ChurchCare, the buildings division of the Church of England, welcomed the announcement today by Culture Secretary Sajid Javid of £8.3 million in grants for 31 English cathedrals. The money has come from a government-sponsored fund set up to support vital repairs to some of England’s most important historic buildings.
Mr Javid announced that the grants will provide 25 Church of England and six Catholic cathedrals with grants worth between £15k and £600k for repairs ranging from roofs, stonework and structural work through to detailed work on intricate stained glass windows.
The successful applicants will receive £8.3 million of money made available as part of the First World War Centenary Cathedral Repairs Fund. This is the second round of grants from the £20 million Fund, which was announced in the Chancellor’s March budget. The third round with £7 million to award will close on 21 January 2015 and all projects awarded money will be complete by March 2016.
Precisely. Yet the need to make this investment has been caused by the foolishness of the CofE hierarchy and the UK government. They have driven away from CofE churches the people who would maintain those churches (committed parishioners, particularly conservative evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics).
The CofE is shrinking – it is steadily losing parishioners, and the average age of those that remain increases each year. The primary reason for this is the way that bishops and government shove liberalism down the throats of the people. The loss of attendance is entirely predictable – most people do not want to attend a wishy-washy church that is tolerant of everything.
In turn, less parishioners and older parishioners means less money in the plate, less tithes, and less voluntary maintenance work. That in turn means that the buildings are not maintained, and eventually the CofE has to turn to the government for help. And the government has no choice but to help – the lucrative British tourism industry is directly affected by the poor state of British churches.
Thus the UK government ends up spending millions of pounds, as a result of driving people away from CofE churches through its promotion of liberalism.
This is not a new argument – people inside and outside of Britain have been predicting it for years. There will be a lot more of it.