MANY Church Times readers will know that Dr Paul Avis is a scholarly priest who has written extensively and reliably about Anglicanism while also serving as a rural parish incumbent in the diocese of Exeter. Thirty-one of his works are listed in the bibliography of this his latest book. His careful scholarship is as apparent here as it is elsewhere, but it has an added moral passion. Avis is aghast at what he considers has happened to his beloved Church of England.
In the preface — citing the Makin report after the Bishop Peter Ball and John Smyth QC scandals, Archbishop Welby’s subsequent resignation, and the “disparagement of the parochial form of Anglican life” — he declares: “My aim is to speak, both critically and constructively, into that sad, gloomy and mournful place in which the national Church of England currently finds itself in the midst of society. It has not been in such a place for centuries.”
In the body of the book, he recognises that the Roman Catholic Church in Britain has fared little better, but he is particularly offended by the behaviour of his own Church, which, in his opinion, justifiably claimed until recently to be established, national, and parish-based. Each one of these adjectives, he argues in subsequent chapters, has now been debased. “The abuse scandals have generated widespread scepticism about the place and value of the church within civil society and about the relevance of its message (the gospel) and teaching to human wellbeing and social cohesion… They have undermined the moral authority that the church expects to claim.”
Both the authority and integrity of the Church of England have thus been undermined, and, as a result, so has its very “trustworthiness” with the general public.
In contrast, he argues: “The good church is a church of ethical integrity, which is — precisely because of that character — a church that elicits respect, gratitude and even admiration from the community and from society, because its identity is perceived by those looking on as having the moral quality of goodness.”
In short, a “good church” is a responsive, responsible Church of virtuous character, and its greatest strength is at parish level. He agrees, though, with Alison Milbank’s The Once and Future Parish (SCM Press, 2023) that rural parishes have now been seriously damaged by being starved of funds (once their own) by the Church Commissioners, which has contributed significantly to ongoing churchgoing decline.
Avis is not alone in reaching such gloomy conclusions. Professor Stephen Bullivant’s Mass Exodus: Catholic disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II (OUP, 2019), unmentioned here, reaches very similar conclusions, albeit deploying greater social-scientific skills. To considerable effect, Bullivant uses an anthropological distinction between credibility-enhancing displays (CREDS) and credibility-undermining displays (CURDS), arguing that his Church has shifted disastrously from the first to the second as a result of recent sexual scandals.
But are such scandals really new? Chaucer alludes to them, and, in my youth, I was well aware that some priests (and schoolmasters) were best avoided. Perhaps what has changed is that the media and the general public, quite rightly, have become less deferential, and that, thank God, we are now learning to show compassion to victims/survivors of abuse rather than to its sanctimonious perpetrators.
This is a forceful book with a serious message.
Canon Robin Gill is Emeritus Professor of Applied Theology at the University of Kent.
Shaping a Church of Ethical Integrity: Groundwork for a church rebuilt
Paul Avis
SCM Press £40
(978-0-334-06661-3)
Church Times Bookshop £32