Church of England reduces use of term "church" to modernize, study finds
Instead, new church groups are opting for terms such as "community," "worship" or "congregation" to describe their projects.
Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury.
The Church of England wants to modernize and be "relevant." To do so, it has decided to stop using the term "church" and focus on synonyms that move away from the Anglican tradition. That's what a study produced by a theological research center in the United Kingdom points to.
Specifically, the use of "church" disappears when new Church of England ecclesial groups are created. Traditionally new church planting projects are referred to as "church plants". This term has been replaced by others such as "communities" or "congregations" almost absolutely.
The study by the Center for Theology and Church Planting Research claims that of the last 900 church groups that have been created in the Anglican Church, none of them used the term "church" to describe their project.
This study has also analyzed a total of eleven dioceses of the Anglican Church in the United Kingdom to analyze their language and the reasons behind these changes. The author of the report, the Rev Dr Will Foulger, vicar of St Nicholas in Durham, revealed to The Telegraph that six of the eleven dioceses used the term "cult" in their main description of new church projects, two used "congregation" and seven "community".
The report concludes that 10 of the 11 dioceses studied "used the language of 'cultural change' to describe the place of new things within dioceses." Foulger suggested that the Church of England may be moving away from using the word "church" as part of a cultural shift. He explained that the word "church" was not broad enough "to describe what it is that these dioceses have been initiating," and added that the phrase "new things" might be more appropriate.
In the opinion of another vicar interviewed by the same media outlet, this new refusal to use the word "church" reflects "a misguided desire to be relevant and to sound modern." Giles Fraser, vicar of St Anne's in Kew, a suburb of London, said that "the Church has given up on church."
For Fraser, these changes will come at an unaffordable cost for the Church of England, which could run the risk of dissolving in this new trend.
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