Letters to the Editor

Minster communities in the diocese of Leicester

From Mr James Ginns

Madam, — Your in-depth report (News, 28 March) is in danger of muddying the waters over the impact of minster communities (MCs).

I grew up in a village in Launde, was encouraged by a proactive vicar to join the church choir and youth group, and came to faith later on the basis of what I had learnt. If I were growing up there now, there would be no vicar to encourage me. My father is growing old there now, with few regular services to attend and no minister available to visit the sick.

The scandal of Launde MC needs calling out, starting with the fact that it’s a community in name only. The euphemism conceals four generations scattered across 34 villages, 35 churches, and four schools, which are to be served by just one stipendiary minister, and which already have to rely on retired clergy to take most of their services. They are being let down by the national Church — amply wealthy enough to help to provide them with sufficient local ministers — and by Leicester diocese, whose poor financial management has escaped your writer’s attention.

Millions of pounds have been poured into a loss-making conference centre, the plush renovation of an inconveniently located cathedral, and a bloated head-office staff that is half the size of the front-line stipendiary team. Together, these drive the diocese’s overheads to almost one third of its total budget. Any self-respecting charity would be embarrassed to publish such numbers, and no one would donate to it. Initiatives such as shared services with its neighbours should have been launched years ago to relieve the diocese’s back-office burden before the deficit ballooned.

It is time for the failed MC experiment to be halted, for the Diocesan Investment Programme to help fund parish priests to revitalise village ministry, and for Leicester diocese to get its financial house in order. The alternative is spiritual scorched earth across the rural parts of the diocese, as retired clergy hang up their cassocks and no one is left to take services or to attend them.

JAMES GINNS
23 King George Square
Richmond TW10 6LF

From Ruth Pearce

Madam, — I was always sceptical that MCs would actually work and achieve the goals set out by the Leicester diocese.

I left Leicester in 2020, but stayed on my church’s PCC for a while via Zoom. It became very difficult, because I didn’t want my previous church to be part of an MC. There was not only the problem of LLF, but, being an Anglo-Catholic parish, we were under the Bishop of Richborough’s care. Ours is a sacrament-centred faith, and my worry was that weekly mass would disappear under the MCs, because you actually need a priest to celebrate mass. I could see that fewer priests meant fewer services, resulting in a reduction in attendance and giving. I’m afraid morning prayer led by a lay person is not good enough.

RUTH PEARCE
19 Ranworth Drive
Ormesby St Margaret
Great Yarmouth NR29 3SH

From Sir James Burnell-Nugent

Madam, — The most recent Leicester Diocesan Strategy, dated September 2024, says: “Our minimum expectation is that Minster Communities will cover the cost of their stipendiary ministry.” So, where is the contribution going from the income from £50 million held in the diocesan stipends fund (DSF) — most of which originates in parish glebe centralised in 1976?

Across all dioceses, the best-performing DSFs generate six per cent for clergy stipends, which in the case of Leicester diocese would be a handsome contribution of £3 million p.a., as opposed to the current £1.85 million. May I suggest that the diocese of Leicester change its unduly harsh clergy-funding policy?

JAMES BURNELL-NUGENT
Sheepham Mill, Modbury
Devon PL21 0LX

Nicaraguan government’s attitude to Christians

From Mr David Skidmore

Madam, — Those of us who welcomed the Sandinista overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979 have a particular responsibility to speak truthfully now that the current regime exhibits so many of the same authoritarian and repressive tendencies.

John Perry (Letters, 28 March) invites us to dismiss the detailed findings of Christian Solidarity Worldwide because he lives in Nicaragua and his wife is allowed to attend her church. Why, then, does he think Nicaragua withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council? Does he also dismiss the findings of Amnesty International?

Last December, Amnesty said that “the Nicaraguan authorities have implemented a sustained strategy of repression against any form of critical organization and expression”. Perhaps the regime prefers those who ignore the repression around them. Or are we to accept his view that everyone who dared to show opposition to the regime in 2018 is a tool of the imperialists?

Is Mr Perry aware that, in a single day (20 August), the government revoked the legal status of more than 1500 different social organisations and that the Episcopal Church (part of our Anglican Communion) has suffered the same fate and is threatened with confiscation of its assets?

Does he deny that 46 religious leaders were detained in 2024? Does he share his President’s view that Pope Francis is diabolical and his bishops in Nicaragua are “spawn of the devil”? What is their crime — something so serious that in the case of Bishop Herrera it merited his being stripped of his citizenship and expelled? He now waits in Rome praying for better times.

I welcomed President Ortega’s visit to London in 1989 when many people did not. I now grieve that Mr Perry, who might have stood with me then, now stays silent when his government is effectively (in the words of the human-rights lawyer Ariela Peralta) “at war with its own people”.

DAVID SKIDMORE
35 Glenferrie Road
St Albans AL1 4JT

Choral Evensong and the BBC’s overseas listeners

From Francis Reinbold

Madam, — I write to bring to your attention a most troubling situation regarding the future provision of broadcast worship.

The BBC recently announced that it would disable use of the BBC Sounds app outside of the UK. The app is the means by which most overseas listeners gain access to BBC Radio broadcasts. Instead, a new app has been provided, giving real-time access only to BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. This move means that all music services across BBC Radio will now be lost, making it difficult for young British artists, from all musical genres, to build any sort of career outside of the UK.

Significantly, the closure of BBC Sounds will also affects the amount of broadcast worship that the BBC carries each week. From a current figure of 243 minutes each week (excluding BBC national regions), it will be fall to just 48 minutes on Radio 4, a reduction of some 80 per cent. Significantly, the weekly broadcast of Choral Evensong (Radio 3), established by the BBC in 1926, will be lost. This will, I fear, contribute to the increasing marginalisation of this distinctive form of traditional Anglican worship.

I am very concerned that this move will reduce the number of foreign visitors to UK cathedrals, affecting their already hard-pressed revenues. Choirs will increasingly become unknown outside of the UK and see sales of their recordings drop.

This is clearly a retrograde step. I would encourage your readers to raise this matter directly with the BBC, to the end that the proposed cutback to BBC Sounds be postponed pending a satisfactory long-term solution.

FRANCIS REINBOLD
Le Pressoir
5 Rue des Ecoles
61120 Crouttes, France

New change to vacancy-in-see rules has the opposite of its intended effect

From Mr Clive Scowen

Madam, — During the debate in the General Synod in February (Synod, 28 February) on changes to the Vacancy-in-See Committee Regulation, much was made by the Bishop of London and others of the importance of reserving places for women, and particularly at least one ordained woman, among the people elected to represent the diocese on the Crown Nominations Commission when it becomes necessary to fill a vacancy in the diocesan see, and the Synod approved a change to that effect.

Last week, the results of the election of 16 members to the vacancy-in-see committee for the diocese of Canterbury were announced and the voting figures are also a matter of public record. That committee will shortly be asked to elect three of its members to the CNC that will be charged with nominating a new Archbishop of Canterbury.

Under the new rules, if at least one female cleric stands for the CNC, no male clergy from the diocese can be elected, but one of the female clergy has to be. Of the candidates who stood for election to the vacancy-in-see committee, there was only one woman priest, and she secured ten first-preference votes out of the 88 cast.

In an ordinary unconstrained STV election, that is nearly twice as many votes as would have been needed to secure her election. But the constraints that now apply under the amended Regulation carried by the Synod preclude her election, because a lay person from the same benefice had to be elected in order for the minimum number of lay members from that archdeaconry to be met — and that would have been the case however many votes she had got. Meanwhile, two lay candidates who received no first-preference votes at all have been elected.

In short, the amending Regulation designed, among other things, to secure the presence of at least one female cleric on every CNC has prevented the only woman priest who sought election to the Canterbury vacancy-in-see committee from being elected to that body and thus from being elected to the CNC, despite her receiving substantial support from the electorate. You couldn’t make it up.

CLIVE SCOWEN
General Synod representative for the diocese of London
69 Brooke Avenue
Harrow HA2 0ND

Requirements for 106th Archbishop of Canterbury

From Canon Andrew Lightbown

Madam, — The next Archbishop of Canterbury must, as Lord Harries writes (Analysis, 28 March), possess “a particular kind of gift, combining spirituality and wisdom in a way that evokes trust”. This, I would argue, should be the next Archbishop’s primary charism. (In fact, I would argue that this should be a defining characteristic of all in positions of leadership in the Church.)

The Archbishop will face two very significant yet related issues: how to rebuild trust in an institution many of whose members have lost confidence in the leadership and moral integrity of its senior leaders; and how to both gain and rebuild trust in a society in which a very significant proportion of people view the Church as either a complete irrelevance, or with contempt and disdain. This will, indeed, demand a very particular kind of gift, but where is such a gift to be found?

ANDREW LIGHTBOWN
The Canon’s House, Stow Hill
Newport NP20 4EA

From Mr Michael Brown

Madam, — If the post of Archbishop of Canterbury really is a “killing job”, then it shouldn’t exist. Why should anyone value an institution that knowingly sets out to treat people like that? Or is it that the Church of England lacks the imagination to make radical changes to its structure?

MICHAEL BROWN
16 Haswell Gardens
North Shields NE30 2DP

Lord’s Prayer amended

From the Revd Claire Wilson

Madam, — Our son Peter, born with a learning disability, has always enjoyed reciting the Lord’s Prayer (Letters, 21 and 28 March). Now in his fifties, however, for some reason he regularly and loudly prays “Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our BUS PASSES.” (Is our Lord alerting us to some future crisis for the elderly?)

CLAIRE WILSON
26 Frognal Lane
London NW3 7DT