The Parish Pledge

By signing Save the Parish’s Parish Pledge you can highlight your support for the parishes in your constituency. Having done this you can download a graphic, which you can publish on social media, to tell your constituents that you are a supporter of their parishes.

The Parish Pledge

As a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate I pledge…

To hold the Archbishop of Canterbury and Church representatives in Parliament accountable to ensure resources are focused on the local front line.

To ensure proper scrutiny of the Church of England’s £10 billion of assets, which was gifted by Parliament and established by primary legislation to support ministry in the poorest parishes.

To support the £55 billion of social good done by parish churches by voting against Measures that facilitate parish mergers or closures, or transfer money and power from local communities to church head offices.

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On submission of this form, a social media banner will be generated which you can then save to your computer by right-clicking on the image.

Last year, the report, The House of Good, using HM Treasury’s Green Book framework, valued the social and economic contributions of churches at £55 billion a year. If parish churches close, taxpayers will bear the cost of this social action, or the poorest will suffer. Additionally, 45% of Grade I listed buildings are owned by the CofE. If these buildings are abandoned, their maintenance will fall to the State to preserve this heritage.

Closing parishes has negative consequences for social welfare, especially during a mental health crisis. Churches are crucial for food banks and other emergency care. The charity Church Action on Poverty showed in a 2023 study that churches are five times as likely to close in the poorest fifth of the areas studied than in the richest fifth.

The risk of parish church closures is not due to declining church attendance but is driven by the CofE’s own policy to cut parish clergy jobs.

This policy is not because of lack of money. The church has a £10.2 billion endowment to support the provision of clergy in every parish, but funds are being diverted to create pet projects of the central church. This policy has never been democratically debated or approved.

The CofE’s own studies show that reducing clergy via parish mergers leads to a faster rate of collapse – and the loss of community benefits and heritage hits the poorest communities hardest.  Despite this, some dioceses are increasing clergy cuts and parish mergers. Over 400 CofE churches have closed in the last decade, and 278 parishes have been lost to mergers.

This has been a deliberate strategy leading to “mega-parish” groupings, with fewer priests managing more churches. In one diocese, only two priests now look after 23 former parishes, while more staff work in the diocesan HQ than as frontline priests. That diocese has more people working in diocesan HQ (41) than frontline priests (39.5)!

There are enough clergy available. With 1,000 priests in diocesan HQs, often with better wages than in parishes, they are not being deployed where desperately needed.

The solution is in Church leaders’ hands: increase the number of parish clergy on the front line. 

Why Parliament is critical to changing the CofE’s current direction

Parliament has the levers to prevent the catastrophe of widespread church closures.  The Church of England, as the Established Church, is supervised by Parliament. Its draft legislative ‘Measures’ (which have full force of statute) are scrutinised in Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee and can be voted on by MPs and Peers.

MPs can ask Parliamentary Questions of Church authorities via the Second Church Estates Commissioner, appointed by the Prime Minister. Parliament must hold the Church, the UK’s second wealthiest charity, to account.