A lot has changed since then. Now part of Unite, one of Britain’s largest unions, the faith workers branch — predominantly priests but also rabbis and humanist celebrants — is fast approaching 2,000 clerical members, or around 10 percent of the clergy in active ministry. The numbers, in themselves, may not sound like much. But these members have joined from a nontraditional sector without any recruitment push from the union, in a remarkably organic process. The branch runs a help line and supports clergy members in disputes; in June, it submitted its first ever formal pay claim.
Technically, clergy members aren’t employees but ecclesiastical officeholders, which means they receive a stipend rather than a salary. The national minimum stipend is currently £26,794, or $34,118 — putting the clergy, according to Sharon Graham, the head of Unite, among “the working poor.” Not everyone receives the minimum. Yet while each of the country’s 42 dioceses — a collection of parishes looked after by a bishop — that make up the Church of England are free to set their own stipend, pay is rarely generous. Averaging not much above the minimum, the paychecks have failed to keep pace with rising energy and food prices.
Along with a stipend, clergy members are provided with rent-free church housing. In a country where access to decent housing is scarce, this is a major benefit. But while vicarages might conjure up images of quaint cottages nestled away in a pastoral idyll, church housing is often old, damp, drafty and expensive to heat, with renovations carried out at the mercy of the diocese. “People will say, ‘What a lovely big house,’” Ms. Skipworth told me. “But try affording it.”
If clergy members are struggling, then their parishioners are too. Thirteen years of Conservative-led austerity, which have cut public services to the bone, have been compounded by a cost-of-living crisis. The effects are legion: 14.4 million people in poverty, homelessness at record levels and pervasive depression. In this scarified landscape, vicars now find themselves acting more like social workers, helping parishioners with debts, fuel and housing.
Across the country, churches are running food delivery services, pay-what-you-can cafes, community shops and assistance programs. Food banks, which in a decade have become a normal feature of British society, rely heavily on churches as hosts, as well as for donations and volunteers. Some churches have opened “warm spaces” — heated rooms for those in need of warmth — and others provide “snuggle boxes,” where donated slippers, blankets, hot water bottles and dressing gowns are redistributed among the community.