The Diocese of Niagara’s bishop Susan Bell recently had a chat with Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York. Cottrell, we are told, is “an engaging and sophisticated leader, theologian, speaker, and writer”. The best that the Church of England has to offer; in which case, at least we now know why the CofE is in drastic decline.
Naturally, Susan Bell asked Stephen Cottrell to give us the benefit of his learning on climate change. Cottrell, we can only assume, is a renowned climatologist in addition to being a sophisticated leader and theologian. Here is part of his reply (my emphasis):
What a good question. Is there a more important question facing the world?
I think I would start by…two things…on the big picture level I think we need to teach much more about this. This needs to be not a kind of add-on to the Gospel; this is the Gospel…how we inhabit the world in the way of Christ…this is the Gospel. So, I’d want to preach and teach about it much more… good to hear that Canada is ahead as usual…it’s even in your Baptismal liturgy. It’s those things that start to impress it into our consciousness. This is what it means to follow Christ.
So there you have it: the good news of Jesus Christ is fixing climate change. This is why Jesus died on the cross. This is the cause for which countless Christians have been martyred. This is what gives meaning and purpose to life. This is incoherent tripe.
And Canada is at the forefront in peddling it.
‘Inhabit the world in the way of Christ…this is the gospel’, sounds fine to me. Live as Christ in the world & follow His Will, this is what the message from Cottrell sounds like to me.
Spot on, Ebor & Bp. Bell: with all the fires, floods, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, it’s obvious that Gaia is in a terrible snit, so sacrificing quite a few more virgins is badly overdue!
In actual fact, isn’t she still emerging from the last Ice Age? Give her time, and she’ll produce tropical plants at the Poles once more.
Re “emerging from the last Ice Age”, more accurately. we are currently in in an Ice Age, but in a relatively warm period within that Ice Age. On a scale of billions of years (the Earth is 4.6 billion years old) there have been five Ice Ages: Heronian, Crygenian, Andean-Sahara, Caroo, and the current one (which needs to be emphasied that we are still in). Ice Ages are characterised by alternations between glaciations when the ice sheets advance and relatively warm period when the ice sheets retreat called interglacials. We are currently in an interglacial. Between Ice Ages are long periods when the Earth is very warm, close to tropical everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
When I explained the above to a church (Anglican) audience which had just heard someone speak, in a context of local land forms due to the last glaciation which ended about 10,000 years ago, I got the, essentially ad hominem, response of “does that mean you don’t believe in global warming ?” Such is the perversion of the notions of creed, orthodoxy, and heresy. In that regard, Bishops Bell and Cottrell may be “leading from the rear”, or fashioning their views for “itchy ears”, and we may need to seek the real source of anti-intellectual non-critical thinking elsewhere. I suggest post-modernist relativism. The is something called the “(Gramscian) long march through the institutions”. The boots of that have left their marks (Marx, forgive the pun) in the “soft” areas of academia (sociology, political science, literature) and have proceeded to the “hard’ areas (the natural sciences, engineering). On the latter, I have witnessed it personally. That that march took a path through Anglicanism, and starting many years ago, does not surprise me.
Perhaps to use glacials and interglacials as a metaphor, the currently relatively warm period of rational thought is coming to an end and the glaciers of irrationality, relativism, identity politics, tribalism, etc. have started their advance/march. Such should not be an alien idea to anyone who reads the New Testament in its entirety.
Shortly after posting that, and regarding the effects of the “boots” of the current fashion in leftist ideology on academia, I came across this :
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-d-i-e-needs-to-die-this-why
Jordan Peterson: Why I am no longer a tenured professor at the University of Toronto
Note that he ends his article quoting Hosea 8:7
This is not new, it’s just more blatant nowadays. My late internationally distinguished husband suffered unconscionable delay in promotion to Full Professor because he was a Christian; this in what was then the largest department in his subject on this continent, and at another once leading Canadian university. I live on a lower pension as a result.
The story is told in lightly fictionalised form in my book O Love How Deep, which may be bought in any of seven formats, and read for nothing here courtesy of our host.
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