The time is ripe for a liberal revival of the Church of England

Things are looking up for the Church of England. Its painful era of disunity is behind it, or soon will be. A major revival is on the cards.

For the first time in about 40 years it is possible to imagine a church that is united enough on gender and sexuality, and in tune with the wider culture

I am being ironic, you are probably thinking. For this is the poor old C of E we’re talking about, which lurches from crisis to crisis. No, I am not being ironic. We are so used to negative stories and predictions about our national church that good news is hard to process. But the new survey of clergy’s views by the Times is essentially encouraging. The Times itself assumed otherwise: its headline was that most clergy no longer see Britain as a Christian country. This is an irrelevant issue, or nonissue, of semantics.

The core findings of the survey are that a clear majority of clergy back reform on the gay issue and that an even clearer majority is tired of the older division over female clergy and wants the Church to reunite.