BBC Wales has an article about a Church of Wales
Two things are interesting to me. Firstly, how similar the
apparent picture is to that in the ‘recent’ Manx survey (i.e. a survey which was
completed a few years back, and some edited highlights were partially revealed
to us civilians recently). Secondly, why BBC Wales gave it prominent airtime.
As with the half-formed religious droppings we get in the nominally
Manx media, nothing this ‘shocking’ about a major church denomination gets into
the ‘national press’ unless that organization put it there and negotiated the
manner in which it would be ‘independently’ reported.
Sorry to burst anybody’s
bubble here, but there are no dedicated reporters doggedly rooting out such
stories and doorstepping powerful but embarrassed figures for a quote. The 21st
century media business does not work like that.
If you compare what is happening locally, it is far more
likely that the C of E’s PR merchant delivered a ready cooked ‘story’ to the
radio news desk, who just reheated it before shoving it down the public’s throats.
The purpose is to ‘spark public debate’ about how churches can survive in the
21st century. Except that the church involved has already had that ‘debate’
privately and internally and is not about to let us heathens make informed
comment.
For a decade or more it has also been (1) negotiating
with government over massive public subsidy and (2), at least partially with
the feedback of those government negotiations advising ‘area management’ on
spotting ‘business opportunities’(such as the closure of local shops, post
offices and youth facilities) or heritage schemes where applications for grant
aid and start-up business funding will be treated very favourably and churches
dead from the ground up get ‘reinvented’ as ‘community facilities’. The community,
of course, has no say in such matters – especially as a popular response might
be ‘More bigotry and brainwashing on the rates? No thanks!’
The worst ones we see here include massive government
help to renovate the empty cathedral as an 'educational resource' (offering very
dubious exhibitions and materials, I might add) and another where government seem
to be handing an awful evangelical outfit land zoned for social housing and
community resources to build a church -cum-'community centre' (thus getting out
of providing the town the real youth and community centre it has been begging
for over two decades).
The new ‘voucher system’ for nurseries is, I suspect,
another stitch-up. Note, for example, the well timed and ‘coincidental’ comments
of the Mothers Union when key beneficiaries will include right wing churches,
now actually being paid to abuse kids too small to crawl away.
When organized religion reduces itself to nothing but a tacky business I
wish that just one politician or civil servant would have the guts to suggest
removing the charitable status. Make them operate like proper businesses with
proper legal checks and balances, and make them pay taxes instead of leeching
off a disinterested public.
Until I hear that suggestion made - and an opportunity
to consider it seriously - this is not a debate but another monologue from a privileged
party. That party has nothing useful to say and far too many opportunities to say it in a
media closed to any genuine contribution from the general public.
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