Emma Thompson

Emma Thompson is a freelance writer.

Thursday

Emma Thompson

What the CofE needs from Justin Welby’s successor

The Church of England website features a public consultation closing on 28th March on what qualities should be looked for in the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. But aren’t the Church’s staff meant to be the experts on God? The Church, with all its committees, seems adept at diffusing and side-stepping responsibility. Could this be a fake consultation to make people think they have a voice? Then, whatever controversy nominees cause, the selectors can say, 'Oh well, it’s what the public told us to do' – with nobody able to prove otherwise. Moreover, respondents might not take seriously the task of choosing someone to follow in St Augustine's footsteps.

Sunday

Emma Thompson

Save our parish priests!

Go to your parish church this Easter, because the clock is ticking for small and rural parishes. Even if the beauty of holiness is conspicuously absent, even if numbers are low and you feel a sinking sense of being the last person standing on the burning deck, go. That is, if your church is still open and you still have a vicar.   I do – and he will heroically be taking services in all six (!) of his churches from dawn till dusk on Easter Day. However, many of the Church of England’s (CoE) 42 diocesan administrations are cutting paid clergy jobs. In Bath & Wells, 178 parish clergy will apparently become 128; in Hereford, 72 will become 55. Priests are being asked to ‘oversee’ even more parishes.

Thursday

Emma Thompson

The hidden private school fees

Are you totting up the cost of school fees? Are you turning your piggy bank upside down, white-faced? Yes, the cost of private education is the ultimate first-world problem. But even among the ‘haves’, some are luckier than others. The global super-rich pay school fees from lavish earnings or trust funds. The rest of us, having failed to take the elementary precaution of being (or marrying) a hedge-fund manager, must save up. The financial pressures on middle-class families can be gruelling.  ‘Overseas trips are crippling. Why can’t they tour to Ipswich?’ fumes a father As a rough starting figure, a recent newspaper investment advice column told a young couple to budget for private school fees at around £30,000 a year.

Thursday

Emma Thompson

New world order: can Britain, America and Australia contain China?

43 min listen

In this week’s episode: can the new Aukus alliance contain China? In his cover piece this week, James Forsyth writes that the new Aukus pact has fixed the contours of the next 30 years of British foreign policy. Britain, he says, is no longer trying to stay neutral in the competition between America and China. On the podcast James is joined by Francis Pike, author of Empires at War: A Short History of Modern Asia Since World War II, who also wrote for the magazine this week, giving the case against Aukus. (00:45)Also this week: what can be done to save the Church of England’s parishes?

Emma Thompson

The Church Closers’ Charter must be torn up

Over the past few months, the Archbishops of York and Canterbury have repeatedly assured us that they love parishes and parish churches. ‘I am passionate that the parish is essential,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury told the Church Times recently. The Archbishop of York went so far as to describe the parish as ‘the beating heart of community life in England’. So why are they supporting a change to church law to make it easier to close parish churches? The paper which proposes the change is at stage one of a three-stage approval process. It has the unsexy name GS 2222, so I call it the ‘Church Closers’ Charter’.

Saturday

Thursday

Emma Thompson

Holy Relic: What will be left of the Church after the pandemic?

34 min listen

Are parish churches about to be devastated by bureaucracy and mismanagement? (00:55) What's the story behind the UK's vaccination efforts? (07:55) Has an intransigent union stopped firefighters from helping the Covid response? (21:55)With church volunteer Emma Thompson; Rector of Great St Barts Marcus Walker; The Spectator's deputy political editor Katy Balls; senior project manager at the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute Adam Ritchie; journalist Leo McKinsey; and chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council Roy Wilsher.Presented by Lara Prendergast.Produced by Max Jeffery, Sam Russell and Matt Taylor.

Emma Thompson

Holy relic: what will be left of the Church of England after the pandemic?

A clergyman admitted to me that he’d recently burst into tears. He’d received an email from his diocese in this latest lockdown ‘strongly urging’ vicars to close their churches. He has an elderly working-class congregation in a poor area. Coming to church was ‘the one thing keeping them going’. Local vicars like him represent the best of the Church of England. They are loving, kind, and they know their flock. Before the pandemic, the C of E had seen attendance halve in a generation. Weekly religious attendance is highest among non-Christian faiths (40 per cent), followed by Roman Catholics (23 per cent) and all other Christian denominations (23 per cent).