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Simon Parke: Why, after 20 years as a priest, I am leaving the Church of England
The Pharisees are running the asylum because they are rich and the Church of England is bankrupt
10 August 2003


So there it is. After 20 years as a priest I am leaving the Church of England. It has been painful for me, saying goodbye to this strange, privileged, dog-collared, crucifying existence, for which the pay is £16,000 a year with a big, rent-free house. Ministry, like plastering a wall or bringing up a child, is an art form involving the constant adaption of the vision to the less than perfect reality.

...One thing we must understand about the Church of England is this: the Pharisees, known today as the evangelicals, are running the asylum. These are worthy people, but they hide behind rules, unable to cope with mystery and spirit. They look in the book of Leviticus and see clear denunciations of same-sex relationships; they read verses in Paul's Letter to the Romans talking about "unnatural relationships". There is, in this psyche, a deep desire for issues to be black and white, fenced in, particularly in the tumultuous sphere of sex.

The Pharisees added more than 600 rules to the spiritual life in order to protect the original Ten Commandments. Christ, however, had a different approach. Rather than add, he subtracted, leaving two guides to life: to worship God and to love others....

...This is a crisis, and so, like New Labour, the church leadership is attracted to anyone with cash. So, with their large congregations around Bromley and beyond, and their success-driven, clean-cut, pre-packaged, winner-takes-all salvation, the evangelicals wield huge financial clout. And so it is that authorities which really should know better pay great honour to them in public, and feel their balls squeezed by them in private....

...What the church needs to do amid its activist, middle-management new culture, with its audits, action plans, consultation documents, appraisals, questionnaires and targets, is recover its contemplative heart....