Tag Archives: Bishop Michael Ingham

Decaffeinated Indaba

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Apparently, indabas have been replaced by sankofas – and you can tell what that reminds me of by the title.

But I jest. Sankofa actually means: “It is not a taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind”. It is a catchphrase taught to English bus drivers to be used as they watch old ladies in their rear view mirrors running after the bus. If that isn’t clear enough, the definition goes on to say: “the narrative of the past is a dynamic reality that cannot be separated from consideration of the present and future”. In other words, the past is dynamic, or changeable by the present, a concept made popular in the ‘70s by those consuming an excessive quantity of magic mushrooms. Since Canadian bishops seem to fall into that category, many of them – Hiltz, Bird, Ingham and Alexander – were present at the latest salacious sankofa  exercise to ponder together homoerotic sexuality under the pretext of conjuring a prior dynamic reality that conforms ancient perversions to 21st century delusions of normalcy.

A pusillanimous church – and that’s what Western Anglicanism has become – grovels and trembles before the culture in which it finds itself. Hence, as Ingham notes below, the church is content to let the culture determine its theology. A church can sink no lower than that.

From here:

Introduced by the Most Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Asante as an ecumenical contribution from the Methodist Church of Ghana, the Akan concept of sankofa served as a guiding framework for the Seventh Consultation of Anglican Bishops in Dialogue, which took place from May 25-29 in Accra, Ghana. The gathering brought together bishops from Canada, Ghana, Swaziland, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Burundi, Zambia, England, and the United States.

Sankofa—literally, ‘It is not a taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind’—refers broadly to the unity of past and present, where the narrative of the past is a dynamic reality that cannot be separated from consideration of the present and future.

[….]

Bishop Ingham noted that despite the bishops present holding many different theologies on marriage, sexuality and biblical interpretation, “we’re not divided by these differences. Rather, we’re spurred to be curious with each other and to hear how these matters play out in our different parts of the world.”

“We’re all very aware that mission is contextual,” he added. “And I think most of the African bishops who attend understand that social and legislative challenges have taken place around homosexuality in Western countries.

Freedom of speech according to Bishop Michael Ingham

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From here:

If religious criticism is intended deliberately to offend, to vilify or to slander, it is not acceptable and I would be outraged. And not just for my own religious faith, but also for others’. I am not against satire. I am against hatred. If satire is intended respectfully to challenge or question a fundamental belief, or to expose the hypocrisy of the institution or its leaders, it is perfectly okay.

There is no unlimited right to freedom of speech and no absolute right to freedom. To exist, freedom needs self-imposed restraints, and democracy requires a consensus based on mutual respect. What we have in the Paris cartoons is a misuse of freedom…it is secular fundamentalism that insists on the right to cause offence in the name of freedom. Religious satire is not off-limits when it serves the public good by exposing hypocrisy and causing us to live up to our ideals in a better way, but when its purpose is deliberately to offend, how is that different from hatred?

Michael Ingham is in favour of satire and freedom of expression provided it is respectful and not offensive, thereby rendering it not free and not satirical. Additionally, satire has to serve the public good. Who decides this? In the absence of an ecclesiarchy, the state; welcome back to the Soviet Union.

In a similar vein, the imam pundit notes:

In a free society, people have the right to offend, but people do not have the right to incite hatred or to stereotype an entire community. When you depict Mohamed as a terrorist, 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide are considered terrorists, when 99.9 per cent of them are peaceful. We must use freedom of speech with responsibility. That is the price of keeping a civil society.

If the imam is correct and 99.9% of Muslims are peaceful (I have a suspicion that figure is too high), we are left with 1.6 million who are not only not peaceful but, since the context is terrorism, are terrorists; I don’t find that particularly reassuring.

Bishop Melissa Skelton is fully supportive of same-sex blessings

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Rev. Melissa Skelton is being installed as Bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster today, replacing Michael Ingham.

For those who may be nursing a hope that the diocese’s policy on blessing same-sex unions might change, this interview should disabuse you (my emphasis):

Q. Since Bishop Ingham was a controversial figure in the 70-million member global Anglican communion, how will you handle his legacy?

A. I intend to listen and learn a lot about what this experience has been like for the diocese — the positive parts of this and the more difficult parts. I’m trying to come to this with a real beginner’s mind, not making assumptions about people’s experience. By the way, I’m fully supportive of offering blessings of covenantal relationships between same-sex couples in the Anglican Church.

What Skelton has already learned from her predecessor is that she can glibly ignore the wishes of the majority in the Anglican Communion and be complacently secure in the conviction that she will not be censured by the Anglican Church of Canada, its Primate, Canterbury or the Archbishop of Canterbury. What God thinks about it, as revealed in the book Skelton claims to follow, might be an entirely different matter; but who cares about him when Fred Hiltz is on your side.

Michael Ingham speaks to the Diocese of Niagara

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In Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel, Men at Arms, our hero, Guy Crouchback, finds himself out of step with his time and the children of his time; they were not simpatico:

He was accepted and respected but he was not simpatico. Gräfin von Gluck, who spoke no word of Italian and lived in undisguised concubinage with her butler, was simpatica. Mrs. Garry was simpatica, who distributed Protestant tracts, interfered with the fishermen’s methods of killing octopuses and filled her house with stray cats.

Guy’s uncle, Peregrine, a bore of international repute whose dreaded presence could empty the room in any centre of civilization—Uncle Peregrine was considered molto simpatico. The Wilmots were gross vulgarians; they used Santa Dulcina purely as a pleasure resort, subscribed to no local funds, gave rowdy parties and wore indecent clothes, talked of “wops” and often left after the summer with their bills to the tradesmen unpaid; but they had four boisterous and ill-favoured daughters whom the Santa-Dulcinesi had watched grow up. Better than this, they had lost a son bathing from the rocks. The Santa-Dulcinesi participated in these joys and sorrows. They observed with relish their hasty and unobstrusive departures at the end of the holidays. They were simpatici. Even Musgrave who had the Castelletto before the Wilmots and bequeathed it his name, Musgrave who, it was said, could not go to England or America because of warrants for his arrest, “Musgrave the Monster,” as the Crouchbacks used to call him—he was simpatico. Guy alone, whom they had known from infancy, who spoke their language and conformed to their religion, who was open-handed in all his dealing and scrupulously respectful of all their ways, whose grandfather built their school, whose mother had given a set of vestments embroidered by the Royal School of Needlework for the annual procession of St. Dulcina’s bones—Guy alone was a stranger among them.

I can sympathise with Guy’s plight: in fact, as soon as I begin to feel the mildest bout of simpatico insinuating its way into my psyche, a vague sense of unease descends upon me. I freely admit it’s my fault – although, I confess, accompanying the heavy burden of this particular guilt is a profound indifference to it.

Not so for Bishops Bird and Ingham: they are entirely simpatico, united, according to Ingham, by the “shared .. contempt and opposition of the fearful” – otherwise known as people who disagree with them.

From here:

No surprises, either, came when Bishop Ingham acknowledged that the two men also have shared the contempt and opposition of the fearful. The two dioceses, so similar in ideals, face the same challenges of change and adaptation to an emerging world.

At this point Bishop Ingham described the shift in relevance from a time when the church was at the centre of political and national power to the era of Post-Christendom. The next change, the one we are experiencing, is away from the old evangelicalism, liberalism and catholicism.  It will not be shaped by the old culture wars that we continue to fight, even, and perhaps most pointlessly, against each other. The future church holds some surprises for those of us so involved in present difficulties that we do not see where we’re going.

I’d like to end on a point of agreement: the last sentence, in this case. They really don’t know where they are going.

Bishops Ingham and Cowan gather at the totem pole

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The two bishops were celebrating the transfer of a parish from the Diocese of New Westminster to the Diocese of B.C. Out of the frying pan into the fire.

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Why stand at the foot of a totem pole rather that at the foot of a cross you might be wondering: the cross would be too Christian.

In reading about totem poles, we are repeatedly reminded that they have no religious significance – just like Anglican bishops – and that each animal on the pole may  represent an ancestor; Aboriginals also thought that the totem pole animals could transform themselves into men. All beliefs that, one presumes, bishops Ingham and Cowan think fit comfortably into Canadian Anglicanism.

From here (page 4):

Soon a gathering of people circled around the totem pole that sits in harmony beside St George church. The visitors were warmly welcomed with singing and drumming. Mike Willie spoke of the long history of his people, the totem and the church. Bishop Ingham welcomed everyone into the church for worship and a time of blessing the restored church.

Dean Peter Elliott fills in for Michael Ingham

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Bishop Michael Ingham has retired. The Very Rev. Peter Elliott has taken over Ingham’s administrative duties in the Diocese of New Westminster. I am unsure whether this is a harbinger of Elliott’s eventual installation as the next bishop and he is getting in some practice, whether it means he won’t be bishop and he really is just filling in, or whether it is of no significance at all in the matter of bishopric succession.

I really can’t understand why anyone would want to be the bishop of such a fractious, financially unstable diocese; I suppose the lust for power is blind to such trifles.

From here:Peter Elliott

The Very Rev. Peter Elliott, Dean of the Diocese of New Westminster and rector of Christ Church Cathedral became Administrator of the Diocese and took over the day-to-day administrative functions of the Office of the Bishop assisted by Synod Staff. During the month of September and in collaboration with Synod Staff, the Nominations/Search Committee will produce materials both electronic and print to communicate information about the Diocese of New Westminster (Diocesan Profile) to encourage nominations.

Michael Ingham to speak in the Diocese of Niagara

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Now that he has retired, Bishop Michael Ingham has started on the lecture circuit.

Where better to begin than the diocese which has been attempting to out-liberal the Diocese of New Westminster for about a decade: the Diocese of Niagara. He will be speaking at the Bishop’s Company Dinner – a diocesan club for well-heeled laypeople inclined to senior cleric sycophancy – on September 30, 2013.

IngThose who wish to be regaled with tales of Ingham’s former triumphs – or how to break up a worldwide denomination by being inclusive – may do so for a mere $225. I wonder how much Ingham is being paid.

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Bishop Michael Ingham: “I believe in a God….”

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It’s never a good sign when someone precedes the word “God” with the indefinite article.

Michael Ingham, in his address at SFU on receiving his honorary degree, resorts to this device, as do many who have wandered from the Triune God of the Bible. He intoned, piously: “I believe in a God” – one of many equally suitable anthropomorphised candidates available for selection; we, if we are wise and wish to avoid the horror of “fundamentalism”, should do likewise. It doesn’t really matter whether we choose the same god as Ingham so long as we don’t fall into the trap of leaving out the all-important “a”, thereby excluding all other gods: that would never do.

We live in a time when religious fundamentalism is growing stronger in all faiths and traditions. It is a movement rooted in fear. The answer in my view is not to abandon religious faith but to join the side of religious progress. Religions must struggle for the equality of women. Religions must uphold the dignity of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people. Religions must work to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation. And religions must work together, not against each other, for justice and peace.
I have never believed in a God who was male, white, and elitist. I believe in a God who is engaged on the side of life, often with powerless people, in the struggle against the many faces of death. And that is my invitation to all of you today.

Bishop Michael Ingham’s farewell sermon

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Michael Ingham preached his last synod sermon at the recent Diocese of New Westminster synod.

If reports on the diocesan website are to be believed, it was greeted with adulation:

When he finished his remarks, the prolonged standing ovation partly answered his challenge.

In the sermon he likened the court battles in which he participated and appeared to be only too eager to fight, to “crucifixion”:

I had never been trained in seminary to spend two days on a witness stand in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

And yet now, twenty years later, many things have changed for the better. We know the word Indaba; we understand something of the depth and complexity of dialogue; we have with us a new friend and companion, Bishop Tengatenga, who has traveled all the way from Africa to build new bridges between the Church in the North and the Church in the South. Out of crucifixion is coming new life.

Having won the court battles and, therefore, not actually having to sacrifice any buildings, Ingham goes on to note that buildings are really not that important after all:

we have a great treasure: it is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a treasure worth far more than all the things we want to cling on to: our buildings, our properties

In spite of the mass exodus of conservatives from the diocese, it is apparent that not all malcontents have fled; murmurings of discontent at the diocese being little more than an ecclesiastical CRA must be rife since Ingham took the opportunity to deny it:

the Diocese” is all of us here. It’s not a group of people somewhere else. It’s not a taxation centre that robs us of our few remaining pennies.

It is only fair to give a departing bishop the last cliché sequence, so here it is; I trust it will move you as much as it moved me:

I realized how insightful and articulate I used to be! But it wasn’t just an exercise in nostalgia. I wanted to see how far we have come, and how much we have remained the same. It’s always a matter of both, not one or the other. We’ve come a long way, but there are miles to go.

Having wrought ruin in Anglicanism, Michael Ingham offers advice on how others can continue his tradition

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From here:

“What’s not widely understood is that the great majority of conservative Anglicans remained part of the diocese of New Westminster,” said Ingham. In fact, moderate conservatives and moderate progressives in the diocese worked to create provisions that no one should be compelled against their conscience to bless same-sex unions and to offer a visiting bishop to oversee parishes that were opposed to the decision. “I’m proud of the fact that a lot of people of goodwill on all sides came together and helped to make it work,” he said.

I doubt that the 800 people in St. John’s Shaughnessy who left the Diocese of New Westminster would agree that “the great majority of conservative Anglicans remained”. Those who did remain were tame conservatives who were duly paraded before synods as a demonstration of diocesan tolerance; no-one in the diocese actually listens to them, of course.

But the reaction was not confined to the diocese or even Canada. Same-sex blessings remain controversial in various parts of the worldwide Anglican Communion, but Ingham says New Westminster’s process of dialogue serves as an example for the Communion. Indaba conversations-an African model of respectful listening and dialogue-are now being used to help heal divisions in the Communion.

“If I have a word of advice, and I did actually say this to Rowan Willliams when he was the Archbishop of Canterbury,” said Ingham, “it is that these things do pass and you do someday find yourself on the other side of these passionate differences. And the way we deal with each other in the midst of them determines the quality of life of the community afterwards.”

To stoutly assert that the storm will soon be over as the church sallies forth into a bright new future of eco-harmony and prophetic social justice making, is a fondly-held liberal self-deception born of the blind optimism of arrogance.

I remember the Diocese of Niagara’s Bishop Ralph Spence in the 1990s peering mistily above the heads of his audience, presumably into a vision of the future that was impenetrable to the rest of us, intoning with an affected piety: “don’t worry about same-sex blessings; in ten years we will be performing them and the fuss will all be forgotten.”

Ingham has also worked to promote interfaith dialogues, including writing the book Mansions of the Spirit. “I’ve seen the whole church move from the attitude, ‘We don’t need to talk to people in other religions; we need to convert them,’ all the way to what I see as a predominant sentiment throughout the churches that we need to understand our neighbours of other faiths much better, because religion needs to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.” That has been increasingly relevant as awareness grows of how religion in its extremist and fundamentalist forms is a destabilizing and violent factor in so many parts of the world, he added.

One important challenge for the church moving into the future is Canada’s increasingly secular society, Ingham said. “Muslims and Jews and Buddhists and Hindus are not our competition. All of us, of all faiths, are seriously challenged by secularism, and we need to find a language that can address people whose understanding of the world is highly secularized, where there is no sense of God or the message of Jesus in their cosmology.”

This, in a way is good news. If Ingham and his successors see no need for converting people, the diocese will gradually wither away as congregations “understand our neighbours of other faiths much better”, realise that they actually believe something and convert to their beliefs. By the time the current generation joins the choir invisible, the diocese will be nothing but a disagreeable memory.