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Hello and welcome to Spectator Outloud. I'm Fraser Nelson. Each week we ask a few of our writers to read their pieces out aloud. On this episode, Emma Thompson talks about the Church of England and how its cuts are about to devastate the parish network, a tragedy, she says, for communities across the country,

religious or not. Then we've got Matt Ridley, reading his piece about the evolution of viruses,

and why lockdown might have an effect in turning them in a rather nasty direction.

And finally, Toby Young, asking where his peerage is, and yes, he's serious.

First up, Emma Thompson.

A clergyman admitted to me that he'd recently burst into tears.

He received an email from his diocese in this latest lockdown,

strongly urging vickers to close their churches.

He has an elderly working-class congregation in a poor area. Coming to church was

the one thing keeping them going. Local vicars like him represent the best of the Church of England.

They are loving, kind, and they know their flock. Before the pandemic, the C of E had seen attendance half in a generation.

Weekly religious attendance is highest among non-Christian faiths, 40%, followed by Roman Catholics,

23%, and all other Christian denominations, 23%. Anglicans are much less likely to attend weekly, 9% or at all.

57% say they go to church never or practically never.

Yet that gap between the number identifying as C of E and actual attendance presents an opportunity.

It shows an untapped interest in preserving our national church.

When COVID struck and those people turned to their churches for spiritual consolation,

what did they find?

Closed doors.

...