Rector’s Reflections
Friday 30th May 2025
Why the Church of England Needs Martin Luther
In yesterday’s reflections, I suggested that the first question which Martin Luther might wish to ask of the contemporary Church of England is this : has the Church of England lost the plot? Has the Church become so focussed on management and the effort to be relevant that it has forgotten to focus on helping individuals to develop a transforming relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ? Has it become primarily focussed on keeping the show on the road, rather than on living and proclaiming the saving gospel of Jesus Christ?
The second question Luther might wish to ask is about Church leadership at the higher level.
The Church of England tends to assume that Church leadership should be left in the hands of the senior clergy. Of course, there are roles for laity in church governance, from the parish level, right up to General Synod and the Archbishops’ Council, but the clergy basically call the shots. The popular phrase is that the Church of England is “episcopally led and synodically governed”; note that it is not suggested that the Church’s synods have any meaningful role in the leadership of the Church. They are essentially advisory bodies.
Luther would challenge this clerical dominance, and ask a simple question: why shouldn’t the laity have a significant role in running the Church? You may remember that back in 1520, Luther invited the German princes to take the reform of the Church into their hands, and many did precisely this. For Luther, the leadership of the Church was far too important a matter to be left in the hands of the senior clergy. The Church needs the insights provided by leaders from elsewhere in the community, who will provide fresh perspectives and be prepared to shake things up and challenge vested interests. Of course, leadership from outside will have its disadvantages, but are we so certain that the disadvantages will outweigh the benefits?
Of course, the Church of England does indeed have such a leader: King Charles III, who is the official Head of the Church, but in practice, the monarch’s role is pretty minimal. I wonder what would happen if King Charles were given the opportunity to take a much more active role in leading the Church of England? Of if the King is too busy, what would happen if this brief were given to another member of the Royal Family? Or there might be some other secular leader who would be an ideal candidate to help the Church of England move forward. Any thoughts?
Luther might also ask us a further question. Of course, it is quite reasonable to expect the senior clergy of the Church to play a significant role in the leadership of the Church. But do they have the knowledge to do so? As a generalisation, many of our senior clergy have little understanding of the realities of contemporary parish life, or the nuances of local cultures. They tend to spend their time talking in generalities, which are either meaningless or profoundly unhelpful. For example, if they ever bother to acknowledge rural churches, they will talk about “rural” ministry as if there were only one type of “rural”. They will also talk passionately about the need to meet the needs of the “Inner Cities” as if there were only one type of “Inner City”. Our senior clergy are incredibly busy – far too busy to get any up to date knowledge of what life is really like in the parishes, schools and chaplaincies of their Diocese. The closest they get would be a short, stage-managed visit to a particular setting – but what depth of insight can one expect from a couple of hours spent such on an official visit?
In short, there is a real danger that many of our senior Church leaders are out of touch with the reality on the ground. They are not to blame for this- it’s the way the system works. We have grown used to accepting this situation, as the way it is. But Luther would challenge us on this. One of the reasons why Luther was so committed to promote reform in the Church was that the leadership of the Late Mediaeval Church had increasingly lost touch with the realities and needs of the local church. This led to the suspicion that the leaders simply weren’t particularly interested in what was going on locally, so long as the money kept coming in, and kept flowing up the chain. But Luther knew that this sort of leadership wasn’t the leadership the Church needed, especially at a time of great change in society and in culture. The 16th Century was such a time, and Luther knew that the Church needed leaders who had a finger on the pulse - leaders who knew what ordinary church folk were talking about, and knew what they were worried about but also what gave them hope.
So Luther might well ask us: have our church leaders become too clerical and too removed from the everyday reality of church life to be able to meet the needs of the Church in an era of rapid change? What do you think?