We reported back in July on the publication of a report by the ResPublica think tank, Holistic Mission: Social action and the Church of England.
This was the subject of a recent debate in the House of Lords, for which the Hansard record can be found starting here. Alternatively ResPublica has published it as a PDF file.
The speakers were not uncritical of the report. The following passage illustrates:
Lord Elton: …Like my noble friend Lady Berridge, who made a very good speech, I attended a meeting recently in the Jerusalem Chamber, where the final version of the authorised version of the bible was agreed, to hear Professor Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University give a PowerPoint presentation. She gave a most illuminating account of the position, outlook and membership of the Church of England. I strongly recommend that account to my episcopal friends and ask them to distribute it as it was a suitable forerunner to the great declamation by George Carey in Shropshire, which nobody has yet had the bad manners to mention, which warned of the end of the church unless something changed. We now have to look at whether what is being proposed is the right change. A good deal of reservation has been expressed about that, not merely because it puts everything in the hands of one church but because of its rather obscurely articulated union with government. The union of government and church is a very dangerous institution, indeed. If the church is seen to co-operate with the Government, de facto it is not co-operating with the Opposition and it is likely to get all the flak that the Government get for things that go wrong which are not the fault of either of them…
The presentation, Telling the Truth about Christian Britain, mentioned in the above quote can be found as a PDF file on this page.
I understand that George Carey has been playing the ‘we’re all doomed’ card for many years but the graph on page 4 of Professor Woodhead’s presentation does seem to support his view. If I were a member of the Church of England I think I’d find that slide pretty terrifying.