scholarly journals Assessing the Church of England’s Leadership Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic: Listening to the Voice of Rural Lay People

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Ursula McKenna
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Church Leadership ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Participation Rate ◽  
Rural People ◽  
Rural Churches ◽  
Kitchen Table ◽  
Lay People ◽  
The Voice ◽  
The Church

Abstract The aim of the present study is to analyse the qualitative text written on the back page of a quantitative survey concerned with the Church of England’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Of the 1460 rural lay people in England who took part in the Coronavirus, Church & You survey, 501 wrote further (sometimes detailed) comments on the back page (34 per cent participation rate). This study analyses the comments made by a subsection of these 501 rural lay people, specifically the 52 participants who voiced their views on how the Church of England’s leadership responded during the first four months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Analysis identified a number of issues and concerns, including: a lack of quality leadership, comparing with other Churches, becoming irrelevant, centralizing action, closing rural churches, neglecting rural people, neglecting rural clergy, marginalizing rural communities, using the kitchen table, and looking to the future. Overall, rural lay people were disappointed with the response of church leadership to the first national lockdown. If these churchgoers are to be fruitfully reconnected with their churches after the pandemic, then leadership of the Church of England may need to hear and to take seriously their concerns.

Religious Coping Among Rural Clergy: Measuring Ways in Which Rural Clergy Draw on Coping Strategies Informed by Their Theological Beliefs

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-102
Author(s):  
Christine Brewster
Keyword(s):  
Coping Strategies ◽  
Religious Coping ◽  
Psychological Health ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Rural Churches ◽  
Images Of God ◽  
Work Related ◽  
The Church

Following the recent decline in stipendiary clergy numbers in the Church of England and the consequent amalgamation of numerous rural benefices, enormous demands have been placed on many rural clergy. Potential stressors include ‘overextension’ and ‘inadequate resources’, which can cause poor work-related psychological health. Folkman and Lazarus (1988), whose work is firmly rooted in the ‘secular’ psychological tradition, contend that in order to survive in times of stress, people need to employ coping practices whereby they can ‘manage’ the personal and/or environmental stressors which ‘tax’ or ‘exceed’ their personal resources. Pargament (1997), however, believes that religious beliefs and religious experience are also important, and he suggests that the psychology of religion and coping ‘bridges a deep psychological tradition of helping people take care of what they can in times of stress with a rich religious tradition of helping people accept their limitations and look beyond themselves for assistance in troubling times’ (p. 9). The present study examines the coping strategies of a sample of 722 Church of England rural clergy who are responsible for three or more rural churches, following their completion of the ‘RCOPE Measure of Religious Coping’ (Pargament, Koenig and Perez, 2000). The data produced suggest that the religious coping strategies most frequently used by rural clergy in multi-church benefices, are ‘benevolent religious reappraisal’ (to find ‘meaning’), ‘collaborative religious coping’ and ‘active religious surrender’ (to gain ‘control’), ‘religious purification/forgiveness’, ‘spiritual connection’ and ‘marking religious boundaries’ (to gain comfort and closeness to God) and ‘seeking support from clergy and church members’ and ‘religious helping’ (to gain ‘intimacy with others and closeness to God’). The data demonstrate that rural clergy certainly draw on images of God that may promote healthy responses to significant stressors, but that they also employ those that may be detrimental to effective coping, and it is suggested that the provision by the church, of educational programmes focusing on religious coping strategies, might lead to the enhancement of work-related psychological health among rural clergy.

Religious Decline in Small-Town Rural Ontario Churches: Effects on Levels of Social Capital and Subsequent Innovative Responses

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-52
Author(s):  
Janet McLellan ◽  
Joel R. Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Local Churches ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Rural Churches ◽  
Community Needs ◽  
The Church ◽  
Religious Decline

The qualitative data in this article highlights the dynamics of religious change and decline in small town rural churches, reflecting larger trends throughout North America and Europe. 1 It questions the consequences of religious decline, particularly regarding reduced levels of volunteerism 2 and community social capital. 3 This article posits that the decline in institutionalized religion has already had negative effects within small-town rural Ontario communities, specifically the loss of leadership to sustain numerous enterprises that traditionally serve members beyond the church alongside decreased support in various volunteer sectors that also provide a range of services, activities, and programs to the larger community. Following an analysis of the challenges facing churches in a cluster of small rural communities within the Haliburton Highlands, the paper details responses developed by local churches and ministers to continue to meet community needs and maintain their strong presence and high levels of social capital in these non-religious locales.

John Mason Neale and ‘Sacrilege’: Spelman (1643) Re-Invigorated

2015 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 578-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD W. PFAFF
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Introductory Essay ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church

In 1846 a new, greatly expanded, edition of Sir Henry Spelman's History and fate of Sacrilege (1643, published in 1698) appeared, edited anonymously by ‘two priests of the Church of England’. These priests were John Mason Neale and his friend and apparent assistant Joesph Haskoll. The monograph-length introductory essay and other editorial contributions show, as well as vast learning, an aspect of Neale's multi-faceted achievement hitherto unnoticed, that of a stringent critic of great families and other lay people who possessed former church property (Spelman's definition of ‘Sacrilege’) and, more widely, of political and economic conditions in mid nineteenth-century England.

Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 11th July 1982

Moreana ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 41 (Number 157- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-71
Author(s):  
John McConica
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
International Commission ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

During the period in which these papers were given, there were great achievements on the ecumenical scene, as the quest to restore the Church’s unity was pursued enthusiastically by all the major Christiandenominations. The Papal visit of John Paul II to England in 1982 witnessed a warmth in relationships between the Church of England and the Catholic Church that had not been experienced since the early 16th century Reformation in England to which More fell victim. The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission was achieving considerable doctrinal consensus and revisionist scholarship was encouraging an historical review by which the faithful Catholic and the confessing Protestant could look upon each other respectfully and appreciatively. It is to this ecumenical theme that James McConica turns in his contribution.

The Township, the Pregnant Girl and the Church: Community Dynamics, Gender and Social Control in Early Nineteenth-century Scotland

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-67
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Church Discipline ◽  
Sexual Offences ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Female Community ◽  
The Church ◽  
Unmarried Girl

In 1814 in a small Highland township an unmarried girl, ostracised by her neighbours, gave birth. The baby died. The legal precognition permits a forensic, gendered examination of the internal dynamics of rural communities and how they responded to threats to social cohesion. In the Scottish ‘parish state’ disciplining sexual offences was a matter for church discipline. This case is situated in the early nineteenth-century Gàidhealtachd where and when church institutions were less powerful than in the post-Reformation Lowlands, the focus of most previous research. The article shows that the formal social control of kirk discipline was only part of a complex of behavioural controls, most of which were deployed within and by communities. Indeed, Scottish communities and churches were deeply entwined in terms of personnel; shared sexual prohibitions; and in the use of shaming as a primary method of social control. While there was something of a ‘female community’, this was not unconditionally supportive of all women nor was it ranged against men or patriarchal structures.

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