaries. Christians vilified one another in barren, unedifying diatribes, of no interest now except to the historical lexicographer. The Protestant side devised a tedious litany of opprobrious stories about the Catholics, repeated over and over: perverted monks, duplicitous Jesuits, tyrannical priests, superstitious laity. Not that it was necessarily all untrue, but so prurient, so self-righteous, so deeply uncharitable. And I’m always intrigued at how one particular medieval idea became a foundational doctrine of Protestantism, maintained all the way down to Ian Paisley, though more delicate churchmen would prefer to draw a veil over it: the curious equation of the Pope with Antichrist. Christianity has no other doctrines that relate specifically to historical persons or places beyond those relating, naturally enough, to the life and work of Jesus Christ: yet here were the Reformers confidently steering themselves towards the possibility of calling good evil.

My sixth reason is to do with the Whig interpretation of history. On the latter theory, which generations of children were taught at school, Protestantism was on the side of ‘progress’ and Catholicism on the side of ‘reaction’. I don’t deny that Catholicism mainly tried to keep things as they were. But not a few aspects of Protestantism were far from promoting social progress and liberty. Women, for example, under Catholicism had a route for avoiding marriage and childbirth and, sometimes, for gaining education, by entering the monastic life. Everyone, of course, believed in the subjection of women, but under the Protestant dispensation subjection to a male became almost inescapable. Or again, in medieval times the Church fought hard (and often dirtily) to maintain its independence of the secular power. This had at least the potential for good. The Church could act as a critic and a conscience to the secular government. Of course it very often didn’t, and of course under the Counter-Reformation the Church got a grip on a number of Catholic governments. But at least there were two spheres, not a monoculture. Protestantism subjected the Church to the secular magistrate. Disloyalty to the one automatically equalled disloyalty to the other. It’s hard not to see the Church of England’s loss of moral appeal to the working class as connected with the cosy alliance between Church and State in England. Bad for the people and bad for the Church. Or again, in medieval England, the monasteries often acted as a kind of informal social service, relieving people in need and providing medical care. The dissolution of the religious houses removed this partial safety net. And I think it was Protestantism that fostered the idea that poverty was related to moral inadequacy, so that the more the poor were allowed to suffer the better it was for their moral welfare.

We don’t know if the world would have been a better or a worse place without Luther. Perhaps a schism in the Western Church would have happened anyway. But after five hundred years we might do more of a kindness to Luther by learning from the mistakes of the past than by celebrating what led to them.

The Antichrist and (the Last) Trump

From almost the beginning, Christianity has had its very own science fiction, fantasy epic genre: End Times Prophecy. As we all know, it’s a heady concoction, brewed from the apocalyptic teachings of Our Lord in the Gospels, the Book of Revelation, the Book of Daniel, and 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. And as we also all know, it all culminates in a mysterious and terrifying key figure, Antichrist: the crucial contribution of 1 John chapter 2. Countless writers, from Justin Martyr in the second century to Hal Lyndsey and others in our own times, have tried to turn this welter of prediction into a coherent programme of events and to work out, if possible, who the terrible figure of the Antichrist will be.

If you and I had been Bible-believing Christians living in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, and maybe even later in some parts of these islands, we would have had no doubt whatever about the identity of Antichrist. On the Reformation view, his current incarnation is that peace-loving clerical gentleman from Argentina who goes about Rome in a white cape and a skullcap, known as Papa Francesco. Yes, the Pope was Antichrist and Antichrist was the Pope. As the excellent article on Antichrist in Dr William Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, Volume I, 1875, says:

That the Pope and his system are Antichrist was taught by Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melancthon, Bucer, Beza, Calixtus, Bengel, Michaelis, and by almost all Protestant writers on the Continent. Nor was there any hesitation on the part of English theologians to seize the same weapon of offense...The Pope is Antichrist, say Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Hooper, Hutchinson, Tyndale, Sandys, Philpot, Jewell, Rogers, Fulke, Bradford. Nor is the opinion confined to these 16th century divines, who may be supposed to have been specially incensed against Popery. King James held it, as strongly as Queen Elizabeth.

It was not actually made an article of faith, but the ordinary person found it much easier to grasp than many of the obscurer of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. On 5 November every year an effigy of the Pope is still burnt alongside that of Guy Fawkes in Lewes (admittedly, an effigy of Paul V, the Pope in 1605, not Francis).

Now, there are some curious paradoxes involved in this. The first paradox is how odd it is, when you think about it, that something like this could become an accepted doctrine of the church. Doctrines are normally about timeless spiritual truths rather than the identity of  particular people. The Creeds mention only two people apart from the Lord: his mother Mary and his crucifier Pilate, and they are only there to support the doctrines of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion. There are no doctrines about Judas or Caiaphas or Herod or John the Baptist. 

So why was the doctrine that the Papacy is Antichrist so attractive? There are two possible reasons. Firstly, the Reformers had boldly rejected a sizeable catalogue of Roman (Catholic) beliefs and practices. People might have taken these to be just a random set of misguided heresies that had accumulated over the centuries, and might have questioned whether there was any logic behind this wholesale rejection. The Reformers’ case would be greatly strengthened by the idea that they were an interconnected web of mischief all emanating from a single dark source, one foretold long ago, even before the coming of Christ. And secondly, a corresponding Catholic doctrine about an individual person already existed: the doctrine that St. Peter was the Rock on which the global Church was built and the first Bishop of Rome, and hence his successors were the head of the whole Church. Branding them as the Antichrist neatly disposed of that claim.

The second paradox is that whereas the Reformation sprang fresh from the New Learning of the post-medieval era, with its better understanding of the historical background of Scripture, the identification of the Pope with Antichrist is actually medieval. Joachim of Fiore first suggested that a Pope would be the Antichrist around 1200, and soon thereafter the idea that the Papacy itself was the Antichrist began to get about and became popular with many groups, some orthodox and others more or less heretical. So this particular article of belief was not a discovery of the Reformers—they borrowed it from medieval Catholics.

The third paradox was revealed to me in reading Dr Smith’s article already referred to. It takes all the relevant Biblical passages at face value—there’s not a hint of liberal theology or Biblical criticism. It works its way very clearly and convincingly to certain conclusions. John’s Antichrist is Paul’s Man of Sin, and is also the Second Beast of the Apocalypse, the false prophet. Daniel’s Little Horn is the First Beast of the Apocalypse; it is not a person but what Smith calls a ‘polity’; it lasts for three and a half ‘times’; it is in fact the corrupted church denoted by Paul’s ‘apostasia’ or ‘falling away’ (in 2 Thessalonians); it is not the Antichrist. Babylon is the harlot riding the First Beast (the references to the seven hills, among other things, make it clear that Babylon is indeed Rome), so Rome is seated upon the corrupted church. Don’t worry if you’re confused; what matters is Dr Smith’s conclusion: since Babylon is destroyed in Revelation 18, but the Antichrist, the Second Beast, is still active in Revelation 19, the harlot Rome cannot possibly be Antichrist. 

Dr Smith says:

Indeed there is hardly a feature in the Papal system which is similar in its lineaments to the portrait of Antichrist as drawn by St. John, however closely it may resemble Babylon.

Whatever faults the Papacy may have or have had, being Antichrist is not one of them. All that trouble the Reformers gave us could have been spared if they had not followed their medieval predecessors so blindly!

So who does Dr Smith think the Antichrist will be? He says:

It would appear further that there is to be evolved from the womb of the Corrupt Church, whether after or before the fall of Rome does not appear, an individual Antichrist, who, being himself a scoffer and contemner of all religion, will yet act as the patron and defender of the Corrupt Church, and compel men to submit to her sway by the force of the secular arm and by means of bloody persecutions. He will unite the old foes superstition and unbelief in a combined attack on liberty and religion. He will have, finally, a power of performing lying miracles and beguiling souls, being the embodiment of satanic as distinct from brutal wickedness. How long his power will last we are wholly ignorant, as the three and a half times do not refer to his reign (as is usually imagined), but to the continuance of the apostasia. We only know that his continuance will be short. At last he will be destroyed together with the Corrupt Church, in so far as it is corrupt, at the glorious appearance of Christ, which will usher in the millennial triumph of the faithful and hitherto persecuted members of the Church.

So, an irreligious, lying scoffer, empowered by prejudice to attack liberty, and relying on the support of thousands of Christians whose lifestyle and attitudes are dubiously Christlike.

Does this remind you of anyone? If I were a fundamentalist, I know who I would take it to point to: the current inhabitant of the White House.