At last the C of E is fighting back, but is it too late to save churches?

So you can no longer hatch and match – but you can dispatch. That’s the latest instruction from the Government to churchgoers and their clergy as lockdown begins again. Christenings and weddings are out, but funerals can still take place, albeit with only 30 people present. As to the Sunday service, which is so central to a congregation’s wellbeing, once more the doors are being closed, whether it’s 8am matins or 10am Eucharist.

For all of us who are churchgoers, this is a traumatic moment. As the Roman Catholic catechism puts it, the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life”. Going to church isn’t an entertaining way to pass the time, akin to a cinema or theatre trip; it is as much a spiritual necessity as food and drink are bodily ones.

If there is anything positive about the latest lockdown, it is the gutsy response of church leaders. During the shutdown in March, Church of England bishops went much further than they really needed to with lockdown, given that the Government’s small print said priests could still be at their altars, meaning only the congregation was barred. While the Catholic Church streamed Masses inside churches with a solitary priest officiating, Anglicans had to be content watching the Eucharist streamed online from the vicar’s kitchen table, complete with leftover toast and marmalade and the rectory’s pet cat. This time, members of both the Catholic and Anglican hierarchies have been refreshingly tough, and publicly voiced their objections.

Their frustrations are rather like those of businesses: they have spent a great deal of time and effort making their buildings Covid secure. Yet still the Sunday service is out of bounds. The daftness of it is made all the plainer when we are told that churches can open for private prayer. So the same number of socially distanced people can sit in the same pews, having used the same hand sanitiser and the same QR code. They can congregate, but they mustn’t be a congregation at a church service, reciting prayers together.

On Monday I went to Mass at my local Catholic church to mark All Souls’ Day. It was deeply comforting to remember together those who have died from Covid-19. Some of us exchanged phone numbers to make sure we kept in touch during the tough times to come.

That mutual aid is something churches do very well, not just for parishioners but for the wider community. The National Churches Trust’s recent report, “The House of Good”, estimated that the value of local churches’ welfare programmes – running food banks, helping families in difficulty, keeping an eye on the elderly – would cost £12 billion if done by business or government.

The Government wants that welfare provision to continue during lockdown. But the trouble is that the very places where it happens – the churches, halls and offices – are funded by the parishioners’ collections. Some people pay via standing order but others pop their cash in the plate. If the churches close their doors, their income, like that of business, will disappear.

Some people may never come back. Without their support, some churches may never open their doors again. And that really would take the heart and soul out of our towns and villages.