SENIOR bishops predicted a retreat by the Church of England from the poorest parts of the country as nearly half of its 43 dioceses will for the first time receive no support from the Church Commissioners because of its financial difficulties.
One of the country’s most influential bishops insisted yesterday the Church must put its own house in order before it preaches to the Government and the rest of the world on poverty. Because of the Church’s stricken financial position, parishes in the neediest parts of the country are in danger of losing out on the cash that they desperately need, the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Rev James Jones, told the General Synod.
As a result the Church would fail in its duty to care for the poor, he said. The bishop, tipped as a future Archbishop of Canterbury, said that the Church could be regarded as “in retreat” because of the way that it was proposing to distribute what remained of its depleted assets.
In an attempt to resolve its internal financial difficulties the Church was in danger of undermining its “prophetic role” in speaking about the poor both internationally and at home.
Bishop Jones, whose diocese will lose £250,000 a year, was speaking at the annual summer meeting of the synod in York in a complex debate on Church finances. It is enmeshed in a financial crisis that began when the Church Commissioners lost £800 million in property speculation in the 1980s.
Churchgoers give an average of £3.61 a week each, but to make ends meet the Church needs them to donate at least 5 per cent of their take-home pay, or an average of about £7.
Bishop Jones said that the Government was setting a better example than the Church when it came to helping the most deprived people out of the poverty trap.
Already clergy jobs are being cut and worshippers have been told that they must put an extra £12 million in the collection plate to pay clergy pensions. Even bishops are being threatened with the loss of their chauffeurs and gardeners as part of attempts to balance the budget.
Synod members were being asked yesterday to decide how to distribute the funds available from the commissioners for supporting the Church’s ministry. Nearly £15 million was given to the Church’s 43 dioceses to help pay clergy stipends last year.
The money was distributed according to a formula based on the historic wealth of a diocese as well as parish income from donations, fundraising and covenanted giving.
The system was, however, considered unfair because dioceses such as Chelmsford, which includes large areas of deprivation in East London, received only £244,000 from the commissioners. In an attempt to find a fairer method of distributing the £15 million, the synod decided to adopt a mathematical formula based on the personal income of churchgoers.
Under the new scheme Liverpool will lose nearly £250,000 of its allocation while dioceses such as Chelmsford, York, Sheffield and Newcastle will gain. Bishop Jones said that he was aware that he was vulnerable to the charge of self-interest, but insisted the Church had got it wrong.
Bishop Jones called on the Church to take into account the “deprivation indicators” used by the Government when calculating poverty and grants and regional aid. These would include factors such as health, crime, life-expectancy, unemployment and education.