In an open letter to her flock, Susan Bell, bishop of the Diocese of Niagara has set a record for the most italicised words ever to appear in a diocesan epistle. She used those italics to emphasis that the prediction that her denomination will cease to exist by 2040 is a call, not to hand-wringing, but to fighting a “climate crisis”. In doing so we will be “working to establish the kingdom of God”.
The message was delivered to the bishop by a beatific vision of St. Greta of Thunberg, patron saint of the church of the immaculate imminent extinction.
From here:
I want to talk to you about the future; and about some intimations about what we might be being called to – and maybe what we’re being called away from. All of that is much more interesting than the hand-wringing of recent weeks.
Is this a crisis? Yes. A holy one, I believe. The question is, how do we respond? Well we are Christ-followers and so I’d humbly suggest that we need to do just that: follow Jesus and listen for God’s voice to guide us.
I am firmly of the belief that God has gifted us with this time. I am not being Pollyanna. I mean this. We have come to the end of a time in which the Church was a dominant force in our culture. That is an undisputed fact. And yet not one that should make us despair. We’ve had a good run.
But I also believe that we are being called to deep engagement with our faith and simultaneously, and our behavior as a culture. As an example, take the climate crisis. What does the mission of God look like in the light of that? If, as N.T. Wright has recently written, New Testament Christians believed that in Jesus the Christ, God was bringing earth and heaven together, “making creation new, restoring the world from all its pathologies,” then working to establish the kingdom of God is rightly the work of all believers. This sounds to me like a robust mandate for a theology which will support bold and sustained Christian action to address the climate crisis.
This is a recovery of a strong Christology, which leads to a renewed sense of both Christ’s work among humanity and a template for our own Christian vocations.
This so-called bishop is definitely full of words but NOT in support of true Christian belief. The current teachings within the ACoC ae anything but Christian but are totally in line with the teachings of the “god of political expediency”. It is long since past the time for these so-called bishops to make a firm stand for orthodoxy.
Even if the west managed to achieve perfect social justice and control over its CO2 emissions it would not necessarily bring us one whit closer to the realized kingdom of God on earth. It is not an earthly kingdom; it is a heavenly, spiritual kingdom entered into by radical repentance and faith in the Righteous One. It is entirely possible to run roughshod over the latter while pursuing achievement of the former.
Where do they learn this “We can help create the Kingdom of God here on Earth” stuff? I hear it time and time again from revisionist priests and bishops.
They are NOT revisionists but they are APOSTATES.
It is the dominant marxist class struggle theology. Suspiciously, the left leaning churches are in the exact same page as left leaning atheist university profs. Of course, they tend to humanism. In Harari’s Sapiens, he classifies socialist humanism as a religious disposition. So human rights, for example, are a facet of socialist humanism’s orthodoxy.
Its one thing to harangue people about feeding the poor. I think that is a good idea. It is another to harangue them about needing to follow fads.
Having academic background myself, in discussing the issue with clergy, they either have no academic chops at all, or they just don’t deign to explain their views to laity. Its not even a matter of bad theology–they mostly subscribe to a gross misinterpretation of ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’ like just remember that and toss out the rest of the bible. Love is all you need…
This disposition is impossible to use to settle disagreements, so everyone with a brain who doesnt want to be treated like ‘oh, you disagree with us? Must not know what love is!’ has left or been pushed out.
It is a tremendously unhealthy environment especially for the few young ppl whose parents drag them along.
i agree with you absolutely that the big question is what love is. We’ve had 20 centuries to sell the world on the love-ideal, and now, distorted, it’s being used to beat fashionable attitudes into us. I’ve just posted this on another thread, but perhaps it belongs here quite as well:–
For decades, since I was an undergraduate and young graduate student (1957-62), I have been discussing with friends the meaning of love for neighbour. All along I’ve been convinced that many of our troubles spring from misunderstandings about what it is and what it isn’t. My paper on the subject grew over years, and was published in Canada in 1969 soon after we arrived. It is reproduced here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-neighbour-yourself-luke-1027-dr-priscilla-turner-1/ . I don’t think it dates badly at all. In fact I was cheered recently to read that my general conclusion is the same as that arrived at by St. Thomas Aquinas. !!!
Only in our Faith do we find a universal love-ethic. The Commandment originates in the OT as we all know; but in Judaism as in Islam it does not stretch to love for everyman.
We like to pretend that illiteracy is a solved problem, but I can read romanized Chinese, but do I comprend it?
My view is that the scripture is very clear what Love is: when we obey God’s commandments, that is love. “And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it.” (2 John 1:6)
So, this means we must follow the commandments. This includes at the very least the ten commandments, and the big one, thou shalt not steal, non furtum facies. One can steal visible things and invisible things, for example, FREEDOM, which is an invisible thing; it is a power given to us by God to do what we will, except as God has forbidden.
One can have a top-down or bottom up view of things: we see this in many issues, for example, climate change. I don’t believe pollution is good, so I ride a bike, I have since I was a kid, grew up riding a bike, etc. Whether I buy top-down ecological catastrophe theory is another matter, but I do know that I don’t really announce that this is part of why I ride a bike. The bottom-up view means you need to be responsible first.
The top-down view, on the other hand, the one held by most of the Academic and Clergy climate hysterics I know is that there must be some ill-specified “systemic change” and that nothing else will do, so they continue to fly on airplanes to conferences, to drive cars, to vacation in Hawaii, etc. The top-down view is, in my experience, simply a way for an individual to avoid taking action. What’s easier, actually feeding the poor, “feed my sheep,” as Jesus commands, or simply suggesting that the Government do it via tax and spend?
Christ died for our freedom, so that we would never need to be entangled with bondage again. Freedom is subjection to God alone, not to any human being. But not everyone wants freedom: freedom for Bob means Alice cannot tell Bob what to do (or not do), it means Alice and Bob actually have to have the relationship skills that clergy like to talk about but which they lack entirely.
This was all on display at general synod, which I watched live. The kicking and screaming and crying because a vote didn’t go one way or another—no respect for freedom, no relationship skills. My freedom means that I get to do what I want and your freedom means you get to do what you want. Marriage, by the by, Jesus never married anyone, marriage is a sentence, he came to liberate us from sentences 😛
straight out of Jesus’ mouth, in the Lord’s Prayer. Thy kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven. Paul has quite a bit to say about it as well.
Our Lord did teach us to pray for the establishment of the Kingdom on earth. Years ago I was taught to add, “beginning with me.” It is however to be doubted whether this bishop has read much if any of Tom Wright. He wrote to me privately some months back, “And I totally agree with you about the present crisis facing our poor old Anglican Communion. What a mess. I did my best in my Durham years but I and others were rowing against quite a strong tide, which is now running if anything even more strongly. The sheer muddle and misinformation about it all is astonishing; if I were to write a book about the issue (which I have no intention of doing) it would have to be a long one because virtually every aspect is misunderstood, misrepresented not least by those who ought to know better, and muddled up in all directions. We pray on and hope for a new generation who will see to the heart of the issues. But I fear it may take some big crisis to change the public mood.”
God, who is the Creator of the entire cosmos including humans, continues to re-create humans turning self-centred persons into God-centred spiritual beings. God’s Church will continue to exist according to His perfect will. Humans should continue to trust God not any self-centred human institutions.
“How do we respond…follow Jesus and listen for God’s voice to guide us…”.
If that fails, there always is the option for another ‘Word to The Church’:
just as the one that did not follow Jesus Who, as The LORD of Creation, provided His Church with His Scriptural teaching on marriage as “in the beginning…”.
I notice in her statement that new phrase “climate crisis”. Seems that the idiots are seeing that their repeated cries of a falling sky has not been heard. So time to ramp up the rhetoric again. First it was “global warming”, but because that never happened between ice ages us deplorable types were apparently to stupid to understand. Then it was “climate change”, because of the inconvenient truth that we witless idiots could not help but notice that sometime the climate got colder instead of hotter. Now it is “climate crisis”. Perhaps now all of us obtuse think for ourselves types will actually get the message. After all, who in their right mind would not be worried about a crisis??? Too bad we aren’t seeing anything even remotely close to a crisis.
They are now being confronted with their own imminent demise that is a direct result of their abandonment of God’s Holy Bible and all things Holy. There are none so blind as those that will not see. And this group is completely blind. They refuse to see the blazing obvious. That it is things like woman ordination, easy divorce and remarriage, no longer using the Book of Common Prayer, no longer using the King James Version Holy Bible, pretending that homosexual marriage could be a thing, just to name the most glaring heresies, that has killed this once Faithful Church. Now they think that further social justice action will save them. Laughable! It will only hasten the inevitable end.
I especially like Bell’s comment that “we’ve had a good run.” As if the Church is some kind of business or social entity that, well, just has its ups and downs. And now we’re in some kind of “downturn,” like the “economy.” It’s no surprise these so-called “leaders” are in such a mess as they try to apply these secular labels to “the kingdom of God.” Moreover, since they know nothing about economics anyway, their metaphors don’t even make sense. You can green up your church buildings all you want….what does this have to do with the Gospel message? But it’s my belief Bell and others never read the Bible. Please explain Jesus’ message about electric cars and solar panels.
That comment, ‘We’ve had a good run’ also struck me as inane, mundane, meaningless and deeply offensive.
How can the beautiful gospel, still at large dare I say, in the liturgy, the communion and the great old hymns of the church, how can the Gospel be reduced to a ‘good run’ ?
How can the King of Glory, our sweet Jesus, be referred to as ‘a good run’
How did things come to this?
The caliber of ACoA leaders is evident in this one telling remark!
This so-called bishop – more correctly called an APOSTATE – should definitely – like many of her APOSTATE colleagues be given a good run – a run right out of the ACoC as they have perverted the GOSPEL to their own corrupt thinking and somehow believe their purple shirts and white collars believe their word is superior to THE WORD.