It’s just about three score years and 10 since Philip Larkin wrote Church Going, his beautiful meditation on the increasing redundancy of places of worship in Britain’s towns and cities. Standing among “matting, seats, and stone / And little books”, in a “serious house on serious earth” the poet wondered: “When churches fall completely out of use / What shall we turn them into?”
Since then, more than 1,700 churches have been closed for Anglican worship, and Larkin’s question has had a variety of answers. About a quarter have been knocked down, and roughly the same number converted into housing. Some have become open-plan offices, or shopping experiences, or innovation hubs; in Bristol, a former Georgian church has become Circomedia, “a world renowned centre for contemporary circus training”; in another, formerly St Benedict’s in Manchester, there are climbing walls and “bouldering experiences” that take beginners and experienced mountaineers up above Victorian gothic arches and stained glass.
Larkin envisaged “A shape less recognisable each week, / A purpose more obscure”, and his words are echoed in a new report presented to the General Synod by the church commissioners. The report acknowledges that, although local people care about their church buildings, it is often for “their role in creating a sense of neighbourhood” rather than any defined spiritual function.
When Larkin wrote his poem, in 1954, about 3 million people still went to Anglican services each week. In 2021, that number was about 605,000. Still, hope, at least among clergy, springs eternal. The 368 churches earmarked for closure in the next three years should not be sold off but leased, the commissioners’ report argues, to show faith in a future resurgence of belief. Empty churches, one bishop maintained, were an expression not of “hibernation” but a “waiting on the Lord”.
Plans for Nigel
Reading about Nigel Farage’s problems with his banking arrangements – his main account appears to have been closed for unspecified reasons and seven other banks have apparently refused his custom – I canvassed the thoughts of my friend Faisel Rahman, who runs Fair Finance, a pioneering community lender in Dalston, east London.
Faisel, who has been given an OBE for his inspiring work, has been providing financial services to the “unbanked” for more than 17 years. It seems, he suggested, “that Mr Farage has joined the 1.2 million people in the UK” who are shut out from high-street lenders and that the Brexiter will therefore quickly be discovering how “fundamental that is for access to accommodation, employment and benefits”.
The people Fair Finance offer services to are all on low incomes; they include ex-prisoners, refugees and recent migrants. Farage has insisted that the absence of a bank account may force him to move abroad in search of credit. Why not instead, Faisel suggests, use his new status and infamous campaigning skills to highlight how the lack of a bank account always serves to “exacerbate economic hardship and exclusion”.
Last week I was invited by a Dolly Parton lookalike outside the London offices of Facebook and Instagram owner, Meta, to sign a petition. The petition demanded that the social media platforms stopped taking down the pages of tribute acts, which contravened its “no impersonation” rules. The campaign seemed to me a no-brainer in that it touched on an age-old ethical principle: I don’t imagine ever camping out to see Proxy Music, the Faux Fighters, Oasish or The Fillers, but I defend to the death their right to appalling puns.
