So Giles Fraser wants a Dr Beeching to start the process of shutting down rural churches.
Inevitably his suggestion started a debate.
One correspondent questioned his basic assumptions about the liveliness of rural church life, another accused him of being urbanist and yet another proposed that rural churches should be centres for celebration without necessarily being open every Sunday for Mattins.
His article was pretty disappointing shooting off a few thoughts at random with some questionable facts and figures about attendance and rural versus urban populations.
Could a Beeching for churches work and what would the result look like?
First the scale, Beeching recommended the closure of 55% of stations (nearly 2500) and 30% of the route miles (effectively tearing up 5000 miles of railway track).
By comparison the Fraser proposals might see the closure of half the churches in rural areas (4500) and presumably most of those saved would be amongst the 6300 Grade 1 and 2 buildings, perhaps all the Grade 1 and half the Grade 2?
Beeching was asked to undertake his study because the Railways were not making headway against the increase in road haulage traffic.
So even though his name is associated with cuts in fact he also recommended that major routes should receive significant investment and promoted the introduction of containers for rail freight.
Frasers idea is similar in that he wants to cut costs and relieve the strain on the finances of the church by closing the less used and less lovely of our churches (57% of churches serving 17% of the population) but he then suggests somewhat limply that if we switch to Minsters then the country will be 'much more christian' in ten years time.
The Minster idea has been around a long time in fact it could be argued that is how evangelisation in England started.
Some Minsters remain but have lost their USP as centres of and for evangelisation. In the part of rural Cumbria where I live there has been talk of recreating a minster to serve the outlying border area of the debatable lands which can be viewed from Hadrian's Wall looking North and South.
The clergy living in community travel to conduct worship in the churches within the minster area.
In St James', Biddenham the congregation are very proud of the parvise, a room over the church porch, which I was told confidently but sadly erroneously, was used for the visiting priest, before the church had its own vicar, who would travel from the Minster or Abbey to celebrate Mass.
Perhaps Fraser was thinking about the Parvise at St Paul's which was in fact used according to Geoffrey Chaucer as the place where the Sergeant of the Laws counselled their clients.
As with Beeching if Fraser has his way there will be protests.
Some stations and lines were reprieved and some churches will be too.
Some lines have reopened and presumably some churches will also reopen perhaps run by volunteers along the lines of heritage railways, some may stay open to fulfil a variety of uses from camping barns to climbing centres or as in the case of one church in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust a Circus Skills Training Centre, jugglers clowns and acrobats.
My experience over 45 years of ministry tells me that Fraser is right, what was manageable and surviving 45 years ago is no longer manageable or surviving and yet, and yet.
Last Sunday I turned up at a church local to me to take a service so that the Vicar could have a day off, on my way there I passed a local garden centre which was about to open the car park was full and a queue had formed at the door.
When I got to the Church it was empty but by the time the service was due to start we struggled into double figures, there was no organist but the previous organist's brother turned up to lead the hymns on his violin, the atmosphere was good as people greeted each other with expressions of concern and friendship and news was shared and the everyone who came made a contribution to the food box collected for the local food bank and after the service no-one seemed to want to leave.
They came to this isolated, out of the way Church because it was their church, the graveyard hosted generations of their families and weddings and funerals were still conducted.
If they had to travel to a centre in Frasers words 'worth travelling to' would they?
My best guess would be no they wouldn't.
The church is struggling with an existential question and there are no easy answers emerging as vocations seemingly decline, clergy leave or retire and the hierarchy feeds itself getting larger and more cumbersome and unaffordable but the idea of a Beeching of the church probably isn't an answer either.
Fraser, somewhat curiously, declares that underused rural churches are theologically little more than rain shelters.
And that made me reach for my Larkin.
Water
If I were called
To construct a religion
I should make use of water
Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes
My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench
And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly
Somehow I cannot imagine those words being inspired by a visit to a garden centre.
Inevitably his suggestion started a debate.
One correspondent questioned his basic assumptions about the liveliness of rural church life, another accused him of being urbanist and yet another proposed that rural churches should be centres for celebration without necessarily being open every Sunday for Mattins.
His article was pretty disappointing shooting off a few thoughts at random with some questionable facts and figures about attendance and rural versus urban populations.
Could a Beeching for churches work and what would the result look like?
First the scale, Beeching recommended the closure of 55% of stations (nearly 2500) and 30% of the route miles (effectively tearing up 5000 miles of railway track).
By comparison the Fraser proposals might see the closure of half the churches in rural areas (4500) and presumably most of those saved would be amongst the 6300 Grade 1 and 2 buildings, perhaps all the Grade 1 and half the Grade 2?
Beeching was asked to undertake his study because the Railways were not making headway against the increase in road haulage traffic.
So even though his name is associated with cuts in fact he also recommended that major routes should receive significant investment and promoted the introduction of containers for rail freight.
Frasers idea is similar in that he wants to cut costs and relieve the strain on the finances of the church by closing the less used and less lovely of our churches (57% of churches serving 17% of the population) but he then suggests somewhat limply that if we switch to Minsters then the country will be 'much more christian' in ten years time.
The Minster idea has been around a long time in fact it could be argued that is how evangelisation in England started.
Some Minsters remain but have lost their USP as centres of and for evangelisation. In the part of rural Cumbria where I live there has been talk of recreating a minster to serve the outlying border area of the debatable lands which can be viewed from Hadrian's Wall looking North and South.
The clergy living in community travel to conduct worship in the churches within the minster area.
In St James', Biddenham the congregation are very proud of the parvise, a room over the church porch, which I was told confidently but sadly erroneously, was used for the visiting priest, before the church had its own vicar, who would travel from the Minster or Abbey to celebrate Mass.
Perhaps Fraser was thinking about the Parvise at St Paul's which was in fact used according to Geoffrey Chaucer as the place where the Sergeant of the Laws counselled their clients.
As with Beeching if Fraser has his way there will be protests.
Some stations and lines were reprieved and some churches will be too.
Some lines have reopened and presumably some churches will also reopen perhaps run by volunteers along the lines of heritage railways, some may stay open to fulfil a variety of uses from camping barns to climbing centres or as in the case of one church in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust a Circus Skills Training Centre, jugglers clowns and acrobats.
My experience over 45 years of ministry tells me that Fraser is right, what was manageable and surviving 45 years ago is no longer manageable or surviving and yet, and yet.
Last Sunday I turned up at a church local to me to take a service so that the Vicar could have a day off, on my way there I passed a local garden centre which was about to open the car park was full and a queue had formed at the door.
When I got to the Church it was empty but by the time the service was due to start we struggled into double figures, there was no organist but the previous organist's brother turned up to lead the hymns on his violin, the atmosphere was good as people greeted each other with expressions of concern and friendship and news was shared and the everyone who came made a contribution to the food box collected for the local food bank and after the service no-one seemed to want to leave.
They came to this isolated, out of the way Church because it was their church, the graveyard hosted generations of their families and weddings and funerals were still conducted.
If they had to travel to a centre in Frasers words 'worth travelling to' would they?
My best guess would be no they wouldn't.
The church is struggling with an existential question and there are no easy answers emerging as vocations seemingly decline, clergy leave or retire and the hierarchy feeds itself getting larger and more cumbersome and unaffordable but the idea of a Beeching of the church probably isn't an answer either.
Fraser, somewhat curiously, declares that underused rural churches are theologically little more than rain shelters.
And that made me reach for my Larkin.
Water
If I were called
To construct a religion
I should make use of water
Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes
My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench
And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly
Somehow I cannot imagine those words being inspired by a visit to a garden centre.
