Growth or decline in the Church of England during the decade of Evangelism: did the Churchmanship of the Bishop matter?

The Decade of Evangelism occupied the attention of the Church of England throughout the 1990s. The present study employs the statistics routinely published by the Church of England in order to assess two matters: the extent to which these statistics suggest that the 43 individual dioceses finished the decade in a stronger or weaker position than they had entered it and the extent to which, according to these statistics, the performance of dioceses led by bishops shaped in the Evangelical tradition differed from the performance of dioceses led by bishops shaped in the Catholic tradition. The data demonstrated that the majority of dioceses were performing less effectively at the end of the decade than at the beginning, in terms of a range of membership statistics, and that the rate of decline varied considerably from one diocese to another. The only exception to the trend was provided by the diocese of London, which experienced some growth. The data also demonstrated that little depended on the churchmanship of the diocesan bishop in shaping diocesan outcomes on the performance indicators employed in the study

The living and the dead; an investigation into the status of erasure within the floor of Bath Abbey

The floor of Bath Abbey offers a singular test of authenticity. Nineteenth century repairs and additions caused horizontal grave markers, which comprise the majority of the Abbey’s floor, to become separated from the burial sites they were intended to memorialize. A century and a half of further occupation has had the effect of removing many inscriptions as surfaces are worn smooth. The result is a patchwork of unintended edits and accidental poetry. This paper explores the notions of authenticity, essence, memorial and erasure as they pertain to the Abbey floor, in particular with regard to the role the body plays in inhabiting/eroding the floor—from both above and below. The author argues that the stones which are most out of place or worn to a state of erasure are no less authentic than their intact equivalents, but that they can be considered to have moved to another state of authenticity rich in resonance and meaning. This paper, in short, is a defense of erasure and that erosion through occupation may be considered a form of social memory; indeed, the marks of walking become the inscription. In other words, the undesigned (erasure, the cutting and repositioning of ledger stones, the missing inscriptions) becomes considered not as a form of dirt but as the positive traces of on-going and meaningful occupation

'No room for religion or spirituality or cooking tips': exploring practical atheism as an unspoken consensus in the development of social work values in England

Academic interest in the subject of social work and religion is a relatively new phenomenon in Britain. This article draws on material derived from a doctorate on the history, development and current practice of church-based social work in Britain to examine the reasons for the absence of debate on this topic dating back to professional social work's earliest days. It takes Alistair McFayden's concept of 'practical atheism' and shows how, in different ways, this concept has been prevalent in church-based social work. It argues that social work in England (rather than Britain as a whole) has been secular in part by default, because those who might be expected to oppose such a position have, for a number of reasons, failed to do so. The result has been an absence of debate concerning matters of religion, replaced instead by an unspoken but widespread practical atheism. The secular humanism found within English social work has never been required to define itself, to test itself against a position that argues for a social work suffused with theological insights. The article concludes that a more open debate on this topic would be of benefit to all concerned