Category Archives: Church of England

The Church of England hair-splitting pantomime farce

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In a recent interview, Justin Welby, channelling the shade of Rowan Williams, declared that same-sex unions are perfectly fine – commendable even – with him but same sex marriages are not. He offered no explanation – perhaps because there isn’t one:

My own view on same-sex marriage is one thing; my own view on same-sex unions is: I recognize, again I have said in public, the immense quality and profound love and commitment of many same-sex unions. I don’t think that marriage is the appropriate way forward.

He omitted the word “yet” after “forward”; I know he was thinking it, though.

The same-sex part begins around 13:30:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir2Cj0Jk3Zo

Canterbury and Vatican to play cricket

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From here:

The head of the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has accepted a challenge from the Vatican to play their first ever cricket match.

I am anticipating the Archbishop of Canterbury suggesting that, rather than play an actual match where someone has to lose, both sides should participate in a continuing Indaba, find a middle ground – known in cricketing parlance as a silly mid-wicket – thereby indefinitely postponing pointless confrontation while projecting the illusion of useful activity – without any of the risk. Besides, to take part in a real match, you need real balls.

How the Church of England should compete with Wonga

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Wonga makes short term loans to people at exorbitant rates. The idea is that the loan is repaid on payday: it is a payday loan company.

Justin Welby wants to “compete Wonga out of business” by creating church assisted credit unions. The problem is, it will take ten years to accomplish; meanwhile Wonga is approving 10,400 loans a day and makes £1.2million a week in profit now.

After lending more than a £1billion in a year for the first time, it now plans to expand by encouraging customers to buy luxuries they would otherwise struggle to afford.

Its ‘Pay Later’ deal allows borrowers to buy ‘higher value goods’, such as furniture or a dishwasher, for up to £1,000, with an up-front charge of 7 per cent of the price.

The idea of buying luxuries we “would otherwise struggle to afford” was not a problem that afflicted my family as I was growing up. Post-war rationing made ½ a pound of butter a luxury, afford it or not; my parent’s lives were not so devoid of meaning that they felt the need to fill the emptiness with “luxuries they would otherwise struggle to afford.” Not so for many people today, I fear.

In trying to set up competing credit unions, the Church of England is foolishly engaged in trying to beat the world at its own game: for some reason, it will keep doing this – possibly because it has forgotten what its own game is – and it always fails.

If Justin Welby really wants to compete with Wonga, preach the Gospel – the real Gospel – and give people meaning and purpose in their lives so that they don’t have to yield to the impulse of attempting to fill their vacuous existence with luxuries that they don’t need, can’t afford and won’t satisfy.

Vicar wants to be accessible to all faiths

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Perhaps it’s just me but, short of claiming to work for the Diocese of Niagara, I can’t imagine much that I would find less inviting than a vicar proclaiming himself to be dynamic and accessible to all faiths.

The Reverend Andy Cain not only makes these boasts but also wants to create an inclusive support network of community champions, a phrase of such concentrated prosaism, it gives me the shivers.

Rev. Cain busies himself with things like “inter-faith” –  akin to the “inter-net”: 90% incoherent, 9% squabbling and 1% unverifiable fact – being non-judgemental, utopia now rather than heaven later, and Gandhi quotes.

I’m sure he means well, though.

From here:

A dynamic vicar, inspired to take up the cloth following a near death experience, is aiming to unite different faiths and create an inclusive support network of community champions.

The Reverend Andy Cain took up his role as the vicar at St Mary’s Church in Cuddington – “a church that was already doing okay but was seeking a greater community focus” – he said in September last year.

The 37-year-old, who was born in Carshalton, is not only focused on diversifying what the church offers to its Anglican community, but on bringing different groups together – regardless of their religion – to “significantly impact the area for the better”.

He said: “Many people give a significant amount to the community.

“I need to find those people are encourage them more, to become great ambassadors for the community.

“I see myself as someone who meets, encourages and drives community champions.

“I would like to be part of the growing spirituality of the community, but want to be accessible to all faiths and none.”

The church bat problem

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From here:

Bats are destroying British churches, the Second Church Estates Commissioner Sir Tony Baldry told Parliament. Speaking in response to a question from the member for Bury North, Mr. David Nuttall (Cons.) on the “ effects of bats in churches”, on 4 July 2013 Sir Tony said the “present situation” of 6400 churches infested with bats was “simply unsustainable.”

“A small number of bats living in a church can be manageable, but parish churches are finding an increasing number of bats taking up residence in large roosts. There are significant costs in financial and human terms to those who worship in these churches, and to the wider community,” he said.

[….]

He [Sir Tony Baldry] told the House [the] bat infestation was “not a joking matter…..”

I’m not laughing – really.

When I was in Britain around 15 years ago, I took a walk to Roath Park Lake close to where I used to live. To my surprise, I noticed a few Canada geese floating serenely on the water; “aren’t they lovely” someone next to me said. “Lovely”, I agreed with a smirk; apparently Canada had been exporting some of its excess wildlife. Just wait a few years when they have gone forth and multiplied and are pooping all over your well-manicured trails, I thought.

I’m sorely tempted to bring a few limey bats back to Canada and introduce them to the Anglican Church of Canada.

Worsening Wonga-gate

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It seems that the Church of England has investments not only in Wonga but in gambling, tobacco, pornography and arms dealing, not to mention alcohol – I expect that is just communion wine, though.

I think that the real problem is not so much what the church invests in, but how much it has to invest in the first place. An organisation that wastes no opportunity to heap opprobrium on a secular government for not doing enough for the poor, is sitting on £5.2billion which, instead of distributing to the poor, it invests, taking advantage of the capitalist system of which it disapproves, at the highest possible interest rate, all the while venting its indignation on Wonga for – that’s right – charging the highest possible interest rate.

From here:

It also emerged that the Church’s ‘ethical’ rules allow it to invest its £5.2billion assets in firms involved in gambling, tobacco and alcohol.

Even firms involved in arms dealing, pornography and human cloning are not barred from receiving Church investment.

The Archbishop confirmed the Church had a £75,000 stake in US venture capital firm Accel Partners, which injected capital into Wonga in 2009.

Vicar thinks school prize-giving is un-Christian

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My first form mathematics teacher introduced himself to his new class by informing us that a few years ago – in Victorian times, in actuality – a middle class young man who left school without any tangible abilities could always, as a last resort, find employment as a vicar in the Church of England. Clearly he was unimpressed by the prospects of those he saw before him. His name was Mr. Gower; he emitted an aura of cynicism which, even at the tender age of eleven, I found appealing – unless it was aimed in my direction.

Little seemed to give him greater pleasure than mercilessly berating hapless Christians who had the misfortune of being in his class; he used to ask whether they had received “a visitation” – I thought it great fun. Attending Morning Assembly was compulsory, yet I noticed he was never there. If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me I decided so, as a burgeoning atheist, I demanded to be excused. To no avail: the headmaster informed me that the government compelled him to compel me to attend – there was no Equality Act in those days. It put me off Christianity for the next 20 years.

I digress. Mr. Gower’s view that the Church of England provides last resort employment is still in evidence in the educational theories of the Rev Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard. He believes that schools should be run without the benefit of competition or rewards, leaving students entirely unprepared for any normal work, and thus fit for little other than jobs as Church of England vicars where all they have to excel at is managing the decline of their denomination.

From here:

Prizegiving ceremonies that recognise the achievements of outstanding pupils should be scrapped from Church schools because they are ‘un-Christian’, a clergyman has said.

The Rev Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard argued that singling out the brightest pupils for praise left those students not receiving prizes with the ‘gently corrosive sense of being not quite good enough’.

Dr Rayment-Pickard, who co-founded an education charity with the aim of getting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into university, said prizes cultivate an ‘individualistic and competitive attitude to success’, which he described as being at odds with the ‘servant ethics’ of the Christian kingdom.

 

The designer baptism

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I was recently at the spot on the river Jordan where, supposedly, John the Baptist baptised Jesus. Actually, there are two places that make the claim; at both of them, people were being baptised on the assumption, I suppose, that the efficacy of the washing away of one’s sin would be somehow magnified.

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One of the locations was patrolled by soldiers carrying assault rifles, preventing over-active candidates from immersing themselves in one country and emerging, without sin, in another.

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Perhaps it’s because I am used to the Niagara that the Jordan river seemed much narrower than I expected. And muddier. That didn’t prevent my wife from braving the advances of an aggressive catfish to collect a bottle of the Real Thing. Most of it has been divided up and distributed to friends but I think we may still have a reserve somewhere for a new grandchild, should another arrive unexpectedly.

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For those who want more glitz than the algae infested Jordan can provide, there is always this:

A new style of service – staged in churches decked out with balloons while guests sit at tables laid out for a baptism banquet – is among options being looked at by officials as part of a drive to make people feel more welcome.

The idea is one of the early results of a major “market research” project, backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and York, examining how the Church could redesign its christening services for the 21st Century.

[….]

As a result some congregations have begun to adapt services to accommodate them, dressing up the doorways with balloons and offering church halls for christening parties.

But a handful have gone further, holding separate christening services combined with family parties.

At one church visited by Dr Millar the entire church had been laid out like a wedding reception with the baptism performed in the centre of the room in front the guests at tables.

Afterwards they were served champagne and a meal while the family cut a christening cake and received presents. The model is expected to form a centrepiece of new christening handbooks for vicars when the projected is completed.

New Church of England plan to attract people: a Pagan Christian church

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From here:

As part of its drive to retain congregation numbers, the Church of England is training its clergy to create a “pagan church” where Christianity will be “very much in the center,” a British newspaper reports.

The mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion is seeking to create new forms of Anglicanism with which people of alternative beliefs should feel comfortable, according to The Telegraph.

“I would be looking to formulate an exploration of the Christian faith that would be at home in their culture,” the daily quotes the Rev. Steve Hollinghurst, who is advising the denomination in its new endeavor, as telling the BBC.

What the church is looking at is “almost to create a pagan church where Christianity was very much in the centre,” he adds.

I have bad news for Rev. Hollinghurst: the Anglican Church of Canada has been telling people they can believe whatever they like while concealing Christianity in a centre that no-one ever seems to find for decades. The result has been that potential congregants choose a belief that tells them that it is better to stay in bed late on Sunday morning than attend a church that can’t confidently convey a coherent Christian message.

Church of England gives up fight against gay marriage

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The truth is, there never was much of a fight. Western Anglicanism is dominated by comfortably tenured bishops whose interests lie in swimming with the cultural tide while indulging in leftist dabblings from the safely of their ecclesiastical plousiocracy. It is more fun to criticise banks than to stand up for traditional marriage. In Anglican Newspeak this is known as prophetic social justice making.

From here:

In a short statement, the established Church said that the scale of the majorities in both the Commons and Lords made clear that it is the will of Parliament that same sex couples “should” be allowed to marry.

The Bishop of Leicester, who leads the bishops in the House of Lords, said they would now concentrate their efforts on “improving” rather than halting an historic redefinition of marriage.