Tag Archives: Anglican

It must be Christmas: I half agree with George Pitcher

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George Pitcher is a liberal Anglican priest who writes for the Telegraph and doesn’t believe in the devil in spite of living in the country that produced the Guardian.

He rightly points out that equality legislation doesn’t work and, ironically, can penalise Christians who hold that every individual is equally loved by and valuable to God:

This Government has never learnt that you can’t legislate for equality and freedom. You can pass laws that protect people from specific harm. You can make it illegal to do harm to others or to their property. But fuzzy, feel-good laws, under which we’re generally enjoined to be nice to one another, are too easy to draft and dangerous to implement.

There’s a delicious irony in equality being thrust upon the household of faith. Because equality before God, all humanity being created equally in the image of that God, a God, as we say, who “has no grandchildren”, is a central tenet of the Christian faith. For orthodox Christians, equality really is not the issue. For them, gay people are equally loved of God; it’s their homosexuality that is sinful in that it is contrary to God’s will. For Catholics, women are every bit the equals of men, indeed they often seem to be venerated above men; it’s their supposed exercise of fatherhood that is an abomination.

Luckily, just as I was getting the uneasy feeling that I was about to agree with an entire article by George, to my relief, he came up with this:

As it happens, I don’t believe there are theological, scriptural or ecclesiological grounds for barring women or homosexuals from priesthood or bishoprics, any more than there is a case for barring newspaper columnists from them.

The bible makes the case for the first barring, and Pitcher himself makes the case for the second.

Anglicans united at last!

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Uniting Anglicans: Rowan Williams couldn’t do it, Katharine Jefferts-Schori didn’t want to do it; Fred Hiltz is still having a conversion about doing it; but Anglicans are finally united against a common foe – warm weather:

Copenhagen unites Anglicans hoping to combat climate change.

As church bells rang throughout the world Dec. 13 to mark Christianity’s commitment to combating climate change, Anglican leaders were making their voices heard about global warming in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The founder of Christianity foresaw this, of course; in the Garden of Gethsemane, as drops of blood oozed through the pores of his skin, he knew his sacrifice would be worth it, because in approximately 2000 years his followers would unite to wage the final battle against that most diabolical of evils: a 0.4 degree rise in the earth’s surface  temperature.

Rowan Williams: betrayal!

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Rowan’s meandering ambivalence:

A close friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury who was tutored by him at theological college said he felt betrayed by Dr Rowan Williams’ new-found opposition to gays and lesbians in the ordained ministry of the Anglican Communion.

The Rev Colin Coward, 64, who lives with a gay man and who preaches regularly at his local church in the Salisbury diocese, said that Dr Williams was aware of his sexuality and never once challenged it.

He said that about a quarter of the 50-plus students at his Cambridge theological college were gay and this was accepted by the Church of that era. Dr Williams was a tutor at Westcott House, a liberal college, from 1977 to 1980.

For some mysterious reason, the Anglican Church attracts a disproportionate number of homosexuals into its leadership ranks. Once they arrive, understandably, they can’t see why their presence is resisted; even though I disagree with the promoting of practising homosexual leadership in the church, I have some sympathy with them because Anglican liberals have “included”, “tolerated” and befriended homosexuals into an illusory sense of leadership entitlement.

Devilish deception

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As Baudelaire observed, the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist. Anglican clergyman, George Pitcher is persuaded:

English satanic practices always make me smile. They conjure up images of very white, fat people dancing around clumsily in a wood. So when I read our story today that a vicar in the Forest of Dean is seeing signs of “dark forces”, I’m afraid I was reminded more of Ghostbusters than of The Omen.

But the Rev Nick Bromfield, rector of Drybrook, Lydbrook and Ruardean, is taking it all very seriously: “It might sound medieval to talk about the relationship between good and evil, but there is no middle ground on this. People need to leave well alone.”

Oh, c’mon, Rev Nick. We’re not talking about Old Nick here, are we? All that classical theistic Greek dualism, which gave us the battle between God and the Devil, with the great eschatological battle fought out at the Cross of Calvary? Are you mates with Mel Gibson?  Or perhaps you just didn’t like finding a sheep’s head impaled on a stake outside one of your churches?

I agree that’s not very nice, least of all for the sheep, but are we still really talking about a Miltonesque battle for dominion between the powers of darkness and light? I don’t think so. Evil is the absence of the divine in humanity, made potent by the power of human imagination gone wrong. So I agree that humans obviously have a capacity for great evil. But because they are possessed by the Prince of Darkness? No. There’s only room for one deity here.

Let’s see, if there is no devil there was no Fall, no rebellion against God, no sin, no need for a Saviour, no Incarnation, no atonement on the cross, no salvation, no heaven, no hell, no hope.

What does that leave us with? The Church of England.

Doing my bit for climate justice

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The Anglican Church at its finest:

Let the bells ring out for climate justice

The 13th of December is the defining moment for faith organizations and churches to conduct a church service and ring bells, sound conch shells, or beat drums or gongs 350 times.

For centuries, across the world musical instruments like bells and drums have been used to warn people of imminent danger – but also to call people to religious service, marking important moments in worship and seeking to connect to God. Sunday 13 December marks the height of the talks at United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen.

At 3 p.m. – marking the end of a high profile ecumenical celebration at the Lutheran Cathedral in Copenhagen, the Church of Our Lady where the Archbishop of Canterbury will be preaching – the churches in Denmark will ring their bells, and Christians around the world are invited to echo them by sounding their own bells, shells, drums, gongs or horns 350 times.

I suppose any auditory extravagance is acceptable in the cause of climate justice, whatever that is, so I am inviting others to join me in flatulating 350 times on the 13th of December; it will take concentration, but it’s worth it because Canadian winters are really cold.

Rowan Williams: salvation through taxation

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Rowan Williams, in a last ditch effort to attract people back to the Anglican Church, has suggested that they should pay more taxes:

Higher levels of tax would be good for society, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr Rowan Williams said that taxation should not be seen as a way of stifling business or redistributing wealth but helping to make the world a better place in which to live.

He called for new levies to be introduced on financial transactions and carbon emissions, and an end to the idea that unlimited economic growth is desirable.

Dr Williams claimed that the “fantasies of unlimited growth” had led to a “vicious cycle” in which consumers are encouraged to buy more goods, which also uses up limited energy and raw materials.

Instead, he said the economy should be geared towards creating a secure and sustainable environment for families.

As part of this, the archbishop said: “We have to ask about ‘green taxes’ (including ‘green’ tax breaks) that will check environmental irresponsibility and build up resources to address the ecological crises that menace us.

For the Pope picking off disenchanted Anglicans, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

The last temptation of Anglo-Catholics

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The Apostolic Constitution has been published to the delight of Anglo-Catholics. It allows married priests and, effectively, married bishops; it is clear that the Pope has, as Anglicans like to say, drawn the circle wide and thrown open the doors in his bid to attract Anglicans disgusted with their own denomination. Unlike Anglicans, though, he has managed to do this without the benefit of Conversation, Dialogue, the Listening Process or Indaba Groups: he just did it.

For the Anglicans who accept what the charitable view as a more than generous offer and the cynical as opportunistic poaching, I wonder how they will feel when the Pope acts – and he or his successor will – on something they don’t agree with. Presumably those who are tempted by the current offer were not sufficiently tempted by previous ones or they would already be Roman Catholic; which means they don’t believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true church. Or perhaps some of the RC specific dogma about Mary, the authority of the Pope or praying to the saints stuck in their craw. For the priests,  maybe it was the prospect of losing Anglo-Catholic paraphernalia – which now they can keep along with their wives; if that was the case, though, it seems like a shallow reason (well, apart from the wives) for resisting the call which has now become so compelling.

I have a friend who used to be an evangelical and converted to Roman Catholicism – mainly because he became convinced of the truth of transubstantiation. I asked him how he copes with some of the RC beliefs that are quite opposed to his previous views. His answer was that he ignores them – after all nothing is perfect. True enough, but I wonder how long Anglo-Catholic euphoria will last once the “Anglo” part fades under the weight of the Roman Magisterium.

Shadowmancer author, G P Taylor to become Roman Catholic

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From the Telegraph:

Children’s author G P Taylor to leave ‘sinking ship’ Church of England and become Catholic

Vicar-turned-author Rev G P Taylor says he will desert the “sinking ship” Church of England, which he said was the “spiritual arm of New Labour”, for Roman Catholicism.

The Rev Taylor, whose children’s book Shadowmancer became an international best-seller, said he was turning instead to the Roman Catholic church, which he believes is less afraid to stand up for important moral issues.

Writing in the Yorkshire Post, he said the Church of England had ”sunk into a liberal pit that was no earthly use and offered no hope, no love and no grace”.

He added: ”It was going through the motions of faith and was largely irrelevant to the people it once thought it served.

”Like so many other Anglicans, I am at that place where I feel I must desert a sinking ship.”

Rev Taylor said: ”The Church I once loved has become the spiritual arm of New Labour.”

The author said many bishops ”spend more time preaching about climate change or dressing up as Druidic bards than preaching a gospel of salvation that would cure the ills of society overnight if properly embraced”.

This isn’t too surprising, I suppose, since Demurral, the arch-villain in Shadowmancer, is an Anglican vicar who is more interested in gaining power in this world through the occult than he is in the heavenly power of the next. This resonates strongly with the shenanigans of bishops in Canada – a resonance made all the stronger for me by the fact that Taylor drew from the exploits of St. Hilda for inspiration:

Well yeah. Yorkshire is a place that I heavily speak to paganism and the occults. It’s one of those areas that for centuries has been a battle between the principalities and powers of heaven or hell. And St. Hilda herself came to Whitby and very famously she cast out the serpents into the sea. And everybody says that she cast out the snakes. But wherever you see the word serpent, you’ve got to always think, you know, what is the spiritual context behind this? And there was some sort of spiritual warfare going on there that she took command over and cleared the place. But there is, there’s always been this tension between good and evil. There’s lots of folklore, and we have lots of ghosts and demons and all sorts of legends, et cetera. So you know, it’s a place that we just carry on ministering in.

I am sure Mr. Taylor would be happy to know that, in the spirit of St. Hilda, here in Canada we are still casting serpents out – of the church in our case; of course, today, the serpents have access to lawyers.

The Church of England: payback time

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Rowan Williams doesn’t have much use for capitalism and he is less than enamoured of the banking system that supports it.

That hasn’t stopped the Church of England from trying to amass profits from the system they enjoy excoriating; I think that is called hypocrisy. Now it has all gone horribly wrong:

The Church of England was accused today of squandering its clergy pensions through reckless betting on the stock market.

Its deepening crisis over how to pay the pensions for retired vicars is ‘largely self-inflicted’, a leading analyst said.

The criticism is an embarrassing new blow to the CofE at a time when it faces divisions over women bishops and homosexuality, a campaign by Roman Catholics to recruit disaffected Anglicans, and the need to ask churchgoers to put more into collection plates to ease its financial worries.

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has been strongly critical of bankers and financiers over their behaviour during the recession.

 

 

A group of climate experts call for……

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Well, actually, make that a group of ecclesiastical political correctness apparatchiks who know nothing whatsoever about science, climate or normal life, led and hosted by the Anglican Ken Dodd impersonator:

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At a meeting hosting by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, leaders from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Baha’i, Jain and Zoroastrian faiths called on the UK and G20 governments to fight for an ambitious deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions at UN-led talks in Copenhagen in December.

A statement issued by the groups meeting at Lambeth Palace, London, said catastrophic climate change posed a ”very real threat to the world’s poor and to our fragile creation”.