English Cathedrals

Lord Bishop of Birmingham Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Birmingham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for the opportunity to celebrate the good news of our English cathedrals. He will understand that if you want to find a Birmingham cathedral, you are more likely to come to it by the future HS2 rather than by a leisurely trip up the east coast. What you will find there is a jewel by Thomas Archer, who built St Philip’s parish church on the highest point of the burgeoning new town that would fuel the industrial expansion of Britain. It was built in 1715. That building is now in the heart of the commercial and professional centre of the largest UK city outside London. It is an oasis of prayer to which people, whether visitors or citizens, come day by day to enjoy a beautiful space in which our new dean, Catherine Ogle, says you can do only one thing, and have that enhanced by the magnificent Burne-Jones stained glass windows.

At the same time, as we will probably hear again today, the choral tradition in Birmingham is of a very high standard, to the extent that Hamish Pringle recently commissioned a new choral work, based—the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, will be pleased to know—on the King James version of John, chapter 1, verses 1 to 14, which is available for parish churches as well as high days in the cathedral. The work of a new young composer, Alexander Campkin, is thus in the heart of one of our great commercial cities.

Of course, as your Lordships may know, the number of young people applying to join cathedral choirs has increased by 6.8% over the past 12 months. That is the obvious but, across England, a living cathedral is a place of civic, cultural and inter-faith engagement. We find that no less so in Birmingham than across the country. It is also a springboard for, if I may indulge this phrase, growing confident Christians in our urban and rural areas. You will find programmes not just about engagement with the regional bankers and Chatham House seminars, following the difficulties in the debate about capitalism last year, but programmes that encourage practising Christians at work to examine what it means to live well in our local community.

That is just one example of what is happening all over the country in our 42 cathedrals. We are seeing, as your Lordships will again know, a steady increase in regular congregational attendance of some 3% a year. That has been going on over the past 10 years. Furthermore, special events and regular public and civic events are even more popular than they have been for years. In 2011, for example, over 3,000 special services attracted 1 million people, and 1.84 million attended public or civic services. Our cathedrals have approximately 12 million visitors a year. They have 15,000 volunteers, people who give up their time freely to enable these places, about which we have heard that the heritage is so important, to be places of living prayer, worship and community engagement. Over 300,000 children attend our cathedrals for educational purposes during their curriculum learning in term-time.

As you look around the country—I hope that we will hear more about this from others in a moment—you will find particular things happening as the cycle of events goes on. We have heard that Coventry Cathedral has just celebrated its 50th anniversary. Of course, it has a distinctive contribution, as so many cathedrals do. In this case, it is the Community of the Cross of Nails, a world-wide gift of reconciliation in a troubled world. In Winchester, the Winchester Bible is now redisplayed. In Truro, the cathedral has been engaged in a county-wide renewal through Inspire Cornwall.

We have heard from several speakers already that this comes with a huge implication for resources. When noble Lords reflect on the age, scale and complexity of the buildings, it will not surprise them that it is estimated that some £100 million over 10 years needs to be spent across the country in ordinary cyclical repairs. I am not talking about the marvellous things that are inspired by English Heritage and other grant-making bodies, but £100 million over 10 years just to keep thing in place. Indeed, since 1991, at least £250 million of repair works alone has been carried out in English cathedrals. Of course, you can follow all this up in the English Heritage Fabric Needs survey. We have been reminded that there is no core state funding for English cathedrals. I am not going to go down that route myself but, while new work and exciting developments are funded generously, routine repairs are much more difficult. There is still a gap between the cathedral’s division grant and the overall cost that has to be paid every year.

Cathedrals are enormous, historic, heritage, prayerful, worshipful places of sanctuary for people who are shy of religion. They are places where people can come and rediscover wonder and awe, both through art and music, and, simply, the power of prayer. Their role in the life of our nation’s cities is immeasurable: civic, cultural and spiritual. It will be a huge boost to the confidence and morale of all these people who are involved, hundreds of thousands of them, in our cathedrals to hear Her Majesty’s Government give a ringing endorsement to our cathedrals in every aspect of public policy.