{"id":13595,"date":"2011-07-14T17:05:51","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T21:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=13595"},"modified":"2011-07-14T17:05:51","modified_gmt":"2011-07-14T21:05:51","slug":"church-of-england-will-be-dead-in-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/church-of-england-will-be-dead-in-20-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Church of England will be dead in 20 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In spite of this optimistic prognostication, I remain convinced that the Church of England is already dead: in 20 years, its corpse, having spent the last few decades marinating in ecclesiastical gas, will become a pickled artefact fit only to be put on display for the entertainment of curious historians in generations to come.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/religion\/8633540\/Ageing-Church-of-England-will-be-dead-in-20-years.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Church of England will cease to exist in 20 years as the current generation of elderly worshippers dies, Anglican leaders warned yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>The average age of its members is now 61 and by 2020 a \u201ccrisis\u201d of \u201cnatural wastage\u201d will lead to their numbers falling \u201cthrough the floor\u201d, the Church\u2019s national assembly was told.<\/p>\n<p>The Church was compared to a company \u201cimpeccably\u201d managing itself into failure, during exchanges at the General Synod in York.<\/p>\n<p>The warnings follow an internal report calling for an urgent national recruitment drive to attract more members.<\/p>\n<p>In the past 40 years, the number of adult churchgoers has halved, while the number of children attending regular worship has declined by four fifths.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The reason for the decline was not discussed but becomes transparently obvious when we read later on in the article that the Bishop of Southwell is concerned that <em>maths lessons are too \u201ccapitalist\u201d and should be reformed to promote Christian values.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Church of England is full of bishops who are convinced they are concentrating on the <em>real<\/em> problem while, in actual fact, they are living their vacuous lives in a barmy, utopian Marxist cuckoo land full of anti-capitalist arithmetic conceived by flamboyantly gay clerics.<\/p>\n<p>Why does anyone <em>want<\/em> the Church of England to survive?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In spite of this optimistic prognostication, I remain convinced that the Church of England is already dead: in 20 years, its corpse, having spent the last few decades marinating in ecclesiastical gas, will become a pickled artefact fit only to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/church-of-england-will-be-dead-in-20-years\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[604],"class_list":["post-13595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-of-england","tag-church-of-england-decline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}