Shock waves triggered by archbishop’s resignation are culmination of years of simmering rage among churchgoers and survivors of abuse
As the faithful give thanks to God in England’s 16,500 parish churches on Sunday, beneath the comforting ritual of prayers and hymns will run a strong undercurrent of shame, anger, sadness and dread.
“We’re now hearing talk of sweeping the stables clean and starting afresh. The sense you get from many in the church is a feeling that the whole hierarchy, not just the man at the top, is complicit and tainted.”The shock waves being felt through the C of E have some parallels with those that engulfed the Roman Catholic church after the Boston Globe 2002by priests and its cover-up.
“But we shouldn’t fall into the idea that mistakes are only made by those at the top of the tree. A lot of the errors made in the Smyth case were made by local people who found out about Smyth’s abuse and looked the other way – and carried on their ascent through the hierarchy.” Conservative Anglican churches in sub-Saharan Africa are growing in number, and many of their leaders think their influence and power should reflect that. Meanwhile, the church in England has been in steady decline for decades.In 2012, shortly before Welby’s appointment, average weekly church attendance was more than a million people.
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