At the weekend, the Archbishop of York, the Right Revd Stephen Cottrell, started a controversy when he said that the Lord’s Prayer should be more inclusive of those who suffered child abuse or struggle with their sexuality.

In his view, the words ‘Our Father’ are the problem.

On Saturday, July 8, 2023, the story appeared on the Revd Calvin Robinson’s GB News show. Emma Webb, an Anglican, was a panellist along with Leo Kearse, an unbeliever:

Emma Webb, head of the Common Sense Society, said that if that’s the way the Archbishop of York thinks, he would be better off leaving the clergy and joining the corporate world.

Leo Kearse, a national security consultant turned comedian, agreed, saying that the Church is one institution that is not supposed to change; it’s supposed to be ‘fuddy-duddy’. Even he understands that much.

Webb said that, as our Lord actually gave us the words of the Lord’s Prayer, the problem for modernisers is Christ Himself. She’s correct. One hears very little preaching from Anglican clergy on Jesus Christ. They often ignore His powerful words in the Gospel passages on Sunday, preferring a poem or their own personal musings.

She said that she recently visited an ancient abbey church in England which has been turned into a glorified coffee shop. She found it shocking.

On Monday, July 10, the story arose on Michelle Dewberry’s GB News show. Political pundit Alex Deane, a former adviser to David Cameron, and veteran Mail columnist Peter Hitchens joined her to discuss it. Both men are practicing Anglicans:

Deane said that the Archbishop should join another religion if that is how he feels. Hitchens said that the problem with the Church of England started 50 years ago when it began rewriting the Lord’s Prayer to make it more modern. Since then, he noted, the pews have been steadily emptying. Furthermore, few people can recite the Lord’s Prayer anymore.

Deane also deplored the questions of notional bigotry that the CofE is always asking about itself. He said that is a potentially dangerous road to go down, since the next generations of Anglicans will be looking at us and posing questions about our own bigotry. Much like Emma Webb, he was also critical of the way cathedrals and churches are constantly being modernised. He pointed out that ancient churches are more beautiful than newer houses of worship and said that is because beliefs centuries ago were much closer to a biblical standard than ours are today.

Two hours later, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, a devout Catholic, explored the story on his show, with broadcaster Amy Nickell-Turner, an unbeliever, and David Starkey, also an unbeliever but one who remembered the religious education classes he had at school decades ago (start at the 50:00 mark):

Nickell-Turner said it was time for the Church to change. Starkey recalled that Christ gave us the words to the Lord’s Prayer and recited relevant verses from the King James Version of the New Testament.

I commend GB News for bringing this story to the fore on television news.

Peter Hitchens was not wrong about Britons being unable to recite the Lord’s Prayer, or as Catholics know it, the Our Father, from the Latin Pater Noster. London’s St Paul’s Cathedral is located in Paternoster Square.

In 2009, The Telegraph‘s Christopher Howse, himself a devout Catholic, wrote ‘People don’t know the Lord’s Prayer’ (emphases mine below):

A retired headmaster was dismayed to find that young people at a funeral could not join in the Lord’s Prayer because the words were not printed on the service sheet …

… the fact remains that many people do not know the prayer that begins “Our Father”. I wonder if this is a new phenomenon.

… Ensuring that the people knew their prayers had for centuries been an obligation of parish clergy. An inscription round the 14th-century font of the parish church at Bradley, Lincolnshire, reads: “Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Crede / Lerne the childe it is nede.”

In his celebrated book The Stripping of the Altars Eamon Duffy devoted a chapter, called “How the plowman learned his Paternoster”, to the instruction of the laity before they made their Communion at Easter time.

This ideal of a system changed as the parish broke down with urbanisation in the 19th century. This came before the arrival in the 20th century of large numbers of people who adhered to religions in which the Lord’s Prayer found no place. Most working people in mid 19th century cities did not go to church. There was not enough room for them if they had wanted to.

Vast numbers of the population were unchurched, which led to the proliferation of Victorian-era churches — mostly Anglican — in response so that people could become acquainted with the Word of God and worship together as believers. The CofE got it just right with that decision. Unfortunately, for many families, once unchurched, always unchurched.

This is what it was like during the 19th century:

In 1850 the Victorian newspaper-reading public was alarmed by the case of a crossing-sweeper called George Ruby, aged 14, who was called as a witness in court and did not know what the Bible was when it was put into his hand so that he could swear an oath.

The exchange between the magistrate and the boy went: Can you read? – No.

Do you ever say your prayers? – No, never.

Do you know what prayers are? – No.

Do you know what God is? – No.

Do you know what the Devil is? – I’ve heard of the Devil, but I don’t know him.

Two years later Dickens was writing Bleak House instalments and, in the tearjerking death-scene of Jo the crossing-sweeper, describes him repeating, to Mr Woodcourt’s prompt, the unfamiliar words of the Lord’s Prayer. He expires halfway through the phrase: “Hallowed be thy…”.

But anyone who wanted to teach a prayer to a dying crossing-sweeper, or the modern equivalent, as he died would soon realise a difficulty: the words are not easy to understand. Jo would hardly have used the word hallowed in his daily trade.

Fast forward to the late 20th century and a further problem appears:

The Church of England has fallen between two stools here. Common Worship, the current format for church services, includes a slightly updated Lord’s Prayer, beginning: “Our Father in heaven”. It retains hallowed.

This means that people who go to church only for funerals and weddings, will not to be able to join in with the traditional words. But the updated words on a service sheet will still strike many as archaic and puzzling.

The same difficulty afflicts the National Anthem. But how can children be given a background in which learning the words of either seems natural?

This, to me, is part of the parents’ responsibility. Then again, how many of them can recite the Lord’s Prayer?

Returning to the Archbishop of York, second in ecclesiastical power and prominence in Britain only to the Archbishop of Canterbury, St Paul warned Timothy about church leaders falling into error and away from the faith. My Sunday post on 1 Timothy 6:20-21 is relevant:

²⁰ O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge”, ²¹ for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.

Grace be with you.^[a]

How true.

The ‘deposit’ is the eternal truth of the Word of God.

As for Christ, He never at any time did not refer to Himself or His Father in anything other than the masculine. We see this all through the Bible, especially the Gospels, including Sunday’s passage, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30:

11:25 At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants;

11:26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

11:27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Christ gives us no wriggle room: Father and Son.

Perhaps it is time for the Archbishop of York to seek alternative employment. Meanwhile, at home, we owe it to the next generation to ensure they learn the Lord’s Prayer and the tenets of faith, the deposit of the Word of God.

The following posts of mine might be helpful in this regard:

Sixth Sunday after Trinity — Year C — exegesis on the Gospel, Luke 11:1-13 (The Lord’s Prayer)

Teaching children the Lord’s Prayer and for general prayers, The Five Finger Prayer

St Augustine on the importance of the Lord’s Prayer

There is no time to waste.