SENIOR churchmen are plotting to do away with several Church of England dioceses and bishops in the latest effort to fend off money troubles.
It will cause dismay among those in the Anglican hierarchy who have so far resisted attempts to reduce the number of suffragan or area bishops, let alone dioceses.
The Times can reveal that secret talks are under way with a view to merging Bradford, Portsmouth and possibly Leicester with their neighbours. If the talks, which are in their early stages, become a formal proposal, the three dioceses would be subsumed by their larger sisters, their bishops downgraded to suffragans and their cathedrals would revert to parish church status.
The diocesan offices, with their costly array of staff and bureaucracy, would disappear and the number of diocesan bishops in England would be reduced from 43 to 40, cutting the increasing burden of bishops’ stipends and expenses.
The plan mirrors what has happened to thousands of parishes. As the number of clergy has declined and the means to pay their stipends has diminished, parishes have been merged into “team ministries”.
“I have heard discussion about Portsmouth and about Bradford,” a senior source in the hierarchy said. “It has not been raised in any official form. With procedures as they are, it would be very difficult for anything like this to go ahead. But there are whisperings in the undergrowth.”
Another source close to the Church Commission pinpointed Leicester as also vulnerable. He said: “It is a whole new phase of church reform in the making. The sheer cost of burgeoning diocesan offices and their accompanying staff is making people think much more realistically about the need for so many diocesan secretariats. The simple thing, of course, would be to keep the dioceses and abolish the administration, but that might be too metaphysical to contemplate.”
Bradford, where the bishop is the Right Rev David James Smith, was founded in 1919. It covers the western quarter of North Yorkshire as well as areas of east Lancashire, Cumbria and Leeds, and could be absorbed into the diocese of Ripon and Leeds, which was reconstituted in 1836.
With 240 stipendiary clergy and nearly 300 parishes in the combined diocese, this would still leave it a fraction the size of a diocese such as London, which has more than 500 clergy and 400 parishes.
Portsmouth, where the bishop, Dr Kenneth Stevenson, is one of the frontrunners to succeed the Bishop of Durham, Dr Michael Turnbull, when he retires, was founded even later than Bradford, in 1927, carved out of the Winchester diocese. The diocese, which includes the Isle of Wight and the southeastern third of Hampshire, could be absorbed back into Winchester, which was founded in 676, giving it a combined tally of 320 stipendiary clergy and 440 parishes.
Leicester’s first bishop was the Anglo-Saxon Cuthwine in 680, but the city has endured diocesan reorganisations over the centuries. The last Saxon bishop fled south in 870 as the Danes invaded the Midlands. The Normans gave Leicester to the Bishop of Lincoln in 1072 and in 1837 the city was handed to the Bishop of Peterborough. Only since 1926 has Leicester had its own bishop again, a position held at present by the Right Rev Timothy Stevens.
None of this would be practical at present because the 1978 Dioceses Measure requires the assent of all interested parties before one diocese can be absorbed into another. No bishop has so far been willing to sacrifice his diocese for the salvation of the wider Church.
But under a review of the measure, set up by the Archbishops’ Council and now taking place, it is thought that the process by which a diocese could be abolished will be hugely simplified. Recommendations are to be published next summer.
David Hebblethwaite, secretary of the Dioceses Commission, set up under the 1978 measure to advise bishops on diocesan structure, said: “There are many opinions in the Church. What is happening is a review of the 1978 measure which would make it easier to process something. It is rather cumbersome at the moment and nothing happens unless an existing diocesan bishop makes a proposal.
"The aim of the review is to come up with a simpler procedure, but that would have to be agreed by the General Synod. The review is separate from what some people might or might not want to see achieved. Undoubtedly, there are some people who want to see fewer dioceses, but there are others who want twice as many.”