Hell hath no fury like a loyal congregation scorned

Remember that Sixties hit by The Hollies called He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother? With lyrics that include “I’m strong, strong enough to carry him … No burden is he to bear, we’ll get there”, the song appeals to trendy vicars. I’ve heard it a few times at church services, replacing Psalm 23 and The Old Hundredth. Well, now it appears that not only the brother, but also the bride and the groom are heavy, after all. The extra weight they’re carrying is making it harder for newly-weds on the wide side to walk down the aisle without having to make an undignified squeeze between the pews.

The solution hit upon by the rector of the Grade II listed church of St Andrew’s, of Okeford Fitzpaine in Dorset, has been to strip out the pews and replace them with chairs. Cue outrage, with furious members of the congregation surrounding their church in protest, with banners saying: “Save the pews from the devil within.”

Passions have run similarly high over redundant pews in many other churches, including Bath Abbey, where congregants erupted in fury when the Victorian ones designed by Giles Gilbert Scott were removed and replaced by stackable chairs.

When it comes to sacred space, most people do not like change. They like what they know – although what they mostly don’t know is that pews are not part of ancient tradition but an invention of the Victorians. Before the 19th century, generations of churchgoers often stood for services. But tell that to the people of Okeford Fitzpaine. As far as they are concerned, as one of them put it: “If you strip out the pews, then the soul of the church is gone.”

Vicars, however, often seem impervious to many congregations’ desire for the familiar and particularly succumb to the temptation to shake things up when they are new incumbents.

The Rev Calvert Prentis, for example, took over St John The Evangelist in Ilford and decided employing a cleaner was inappropriate. That decision ended up in an employment tribunal with a judge complaining the cleaner had been treated “unfairly on a human level”. In Warrington some years ago, a vicar introduced clapping during hymns and upset one parishioner so much that in the ensuing furore the reverend ended up on the floor.

But change is often done not so much for change’s sake but for that other issue that dominates church life – raising money. Remove pews and you have flexible space. You can use the stackables to create a café on weekdays or host a money-spinning black tie event in the evening.

Given that many church bank accounts are in the red, caused by months of lockdown and no collection plates, expect more fundraising wheezes of this kind in the future. And in the meantime, while we all need to be socially distanced, putting out a very few chairs might make it a lot easier to keep people two metres apart than by trusting them to do so in a pew where it’s all too tempting to slide along to your neighbour to chat about what the vicar’s dreaming up next.

It won’t be much consolation to the people of Okeford Fitzpaine, but I can guarantee that their church won’t be the last to have its pews taken to the recycling centre. Or even sold off to raise yet more cash. And if it’s any comfort to the rector, I’m sure she won’t be the last to learn that hell hath no fury like a congregation scorned.