Recent scandals and resignations at the highest levels of the Anglican Church in England set me to wondering just what motivates someone to become an Anglican priest these days, and what they actually believe. From recent evidence, one might theorise that access to young persons for paedophilic activity is one motivation, but it would be ungenerous (one hopes) to assume a more general problem. My anecdotal experience, which is admittedly limited, is that modern clergy are a very mixed bunch indeed. One very noticeable trend is the number of women ordained: roughly a third of all Anglican clergy are now women and the figure is rising fast. This is an extraordinary change. It seems only yesterday that conservative church members were fighting against the ordination of women priests at all. This must mean something but one hesitates to theorise. The church also seems to be in gradual retreat from its traditional teaching on LGBTQ+ issues and there are certainly more priests, openly from that community, than before. How do they cope with the Bible’s antiquated views on sexuality one wonders. In the case of the celebrity vicar, the Rev. Richard Coles, we know the answer of course: he lied about his sexual activity to his congregation and his superiors, although he seems to have suffered no consequences for his transgressions of church law or his dishonesty. Yet again, one hesitates to theorise.
A 2014 YouGov survey revealed that 2 per cent of Anglican clergy do not believe in God, which is about 400 of them. I suspect the real number is probably higher, although it must vary depending on the state of individual faith at any given time. Evidence for this atheistic tendency is that the same poll reveals 16 per cent were ‘uncertain about the nature of God’. I thought the Bible was pretty clear on that one, if not a lot else. I would hypothesise that a majority of clergy no longer believe a great deal of the Bible’s teachings – for example, on sexuality, on hell, on the need for salvation. What do they preach about, one wonders? All of these Biblical beliefs are enshrined in the 39 Articles of Anglican faith. Back in Victorian times, a clergyman was required actually to sign those Articles before he could be ordained. This is no longer the case. So, there is absolutely no way of knowing what specifically any given clergyman believes – if anything at all. And there is virtually nothing in the way of survey data to give an overall picture. I wonder why this is? These days, we have polls on virtually every aspect of human life and there is no shortage of PhD students looking for subjects of study. So why do we not know what Anglican clergy believe, individually and in aggregate; what motivates them to do what they do; and why do we have no idea what function they think they are performing in society? I suspect that the Anglican Church itself shies away from any and all inquiry into such matters because it knows that the answers would be most unwelcome and would undermine its very raison d’etre.