It came to pass in 2020 that a decree went out from the General Synod that all the Church of England must be carbon net-zero by 2030. And this ruling was first made when Justin Welby was Archbishop of Canterbury. And all went to have a good hard look at their church heating systems, every one into his own vestry cupboard…

How easy it is to issue a decree from on high; and how hard it is for the people on the ground to have to deal with its consequences.

The miscreants now have to rip out the new gas boilers and replace them with an eco alternative

One of many consequences of that arbitrary round-number target – and it’s a microcosm of the centralised C of E’s attitude towards its parish churches – was that three months ago the vicar and churchwardens of Christ Church, Chineham, in the diocese of Winchester, received a consistory court ruling from the chancellor of the diocese, Cain Ormondroyd, which came across as an absolute bollocking. It was as if they were a group of mis-behaving prefects summoned to the headmaster’s study. The ruling was along the lines of: ‘You’ve let God down, you’ve let the diocese down – and you’ve let yourselves down.’ The Chineham ‘Petitioners’ (as they were referred to in the ruling) are now beginning their long-drawn-out punishment.

Their offence was that, after enduring a freezing winter of coughing, sneezing, dwindling congregations and demoralised volunteers while they waited for the hopelessly slow Diocesan Advisory Committee to respond to their request for advice on which kind of heating system they should install to replace their failed gas boiler, they’d dared to take matters into their own hands. Having taken advice from energy providers about the possibility of installing either heat-pumps or a bio-LPG fuel system, they’d concluded that both options were impractical and far too expensive. The most viable solution for the time being was to replace the broken gas boiler with new, more efficient gas boilers.

The work had begun by the time the Diocesan Advisory Committee got around to objecting to replacement gas boilers, a year after the request. The committee also never once visited the site to see for themselves the impracticability of their preferred bio-LPG option, which would have required the felling of trees or the taking up of a large chunk of the church’s outdoor space.

‘The case,’ wrote the chancellor in his lofty ruling, ‘presents a cautionary tale in respect of the difficulties that can arise when proper consideration is not given at an early stage to the Church Buildings Council’s net-zero guidance. The Petitioners compounded the difficulties by deliberately proceeding with works which they knew to be unauthorised. The combined result is most unfortunate.’

The result is, in fact, that Christ Church, Chineham, is a heated, well-attended church again, to the relief of all who worship there. But the ‘unfortunate’ situation to which the chancellor referred is that the miscreants will be forced to rip out those new gas boilers and replace them with an eco alternative.

Like a headmaster who decides to show a spot of leniency at the last minute and not expel the prefects on the spot, the chancellor decreed that, as another winter was on its way, ‘I am minded to grant a faculty for the gas boilers to remain for three years’ with the condition ‘that any carbon emissions from the operation of the gas boilers be offset’.

I contacted the vicar, the Revd Jonathan Clark, to ask him how the church was dealing with this ruling, while the clock ticks down to the moment in 32 months’ time when the new boilers must be ripped out. He responded that he didn’t have time to speak to me, as ‘this affair has already taken far too much attention away from our core mission’.

What a time-consuming distraction it must have been! He’s trying to run a church, for goodness’ sake. His first duty is to his parishioners’ spiritual needs. The people who help him are unpaid volunteers, who give hours of their time to the C of E, an increasingly thankless task. They’re the ones who get clobbered for their trouble. Clark referred me to a letter he wrote to the Church Times in November, in which he advised churches, first, ‘to pray earnestly that your existing boilers don’t fail’, and then said to the General Synod: ‘We support the drive to net-zero carbon, but was this the kind of result intended in your formal drive to it?’

Parishes across the country are experiencing much the same thing. To comply with the C of E’s ‘Routemap’ for the ‘journey to net zero’ churches must apply for official permission from the diocese before installing a ‘like-for-like’ gas boiler. They must provide all kinds of documentation to explain why they are asking to go against approved practice. Dozens of churches are left without heating for months, sometimes years, during the agonisingly slow decision-making process, in which time damp damages the interiors and makes the parishioners ill.

Most of us are familiar with all sides of the net-zero argument. We’ve read journalists telling us to buck up, stop complaining and install heat pumps. We’ve also kept abreast of climate-emergency sceptics, who question apocalyptic global-warming models and remind us that renewable energy is intermittent. They point out rare-earth metals for EV batteries are often mined by child labour in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ed Miliband’s obsessive push for net-zero targets is going to immiserate Britain.

There are many facets to ‘the science’ and to the economics. But the Church is in the grip of eco-zealots, who pour shame on parishes if they dare to resist a heat pump. Each diocese has its ‘net-zero carbon engagement officer’, or sometimes ‘creation care engagement officer’, paid higher salaries than parish priests. They’re employed to be zealous.

The Church Commissioners have committed £190 million for grants to support the net-zero project. That money would have been enough to provide an extra ten parish priests in each of the C of E’s 42 dioceses for the next decade.

The C of E’s loss of a sense of proportion on this subject is encapsulated by the fact that, in the timetable for next month’s General Synod, the issue of ‘Lowest income communities funding’ has been relegated to ‘Contingency business’ (i.e. ‘we’ll discuss it if we have time at the end’), while a full hour on the afternoon of 12 February has been allotted to a motion to ‘promote the use of local, seasonal flowers and foliage and discourage the use of floral foam’.