Amidst budget cuts and a long, pronounced decline in attendance, the fight to preserve medeival churches in England is dire.  Writes Ian Jack at the Guardian:

Nothing as handsome as these churches will ever again be built in these villages; their presence there seems almost miraculous, like finding an original Leonardo in a Skegness postcard rack. But how empty they are! Christian worship seems to have melted away almost as completely as the wool trade, and long before Richard Dawkins and the atheist revival came hunting for an argument. We should at least take care to preserve its inspiring remains.