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Marcus Walker Profile picture
Marcus Walker
@WalkerMarcus
A clergyman in the Church of England in the Diocese of London. Musings in Church and State and late Roman History (and, in fact, any history).
Sep 22 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
So this turns out to be Bristol and - sigh - what a depressing document this is. This goes well beyond the astonishing 80-90 Diocesan Staff to Stipendiary Clergy numbers. If you want to know everything that’s wrong about the Church, read this document. Image Take a look at the description of what a Bishop is & what they do. I just don’t think I agree with this at all. Some are the basic vocation of a Christian & some are the skills required of a manager in a secular company. Where is teaching? Preaching? Being pastor of the pastors? Image
Jan 10, 2024 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
Well, well, well. Did you know that Paula Vennells is the progenitor of the Church of England’s Governance Review? The massive project to centralise all the power - currently dispersed to ensure checks and balances - across the Church?

You didn’t? Well… buckle up. The whole thing comes out of a secret Lessons Learned Review written by Paula Vennells and presented to the various Church authorities in 2020 (!! 👀 !!). This was a consequence of a failed Church Buildings Review where the various church bodies could not find consensus.
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Nov 26, 2023 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
So Napoleon. Why was it so bad?
1) It was just… dull. Nothing sparkled. There was no excitement. They somehow made the rise, reign, and fall of one of the most characterful men of history be boring. 2) There was no storyline. No drama. No tension. There was every opportunity to create a storyline but somehow they didn’t. History was just one thing after another, with a hint of ennui.

The scriptwriter needs a new day job.
Sep 25, 2023 • 17 tweets • 8 min read
This study, ably reported on by @MadsDavies, is an absolute shocker and should be a game changer. I hope you will forgive a long 🧵 but this is so important given how many other dioceses are implementing schemes following what we can safely call the Failed Wigan Model. The highlights?
💷£1.2 million wasted 🤑🤑🤑
📉Weekly attendance 🔻1/3
📉Annual giving 🔻1/3
📈 Deficit 🔺£56,000 to £295,666

In figures that is almost 600 people stopping going to church and £500,000 less given.

Read the report here: d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net/603eb0893e402/…
May 16, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I keep coming back to this interview and keep thinking how it betrays one of the huge unresolved questions in British politics: to what extent can a person whose whole philosophy runs against that of a gov’t oversee the implementation of their objectives?
newstatesman.com/the-weekend-in… In diplomacy it feels starker than elsewhere. If you believe in appeasement of Russia and China (which McDonald clearly did), how does that not affect the various options you present or arguments you make to ministers?
Oct 4, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
So day three of Conference. What is it like? It’s like a wake, but no-one’s sure if the corpse is the Conservative Party or just Liz Truss’s ministry and, like every good wake, everyone’s getting smashed. I presumed this would be like conferences in bad times before but it is a different level of bad. I have not met one person, not one, who weighs-in to defend her or the government (apart from those explicitly paid to do so - and even then… 👀).
Oct 3, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
So the problem for Liz Truss & the party is this: the conservatives are no longer trusted on the economy and no longer trusted to be competent. This is no longer a question of winning the next election, it’s one of survival now. What should she do? Form a Grand Tory Coalition. All parties under FPTP are coalitions and that is an unmitigated good thing. When Truss took power she decided to appoint only those who were internal political allies which, when not commanding the support of a majority of either MPs or total members, is foolhardy.
Jun 23, 2022 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
This is the paper Synod will discuss: churchofengland.org/sites/default/… The controversial passage is below. Although I would have phrases this differently, Bp @nickbaines is not calling for Ukraine to surrender territory, just saying Britain should support whatever decision Ukraine makes. Image While the paper doesn’t call for Ukraine to surrender its territory for peace, the paper overall is one I couldn’t actually endorse. There are serious flaws in it, which I’d like briefly to flag up, and some aspects which are worrying for their absence. 🧵
Mar 21, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I wonder if we’re missing something here. Perhaps it’s not that Putin is using war crimes in order to achieve his aim of conquering Ukraine but that both the conquest of Ukraine and the use of war crimes are part of a wider aim: the end of any hint of a rules based int’l order.🧵 It’s telling that he didn’t bother trying to justify the invasion with a false flag exercise, he just launched a state on state war with no justification under the UN Charter.
Oct 2, 2021 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
Well, well, well. For all the “Shocked And Appalled” episcopal responses to #SaveTheParish, and all the protestations that the parish could never be under threat and anyone who says otherwise is scaremongering, Leicester has let the cat out of the bag. Read this & weep. Image What the Bishop of Leicester is proposing the the complete dismantling and destruction of the parish system, the loss of independence for all the little platoons across Leicestershire and the creation of “Minsters”. This is the death of localism. It is why #SaveTheParish is vital
Mar 31, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
There’s a new Code for Safer Working Practice for theCofE which, I think, all church bodies and church officers must sign up to. Some of this is essential, some long overdue, some rather worrying. Not least this sudden & undiscussed ban on parish parties.

churchofengland.org/safeguarding/p… Image Indeed, my reading of this document would ban priests from going to the pub if there are children there. I haven’t seen this discussed anywhere but if they are going to implement such a drastic imposition on clergy & parishes, this needs proper debate & scrutiny.
Sep 22, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
My unpopular view of the day: people are welcome in the Church, to love their church, to yearn for prayer and worship to take place in their church, to seek sanctuary in their church during a pandemic... *even* if they haven’t come to the Annual Parochial Church Meeting. I know how we all want people to be more engaged in their local churches, and @MirandaTHolmes is so often wonderful on this & on our concern for those marginalised from the church, but making the church into a private members club is the way to crash this.
Sep 11, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Had to happen. Image I remember the Berlin Wall falling so well. We had lived in Moscow until 1988 and to see the whole Eastern Bloc collapse was astonishing and exhilarating - the first real geopolitical event I even began to understand.
Sep 10, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It strikes me that the government has two major, countervailing, hostile narratives to deal with:
1) a majority of the population that is still so jumpy it disapproves of any semblance of normalcy
2) a substantial minority that simply does not believe Covid to be a serious threat To pursue the policy they have adopted they have simultaneously to reassure the first that it’s not so bad that the economy must be permanently crippled and the latter that it is bad enough to justify unprecedented restrictions in liberty, even including in wartime.
Sep 8, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
And today’s fun is Luther-fun! We’re in Wittenberg, the home of the Prince Electors of Saxony... the home of the Reformation.

Hier stehe ich! Image And here we are. The thing that kicked it all off: an indulgence, being sold to fund the debts incurred by Albert as he sought to add the Archbishopric of Magdeburg to his already not unimpressive spiritual possession of Mainz. (Never seen an indulgence before. Impressive.) Image
Sep 6, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Mass at Mainz Cathedral. The website was completely wrong, with some masses canceled and others replaced advertised Morning Prayer: to get in you needed to phone in advance to get a ticket, but no mention of this on the website. V distressed tourists at the door. Image It was lucky I was with an RC priest, who had booked ahead to concelebrate, so they were able to slot my in as supernumerary (and were very friendly in the process), but it was a proper reminder of how websites & social media aren’t an optional extra but missionally vital.
Sep 5, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
One of the more frustrating elements of the discourse around XR is that commentators insist on pretending that XR’s aim is to promote a public policy response to climate change. It’s not, their aim is the overthrow of representative democracy & capitalism - & they don’t hide it! Image So it’s just frustrating to see commentators scratch their heads and say “this will undermine their cause and alienate the electorate”. They don’t care about the electorate, they explicitly want to bypass the electorate and representative democracy. Again: they don’t hide this.
Sep 5, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
St Peter’s Cathedral is Trier is magnificent, and Romanesque (built around the same time as @StBartholomews, so I’m biased) and is the oldest church in Germany, with elements going back to Constantine’s foundation. But it seems never to have really been liked... ImageImageImage In the Middle Ages they clearly went “this is a bit boring but we can’t really knock it down, let’s just build something Gothic and tack it on the side.” So they did. And it’s rather lovely. ImageImageImage
Sep 4, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
The Porta Nigra into Trier is ancient and huge and epic, but the best thing of the day so far has to be the discovery of a whole load of Roman busts on sale in the Porta Nigra’s shop... (and a Roman helmet!) ImageImage And the worst thing? The opportunity to buy a life-time’s supply of Karl Marx busts. 😡 Image
Sep 4, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
So farewell Cologne. It would be a travesty not to feast on the glory that is the cathedral. A stop-start affair: started in 1248, stopped mid-Reformation, restarted under the Kaisers, bombed, restored. It’s a reverse tardis, feeling GINORMOUS outside but humanising inside. ImageImageImageImage Although he was writing about Chartres, and although Chartres is much more of-a-piece than Cologne, Kenneth Clark’s words on the Gothic are well-worth reading as we continue the #HRE2020 progress. ImageImageImage
Sep 3, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
There’s some late night sitting at the modern art gallery which I’m being frogmarched around, to my great edification. It’s very deep. Image Finally, thinks I, a fellow traveller!

Oh no. She’s an exhibit. ImageImage