“I THINK it’s fair to say that, since my appointment . . . it has been an eventful yr,” the Second Church Estates Commissioner, Marsha de Cordova, observes. It was lower than six weeks after her appointment in October 2024 (News, 11 October 2024) that the unprecedented resignation of Archbishop Welby was announced. YouGov polling within the wake of the Makin Review suggested that just 25 per cent of the general public held a favourable view of the Church.
Safeguarding will not be the one issue that has exercised MPs, whose questions Ms de Cordova answers in Parliament every few weeks in her position as a link between the Government and the Church. Last November, the Labour MP for Exeter, Steve Race, suggested that “going backwards on very modest moves to finish discrimination against same-sex lay and clergy couples” was “not a sustainable position if the Church wishes to proceed to benefit from the privileges of its established status”. Last month, 27 senior Conservatives wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury-elect calling on her to halt Project Spire — a £100-million fund announced by the Church Commissioners to learn communities affected by the historic transatlantic slave trade.
Also last month, MPs deemed the National Church Governance Measure “inexpedient” (News, 12 December) — a determination also applied to the Clergy Conduct Measure (News, 31 October). The Abuse Redress Measure passed, nonetheless.
MPs were “rightly” exercised about safeguarding, Ms De Cordova suggests. “There’s no doubt that the Church must be on this journey of rebuilding public trust and confidence, and I believe the problems around safeguarding have contributed to that.” After a General Synod vote that stopped in need of transferring all safeguarding functions to an external organisation, in favour of only partial independence, she issued a press release warning that it “puts back the progress we want”.
But she can also be keen to emphasize the nice that the Church brings to society, referring greater than once to her vision of the local church as a “beacon of sunshine”. The interview takes place, at her request, on the “incredible” St Barnabas’s, Clapham Common, in her own constituency of Battersea. She makes a beeline for a prayer group ending its lunchtime meeting, and is clearly well-known to the Vicar, the Revd Richard Taylor.
Amid scrutiny from parliamentarians, the extent of fine will is “striking”, she suggests: “Everybody desires to see the Church do well, and do higher at this. And I believe that that offers us all hope.”
EARLY on in Ms De Cordova’s tenure, the Government announced that the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme had been prolonged for one yr only, and capped at £23 million, prompting an outcry. She maintains her position, set out in a packed Westminster Hall debate one yr ago (News, 24 January 2025), that more long-term support have to be found.
“It really is upon this Labour government to, for my part, make the proper decision to see that that scheme is made everlasting,” she says. While the image of public funds painted on the last Budget is removed from rosy, she stays “hopeful, because I believe that’s essential for me to do”.
Back in July, the Conservative MP for New Forest West, Desmond Swayne, made a link between the Church’s advocacy for the grant scheme and its expenditure on Project Spire. These were “two separate issues”, Ms De Cordova replied. Nevertheless, his query was illustrative of growing scrutiny of the Project by Conservative MPs.
Katie Lam, a Shadow Home Office Minister, told the House of Commons in April: “The funds which have been committed to projects via the Church of England’s reparations project are, in truth, for the maintenance of parish churches and the availability of salaries for the clergy.
“I do know that the Second Church Estates Commissioner is devoted to our parish churches, and wouldn’t support anything illegal; so will the Hon. Lady please provide the grounds on which the Church Commissioners are authorised to allocate this money to goals for which it was not intended?”
The Church Commissioners have repeatedly emphasised that the fund is for “healing, justice, and repair”, somewhat than reparations, and that none of the cash will come from parish income.
“I believe it’s a undeniable fact that we all know that the Church does have a historical link with the chattel enslavement of Africans,” Ms De Cordova says. “I believe Project Spire . . . by way of the Church atoning for its wrongs and its sins is totally the proper way forward. . . To the critics, what I might say is, as someone who has ancestors that were enslaved, I almost find it slightly crass, frankly.”
MS DE CORDOVA’s grandparents got here to Britain from Jamaica, as a part of the Windrush generation. Her mother joined them within the Sixties, and the close-knit family built their lives in Bristol, where she grew up because the second of six children. During a 2022 debate within the House of Commons on the Windrush Review, she lamented that “the racism and discrimination they experienced once they arrived here stays today.” In a 2021 interview with The Times, she spoke of black colleagues waiting to vote being handed one other MP’s coat and bag.
Amid debate concerning the rise of Christian nationalism and the far-Right, she says: “We should be really mindful of those who seek to, for my part, appropriate Christianity, our beliefs, values, and in addition our symbols, particularly where they seek to sow division. If we take into consideration who we’re as Christians, and what our values are, the message of Christ, it truly is about unity, it’s about social justice, it’s about equality, and it’s about freedom. And I believe concerning the great men and girls which have gone before us. We’re a stone’s throw away from where William Wilberforce used to go to church, the nice abolitionist; others, like Martin Luther King Jr, who spoke about bringing people together, and anything that seeks to not try this, I don’t consider that stands with our values.”
Aged ten in 1986 — when the apartheid regime in South Africa was at its height — she was given a book about Nelson Mandela. It proved to be a pivotal moment, catalysing an early sense of justice that fuelled her journey into politics. In a 2024 interview with Premier, she drew a connection between Mandela’s fight in South Africa and her passion for the rights of Palestinians, observing that “where there’s injustice . . . if we remain silent we turn out to be complicit.”
Raising concerns about Gaza inside months of her arrival in Parliament in 2017, she has remained an outspoken critic of Israeli “impunity” within the war that broke out within the wake of the 7 October Hamas incursion.
“I visited the West Bank quite a lot of years ago now, so I even have seen first hand what the occupation has led to,” she says. “And obviously, with the awful, horrific war that has taken place in Gaza . . . by way of the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians, it’s something that ought to really shock and horror anybody, particularly those of us with a faith.” Correspondence from constituents have encouraged her to stay outspoken. “When I first voted for a ceasefire, back in 2023, I had received over 6000 pieces of correspondence asking me to accomplish that. . . We are believers and we consider in justice, we consider in freedom, and we consider in peace.”
IN A 2023 interview with the Mirror, Ms De Cordova recalled: “We were at all times told, growing up, that because we’re black, we can have to work twice as hard. And, in my case, I obviously have a disability as well. So, there was a good greater pressure placed on me to need to work harder and be higher.”
Born with nystagmus (an involuntary movement of the attention), she is registered as severely sight-impaired. Able to see “blurry outlines of faces and a few colors, nothing after a couple of feet”, she described in an interview with The Times her frustration at being supplied with parliamentary papers in small type and the “nightmare” of navigating the “incredibly dark” estate. She has the support of a sighted assistant.
Before entering politics, she founded the charity South East London Vision, and, as an MP, she stays a champion for the rights of the disabled. In 2017, she was made Shadow Minister for disabled people by Jeremy Corbyn (for whom she voted as leader, twice). She described the last government as presiding over a “hostile environment against disabled people”, and was one in all 42 Labour MPs who signed a wrecking amendment against the present government’s controversial welfare reform Bill.
More recently, she has been a vocal critic of the Assisted Dying Bill, telling the House of Commons “we want assistance to live, and never to die.”
“I still stand by that,” she says. “I fear for the various disabled men and girls that might be affected should this Bill be passed. I feel we must always be investing in end-of-life care.” She points to the Royal Trinity Hospice, a brief walk away: “I believe that’s where the main focus should at all times be. I definitely don’t consider that the levers that were used to bring forward this laws were the proper ones — a Private Member’s Bill.
“It didn’t provide us with the time to scrutinise it properly . . . and it’s now currently sat within the House of Lords and it rightly is getting the scrutiny that it needs. . . My view is that if this Bill passes, it would be a complete shift in how we take a look at life.”
Does she subscribe to a selected theology of disability? “When I used to be growing up, after I didn’t have such a powerful faith, I might go to the attention hospital often, and would pray or hope that there could be a cure,” she recalls. “But, after I became a Christian, and my faith is now rooted in what God’s image of me is, he has created us all within the image of Christ; so I do know that we’re all perfect in that space. And that’s the message that I might love people to get.”
In several interviews she has paid tribute to her single mother, who fought to be certain that she remained in mainstream education, with additional support. While agreeing that there’s “absolutely” a necessity for a specialist setting for some children, she maintains that “the default should at all times be mainstreaming our kids with the proper support.”
SPEAKING to the Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron for Premier, in 2024, Ms De Cordova described going to Sunday school as she was growing up, but not developing what she describes as a powerful faith until in her twenties. It was the messages about Christ that “really resonated”, she said, resulting in her baptism.
She has attended Holy Trinity, Clapham (HTC), a church within the Holy Trinity, Brompton, network, for quite a lot of years. Its Vicar, the Revd Jago Wynne, is one in all the leaders of the Alliance, which has campaigned for the stand-alone services of blessing for same-sex couples to be subject to further synodical processes. Ms De Cordova, who voted in favour of same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland, and served as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities from 2020 to 2021, says that she believes that that is the proper way forward for the Church.
“I’m a parliamentarian; so I’m a legislator, and to make laws we’ve got to undergo a process,” she says. “I believe that opens it up for correct debate, dialogue, and scrutiny.”
Learning more concerning the history of HTC has been inspiring, she says. Mr Wynne once told her that her hopes following her election — “that I can represent Christ well while I’m serving my constituents” — echoed those of William Wilberforce.
“When I joined HTC, I had no idea I used to be going to be going into politics, but plenty of the congregation are literally my constituents, and that will not be something I might have ever thought would occur. It’s just the amazing wonderfulness of how God works.”
