We Need a Lockdown Skeptic Church

Last autumn I wrote this piece for the Spectator with the conclusion..

If we had lockdown after lockdown, would the church be prepared to speak out? Vicars shouldn't wait to find out. If the church wants to make itself relevant, it should speak up – and kick start a conversation on the validity of Britain's coronavirus response.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/when-will-more-vicars-like-me-speak-out-against-lockdown-

I am still waiting for someone (please anyone) higher up the food chain of the Church of England to speak out.   

A poll last month said that 30% of population are in the anti lockdown group.  Couldn't some of the bishops or cathedral deans at least give voice to those voices? There must surely be the odd minority dissenting voice? To quote myself again (apologies);

The church used to pride itself on robust debate. It was a seedbed for intellectual giants who were not afraid to say their mind. But whatever happened to those colourful canons, dotty theologians, and rebellious bishops who made the Church of England so gloriously interesting, if not fun? 

Are the senior ranks so depressingly homogenous? We know that this is the case in terms of the voting preferences of bishops because according to a recent study only 6% voted for the governing party.   What does this say about the way in which the Church hierarchy makes decisions and collates knowledge on the world around it?  Sounds fairly narrow and limited to me.  Without wanting to digress too much off the subject of lockdowns, this short clip from Yes Prime Minister highlights that the Anglican problem of recruiting clerics from a wider pool has been around for ..sometime now. (It is also a comedy classic.) 

On a serious note the urgency of getting out of lockdown cannot be overstated. It is clearly evident that the cure is worse than the disease. For instance, the rise in mental health issues around children during Lockdown 3.0 is staggering. This Lancet article should chill us to the core:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30570-8/fulltext 

( Another story is .. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/30/five-children-every-class-likely-need-mental-health-support/ ) 

I have two teenage children and I can vouch for what is happening.  They feel what I suspect many teens do namely that they have been asked to sacrifice their career opportunities.  They calculate that they will be poorer and have less meaningful lives due to the loss of a year of education. 

Perhaps you the reader think this is melodramatic? On numerous occasions I have read trite posts on social media along the lines of every kid is in the same boat and perhaps all this education is not so important anyway?  Whatever the empirical data on educational attainment and lockdown imagine being in a school system where the daily  mantra is that every day here matters. Now picture trying to compute the current change in rhetoric. 

I suspect there is hardly a child in this country who has not been drilled with this at every class and every assembly. We told them that going to school was crucial. They might have moaned about this and rolled their eyes, but deep down even if they did not believe it they believed that we believed.  Michael Gove even fined middle class parents for taking kids to well heeled holidays during term time. He was insistent. So were the unions. It got so draconian that some local authorities were reportedly threatening fines for  going to funerals of distant relatives. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/parents-fined-120-taking-son-18966634

Then Covid came and suddenly education became expendable. 

All that talk of the necessity of school evaporated. 

School was a luxury in a time of normalcy, not apparently a human right.  

Of course all those bourgeois folk celebrating on Facebook that educating children was capitalist oppression where probably the first to rush to John Lewis' (before stopping off at Pret-a-Manger) to stock up on laptops. Returning home they probably booked a host of Zoom private tutors.  The poor kids living on the 17th floor of a tower block have no chance to compete with this. 

Now I give the above story as an example of something the bishops could get hot under the collar for.  I don't think that the general public would be too agnst if one or two of Church's prelates put the case for getting kids back to school... like next week, Monday.  The unions might rumble.  What I am saying is that this would hardly be a bad news story for the Church, quite the reverse. Not that this should be the primary reason for doing this. Lockdowns are simply bad in themselves and they are particularly bad for children.

Readers who want to follow this debate more closely with a church spin could consider subscribing to the podcast Irreverend hosted by Revs Jamie Fanklin and T J Pelham.   Here's the latest episode on YouTube.