The dying COE cannot afford a sabbatical

Covid should have been its moment, but the Anglican hierarchy would rather talk progressive politics

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has announced that next year he will take a sabbatical. In the spirit of fair play, I have to admit that this is common among clerics and his predecessors did it, too (Rowan Williams knocked off for three months to write a book on Dostoevsky) – but my time is short, as is the Church’s, so I must be blunt. This does not look good.

We are in the middle of a national crisis, and it’s a crisis about death. This should be the Church’s big moment because the central message of Christianity is that while death is bad – and we will accompany you through it – it’s not the end. Jesus lived. He died. He rose again. This, Christians believe, is a historical fact, and it’s this outrageous claim that converted much of the world to Christ.

But there is no accompaniment in 2020 because the churches have been shut (earlier this year, the Anglicans banned even their own clerics from entering them), and though the Church of England hierarchy spreads the Good News, it tends to do so quietly and thinly. In the past few days alone, the Archbishop has also spoken in defence of Britain’s foreign aid budget and urged the world to ban the bomb.

It’s a Church stuck in the Sixties, when much of Western Christianity took a new stance on death – it embraced a cult of moral divestment, of giving itself away piece by piece, making no judgment of its inheritors, asking nothing in return. Anglican theology, once the trigger for civil war, is now impossible to decipher, and while the hierarchy’s causes have often been just, the Church “progresses” without moving forward.

Every concession to what it thinks the world wants of it is instantly met by a new demand; the internal debate, one suspects, is what some Anglicans live for. There is no terminus except institutional death – the point at which the Church has accompanied society so far without question that, rather than trying to change us, it has become just as confused, materialistic, secular and scared as the general population.

The beauty and the liturgy remain, but what do they mean without faith? Without faith, the volunteers and money will eventually vanish, too, and the architecture will fall to ruin. It feels as if much of the Church of England has been on sabbatical for 50 years.

I’m not casting stones: my lot, the Catholics, are drowning in troubles. But whenever a trendy nun in jeans tells me Rome should move with the times, I point straight to the Anglicans as an example of a Church that surrendered to modernity on every demand yet has fallen faster, harder, than anyone else. Chasing relevance leads to irrelevance because you’re no longer special – except as a lesson in what not to do.

It’s hard leading a divided communion in a soulless age, but it was probably harder to convert pagan Britain in the sixth and seventh centuries – and what the mission required then, as now, was spiritual leadership. So, my very best wishes to the Archbishop, and I hope he returns with a fresh sense of zeal.

Drop the namby-pamby handwringing. If any journalist wants to debate whether God is a feminist, or the appalling injustice of a veal cutlet, tell them politely but firmly that you just don’t care, which is the correct answer to most culture war issues. When a Church has as little time left on Earth as the Church of England does, you can’t mess about.

There’s a tear in the seat of these trousers. It’s not visible yet, so I’m wearing this pair and no other till they finally give way. Hopefully it won’t be in public, but then where am I planning to be for the next six months? I’m in bed by 10pm most days because there’s nothing to stay awake for.

This lockdown is worse than the first. The nurses have stopped dancing and fear of the disease has been replaced by fear of the state. The other day I found myself sitting in an empty train carriage with a mask on. Why?! Not the danger of Covid but fear of the cops, who are everywhere on my commute, strolling about in twos and threes with an air of purpose one never knew they had. Rob a house and you can probably get away with it. Ride maskless on the Piccadilly Line and they call in the Swat team.

We’ve gone from Blitz spirit to rationing without the victory party in Trafalgar Square, and the mood is sullen. On Saturday, I was asked to sign in to the Government’s app – not for sitting in a restaurant, which is impossible, but for joining a queue to place an order. I gave a mad little speech about Bill Gates and marched out. We were told for years to protect our data; now we’re expected to give it to any idiot with a clipboard. We were told the rozzers are overstretched; I’ve seen them interrogating dog walkers. And we were told mental health was important and you have to talk about it even if your tick is that you don’t like to. Now we’re locked up and alone.

Britain has run two experiments at once. The state has taken complete control of our lives at the same time as it has cut the individual adrift. Anyone who questions this is branded a lunatic. When my trousers eventually give way in the middle of Waitrose, I shall finally look like one.