A modest exercise in Anglican actuarial theology

A small flaw in your theory. (As an American Episcopalian, I don’t know as much about the C of E as I ought to.) How many of the Evangelicals are against the ordination of women bishops? Or are they just against homosexuals?

I ask, because they seem to be able to raise substantial sums on their own. Their leaving could hurt the Church’s finances a lot, and that wouldn’t help the pension situation any.

I seem to recall that when priests left over the decision to ordain women the CofE gave them full retirement benefits since it was a matter of conscience. This seems pretty bizarre since, if you act on conscience it seems only reasonable that you accept the consequences.

A mass clergy exodus in the US where there are too few Indians and far too many chiefs could be very good all around though especially if they cut a deal with the RC church and became Catholic priests. Of course it would mean a major cut in salary and benefits, and a significant increase in the work load.

Clergy in the Episcopal Church are paid on a scale better than academics with PhDs. The academic qualification for the job, an M.Div., is comparable to a master’s degree in education or community college course to be a medical records clerk. The work load in minimal–two or three services a week, tending a congregation of perhaps 300 souls with the help of an assistant, occasional sick calls that can be palmed off on lay volunteers and a weekly 10 minute sermon to prepare. The benefits are terrific: great pension scheme financed by a mandated 18% contribution by the congregation and approximately half their salary tax free as a “housing allowance.”

If Anglican priests are anything at all like Catholic priests, the strident rightwingery is probably very overrepresented among the under-40s. And among popes and bishops. So the CofE obviously isn’t just like the RCC. But still, I don’t think they’ll be driving out the people they’d want to drive out.

Similarly, the Episcopal Church is a little business that thinks it’s a trade union and has, at least in the short run before we’re all dead, defeated the market.

In addition to the 18% mandated contribution to the Church Pension Fund there’s a minimum stipend for clergy and a variety of requirements to see to it that priests get gentlemen’s salaries–in spite of the fact that there’s a substantial oversupply of priests, and would be even more if dioceses didn’t restrict the number who are ordained. Consequently, as of a few years ago when I was on vestry, it cost a church about $100,000 a year to employ a priest–a heavy hit for most congregations, which are small.

A solution proposed locally was to set up lay volunteers and parish secretaries, who would be paid pink-collar wages, as “lay parish administrators” to conduct all the business of the parish and do the pastoral work, while priests, like bishops in the early Church, acted as overseers, supervising 3 or 4 churches and popping in every month or so to do a service.

Even a 1/39th cut in pay was not acceptable. Having supernumerary priests in secular employment do the services pro bono or for a few bucks a pop was also not on and my proposal, simply ordaining the lay volunteers or parish secretaries who were supposed to run parishes so that they could conduct services too was definitely not on. Ordination per se–as distinct from all the administrative and pastoral tasks that were part of the job–was an indelible character that required a “professional-level salary.”

Anglican clergy who resigned over women priests received very generous (some would say over-generous) compensation payments. Those under 50 were entitled to three years of graded payments (full salary the first year, two-thirds the second year, half salary the third year). Those over 50 were entitled to ten years of graded payments followed by full pension benefits. In addition, all clergy, whatever their age, were eligible for housing benefit, which meant that if they took out a mortgage the C of E would contribute up to £75,000.

If this compensation package is offered to those resigning over women bishops (and there is every reason to suppose that it will be) then the Church of England certainly does not stand to gain any financial benefit from a mass exodus of traditionalist clergy. On the contrary, it faces the prospect of ruinously expensive payouts – which is one reason why the legislation to ordain women bishops has been delayed so long, and why many senior bishops (even those sympathetic in principle to women’s ordination) are still dragging their feet.

Do we detect the actions of the Invisible Hand of St Adam of Smithfield up the bottom of the Church Commissioners?

I doubt it, frankly. The CofE generally are incapable of such clarity of self-interest. I think we’re looking here at the converse of a cock-up-not-conspiracy situation.

[Cracking post, though.]

dd, are you ever going to follow up on “More detailed psephological analysis, including how me and Martin Baxter got it so wrong[1] tomorrow”?

Freakonomics: The CofE has a stake in representing itself as a tolerant institution that doesn’t burn heretics or punish people for their conscientious convictions. There’s the “strategic nobility” of turning the other cheek, claiming the moral high ground. If these dissenting priests were cut off, conservatives would get the final ah-ha: “You say we’re being intolerant and sexist. Well look at you–you tolerate everything but sincere conviction.” Of course it’s another matter whether the CofE has to pay out that much to achieve its end.

More Freakonomics: The Episcopal Church in the US is rational in paying its clergy “professional-level salaries” even in an impacted labor market. High salaries confer prestige and authority on priests and, indirectly, on the institution. Clergy need to grab at all the prestige they can get–they’re generalists with no special technical skills; they aren’t any more educated than most members of their congregations; no one believes they can do transubstantiation magic, make rain or protect them from the evil eye. If they didn’t have the prestige and authority conferred by high salaries people might question paying them any salaries at all. If however they’re highly paid, people infer that there must be some reason for it.

Still more Freakonomics: By the same reasoning, Rove has got to get an award or promotion to signal his worthiness to stay on–otherwise he has to get kicked out.