A Post-Covid CofE : Better than 'Songs of Praise' Repeats?

The Bishop of London, The Rt Revd Sarah Mullally has been tasked with advising the Church of England on how best to respond to the potential easing of the Covid-19  ‘lockdown’, and has warned that it’s unlikely that things will be be back to normal by the end of the year.

This statement should come as no surprise. The reality of Covid-19 is that it’s going to be with us for some considerable time and that it may be years before an effective vaccine is available.  In any event, as a result of the social and economic disruption that Covid-19 has caused - to say nothing of the need to be much more hygiene conscious and better prepared for any future pandemics - life is going to be very different for all of us. To quote that much overused phrase, ‘We shall have to adapt to a new normal’.

Even if we were sufficiently naive to attempt to pick up where we left off, I suspect the church would inevitably look rather different.

First, some of its members will have been lost, sadly, to Covid-19. Others, because of age and/or underlying medical conditions may well be amongst the very last to be able to venture out into public with any degree of safety, and therefore to attend worship. Given the age profile of many congregations, this would make a very significant difference to the numbers in church.

Second, we are all creatures of habit, and as a result of lockdown some people will have developed new habits and abandoned old ones. Some of these changes will doubtless extend beyond lockdown. It’s possible that for some, a temporary inability to practice even a long-established routine of going to church may result in the permanent loss of their churchgoing ‘habit’ especially if they’ve become accustomed to worshipping in new ways at home, whether on line or using ‘hard copy’ resources. (I suspect this may be more the case for younger worshippers for whom there were already many other distractions from regular church attendance.)  

Third, it is widely recognised that most church buildings do not easily lend themselves to social-distancing nor to many of the new hygiene practices that are already being recommended e.g. everyone washing their hands on first entering or leaving the building.  (None of my three churches have their own WC, never mind convenient hand-washing facilities by the main entrance!)  

Fourth, there is talk - reasonably enough - of the need to abandon the use of hymnbooks and service sheets.  This would necessitate the use of screens showing the words of the service.  Already popular in many of the more evangelical or charismatic establishments, this would be a major shift – and a serious architectural challenge – in many other churches.

Fifth – and perhaps most devastating of all – the singing of hymns or other parts of the service may have to be forbidden, at least for a time, as singing is known to spread the Coronavirus. This will be a major blow for churches of all shades – from Cathedrals where no Choral Evensong will be possible, to charismatic Evangelical strongholds where it will be forbidden to belt out the latest Worship Song.  The absence of music could also potentially impact further on attendance.

This all sounds rather bleak, but as Covid-19 takes its course, government guidelines change and Bishop Sarah and her colleagues work through the implications, how much of this will be a reality - and for how long - will hopefully become clearer.

In the meantime, it has been quite interesting to watch the inevitable and sometimes rather heated exchanges on social media and in the press between the optimists and the pessimists (or some might say the Propagandists and the Prophets of Doom). The former have waxed lyrical about the numbers of people logging onto streamed services, claiming that these represent the highest ‘congregation’ figures for many years (in reality just a bit higher than the weekly audience for BBC 1’s ‘Songs of Praise’) whilst the latter have said that recent events spell the end of the Church of England.

As someone who thinks of himself as a realist, and who tries to see any problem as a potential opportunity, I’m not sure what I think. On the one hand, I suspect that the profound and disturbing impact of the Covid-19 crisis may have challenged people’s values and perhaps prompted them to recognise the folly of materialism and to begin to ponder more spiritual matters. This could present the church with a wonderful opportunity.

On the other hand, many people feel that the leadership of the CofE seriously mishandled the enforced closure of churches through their insistence (sorry, ‘guidance’) that even clergy couldn’t enter them to pray or to celebrate the Eucharist, albeit alone. I don’t want to rehearse all the old arguments here (and actually I can see pros and cons on both sides) but time alone will tell whether or not this was, as some have suggested, a PR disaster that has completely undermined the CofE’s role as the national church.

Either way, the pandemic and its aftermath is undoubtedly going to have significant financial implications for the Church just as it will for so many other organisations, businesses, families and individuals.  It has been suggested that this will force the CofE to grasp nettles that it was going to have to grasp sooner or later in any case, i.e. that we have an unsustainable number of churches, that clergy will need to become increasingly self-supporting rather than being paid a stipend and that the administrative infrastructure will need to be radically overhauled and slimmed-down.

In the wake of Covid-19 the Church of England will undoubtedly change. It will have to. What that change will look like, and whether it will be for better or for worse remains to be seen.

Will the recent adventures in live-streaming outlive the lockdown and the CofE become mainly an ‘internet church’? Maybe. I have to be honest and say this is far from  my ideal option, but it would be marginally better than having to watch ‘Songs of Praise’ repeats.