WORKING-CLASS candidates proceed to experience a “cultural loss” of identity when exploring a vocation to the priesthood, in addition to each academic and financial barriers to training, a paper as a consequence of be debated by the General Synod next month says.
It was written by the Bishop of Barking, the Rt Revd Lynne Cullens, who chaired a “task and finish” advisory group, commissioned by the Ministry Development Board (MDB), and the Bishop of Chester, the Rt Revd Mark Tanner.
Last February, the Synod voted unanimously for the event of a national strategy for encouraging, developing, and supporting vocations of individuals from working-class backgrounds, each lay and ordained; and for the MDB to bring that back for debate inside 12 months (News, 28 February 2025).
The private member’s motion last 12 months was brought by the Vicar of St Matthew the Apostle, Burnley, the Revd Alex Frost, out of a priority that “some people from a working-class background with a calling to ministry have found it difficult to progress due to expectations and assumptions based on their social class.”
His speech received a standing ovation. As well because the advisory group, the MBD also commissioned a church-wide consultation process, alongside testimonial movies.
The 20-page background paper (GS 2435) as a consequence of be debated at the subsequent sessions acknowledges the “hurt, anger and frustration” expressed at consultation meetings, together with a cautious hope that “class dynamics were being talked about”. It also acknowledges “a robust response against the query itself being ‘othering’ and demonstrating an influence imbalance”.
It summarises the major barriers to training as “the overly academic nature of coaching within the Church of England, or a minimum of the perception of it”. Reflections included the experience that “having a robust regional accent could mean you’re perceived as being ‘thick’.”
The report identifies the financial challenges to accessing training. Comments about “the ‘posh’ nature of TEI[s’] [theological-education institutions] having an alien and impenetrable culture were frequent”, it says. There were also positive stories of TEIs’ engaging working-class students well: “The subject of sophistication engagement within the training sector is already bearing fruit,” the paper says.
The major area of concern over training was around housing. While the recent clergy well-being package was discussed, and the advantages were clear, “many are hesitant to offer up social housing, as they’re vulnerable at retirement in what they might secure from the church or elsewhere.” Some felt that the system was still geared to the home-owning section of society.
“Coupled with the dearth of trust that exists within the Church around retirement and housing provision, [it] creates a situation that just isn’t conducive for encouraging working-class vocations to ordained ministry.”
Feedback on elements of culture and leadership formed essentially the most nuanced discussion, the paper says. “Those who do explore vocation . . . too often report a way of ‘cultural loss’, having felt a necessity to reduce their working-class identity in some solution to have the ability to ‘get on’ within the institution.
“More broadly, people’s sense of cultural loss will be felt because their working-class experience and background is dismissed as not being relevant to the skillset any minister might need.”
The perception that clergy, specifically within the C of E, were perceived as middle class was not actually true, but still “loomed large enough” in people’s pondering “to the extent that some working-class clergy ministering in working-class congregations will not be seen as working class because they’re a priest (‘all priests are middle class; you’re a priest; subsequently, you should be middle class.’”
The report concludes: “Fewer barriers, more leaders with working-class roots are the clear and easy call of this paper. . . This is a problem of social justice that everybody must be concerned about. . . Careful work should be done to extend trust and construct the sense that ‘we’re all on this together’ and that ‘church just isn’t done to’ those and not using a voice by those who have it.”
It also describes this as “an incredibly hopeful moment”. It says that there had not been time to provide a national strategy intimately, however the advisory group had “put the work in to encourage working-class vocations at a national level and as a everlasting fixture”.
