We would draw your attention to the Church Urban Fund data update released on the Feast of Mark the Evangelist, 25th April and available in their online Look Up Tool. This has been refreshed to include recent census 2021, parish boundary 2023 and index of multiple deprivation 2019 data.
Here are the challenges of Mission!
Our parish of S. Paul, Deptford has moved from being the 773rd to the 704th most multiply-deprived parish out of the 12,329 parishes … where 1 is the most deprived. This means that our parish is one of the most deprived in the country, and in the highest 6%.
We have the highest child poverty rate within the Diocese, at 34%, and the 241st highest in the country;
extremely high rates of pensioner poverty, 44%, the 129th highest in the country,
and working age poverty 24%, ranked 538th in the country.
As far as we can discern from the new data we now rank as the 3rd most deprived parish in the Diocese, previously we were 5th. The two parishes above us:
1. Bellingham, S. Dunstan, at 473, (& the Rector's former parish, 1996-2006).
2. Angell Town, S. John the Evangelist, at 613.
There is a great deal of internal battling within the Church of England about many matters, which of course are all important in their ways, however as the deprivation statistics are updated, we call to mind Fr Charles Marson's letter written during the ritual controversies of an earlier era about the real disorders of the Church, which concludes:
"If the Commissioners wish for any further information as to our clothes, chandelry, or as to which of our joints we crook in worship, I shall be delighted to give them every information. But I beg leave to point out that the lives of Christ's poor people are starved and stunted; that their wages are low, their houses often bad and unsanitary and their minds full of darkness and despair. These are the real disorders of the Church and not any faults in my stage management, which is, perhaps, amateur."
The letter is available to download in the attached files below.
Read more about Fr Charles Marson here
