The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
”
It’s easy to blame external factors on church decline — post modernism, immigration, secularism, the economy. The great thing about external factors is that you don’t have control of them. A mood of defeat sets in. We do have control over internal factors — what we believe, what we do.
Why is the church of England in decline? Here’s an internal factor worth considering…
According to a poll of Anglican clergy which found that as many as 16 per cent are unclear about God and two per cent think it is no more than a human construct.
In addition to those who describe God as a human creation, the YouGov poll found that three per cent believe there is some sort of spirit or life force and 9 per cent argue it is impossible to imagine what God is like.
Clergy were significantly more likely to hold unorthodox beliefs the older they were and the longer they had been in the ministry. Nearly 90 per cent of those ordained since 2011 believe in God compared with only 72 per cent of those who became priests in the 1960s, the research discovered.
