Is the public perception correct that, due to falling numbers, the Church of England is in terminal decline? Or is it the old, old story of general malaise leading to new birth and new vigour? The Church of England has got itself into its present difficulties by remaining too parochial; not so much by holding fast to the beauty of Cranmer’s Liturgy, which I do myself, but by holding fast to the literal truth of the ideas which it embodies. Of course in one sense the Church of England had no choice. For most clergymen the religion of the C.of E. is the whole of life. It is all they know. Take away what they know, and they have nothing left. One might have thought that the mauling they suffered over the size of the heavens, and the mauling they suffered over the age of the earth and its consequences for Man, would have stimulated their curiosity to find out about life outside the Church. But no: Aquinas’ text, “God created the world, and God created science; so there can be no incompatibility” is as far as most of them go to counter the threat of annihilation. Jesus both healed and preached; without healing no-one would have listened to him. Unfortunately the clergy cannot heal.
In 1927 there was a most interesting conversation in Brussels, on science and religion, between top scientists of the day. Not the august figures of Max Plank and Einstein; but the younger men, Heisenberg, Pauli, Dirac, and later Neils Bohr, men at the very front of nuclear research. It was an urbane, civilised conversation, generally sympathetic to religion, but viewing official religion as being on the edge of life, because of its inability to talk in any language but its own. They spoke of the great medieval myth of the nature of the Universe, which had allowed ordinary people to know where they stood in relation to Nature, and which had been torn apart by science whose measurements had proved that too much of the myth was false. And nothing had replaced it. (One can find an account of the conversation on the Internet, by looking up Werner Heisenberg).
The conversation anticipated the public attitude today towards science and religion, some 80 years later. But the Church is still unable to meet science on its own terms; and creationism so conflicts with the truth of science, that ordinary people, who accept science, tend to reject creation. God did not plant fossils in sedimentary rocks to mislead geologists.
Most Christians would say that the heart of religion was some experience of the Almighty, the Creator, and better still an indwelling or communion with Him. But this does not qualify Christians to play an effective part in running the secular world. For a start you have to reconcile the secular Rule that a man may be given one chance, but normally should be punished the second time, with the gospel Rule that you should forgive 70 times 7 times.