The Two Catholic Churches: an Anglican reflects

Extract

As a non-Catholic I cannot judge whether Archer’s thesis is substantially sound or not. What I can say, however, is that I hear the authentic sounds of the North East Church in his very stimulating and thought-provoking book. In much of what he says he is speaking for the entire Christian community in that area as it struggles to fulfil its ministry in a depressed region where high unemployment affects the quality of life.

What I have to write here I base not only on my own experience— my own working-class upbringing, my seven years as Vicar of St Nicholas, Durham, and as Prison Chaplain at Durham, and my general knowledge of working-class culture in the North-East—but also on the results of a special questionnaire. I sent this to twenty Anglican incumbents in working-class parishes in Newcastle and Durham, asking them for observations on decline, liturgy and styles of ministry, and for their reflections on church growth.

Although Archer was not concerned with the decline of an Anglican working class the evidence is clearly there. Let us take the churches of Benwell, which cluster together on the north of the Tyne. Thirty or so years ago there were ten churches in existence in South Benwell of various denominations, including at least two Anglican parishes. Today, there are none in the same area apart from one very small evangelical independent church which cannot afford to pay its own minister’s salary. As well as the closure of churches, signalling their bleak failure to maintain a ministry among a solidly working-class populace, the service registers of churches in West Benwell indicate the same trend.