WRITING in his diocesan leaflet in 1944, the Archbishop of York, Cyril Forster Garbett, expressed dismay at the decline in Bible-reading in the nation. “I believe one of the preliminaries of a religious revival should be a movement to encourage the reading of the Bible, though with this there would have to go intelligent teaching as to the meaning and purpose of its books,” he wrote. He was responding to a report by the National Society, The Church and Adult Education, which accused the Church of having confined its understanding of religious education to schools and children, neglecting the laymen who had “ceased to advance in religious knowledge since his Confirmation classes”.

In a subsequent letter to the Church Times, Harold E. Metcalfe noted that the Congregationalists at Whitefield’s Tabernacle had offered evening classes “undismayed by air-raids or flying bombs”, and lamented the lack of a similar Anglican offering in London. In fact — as a correspondent swiftly pointed out — a number of diplomas and certificates were open to “external students” at the time, at institutions among which was the London Bible College (now the London School of Theology, or LST). Nevertheless, 80 years later, questions about the Church’s commitment to the theological education of the laity remain alive. For several years, Sue Slater, a Lincolnshire lay member of the General Synod, has steadfastly repeated questions to the Archbishops’ Council about provision of funding for the training of lay people (“who all our reports keeping telling us are going to be absolutely vital”).

This week, the current Principal of LST highlighted the fact that the country’s Bible colleges — one source of such training — were not immune from the financial stresses evident in the wider higher-education sector. Annual reports show the challenges of recruiting students, the shortfall between their fees and the cost of provision, and the legacy of the pandemic. There have been closures and mergers in the sector; but it also offers a window on to the changes in the texture of British Christianity since the National Society published its report: colleges linked to Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are reporting growth in numbers, and online learning.

While forecasts about the viability of the sector vary, concern about the preservation of its variety will find a sympathetic ear among many principals in the TEI sector — the finances of which are currently under review. The Synod heard last month that two-thirds of ordinands were now to be found at one third of the 22 providers. Raising concerns about how the value of such institutions was measured, the Revd Professor Morwenna Ludlow urged the Archbishops’ Council to bear in mind that they were “places where important theological work is done, which enriches the mission of the Church more broadly”. Uniting both sectors, perhaps, is a concern that we value what Garbett took to be essential: intelligent teaching about the Book of Books.