“TO HELL with the Bishop.” The outburst from Lord Foulkes (Labour) on Tuesday, when the Bishop of Leeds, the Rt Revd Nick Baines, stood to intervene in a debate in the House of Lords, was, observers said, directed at the Conservative bench, which had indicated a desire to hear from the Bishop. But it is hard to miss an anti-Church mood in the air since the publication of the Makin review. Parliamentarians are trying to remove the Lords Spiritual; further resignations and suspensions are demanded; disestablishment, once a fringe cause, now looks less far-fetched.
Matters were not helped by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s ill-judged valedictory speech last week, which provoked understandable anger from abuse survivors; his subsequent apology, while appropriate, is hardly likely to mollify the Church’s critics. It is not surprising that, a day later, discontent with the Church surfaced in a Lords debate moved by the Archbishop of York on the importance of social cohesion. Baroness Berridge and others took the opportunity to lambast the Church for safeguarding failures — and to ask when and how independent oversight would be implemented. Archbishop Cottrell, unlike Archbishop Welby the day before, paid tribute to victims and survivors of John Smyth, and apologised for the Church’s “shameful failings”. The substance of his speech, on the summer riots, deserved a hearing, though, pointing as it did to “the rise of misinformation on social media
. . . undermining trust in democracy itself and in the rule of law”.
The dangers of misinformation online were raised in a recent report, The Future of News, by the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee. Bishop Baines, a member of the committee, observes, wisely, that “everyone needs to be healthily and enquiringly sceptical about what they read or hear and how it is framed — and by whom and for what purpose.” While the media have played an important part in uncovering scandals, there is also a tendency, as Andrew Brown points out (page 20), to sit light to the facts. The impression, in some instances, is that people are angry with the Church for reasons other than the presenting ones.
When an anti-politics mood takes hold, democracy is endangered. An “anti-Church” mood presents its own dangers. In his Lords speech, Archbishop Cottrell referred to a Theos report that showed that “parish churches were central to the emergency response to the riots.” The Church, he said, “must continue to build and nurture . . . connections” with local communities, which were especially valuable when community tensions boiled over. It would be tragic if, because an anti-Church mood had taken hold, these connections were frayed. Those who suffered would not be newspaper columnists, MPs, or peers: they would be the many other people whom the Church seeks — however falteringly — to serve.