STEPHEN GLOVER: I love the Church but it's become a self-lacerating sect, gripped by the wrong concerns - and failing to convey what many still yearn to hear
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Christmas again. In two days' time we will celebrate the birth of Our Lord. Across Europe, pews that were once full will probably be emptier than ever. True, in Orthodox Russia there will be a decent turnout when, on January 7, they celebrate Christmas. So also in largely Orthodox Ukraine.
![[The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, showed undue leniency to an abuser, in this case a rogue priest, in his previous role as Bishop of Chelmsford]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/23/01/93409659-14219673-The_Archbishop_of_York_Stephen_Cottrell_showed_undue_leniency_to-a-97_1734918400164.jpg)
Strange that two of the more Christian countries in Europe, and Orthodox ones at that, should be at war with each other. In Roman Catholic Poland, too, there will be millions of people in church on Christmas Day, though fewer than a decade ago. But across what was once Christian Europe, in France, Germany, Spain and Italy, congregations will be much sparser than they were a generation back.
In Britain, where only 49 per cent of adults believe in a deity, according to a recent survey, they will probably be the thinnest of all. If a Christian God is in retreat across the Continent in our increasingly secular and consumerist age, He has already disappeared from the lives of many Britons.
Justin Welby, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, has fostered a self-lacerating culture intended to burden us with guilt. Who can doubt that the many failings of the Church of England – the Established and supposedly national Church for the 85 per cent of the population that lives in England – have contributed to the alarming collapse of belief and attendance?.
I feel I can be rude about the C of E because it is the Church in which I was brought up, and which my father and several relatives have served as priests. I love it, and yet it – by which I mean the behaviour of some of its senior clerics – often drives me potty.
