In 1963 ‘The Reshaping of Britain’s Railways’ first saw the light of day. It was a report composed by Richard Beeching and its immediate effect was the removal of 4,000 route miles from the system. Another effect was the coining of the phrase ‘Beeching’s axe’. For some this was an accolade. Old-fashioned little branch-lines and their stations were sent packing; major routes became investment targets. Others took a different view. Beeching, they said, was despoiling a national heritage. His plan was sheer vandalism. It was also a farewell to steam.
The Established Church is now in the throes of deciding whether a similar plan is appropriate for its own place in public life. (It had its own Paul report in 1964.) Just as customers forsook British Rail and chose cars and motorways, so parishioners then were forsaking parish churches and patronising supermarkets and other centres that catered for their needs. The upshot has been a relentless merging of parishes and the onset of a crisis in clergy deployment that involves cuts in clergy numbers and a recognition that it is difficult to defend the viability of the existing territorial system of the Established Church.
Underlying this issue is one of identity. As with a railway system it is necessary to ask ‘What is it?’ The four great groupings that became the norm a hundred years ago were one way of answering the question. Numerous franchises were another. Dieselisation and electrification did away with the need for men like Gresley and Bulleid and transformed the nature of the argument. Whether a national railway system is an entity or a collection of disparate items is in question. Likewise the Church has to face a question of identity. Is it a monolithic hierarchy with its own bureaucracy or is it an untidy collection of local believing communities, a federation of parish churches, if you like?
In organisational terms a Beeching plan for the Established Church makes sense. But if the Church of England is something else, if it is seen as a wealth of local churches dedicated to the worship of God and the proclamation of the Gospel, each with its own leadership and appetite for change, other possibilities enter the reckoning.
It is a commonplace to observe that there are close similarities between a higgledy-piggledy English railway system and an equally higgledy-piggledy array of local churches. Both arouse deep affections. Both invite administrative intervention. Both need critical assessment. The present emergency has made the issue an urgent one for English Christians, for Anglicans – and also for others, as Thomas Arnold pointed out when the Established Church faced an earlier, equally ominous, bleak future.
If you have a comment on this post please send an email to Revd John King at johnc.king@talktalk.net Edited extracts may be published. To forward this to a friend click on the chain icon below.