The Church Mouse Blog

29 May 2025

Mouse recently confessed to someone that he was sceptical that a quiet revival was underway in the UK, and the response he got was a frustrated, "Don’t you believe in Jesus?"

So here I am making my confession. I’m The Church Mouse and I’m a ‘quiet revival sceptic’. But I still have hope.

In case you have missed it, the ‘quiet revival’ is the title of a report from the Bible Society that has made the stunning claim that the Church in England and Wales has, despite everything we have previously believed, experienced dramatic growth in recent years.

The most extraordinary claim is that, in the past six years (i.e., since just before the pandemic), the Church in England and Wales, across all denominations, has grown by more than half, from a total of 3.7 million regular worshippers to 5.8 million. The report says that it is largely the young who are driving this, in contradiction to our previous assumption that every generation is less religious than their parents.

The evidence for these claims comes from a large survey undertaken by a highly respected polling organisation, YouGov, that whether they had attended a church in the past month, among other questions. The same question set and methodology six years previously reveals a 56% increase in attendance.

And none of us noticed.

Reaction has largely been one of joy, mixed with anecdotes supporting the conclusions and speculation as to the reasons.

‘I had noticed more people attending recently, so it has the ring of truth about it!’

‘Young men are increasingly in search of purpose.’

‘Gen Z are much more spiritually open than previous generations.’

This is the sort of thing that church social media is full of.

Numerous articles have been written to explain this growth. We have been treated to explanations of how Gen Z is simply a different sort of human being from Gen Y or us oldies of previous vintages. Apparently, they are more open to spirituality and not burdened by old assumptions around faith. We are told that they don’t have the same sense of hope that previous generations had, so they are searching for new sources of meaning and purpose, and it is the young who are fuelling the growth.

So let Mouse unpack what this survey is actually saying and then form a view, to the extent that we can from the available evidence.

Firstly, the survey is not a measure of the number of people who have attended church regularly. It is a measure of the number who said that they have attended church regularly. Those are not the same things, and we must test whether there is a gap between actual attendance and claimed attendance before going any further.

Pollsters have long experienced the phenomenon of inaccurate responses in political polling. Perhaps most famously, the 1992 general election was widely predicted to be a Labour win. When the Conservatives secured a 21-seat majority, the pollsters looked at their numbers to work out what went wrong. They had accurately reported how people told them they would vote, and their samples were representative. But they coined the term ‘Shy Tories’ to explain the phenomenon. Some felt a sense of social embarrassment in telling someone they intended to vote Tory, so they either said ‘don’t know’ or declined to respond. They have since learned to make adjustments for this type of thing.

When it comes to polling on church attendance, no such methodological rigour exists. The polling firms can only report what they are told by members of the public and aim for samples that are large and as demographically representative as possible. So the minimum this survey can tell us is that more people are claiming to go to church than was the case six years ago.

This Mouse would be absolutely overjoyed if this turns out to be the reality, but let me set out a few (evidence-based) reasons why he finds it hard to believe.

Some of the churches where the Bible Society reported significant growth actually count the number of people who walk through their doors, and the numbers don’t match.

The most robust data set by a UK denomination is from the Church of England. Each church counts the number of worshippers during the same period each year, and the numbers are compiled to create a robust, consistent data set. The data shows that over the past six years, the Church has shrunk by between 10-20%, depending on how you count it.

Some commentators have responded that the Church of England is the exception, not the rule. Mired in conflict over sexuality and having high-profile sexual abuse cases in recent years, we should simply ignore the Church of England. The growth is elsewhere, we are told.

The Head of Research for the Bible Society, Dr Rhiannon McAleer, has made this argument.

“Some churches, like the Church of England and Methodists are very good at counting attendance within their churches and these data sets clearly show decline. This is picked up in the media and extrapolated to the wider picture, when it is not necessarily a fair indication of what’s going on in many denominations and churches who don’t collect attendance statistics.”

But that is not what the Bible Society report says. We can see in the data exactly what they are reporting for the Church of England. They are reporting significant growth.

According to their data, 41% of the English and Welsh Church attendance in 2018 was in Anglican settings. Based on a total regular attendance of 3.7m people, we can calculate the Anglican attendance at around 1.5m. By 2024, Anglicans had reduced as a proportion to 34% but of a much larger reported attendance of 5.8m people, so we should be seeing an increase in attendance of around 500,000 to around 2m. In other words, the report claims that the Church of England has grown by a third since 2018.

The Church of England has a range of measures of attendance, but even its most favourable measure of the ‘worshipping community’ is 8% smaller in 2024 than it was in 2018. By stricter measures, such as the average Sunday attendance, the CofE is more like 20% down, despite small increases in numbers since the pandemic lows.

Mouse notes that the Bible Society report includes Wales, however, the Anglican Church in Wales reported attendance of just 26,000 in 2018, so it is safe to assume the vast bulk of these numbers are from the Church of England.

The same methodology can be applied to the data for the Catholic Church, the next largest denomination. The report said that it has grown from 23% of attendees in 2018 to 31% in 2024, meaning it would have grown from around 850,000 regular attendees in 2018 to 1.8 million in 2024, spectacular growth of almost a million regular worshippers.

The Catholic Church in England and Wales reported regular mass attendance down around 20% from pre-pandemic levels, to 555,000 in 2023 from 702,000 in 2019.

Between them, these two denominations have reportedly grown their regular attendance by almost 1.5m people, out of the total reported growth of 2.1m, or over 70% of the total growth. But Church attendance data simply does not back that up.

If we are to take seriously the claims from the Bible Society / YouGov report, someone must come up with a plausible explanation for how it shows growth in attendance of 1.5 million people in denominations whose own statistics show decline.

It is certainly possible that there has been growth in other denominations, but when we have good reason to believe that over 70% of the growth claimed by this report is non-existent, it is hard to believe that the overall picture is anything like the headlines.

Mouse is a little frustrated that the actual questionnaire and data tables from YouGov are not available. That is not to suggest anything is being deliberately hidden, but for anyone looking to understand the data better, this would be invaluable. There may be a better way to understand the numbers, but Mouse cannot work out what that is. There may be more nuggets to be mined from the data tables if they are available, but for now, Mouse has to draw stumps at this point.

So where does this leave us?

Mouse’s take is that it is far from clear that more people are attending church than was the case in 2018, based on actual data from the two largest denominations in Britain. More solidly, we have pretty firm grounds for believing that nothing like the 56% increase is happening in reality, even if there is some growth in some places.

It is perhaps most interesting that people are claiming they attend church more frequently, even if they aren’t actually doing so in practice. For some time there was a bit of a social stigma in certain circles about religiosity. The New Atheist movement had created a hostile environment by arguing that religious faith was the preserve of the ignorant and needy. Many felt the need to move their faith into the private sphere in the face of this. That has largely died away. Perhaps the ‘Shy Christians’ are prepared to say what they really think more now.

But Mouse would conclude by zooming out a little on the macro trends. Church attendance and religious affiliation in Britain has been on the slide since before the Second World War. This has been well evidenced in church attendance data and robust surveys, such as the British Social Attitudes Survey and the Census. Perhaps it will turn around. Perhaps it has already started to do so, but Mouse urges that we not underestimate the depth and profundity of the social forces that have been driving that decline for the past century. Patterns of behaviour learned and passed on from one generation to the next have changed. New habits, behaviours, attitudes and beliefs have replaced core assumptions of previous generations. Turning this round will not be driven by a TikTok meme or a passing fad.

Facing into these uncomfortable truths is not a lack of faith or hope, but simply a recognition of the reality in which we live. In fact, it is only by facing this truth that we can have hope that we will turn it around. This Mouse still has hope, but it remains a hope in things we have not seen.

10 February 2025

Mouse was intrigued by newspaper reports of a new survey claiming to have found that Gen Z are the most spiritual generation and the least committed to atheism. The claims looked compelling but need a deeper look.

Just in case you've been able to miss the deluge of excited Christians sharing the news, Mouse is referring to an opinion poll survey of 10,000 people in the UK which has found that the generations appear to be becoming more spiritual. The survey was first reported in The Times, which headlined that Gen Z were half as likely to consider themselves atheist as their parents.

The survey has been pounced on by some Christians, eager to demonstrate that the current generation of young people are open to conversations about faith and suggesting that this might be the prelude to a revival in the UK.

Well. Perhaps.

The first alarm bell for Mouse was that the survey, with an impressively large sample size, is not actually available for us to review. We don't know the exact questions asked and we are not able to see the data tables behind the headlines. We don't know how the data was collected or the demographic breakdown of the sample. Mouse is always suspicious of a survey when he can't see the exact wording of the question asked or the actual data.

The second alarm bell is that the survey was conducted for the purposes of publicising a book - The Devil's Gospels, by Christopher Gasson. So what we're evaluating here is a survey where we can't see the questions or answers, which was constructed to generate publicity.

Nevertheless, let's take a look at the information that is available from this survey with an open mind. Gasson has written up his key conclusions from the survey in a stand alone report. In the introduction, Gasson writes:

I expected the data to confirm what has been assumed for a long time: Britain is steadily becoming a more atheist country. The results are the reverse of what I was expecting.

Mouse would suggest that Gasson's expectations were somewhat out of line with most of the recent evidence, if that was the case. There has been no evidence of increased atheism for a long time. That said, the evidence has strongly indicated a growth in 'nones' - those affiliating with no religion.

However, Gasson's data does appear to have a counterintuitive conclusion. It appears to show that younger generations consider themselves more spiritual and more religious than older generations. This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that despite the nation becoming less committed to religion steadily over time, younger generations are becoming more committed to religion than older generations.

Now, Mouse will suspend his suspicions that some of this may be caused by the exact nature of the questions asked and take the finding at face value. How can this be true?

In 2022 a survey asked the UK population about belief in God, heaven and hell and came to another paradoxical conclusion - that younger generations were both less religious than older generations, but also more likely to believe in heaven and hell.

It was a puzzle that the Policy Institute looked into in a fascinating article by David Young, who asked:

Is this due to a rise in people with unorthodox combinations of beliefs, shunning organised religion but believing in eternal damnation? That may be an intuitive solution – but it’s not the answer.

Young's solution to the puzzle was a simple analysis of demographics and the impact of immigration. In essence, the younger the generation the increasing proportion of the population is made up of first or second generation immigrants, who come from relatively more religious backgrounds than the UK population into which they have settled. As Young explains:

later generations do include a higher proportion of people from immigrant backgrounds (a person was classified as having an immigrant background if either they described themselves as an immigrant or described both their parents as an immigrant), though this has actually levelled off in Gen Z, which is probably only because the Gen Z cohort is still too young, with birth years between 1997 and 2012, for many Gen Z adults to have immigrated to the UK from abroad, compared to preceding generations.

In particular, Young showed how the increased British Muslim population amongst younger generations moved the needle on belief in Heaven and Hell. While the headline showed that Gen Z were more likely to believe in Hell than any other generation, this is not true when Muslim respondents were excluded.

So what has Christopher Gasson discovered in his survey?

The increased religiosity and 'spirituality' of Gen Z are most likely not a fundamental change in values of younger people, but more likely simply reflect that a greater proportion of this generation come from more religious immigrant families.

Many Christians assumed that the increase in 'spirituality' could be a stepping stone towards commitment to faith. But it is more likely that it is, in fact, a stepping stone in the other direction. Children of immigrant parents who come from a religious background are less likely to follow the faith when they are growing up (and trying to fit in with their mates) in a society which is largely faithless.

It is possible that this demographic phenomenon explains the whole of the effect that Gasson has found. Or perhaps there is an element that young people are more open-minded than older people. After all, Gen Z are aged between 11 and 26 - the ages when teenagers and young adults are discovering themselves and finding their own way in the world. This may explain why the report claims that younger generations are much more likely to have taken a greater interest in religion and spirituality in recent years.

Mouse is not without hope that there will be a change in the direction of travel with regard to faith in the UK. But he is not yet convinced that he is seeing it happen. The best evidence appears to simply show that the reason for changing beliefs in the generations is due to demographic changes. As David Young concluded, "The pattern we see in Gen Z emerges not because of changes in the combinations of beliefs held by Britons, but changes in the composition of who Britons are."

13 January 2025

It seems we are Schrodinger’s Church - both growing and shrinking at the same time - according to the latest statistical release from the Church of England. Attendance in 2023 was higher than 2022, but still significantly below pre-pandemic levels so we have yet to show we have bucked the overall long-term trend of decline.

The headlines from Statistics for Mission 2023 are that the post-COVID bounce-back continued with an increase in attendance of between 2.5% and 5%, depending on which measure you use. But the bad news is that those numbers still put us well below the pre-pandemic attendance level.

The key numbers are average all-age attendance during October, which increasing by 4.6% between 2022 and 2023, but that level is still 20% lower than 2019. That pattern is broadly consistent across most measures.

Easter and Christmas attendances increased by more in 2023 (8.6% and 20% respectively) but Mouse observes that these tend to fluctuate more depending on the weather and the day of the week that these festivals fall, and overall they are still well down on pre-pandemic levels by 20% and 16% respectively.

Mouse would like to offer a few observations.

It is commendable that the Church of England publishes such fulsome statistics and the methodology used is probably the most reliable of all the options. It has been consistent for many years to allow comparisons to be drawn and trends identified. The church asks each parish to physically count the number of people who come through the doors for each service during October and then adds them all up. This has the advantage that it is, in theory at least, not a subjective measure. It does not rely on estimations or surveys which could be subject to bias depending on who does or does not fill them out. To that extent, we treat the numbers as reliable.

However, that does not mean that we should not do further interpretative work on the outcomes.

It has been obvious for some time that one of the issues with this methodology is that counting the number of people in attendance does not give a clear indication of the size of the membership of a church. The count would be the same for a Church with 50 members who were all in attendance each week as a church with 100 members but where attendance is 50%. Electoral rolls are even less reliable as they are only fully refreshed every four years and even then depend on the extent to which church administrators are motivated to enrol parishioners.

This feature of the data means that it is difficult to interpret changes. Do falls represent the same number of church members attending less frequently or fewer members attending at the same rate as previously. Or both. Conversely, do we interpret the recent rise in attendance as the conversion of new members attending church for the very first time, or simply those who had stayed at home for a while coming back, or just those already attending coming to church more frequently.

For this reason, the Church of England stats wizards came up with a new measure - the ‘worshipping community’. This attempts to measure those who attend worship once per month or more, whether physically or online, so is intended to give a more rounded picture of membership. This number shows a 2.5% increase from 2022 to 2023, but only a 10% reduction from the 2019 level.

This is perhaps a little more encouraging, but given the more survey-based nature of this number, it is subject to more bias. Mouse likes the concept, but it lacks the rigour to be able to rely on it too heavily. And even if we take it at face value, it still points to a shrinking church, just one which is shrinking more slowly than the headline figures.

It is also important to note that these numbers are already pretty dated by the time they are published. The latest release relates to October 2023 attendance. To that extent they are what statisticians would call a lagging indicator, helpful mostly to understand the past rather than predict the future. However, within these numbers some of the statistics could be considered leading indicators - ones which point to a future direction.

Marriages and baptisms are not true leading indicators, but have shown that they move more quickly than the headline attendance numbers, so may be a proxy for leading indicators.

Sadly the data here is not encouraging. As Mouse has previously noted, marriage rates within the Church of England have been plunging and, if you exclude some blips around the pandemic and avoid over-interpreting the post-Covid bounce-back, remain dreadfully low. Similarly, baptism rates are plunging, with the latest data showing the CofE undertaking 24% fewer baptisms than as recent as 2019.

The thing that determines whether a church will grow or shrink is the r number - the rate at which church members replicate themselves. Or more simply whether more people are joining the church through birth and conversion, or whether more a leaving it by death or by leaving the faith.

The Church of England has had a negative r rate for quite some time. This is in large part due to demographic change. According to the ONS, there were 598,000 deaths in England and Wales in 2023 and 598,400 births. However, there was population grown of 610,000 due to net immigration of 622,000. The balancing figure is migration from England and Wales to Scotland. Population growth was strongest in cities and urban areas, also reflected in the CofE data.

Recent immigrant communities are far less likely to join the Church of England than those born in England. At the time of the last census, the largest immigrant communities in the UK were from India, Poland, Pakistan, Romania, Ireland, Nigeria, Italy, Germany and Bangladesh. None have a significant Anglican church, from which migrants might expect to naturally move into the Church of England on arrival, with the exception of Ireland, which has around 125,000 members in the Republic - small enough not to invalidate the broad line of argument here.

Without any conversions or people losing the faith, the church will naturally shrink unless church members have babies at the same rate as the death rate and every single baby born to parents who attend the church will subsequently grow up in the faith. Neither of these propositions are realistic.

Evidence from recent studies in church growth within the Church of England show that this fundamental in the r rate has not been overcome, even by the most successful evangelical church planting initiatives. While the evidence base on church planting in the Anglican context is very limited, what does exist seems to show that the vast majority of attendees in new church initiatives are those who either come from another church or who have some degree of churchgoing in their past. In other words, these initiatives are reaching people from within a population which is itself shrinking. The best this can do, therefore, is slow the decline.

According to a 2021 report from the Strategic Development Unit, the data on Resource Churches who had been given funding to support church growth in the Church of England showed that 38% of attendees moved from other churches and 24% had recently moved to the area. A further 14% were ‘de-churched’ (i.e. used to go to church but gave it up) and just 9% had never been to church. The remaining 15% were either part of the plant team, the ‘inherited’ church community or attend in addition to another church.

Even this data is potentially subject to challenge as it was collected by survey from the churches themselves, who may have an inherent optimism bias about the success of their evangelism efforts. Mouse also notes that all the Resource churches identified were in cities, where population growth was strongest and were the result of huge efforts by the planting churches and massive financial investment.

We have yet to find a model which can reach significant numbers of people who have never been to church or come from non-Christian communities, which is essential to increase the r rate of the Church.

So what have we learned from the most recent statistical release? Mouse would encourage a combination of optimism and realism. It is positive that the church appears to have been growing. We must be realistic that the Church of England may not be the church of choice for everyone and we are not part of a growing community. We must continue with church growth efforts that are working, even if they are merely slowing the decline. We must re-double efforts to revitalise those church communities which have been neglected by the most recent Renewal and Reform plans.

The Save The Parish initiative has given voice to some of those who feel neglected by Renewal and Reform programme. The argument goes that the bulk of the Church of England’s parishes have been neglected and starved of resources while millions is ploughed into shiny new initiatives, which are yielding meagre results.

Mouse has to admit that the maths is difficult to comprehend. With 16,000 churches at its disposal, growing the church by just one weekly attender at each church would be an increase of 2% - a remarkable and dramatic turn-around in the long term decline of the Church. That isn’t to say that shiny new things should be stopped - there are many great examples of revitalised churches growing strongly. But Mouse contends that these efforts have not overcome the demographics, so a new plan to support the whole of the church is needed.

The last dose of realism Mouse would add is that the trend of decline is a very long one. It has hardly budged regardless of who has been Archbishop, what national evangelism strategies we have employed, which issues are causing the most argument in the Church at the moment. This points to something more fundamental in our society and demographics which will take enormous efforts to overcome. It has happened in the past, but changes to trends this deep do not happen very often.

6 January 2025

Thank you for subscribing to updates via email. Mouse has migrated to a new system to distribute updates, so if you subscribed on the old 'FollowIt' system you might notice that things look slightly different now. You still have the option to opt out at any time (booo!) and Mouse crosses his heart and promises not to use your email address for anything whatsoever other than sending you updates via email.

Thanks again!

Mouse

A minor revolution may be taking place in the history of the Anglican Communion. Firstly a little historical context is helpful to understand what is being proposed.

The Anglican Communion came into fruition rather organically in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1787 Charles Inglis, Bishop of Nova Scotia was appointed with Jurisdiction over all of British North America. He was the first of what would become a series of 'Colonial Bishops' appointed by the King within the Church of England. Inglis had sailed to the US on behalf of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which still exists today in the for of USPG.

Other Colonial Bishops were appointed and a slow process of development through the 19th century led to increasing independence of national Churches under 'Metropolitan Bishops'. In 1841 the Colonial Bishoprics Council was established, which formalised more Dioceses and Metropolitan Bishops and in 1867 the first Lambeth Conference took place at the invitation of Archbishop Longley.

This marked the start of a more fomalised structure, whereby Provinces established effective autonomy from England, which became endorsed under the structures established and agreed globally. It is those structures that we have inherited today.

The strange thing about the Anglican Communion, however, is that in ceding virtually all central authority to its Provinces there remains very little in the institution or structures that join the member provinces together. They are instead bound together by history and by a willingness to call themselves members of a Communion and to meet and work together.

Recently, it is the second of these that has come under significant strain. Member provinces have disagreed on issues of sexuality with such ferocity that some have rejected communion fellowship with other members. Conservative provinces have boycotted attendance at the Lambeth Conference where bishops who have endorsed same-sex marriage and 'liberal' position on sexuality are invited. They have also recognised the break-away Anglican Church of North America and established various forms of collaboration outside the traditional structures of the Anglican Communion. Following the Church of England's more modest proposals under Living in Love and Faith, some have rejected the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury entirely.

Despite this, the actual authority if the Archbishop of Canterbury is very limited. Justin Welby has repeatedly used the phrase 'I'm not a pope' to try to be clear that he is not in a position of direct authority over any of the global provinces of the Anglican Communion except his own.

He holds a traditional position of authority within the communion as a focus for unity, with power only to invite bishops to the Lambeth Conference and to act as President of the Anglican Consultative Council, a body which itself has very limited powers to work collaboratively and advise members church on global affairs.

Nevertheless, if even the Lambeth Conference cannot meet in full and the ACC cannot function effectively due to boycotts, then change must come.

With that context, the Anglican Consultative Council asked the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO), one of its permanent committees, to look at reform. The IASCUFO is made up of 18 members, around two thirds of whom are from the Global South. At the last ACC meeting, the IASCUFO put a report forward proposing further work be done and in response the ACC:

1. Welcomes the proposal from the Inter-Anglican Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) to explore theological questions regarding structure and decision-making to help address our differences in the Anglican Communion;

2. Affirms the importance of seeking to walk together to the highest degree possible, and learning from our ecumenical conversations how to accommodate differentiation patiently and respectfully;

3. Asks the IASCUFO for any proposals that may impact the ACC constitution to be brought for full discussion to the ACC-19 [its next meeting in 2026]; and

4. Asks IASCUFO to proceed with this work and report its progress to the Instruments of Communion

Mouse observes that there are some limits to this brief, in that it comes from the ACC and cannot impact on wider issues beyond the remit of the ACC. As such, some topics such as the role of the Lambeth Conference and the Primates Meetings, two key instruments of communion, are out of scope.

It is also explicit that the remit and purpose of this work is to find ways of resolving our current differences. While some of the commentary talks about post-colonial power structures, the brief was simply to find ways to manage our current differences, so that talk appears to Mouse to be somewhat beside the point.

Bishops at the Lambeth Conference

On 18 December, the IASCUFO published a lenghty report, under the stewardship of our very own Graham Tomlin. It proposes two changes which the report itself accepts are models, but with the hope for more significant impact.

1. To change the description of the Anglican Communion from one which describes provinces as being 'in communion' with Canterbury to merely having a 'historical connection' with Canterbury.

2. To remove the Archbishop of Canterbury from being permanent president of the ACC and introduce a rotating Chair.

The hope is that it will enable the Communion to move on from a period of intense division to one in which members can genuinely 'walk together' while accepting that differences exist. The report is honest about the depth of division, suggesting it may even be an existential threat to the Communion.

The proposals recognises both that member provinces are genuinely autonomous in their decision-making but also want to remain in some way part of a global communion and in downgrading the role of Archbishop of Canterbury also accepts that England is no longer the center of the Anglican world.

If successful, it would mark an extraordinary and unexpected success in Justin Welby's attempts at reconciliation within the Anglican Communion, finally taking practical steps in implementing the declared intention of 'walking together' in some form.

Mouse has a few questions, however.

The obvious question is whether these minor technical changes will be sufficient to placate militarised conservatives who have previously insisted that 'Godly discipline' be exercised over churches which have introduced policies on human sexuality with which they disagree. Mouse is sceptical on that front.

The description of the Anglican Communion to be amended originates only from the 1930 Lambeth Conference. the IASCUFO paper argues that it is de facto the primary definition as it is the one which is most commonly referred to, but it is not something which sits in a formal constitution or legally binding document, so this move is symbolic at best. It may be something which allows those in a form of impaired communion to stay within the Anglican Communion in good conscience, but it doesn't change much in practice.

Secondly, it reduces the concept of Anglicanism to little more than an acceptance of the name. If provinces are no longer willing to say they are actually in communion with each other, then in what way are they actually part of a communion? Mouse could understand a proposal which changed the perspective from being in communion with Canterbury to being in Communion with one another, but simply one which has a historical connection to Canterbury is watered down to homeopathic levels.

Rowan Williams' solution to this connundrum was to attempt to introduce a 'Covenant'. The 1988 Lambeth Conference called for a "common declaration" that would assist a coherent doctrinal identity for the Communion, but no such declaration was produced. In 2004 the Windsor report called for a declaration from provinces to 'bind themselves' to each other by a covenant and a paper was produced by the ACC in 2006 titled Towards an Anglican Covenant discussing a way forward. Rowan Williams ran with the idea as Archbishop, largely in response to the troubles the Communion was finding itself in. But his efforts failed to convince. The final nail in the coffin was a rejection by a majority of the dioceses in the Church of England in 2012, which meant the proposal could not be taken forward in the Church of England. It came shortly before the end of Williams’s retirement and the concept was not taken forward by his successor.

Mouse's final observation is that the process for appointing a new Archbishop of Canterbury is underway and under reforms brought about by the Church of England, this includes greater representation from the Anglican Communion in recognition of Canterbury's global role. In July 2022 the rules were changed to include five representatives from the Anglican Communion on the 17 member committee who decides on the new Archbishop and representation from the Diocese of Canterbury was cut from six to three. It is rather unfortunate timing that these are being put into action at the same time as the proposals to significantly downgrade the Archbishop's global role. Had these proposals come sooner it is unlikely the Church of England would have changed the rules on appointing the new Archbishop.

Image Source

2 January 2025

It has been great to be back blogging after a long break and Mouse has been delighted by the response it has received. He has enjoyed digging up some interesting research and generating AI images to illustrate it.

By way of a kick off to the new year, here are the top five most read blog posts of 2024 from The Church Mouse blog.

1. What is the Church of England's doctrine?
Mouse takes a look at what the Church of England actually means by 'doctrine' and what it might contain, tracing its origins back to the 39 Articles and its development since then.

2. A church on its knees: the Welby legacy

Mouse take a long view of Justin Welby's time as Archbishop of Canterbury and attempts an honest assessment of his time in office.

3. How should we pick our bishops?

In light of repeat failures of the CNC to appoint new bishops when needed, Mouse took a look at the process in its historical context and considers whether it is time for an update. The post concluded by saying that it needed to be sorted out in time for Justin's retirement, although it has turned out to be a rather more pressing issue.

4. Why do priests in the Church of England wear robes?

Following an interesting question on social media, Mouse took a look at the (very long) history of clerical dress and considers the theological and missiological implications.

5. Is the Church of England getting out of the marriage business?

Mouse took a look at the data on Church marriages, which sadly is not pretty reading, and considers the implications of no longer marrying very many people.

18 December 2024

In 44BC Rome was reeling from the assassination of Julius Caesar. He had re-shaped the politics of Rome and made himself an emperor in all but name, but enemies had conspired and he was murdered on the Ides of March.

Caesar was popular with the people and fear of reprisals from the mob meant that the aftermath was tense and carefully managed. Mark Antony brokered a deal with the conspirators in the Senate to avoid punishment for them, but Julius Caesar would be honored and his appointments and structures maintained. Within two years of his murder, Caesar was recognised by the Senate as a god.

After a legendary power struggle, Caesar's great-nephew and adopted son Octavian emerged as the sole ruler of Rome in 27BC and adopted the name Augustus, ruling as Emperor. His keen propaganda skills made extensive use of his relationship with Caesar, promoting the cult of Caesar as a way of boosting his own status. Ever since Caesar's elevation to divine status in 42BC, Augustus had styled himself Divi Fillius - Son of the God. He would later claim that he was conceived by his mother Atian when she was asleep in the Temple of Apollo and was visited by the god in the form of a snake, so some considered Augustus the son of a god twice over.

One of the most famous events in the aftermath of Julius Caesar's death took place a few weeks later. A bright star appeared in the sky, visible throughout the day and night. Scientists today speculate that this may have been one of the brightest comets in recorded history. The appearance of this 'star' was immediately interpreted as Caesar's spirit being taken to the divine realm in the process of his deification. It was the most famous comet in antiquity, known throughout the Roman world. The poet Ovid wrote in AD8

Then Jupiter, the Father, spoke..."Take up Caesar's spirit from his murdered corpse, and change it into a star, so that the deified Julius may always look down from his high temple on our Capitol and forum." He had barely finished, when gentle Venus stood in the midst of the Senate, seen by no one, and took up the newly freed spirit of her Caesar from his body, and preventing it from vanishing into the air, carried it towards the glorious stars. As she carried it, she felt it glow and take fire, and loosed it from her breast: it climbed higher than the moon, and drawing behind it a fiery tail, shone as a star.

Matthew wrote his Gospel around a hundred years later. By then, the cult of Caesar was well established alongside the cult of Augustus, who ruled until AD14. The association of Caesar with the star as a sign of his divinity was also well known. Coins from the period regularly feature the star motif and Augustus reigned as the son of a god at the time of Christ's birth.

It is with this backdrop that Matthew tells us that magi from the East, saw a bright star in the sky, signifying the birth of a king and they followed it to find the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. Matthew's account is tailor made to invert the story of Augustus, Divi Filius, to tell the story of Jesus Christ, Son of God.

As we read that story again this year, it strikes Mouse that there remain many reports of stars heralding the gods of our day. Political stars tell us that prosperity and security can be bought at the price of our loyalty to the latest demagogue. Stars seen by 'influencers' tell us that health, happiness and well-being can be found with the purchase of the latest product, with just a small commission payment taken along the way to enrich those helping us find our path. Other stars point to a culture that seeks happiness and fulfillment in the selfish pursuit of our own desires, without the need to put others in our community before ourselves. There are many stars and their prophets seem to be greater in number than we have known for some time.

The tricky thing is not spotting bright stars, but working out which one to follow. The Romans did indeed spot a bright star in the sky, just as the magi did. But their belief that it signaled the divinity of Caesar was in error, while the magi correctly interpreted the star they saw and followed it to Jesus.

One of the keys is to avoid stars that point us to the self gratification, enrichment or status of those who spotted them. Following Jesus is a path of humility and self sacrifice, but Augustus urged others to follow the cult of Caesar for his own benefit, not for anyone else's. By contrast, the magi did not know where the star was leading them and sought no benefit in following it other than the privilege of paying homage to a new king.

As the Church of England struggles with a crisis caused by repeated and appalling failures to act on safe-guarding issues out of a sense of fear for its own position, we must more than ever follow the star that points to Jesus, wherever that leads us. And do so with the expectation of humble and sacrificial service to others.

Our story today can also invert the stories of those who look to take advantage of others for their own gain, just as Augustus did by encouraging worship of his Great Uncle, to boost his own prestige. In our case, if following the star to Jesus means accepting our personal and institutional failures, then it must be done whatever the seeming cost. Then we serve our communities with humility and grace, preaching the good news of a God who came as a baby to show us what a life of love can look like.

Our church is shrinking and that is desperately worrying, but a church which lets the vulnerable suffer and covers it up through fear that a reputation could be hurt by the truth is no church of Christ and not one worth preserving. Perhaps if we follow the star to Jesus, we should be more confident that whatever hardship we face on the road it will eventually lead us to where we need to be.