The Church of England is turning away trainee clergy for the first time in history after £1.3billion of its investments were wiped out in the financial crisis.
Up to a dozen graduates of theological colleges will miss out on their ordination next month and may end up on the dole as there are no parish jobs for them.
The Church has previously given all graduates placements in parishes as curates, which they need before they can become ordained as priests.
I wonder how much truth there is in the claim that all of those who missed out on curacies were from the evangelical colleges.
Any comments from those in England.
It isn’t going to be easy to get positions anymore. Most Anglicans know the church won’t mind if you decide to “do” a eucharist in your living room. Why would you pay someone to tell you everything you want to do or believe is OK? No reason to get up on a perfectly nice Sunday morning to do that. With a CEO like Rowan Williams why would anyone even turn on YouTube to see what he says this week.
I am not sure this is a fair assessment of the situation. At Ridley Hall, Cambridge, we have had a handful of students struggling to find jobs or have had jobs fall through that they expected to go to during the last couple of years, but I suspect no more or less than anywhere else — whatever label you put on them.
Certainly, it is going to be tougher in coming years because of the way in which the world economy has performed and the impact that has had on the finances of parishes and the wider church. I would hazard that there is a complexity of reasons why certain individuals are finding it difficult to get curacies — and if conservativeness or otherwise is part of the mix, it is not as significant as is being suggested here.
One of the things that does need to be pointed out is that when you look at the number of men and women being trained for ordination in the Church of England, a huge proportion come from evangelical, charismatic, catholic, and conservative backgrounds.