Understanding the Church of England's Crisis: Ethics vs. Belief

Ethics Without Truth: The Collapse of Belief in the Church of England

Two recent Anglican reflections attempt to explain the condition of the Church of England. One comes from the theologian Paul Avis, who diagnoses institutional failure and calls for moral repair. The other comes from Theo Hobson, who describes his decision to train for the priesthood as a search for joy and meaning later in life. They differ in tone and genre, but they share a crucial premise: that the Church’s crisis is primarily ethical, cultural, or experiential.

That premise is mistaken.

Taken together, these articles do not explain the Church of England’s collapse; they reveal its deeper cause. The Church of England is not failing because it has behaved badly. It is failing because it no longer knows what it believes strongly enough to command obedience, exercise judgment, or form clergy capable of authority.

What safeguarding explains — and what it does not
Avis is candid about the scale of the damage. He writes that “the Church of England’s moral reputation has been wrecked” and that its standing in society has been gravely damaged, above all by safeguarding failures and the institutional response to them.¹ From this diagnosis he draws a clear conclusion: “The priority must be the ethical.”²

The argument is coherent on its own terms—but only if ethics can stand independently of doctrine.

They cannot.

Safeguarding failures are real and grave. They expose cowardice, procedural evasion, and institutional paralysis. But they do not explain themselves. They presuppose something more fundamental: a Church that has lost the capacity to judge. And the loss of judgment is always theological before it becomes procedural.

Safeguarding did not cause the collapse. It revealed it. A Church that cannot say with confidence what is true cannot say with authority what is wrong, and a Church that cannot judge cannot protect.³

How belief was replaced by ethics: the evidence from Avis
Avis does not set out to downgrade doctrine. Yet his own argument illustrates precisely how belief has been displaced by ethics in contemporary Anglican self-understanding.

He locates the Church’s crisis first in reputational collapse rather than doctrinal incoherence. The presenting problem is not false teaching, but lost credibility. From this follows his prescription: ethical renewal must precede ecclesial recovery.

That move is decisive. Authority is no longer grounded in truth received and taught, but in credibility earned through ethical performance. The Church does not speak authoritatively because it teaches what is true; it teaches only insofar as it is judged morally credible by external standards. Belief becomes conditional upon reputation.

What is striking is not only what Avis says, but what he does not say. There is no sustained appeal to binding doctrine as the foundation of moral judgment. No insistence that safeguarding failures represent a collapse of belief about sin, authority, judgment, or the nature of the priesthood. No claim that ethical failure flows from theological incoherence. The causal direction runs the other way: moral failure explains ecclesial weakness; ethical renewal promises recovery.

Even when theology is acknowledged, it is immediately relativised. Avis writes of the Church having lost its way not through theological error alone, but through a failure to embody justice, goodness and love.⁴ Doctrine is mentioned, but ethics remain primary.

This is the substitution at work. Doctrine no longer functions as the source from which moral life flows; it becomes a background condition, while ethics take centre stage. The Church is urged to be good in order to be heard, rather than to teach truth in order to be obeyed.

In classical Christian theology, the order is reversed. Moral authority proceeds from truth, not from reputation. Once that order is inverted, belief becomes fragile and authority evaporates.

Vocation reframed: from obedience to fulfilment
The same theological weakness appears, from a different angle, in Theo Hobson’s account of vocation. He announces his decision to train for holy orders with irony: “I have recently begun training for holy orders in the Church of England. I know, they’re getting desperate.”⁵

He is explicit about motive: “My motivation for wanting to be a priest is selfish. I want more joy in my life.”⁶ Vocation is framed not as a summons received, but as a desire pursued.

Joy, Hobson explains, is “deeper, linked to a sense of the goodness of existence,” and is found in “communal meaning-making fun.”⁷ Religion matters because it enriches experience. Even its wideness and depth are described affectively rather than doctrinally.

Parish life disappoints on similar grounds. Churches are uninspiring, the music dirgey and naff, and the difficulty lies in “the gap between how church ought to feel and how it does feel.”⁸ Perseverance is recommended not because the Church teaches binding truth, but because remaining may eventually make it feel right.

What is absent is decisive. There is no sustained account of priesthood as an office ordered to teaching, sanctifying, and governing. Authority disappears. Sacrifice vanishes. Doctrine is silent.

This is not a personal eccentricity. It is Anglicanism speaking plainly.

Why Anglican premises cannot sustain Catholic priesthood
Traditional Catholic theology begins elsewhere. Vocation is not grounded in desire but in summons. The priest does not enter ministry to find joy; he finds joy, if at all, by conforming himself to a sacrifice already given.

The Council of Trent teaches that Holy Orders is a sacrament instituted by Christ, conferring an indelible character ordered to sacrifice and the governance of souls.⁹ Presbyterorum Ordinis insists that the priest acts in persona Christi Capitis—not as a facilitator of meaning, but as a bearer of Christ’s authority.¹⁰

The Fathers are uncompromising. St John Chrysostom warns that the priesthood is ranked among heavenly ordinances and must never be approached lightly.¹¹ St Gregory the Great insists that the pastor must first be dead to himself, lest the care of souls become a theatre for vanity rather than service.¹²

A priesthood grounded in fulfilment will avoid judgment.
A priesthood grounded in sacrifice will exercise it.

The difference is not stylistic. It is ontological.

Why safeguarding failure follows theological collapse
Safeguarding failures do not occur despite Anglican theology. They occur because of it. Where authority is suspect, responsibility dissolves. Where doctrine is negotiable, discipline becomes impossible. Where judgment is feared, evil hides behind committees and policy language.

Doctrine does not mechanically prevent sin. It creates the conditions in which sin can be named, judged, and punished. Remove those conditions, and proceduralism becomes a refuge for cowardice.¹³

False catholicity and a national problem
The Church of England continues to claim catholicity through the via media and branch theory. Both now function as placeholders rather than principles. They preserve Catholic language while denying Catholic conditions: doctrinal unity, sacramental coherence, and authoritative judgment. Newman was right to identify them as ecclesiological fictions.¹⁴

What remains is not Catholicism, but its aesthetic memory.

This matters because the Church of England is not merely another denomination. It is the established Church. Bishops sit in Parliament. It presides over national rites. It claims to articulate a moral grammar for public life.

A state church that no longer believes cannot sustain a nation’s conscience. Moral authority borrowed from a faith it no longer inhabits will always run out.¹⁵

The conclusion the articles cannot draw
The Church of England is failing not because it has loved too little, but because it has believed too little. It seeks moral authority without doctrinal truth, ethical credibility without binding belief, and pastoral influence without the authority to judge. Such an arrangement can persist for a time, supported by habit and inherited structures. It cannot endure.

But this is not an Anglican problem alone.

The same substitution of belief with ethics is now visible across much of mainstream Christianity, including within the contemporary Catholic Church wherever similar patterns take hold. These patterns rarely appear as explicit doctrinal denial. They emerge through practice: belief is displaced quietly rather than rejected openly.

One pattern appears where pastoral accommodation proceeds without corresponding doctrinal clarification—especially in matters touching marriage, sacramental discipline, and moral responsibility. When divergent outcomes are permitted without a shared rule of belief, doctrine ceases to function as a common grammar. Ethics remain, but they operate independently.

Another appears where authority is exercised primarily through process rather than judgment. Consultation and discernment have their place; but when they substitute for teaching—when consensus replaces proclamation and accompaniment replaces correction—doctrine becomes procedural. Authority is redistributed, not clarified.

In both cases the effect is the same. The Church speaks readily about values and mercy, cautiously about repentance and truth; energetically about inclusion, ambiguously about conversion. Moral concern persists, but it is no longer anchored in truths that compel assent.

The pattern is consistent. When belief weakens, ethics inflate. When doctrine becomes negotiable, process becomes decisive. When authority is distrusted, judgment is deferred. And when judgment disappears, coherence follows.

A Church that treats belief as provisional will find its ethics ungovernable.
A Church that replaces doctrine with process will discover it has no means of correction.
And a Church that cannot judge will, sooner or later, fail to protect.

The Church of England reached this point sooner and more visibly, in part because of its public role. Others should recognise the trajectory while there is still time to reverse it—not by louder ethics, but by firmer belief.

When belief is optional, ethics become ornamental—and authority disappears.

Paul Avis, “Ailing and failing: the Church of England has lost its way,” Church Times (2025).
Ibid.
Matthew 7:26–27; Romans 1:21–22.
Theo Hobson, “At 53, I’m training to be a priest,” The Spectator (2025).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Council of Trent, Session XXIII, Doctrine on the Sacrament of Order, chs. 1–4.
Second Vatican Council, Presbyterorum Ordinis (1965), §§2–3.
St John Chrysostom, De Sacerdotio, III.4–6.
St Gregory the Great, Regula Pastoralis, I.1–2.
Hebrews 5:12; Ezekiel 33:7–9.
John Henry Newman, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Lecture X (on the incoherence of branch theory); Apologia Pro Vita Sua, chs. 1–3.
Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae (1896), §§24–36; Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi (1943), §§13–14.
1 John 4:7–10; Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (2005), §§1–3.

The Anglicanism of Exhaustion: James Orr and the Crisis of Belief in England’s National Church

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