Hello, I'm Sam Holmes and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Every week, a few of our favourite writers read their pieces from the latest issue.

This week, we'll hear from Reverend Marcus Walker about the state of the Church of England, Douglas Murray on transracialism, and Petronella Wyatt on Westminster Culture Today.

First up, Reverend Marcus Walker shares his concern and disapproval

at being described by the Church of England as a key limiting factor. I am a key limiting

factor. That's a new one for a clergyman of the Church of England. We've traded under

parson, cleric, priest, minister, Padre, and even pie and liquor,

but never before have I heard us described as key limiting factors. That this phrase was used

during the announcement of a new C of E-endorsk scheme to create 10,000 new lay-led churches in the next 10 years,

add future injury to present insult.

Lay-led churches release the church from key limiting factors,

said Canaan John McGinley, introducing the initiative.

When you don't need a building and a stipend

and long, costly college-based training for every leader of the church,

then actually we can release new people to lead and new churches to form.

Well, maybe.

But once you've ditched the buildings, the clergy and the theological education,

you don't have very much of a church left. On one level, this key limiting factor business is rather

amusing. It was only in February that the Archbishops of Canterbury and York took to these

pages to accuse those of us concerned for the future of the parish system

of being, and I quote, rascally voices. The articles Emma Thompson and I wrote for the

spectator were denounced of scaremongering. Five short months and one Freudian slip later,

and we are all rascals now. On another level, it's just rude.

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