A People’s Church: A History of the Church of England by Jeremy Morris
Profile Books, £30, 480 pages
The defining and unhappy image of the response of the Church of England to the Covid-19 pandemic was that of the Archbishop of Canterbury celebrating Holy Communion on his kitchen table at Lambeth Palace. It was Easter Day 2020, and he had closed the churches to “go the extra mile” beyond the Government’s lockdown guidance. How did an institution once central to the religious consciousness of the United Kingdom and its identity become reduced, at a time of national crisis, to a state of such grim pathos?
