{"version":1,"tree":{"n":"html","c":[{"n":"head","x":"\n ","l":"\n ","c":[{"n":"title","x":"Desconocido","l":"\n \n "},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../stylesheet.css"]]},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../page_styles.css"]]}]},{"n":"body","a":[["class","calibre"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"| ","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Siguiente","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articlenextlink"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_6/article_1/index_u66.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_6/index_u13.html\", \"frag\": \"article_0\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_6\"}"]]},{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"Churchgoing, going…gone? ","a":[["class","calibre8"]]},{"n":"h1","x":"The Church of England is dying out and selling up","a":[["class","calibre9"]]},{"n":"div","x":"Even if you don’t go to church, this matters","a":[["class","calibre19"]]},{"n":"p","x":"may. 09, 2025 04:47 | North Hill, Cornwall","a":[["class","calibre10"]]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img1_u30.jpg"],["title","Winter sun highlights the church steeple"],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_6/article_0/images/img1_u30.jpg"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"P","a":[["data-caps","initial"],["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"span","x":"USH OPEN","l":" the heavy door and step inside. The sound as it slams behind you will feel loud, almost rude, in the old, cold silence. For St Torney’s Church in Cornwall is very old indeed. The Normans built it. The Tudors enlarged it. The Victorians meddled with it. Daphne du Maurier immortalised it in “Jamaica Inn”. It has outlasted the Reformation and the civil war.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"It could not outlast apathy. In the 20th century, people stopped coming. By the start of covid-19 it had four worshippers. It closed as the pandemic began and never reopened. Its organ was taken out, its hymn books were removed, its Bible was taken from its lectern and a more silent silence fell. An 800-year history was over.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"The Church of England (","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":") is in trouble. This is an odd ecclesiastical moment. The pope is dead, the Archbishop of Canterbury has gone. Not since 1691 have both seats been empty. But those seats will be filled. A far more anxious emptiness is in the ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":"’s pews. Adult church attendance in England has fallen by over a third in 15 years; just a little over 1% go to services weekly, according to the ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":"’s own numbers. A ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"a","x":"rise in churchgoing among the young·","l":" is mainly a Catholic phenomenon. The ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","nofollow"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_6/article_1/index_u66.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E ","l":"closes 20-odd churches each year.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Critics sense a spiritual vacuum too: in its failure to resolve international squabbles over its stance on gay marriage and in its cover-up of appalling child abuse. On January 6th, the former archbishop Justin Welby, who many felt failed in his handling of that scandal, laid his curving staff on the altar at Lambeth Palace. The process of selecting a replacement has begun.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Whether or not you believe in God, this matters, to bureaucracy and to Britain. Britons might be a Godless lot—in the 2021 census less than half called themselves Christian, down from almost 60% in 2011—but Britain itself is not. The ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"C ","l":"of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E ","l":"is not merely a church but an established church. England is one of around 20% of countries (from Tuvalu to Denmark) with a state religion. It is institutionally ecclesiastical.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"The ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":" has soft power (bishops lead Remembrance Day celebrations) and actual power (26 bishops in black-and-white robes sit in the House of Lords, where they can help shape laws). It has educational power (through 4,600 ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":" schools) and sacred ceremonial power (England’s king is crowned by England’s senior archbishop). And it has money: the ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":" has an endowment of £10.4bn ($13.9bn). ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Now it is choosing a new leader. The process is as eccentric as one might expect of an institution that dates back half a millennium and which has had, in its time, not merely bishops but also kings, queens and castles—less a church than a chess set. The election and enthronement of an archbishop lasts for months and involves a king (Charles), a “Clerk of the Closet” (it’s complicated) and laws that date to 1533.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"These tend to show scant regard for modern spelling (they refer to the “Archebishope” and “the Kynges Majestie”) or for modern morals (one law rules that if the prime minister is Jewish or Catholic they cannot take part since this would be a “high misdemeanour”). This process will not, then, involve much ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"DEI","l":". It will involve a special 13th-century stone throne.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"The new recruit will have a daunting job. England is not always kind to its archbishops, as Thomas Cranmer found out when he was burnt at the stake. Although the new one will not face that, a full in-tray awaits. He (probably, though unlike the next pope it could be a woman) will have to deal with those who query the ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"C ","l":"of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":"’s political power: for a church in which so few regularly worship to have a say over the laws of the land is “ludicrous”, says Andrew Copson, the head of Humanists","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":" UK","l":". ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"The primate will have to deal with the weakening link between church and crown. England’s heir, Prince William, does not go to church every Sunday and was said by a palace insider to feel “not instinctively comfortable” in a “faith environment”—ominously weasel words for someone who will bear the title of “Defender of the Faith”.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Managing the church’s present while preserving its past is a core part of the new archbishop’s job. Christianity changed the shape of England—a spire or tower is the first thing you see when approaching an English village—and the English language itself. Despite the ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":"’s fall from grace, the words of the King James Bible of 1611 infused English, putting words in our mouths like “fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:4) and “words in [our] mouth” (Isaiah 51:16). It is “very difficult to understand English history”, says Tom Holland, a historian, unless you understand Christianity, since it is “suffused” by it. The very ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"BC","l":"/","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"AD","l":" dating system was popularised by a 7th-century English churchman, the Venerable Bede. Time turns on his ecclesiastical axis.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Perhaps the ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":"’s most obvious vestiges are architectural: its churches. Some 16,000 remain open; 197 have closed in the past decade alone. It is, says Sir Simon Jenkins, an historian, “impossible to overstate” their importance; England is unimaginable without its dreaming spires.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"If the churches’ importance is clear, their modern role is not. In the 1950s the poet Philip Larkin walked into a church and wondered “When churches will fall completely out of use/ What we shall turn them into”?","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"b","x":" ","l":"Real estate is the short answer. The ","a":[["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":" sells off old churches, surprisingly cheaply. One church “benefits from” mains water and electricity, not to mention a “nave, aisle, organ chamber and tower”; another from a “spacious” interior. Both are going for under £300,000.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Some, like St Torney’s, are saved by charities such as the Churches Conservation Trust. Others are turned into cafés, offering scones and a little spirituality—a kind of numinous National Trust. Some are too hard to convert into anything, since they also “benefit from” graveyards and quite a lot of dead bodies. Many fall further into ruin. Almost 1,000 are on Historic England’s “at risk” register.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"The new archbishop then, will be busy. The ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E ","l":"has faced crises before. In the Victorian era, the theory of evolution and the new science of geology shook the stony certainties of faith. The critic John Ruskin heard the “clink” of geologists’ hammers in “every cadence of the Bible verses”. The poet Matthew Arnold stood on Dover Beach and heard the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the sea of faith.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"What is different now is that the retreat is so quiet. Faith is not roaring; it is ebbing, all but unnoticed by most. The","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":" C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E ","l":"should perhaps expect this: there is, as the King James has it, a time for everything: a time to speak and a time to keep silence. In St Torney’s, there is no sound but the birds. A time to be born; and a time to die.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"■"}]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","a":[["class","calibre18"]],"c":[{"n":"b","x":"Correction (May 9th 2025): ","l":"The figure given in this article for the number of ","a":[["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":" churches that have closed in the past decade has been corrected, in line with ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"C","l":" of ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"E","l":" data.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]}]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, ","a":[["class","calibre18"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"sign up","l":" to Blighty, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/newsletters/blighty"],["rel","nofollow"]]}]}]}]},{"n":"div","x":"\n","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]},{"n":"p","x":"This article was downloaded by ","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre16"]],"c":[{"n":"strong","x":"calibre","l":" from ","a":[["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"a","x":"https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/08/the-church-of-england-is-dying-out-and-selling-up","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/08/the-church-of-england-is-dying-out-and-selling-up"],["rel","calibre-downloaded-from"]]}]},{"n":"br","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"br","l":" | ","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_6/index_u13.html\", \"frag\": \"article_0\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_6\"}"]]}]}]}]},"ns_map":["http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"]}