On 22 July 2025, The Church of England Newspaper (CEN) announced that there will be no further published editions until further notice, although its Editor, Andrew Carey, will send out a weekly newsletter for the foreseeable future.
The announcement states:
“… the Church of England Newspaper has had to review its operations following the passing of Keith Young, owner and director of Political and Religious Intelligence Ltd. Keith was generously the sole provider of additional finance to continue supporting the paper and we are now exploring all options to secure a future and hope that you will bear with us as we seek an orderly transition to serve our readers and subscribers, our advertisers and all other partners.
[…]
We promise to keep you informed as we fully explore all options before us. And we will contact you with any changes or updates. Please feel free to contact us for any clarifications on the above.”
Background to the history and development of the CEN, dating back to 1828, is given on its web page.
Comment
At the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in May this year, it was announced that Life and Work, the 146-year-old magazine of the Church of Scotland, was to cease publication later in the year. The General Assembly accepted a Faith Action Programme Leadership Team (FAPLT) and Assembly Trustees recommendation that the church could no longer afford to publish Life and Work in its current form.
The magazine, which contributed significant surpluses to the Church prior to 2020, had struggled with falling reader numbers and a growing financial deficit in recent years. Lynne McNeil, Editor of the magazine for 23 years, told the Assembly that “for the sake of the team and the history books”, they disputed some of the figures in the report, and that a significant part of the deficit was due to internal recharges, most imposed for the first time this year. (FAPLT accepted amendments to the motion to that effect.)
A Commemorative final issue is here.
With thanks to Peter Crumpler and David Torrance, respectively, for highlighting the two stories.
is the Church Times in a healthy state ?
I am not privy to that information, but the revised version of this post (qv) reports that the Church of Scotland’s Life and Work is to cease publication.
The CEN always had a smaller, more niche circulation than the Church Times in my view (ordained in 1977 and read both on and off ever since). But clearly all print media are in trouble as we access more and more online (as per this exchange). So whether welcoming or bemoaning them, we all must adjust to the current economic realities.