London (England)
From our special correspondent
Andrew Morsley steps out of Farringdon station in central London in the pouring rain. Despite the strikes that paralyze the British capital, this operational director of London transport works that day. “We have to help people find their way around,” he smiles, before heading to a nearby café. The tall, 40-year-old with his hair swept back doesn’t just guide Londoners on their daily commute. For the past three years, he has also been in charge of a community of a dozen faithful Anglicans in his district of Harrow (north-west London).
“We started meeting on a regular basis during the pandemic by videoconference, says Andrew Morsley, stirring his milk tea. But after the confinements, with my wife, we felt that God was calling us to get involved in our neighborhood. It seemed strange to us to take the car every Sunday to go to church. From now on, the community meets every Sunday in the homes of its members and, once a month, in a café: prayers, reading of the Bible and time for sharing replace the office and the sacraments.
These assemblies of evangelical inspiration have multiplied across England, under the impetus of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, installed ten years ago, on March 21, 2013. Since his arrival at the head of the Church of England, this accustomed to management positions in the oil industry has embarked on an evangelization project of unprecedented magnitude on the secularized Old Continent. The Vision and Strategy plan, launched by the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, and the Myriad initiative: these two projects adopted in 2021 aim to create, by 2030, 10,000 of these local communities, in which lay people are called to responsibilities.
It was with Myriad that Andrew Morsley was able to take training in order to learn how to lead his group of followers. “I felt that I could put my management skills at the service of my faith,” he says. For two and a half years, leaders like him take lessons in community stewardship while maintaining a connection with an ordained Anglican priest.
“Rather than sending a seminarian for nine years in formation, we decided to help the laity to take the lead,” explains Father John McGinley, director of Myriad. So we tell people that if they have a vision for a new way of doing church with those who don’t come to services, we will support them and train volunteers where they are. This also makes it possible to compensate for the drop in the number of priests. »
In his eyes, this initiative could stop the inexorable decline in the number of faithful. According to statistics published by the Church of England, their numbers fell from over a million in 2009 to some 850,000 in 2019 before the pandemic, an all-time low. Today, between 20 and 25 churches close each year. From 1969 to 2010, 11% of them went out of business. “I often say that we have been in constant decline for seventy years. Maybe we should try something different”, jokes the director of Myriad.
In their efforts to breathe new life into Anglicanism across the Channel, Justin Welby and the Church of England are trying to reach beyond the circle of their faithful. In the brand new library of Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Graham Tomlin watches the rain pounding on the bay window.
It was in these premises, located between the Houses of Parliament in Westminster and Lambeth Palace, that Justin Welby asked the Bishop to establish the Center for Cultural Witness. “Our job is to bring the word of the Church of England to our society,” explains Graham Tomlin. We have put in place a program for leading Christian voices, from members of parliament to bishops, theologians and artists, to sharpen their speaking to testify to the way in which Christians see the world. The center also launched an information site on March 15 called “Seen and Unseen,” “a place to find Christian viewpoints without falling into controversy,” the bishop continued.
To understand this evangelical and evangelizing momentum, you have to know where Justin Welby comes from. His vocation was rooted in the upscale neighborhood of Brompton, more precisely in the network of churches in the parish of Holy Trinity, of which he was for a long time one of the lay leaders. This is where the Alpha courses were created. This formula proposing a process of conversion following the (re)discovery of the fundamentals of Christianity was originally intended for believers, before being extended to non-believers or people distant from the Church. From the 1990s, these courses spread throughout the Christian world and made Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) famous.
The vision of the Church of England carried by Justin Welby finds its genesis there. This network, which is distinguished by a spiritual proposal strongly influenced by the Charismatic Renewal, has long specialized in the planting of new churches. “We started in the 1980s to bring disused parishes back to life,” recalls Mark Elsdon-Dew, director of communications and church building. Then over time, we ourselves developed our own communities. »
Should we see in Justin Welby’s work the influence of the community he comes from? “Like us, Justin fully supports the creation of new communities,” says Mark Elsdon-Dew. For David Porter, who was his chief of staff for a long time, “it would be a caricature to reduce it to HTB, but it played an important role, it’s undeniable”. “Evangelization is an absolute priority for Justin Welby, as well as prayer and the renewal of religious life”, describes the one who now works part-time as a strategic consultant for Lambeth Palace.
All these initiatives have trouble passing on to some of the Anglican clergy. For many, these projects come at the expense of parishes, directing a substantial part of the Church of England budget to these communities. “However, several reports and studies show that the parishes are the first factor of development”, deplores Alison Milbank, who insists on the lack of formation given to the laity. This Nottingham priest, also very critical of HTB, co-founded the Save the Parish collective.
“A previous initiative with significant financial resources was launched in 2014,” she adds. Of the 90,000 new faithful hoped for, the Church of England has collected less than 13,000. The Anglican tradition is based on the Eucharist and its clergy who form its backbone. We are actually losing what makes us strong. We can only hold on, waiting for better times. »
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