The Save the Parish Debate

The Once and Future Parish, Alison Milbank, SCM Press, 2023, pp. xxiv, 194. Paperback. ISBN 978-0-334-06313-1.

This book makes the case for a revitalised parish ministry. Its author is unhappy about the centralising policies of the Church of England at diocesan and national level and criticises the balance of investment by the Church Commissioners where untried projects are favoured against investment in parishes and the clergy who serve them. Alison Millbank is Professor of Theology and Literature at the University of Nottingham. She is also Canon Theologian and Priest Vicar at Southwell Minster. This book is written as a follow-up to that by Alison Milbank and Andrew Davison, For the Parish published twelve years ago which influenced and inspired what has become the ‘Save the Parish’ movement.

Alongside her critical commentary on the many recent Church of England reports and innovative initiatives in the sphere of evangelism, Millbank includes tremendously encouraging accounts of what can be achieved in lively Anglican parishes with dedicated congregations and committed local clergy. Her title is taken, for those who remember, from the initiator of support and research into parish ministry, Lauren Mead of the Alban Institute with his book The once and future Church. She refers equally strongly to the Arthurian Legend parallel of a ‘once and future king’ and his return when need became great. This is given its modern interpretation with a frontispiece cover of a painting by the Glasgow artist Peter Howson. It gives the book its central theme, that especially amid crises and in times of great human need basic inherited human and spiritual values become beacons of hope. Her argument is that we have a dearth of moral leadership in many parts of the world. One reason in England for this she says is that the once national church has retreated from being the church which is for everyone towards becoming a grouping of gathered communities with increasingly sectarian characteristics.

In eight carefully researched chapters Millbank sets out the case for a renewal of locally based parish ministry. She charts the change in allocation of resources away form the parish, the increased centralisation of leadership, a depletion in the numbers of stipendiary clergy and the increase in diocesan and national posts. She explores the changes in emphasis in mission, an unhelpful umbrella term, the lack of theological and liturgical education in ministerial training and continuing formation, the changed understanding of the role of bishop and the very different paths to appointment culminating in a leadership not adequately formed in Anglican traditions and in the main without academic theological backgrounds. She laments the lack of use of retired clergy as a theological and liturgical training resource.

Most helpfully for readers of this journal Millbank exposes the lack of support for rural parishes. She explains how most do not qualify, even with changed terms, for the generous central funding handouts. She applauds small congregations of the faithful who raise enormous amounts to maintain their buildings. In urban as well as rural areas she describes a laity who feel more abandoned by their church than ‘liberated’ to engage in ministry in the world. It is perhaps unfortunate that Millbank does not give research details of the Church in Wales where she says abandoning the parish for other structures has resulted in steeper decline.

This is an unashamedly partisan book which sets out to defend a parochial system which has been put under threat. There is some hyperbole and hints of a memory that things were better before. She does not defend the Book of Common Prayer uncritically. Interestingly she says that if the reforms of the 1928 book had been passed by Parliament, then a continuing gradual programme of liturgical revision might have been carried out. It is the ‘spirit’ of the BCP which she applauds with its inclusive emphasis as something which the devout lay person could use and know that others were also a part of ‘the blessed company of all faithful people’.

The overall argument is that those who have been appointed wholly now internally by the Church of England and a majority who populate its General Synod and its committees have developed policies which demonstrate little or no understanding of the faith and traditions which have formed their church and have opted for a mistaken emphasis on non-parochial solutions.  While placing considerable responsibility for this on those the system has appointed as bishops. She makes an attractive argument for what is called ‘virtuous hierarchy’. It is a concept worth further development. In this more collegial idea she says the gap between clergy, laity and their bishop could be lessened while retaining the need for hierarchy and boundaries for faith as well as behaviour. She argues for a greater role for local laity and clergy in the appointment of their bishop resulting in a greater attention to its core activities and a lessening of often ill-informed public pronouncements. With this rebalancing she sees a renewed role for the archdeacon and Rural/Area Dean as those more obviously sharing in a mutually acknowledged task of oversight.

The cover of this book announces it as, ‘Perhaps the most important book written about the Church of England in recent times’. It is hardly that but does make public in a well-researched way the changes in a church which is now giving a confusing message about its priorities. Millbank says that it is possible for an academic to set out this case more independently than those inside the institution, hampered by the fear of exclusion or lack of preferment. Our university theological departments, themselves under threat in many places, can be applauded in this case for speaking out in defence of the parochial ministry still the valued sustainer of local life, values and community.

This Review first appeared in the Journal ‘Rural Theology’