Tag Archives: Church of England

Some think many Church of England parishes would collapse without gay clergy

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Since many Church of England parishes are collapsing anyway, perhaps it’s the presence of gay clergy that is hastening their demise.

If the seemingly extravagant “1,500 gay, bi or trans clergy” number mentioned in this article is accurate, it means that Anglicanism in the UK is following in the footsteps of its North American cousin – wilfully flushing itself down the toilet of gender bending irrelevance into oblivion’s cesspool.

With what sensitive, discerning yet piperitious aphorism should one greet this news? “Good riddance” comes to mind.

A coalition supporting the gay and transgender members of the Anglican church is pressing for it to recognise the contribution made by those clergy without whom, it says, some parishes “would face utter collapse”.

The group advocates lifting the ban on bishops in civil partnerships and allowing priests free choice on whether to conduct such ceremonies in their churches, an issue currently being considered by a review group in the church’s House of Bishops.

Reverend Benny Hazlehurst, Chair of the LGBT Anglican Coalition, told PinkNews.co.uk the group would be handing out flyers outside the General Synod at a Silent Act of Witness tomorrow ahead of its meeting with the review group this month.

He said: “If all the LGB&T Clergy were to leave the Church of England, parochial and sector ministry in the Church of England would suffer major trauma, and the parish system in some parts of the country would face utter collapse.”

Rev Hazlehurst said the group estimated there are over 1,500 gay, bi or trans clergy in the country and the LGBT Anglican Coalition was advocating more recognition of these members.

 

If the Church of England hates Capitalism so much, where does it get its money?

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While some of the Church of England’s income comes from donations, 15 percent (£160 million) comes from Church assets of £4.4 billion. Yes, that’s right, the anti-capitalist supporter of the 99%, the marginalised, the homeless, the occupiers and those who use St. Paul’s as a toilet are sitting on £4.4 billion. Well, not sitting exactly: the money is invested in the stock market and property markets where much maligned mavens of finance wheel and deal to earn the church 5.7%.

Naturally, the church has a policy on ethical investing, so it avoids such things as arms, pornography, gambling, alcohol and tobacco. That didn’t stop it investing in one of the UK’s more tawdry rags, the News of the World, though, or persuade it to withdraw its funds when the hacking scandal became public.

The church did withdraw funds from Caterpillar because Israel uses the bulldozers to “demolish Palestinian homes” and the Church always enjoys finding a new way to bash Israel.

The one thing the Church is not doing with its £4.4 billion is giving it away to those for whom it has such affection: the poor, marginalised, homeless and occupiers. It hasn’t even used any of the money to build a toilet for the occupiers.

It all makes what Rowan Williams has to say about capitalism sound even more hypocritically silly than his usual divagations.

Here is his most recent effort:

Church of England, the Burger King of Christianity

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From here:

Getting married? Have it your way, says Church of England.

Just weeks before the royal wedding of Will and Kate, the Church of England has a new video on its wedding website. You can wed at a magnificent church as easy as ordering a fast food burger — your way. And you don’t even have to be Christian.

By lowering the entrance qualifications to zero, the Church of England is trying to attract people who are looking for nothing but pretty buildings and grinning, compliant vicars.

Which parish will be the first to offer a drive-through lane?

UK: Same-sex marriages to be permitted in Anglican churches

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From here:

Ministers are expected to publish plans to enable same-sex couples to “marry” in church, the BBC has learned.

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is to propose lifting the ban on civil partnerships taking place in religious settings in England and Wales.

There are no plans to compel religious organisations to hold ceremonies and the Church of England has said it would not allow its churches to be used.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said the change was “long overdue”.

Civil partnership ceremonies are currently entirely secular.

What next for the Church of England, one wonders. This, perhaps:

RUNCORN – England – Under new Coalition rules spearheaded by Nick Clegg, all churches in England and Wales will now be forced to include gay bath houses in the religious buildings.

The new initiative pushed through by Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, will involve massive renovations to all the churches in the British Isles.

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is to propose pushing through the gay bath house bill making it compulsory to include bath houses in all religious settings in England and Wales.

“We’ll have bath houses where the men and priests can congregate and even a viewing gallery where Coalition church bath house inspectors can ensure that the gay orgies within the churches are conducted in a gay enough manner,” Arch Deacon of the Bristol Diocese, Henry Felcher, told the BBC.

Already, there has been interest from some celebrities like George Michael and Sir Elton John.

“We’ll be going to church a lot more often in England now. I’ll bring the baby with me to tell him about the bees and the bees,” Sir Elton John told the Los Angeles Times.

Anglican Church considers “baptism lite”

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From here:

Church of England baptism services may be re-written to remove some references to Christianity.

The plan for a new ‘baptism lite’ service designed to make christenings more interesting to non-churchgoers will be considered next month by the Church’s parliament, the General Synod.

Supporters say the baptism service should be ‘expressed in culturally appropriate and accessible language’ that is readily understood by ‘non-theologically versed Britons’.
But traditionalist clergy said the idea amounted to ‘dumbing down’.

The new service would be used at 150,000 christenings each year. If the plan is accepted, it will be the third full re-write of the baptism ceremony in around 30 years – the version in the Church’s Book of Common Prayer went virtually unaltered for more than 400 years until 1980.

Complaints centre on three sections of the baptism service from the Church’s latest prayer book, Common Worship, authorised for use in 1997.

In one, parents, godparents or an adult being baptised are asked to ‘reject the devil and all rebellion against God’ and to renounce ‘the deceit and corruption of evil’. They are asked to ‘submit to Christ as Lord’.

Next I suppose there will be Salvation Lite, where we can:

Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Oh, sorry, I forgot, the Church of England has already done that.

Anglicans heading for Rome have to vacate their buildings

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From here:

They have worshipped together for decades on the pews of their parish church. Generations of their loved ones have been baptised, married and buried there.

But now a Church of England congregation is being torn apart by the Pope’s offer to welcome disaffected Anglican traditionalists into the Catholic Church.

In a vote which has split the local community and left long-standing friends on opposite sides of a growing divide, 54 parishioners at St Barnabas Tunbridge Wells have indicated that they intended to become Catholics while 18 said they would remain in the established Church….

At St Barnabas the move towards Rome is being led by the vicar, Fr Ed Tomlinson. He believes that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let down by Church leaders.

But he has been told by the diocese of Rochester that if he and his followers leave the Church of England they will no longer be allowed to hold services, even on a shared basis, at St Barnabas – a nineteenth-century red-brick church where Siegfried Sassoon, the First World War poet, was baptised.

The firm stance has infuriated Fr Tomlinson, the vicar since 2006. “The whole thing stinks to high heaven,” he said.

“The Archdeacon made it abundantly clear that he does not want to entertain the notion of shared worship space and that he would resist my remaining here in any capacity.

“How lamentable that a solution based on unity exists but those with authority seem more intent on division.”

I have an eerie feeling of déjà vu. The Church of England’s hierarchy has demonstrated that, for all its prattle about ecumenism, what counts is kow-towing to the earthly power of the rapidly disintegrating ecclesiastical old boys’ – and women’s’ now – club of petty pointy-hatted eco-justice obsessed autocrats that pass for prelates in England’s green and pleasant land.

The Church of England selling the family jewels

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From here:

The Church of England has been secretly plotting the sale of one of its greatest treasures, a set of paintings worth an estimated £15 million, despite concerns the move will provoke a furore.

Leaked documents show senior officials are acutely aware there could be a backlash if the 12 paintings that have hung in the historic home of the Bishops of Durham for 250 years disappeared into the hands of a ‘billionaire from Russia’.

The confidential documents also reveal the Church Commissioners, the Church’s financial arm, have hired a London public relations firm for up to £37,000 to handle the predicted outcry over the sale.

The Commissioners, who include the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, faced such a storm when they last raised the prospect of selling the paintings ten years ago that they were forced to shelve the idea.

Art lovers, MPs and even the then Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, expressed outrage that the collection of large canvases by the 17th Century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbaran could be moved from its home and even broken up or sold abroad.

No doubt the Church of England needs the cash to continue to promote its “mission” – whatever that is – or perhaps to continue to house its bishops in style – including, up until recently,  Tom Wright, whose attachment to some very expensive paintings doesn’t prevent him noting that in the world the rich get rich at the expense of the poor. One wonders how future bishops of Durham will be able to bring themselves to continue pontificating on the evils of poverty without the consolation of being surrounded by the aesthetic delights of the Spanish masters.

World War 2 in the Church of England

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From the BBC:

The Bishop of Lewes has been criticised for comparing the debate over the ordination of women bishops to the outbreak of World War II.

The Rt Rev Wallace Benn told a Church conference of Anglicans that he felt there was “real serious warfare just around the corner”.

The bishop said the Church of England into which he had been ordained was “not the same Church today”.

Supporters of women’s ordination said the bishop’s views were “demeaning”.

Speaking at the Reform conference of conservative Anglicans in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, the bishop said: “I’m about to use an analogy, and I use it quite deliberately and carefully.

“I feel very much increasingly that we’re in January of 1939.

“What we must not do is create a phoney war, but we need to be aware that there is real serious warfare just around the corner.”

Christina Rees, of Women and the Church (Watch), said the bishop’s views were “demeaning”.

Whatever one’s view of the legitimacy of women bishops, the above comment from Christina Rees is at least useful for the light it sheds on how liberals think: they don’t. Whether Ms. Rees finds opposition to lady bishops demeaning or not is beside the point. The truth is, there are two factions at war with each other in the worldwide Anglican Church. One holds to the orthodoxy of 2000 years of Christian understanding, the other wants to adopt innovations that – the orthodox would claim – make the Church less than Christian.

For all of Rowan Williams’ Hegalian finagling, the two factions can’t coexist within the same organisation: they are diametrically opposed to one another. Lady bishops are the tip of the iceberg; the Anglican Communion is already at war with itself and Christina Rees along, with her cohorts, should open her demeaned eyes and recognise that what Rev. Wallace said is true. It is going to get much worse.

Druidry to be recognized as a religion

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From the BBC:

Druidry is to become the first pagan practice to be given official recognition as a religion.

The Charity Commission has accepted that druids’ worship of natural spirits could be seen as religious activity.

The Druid Network’s charitable status entitles it to tax breaks, but the organisation says it does not earn enough to benefit from this.

The commission says the network’s work in promoting druidry as a religion is in the public interest.

The move comes thousands of years after the first druids worshipped in Britain.

Druidry was one the first known spiritual practices in Britain, and druids existed in Celtic societies elsewhere in Europe as well…..

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott says that with concern for the environment growing and the influence of mainstream faiths waning, druidry is flourishing more now than at any time since the arrival of Christianity.

Druidry’s followers are not restricted to one god or creator, but worship the spirit they believe inhabits the earth and forces of nature such as thunder.

Druids also worship the spirits of places, such as mountains and rivers, with rituals focused particularly on the turning of the seasons.

After a four-year inquiry, the Charity Commission decided that druidry offered coherent practices for the worship of a supreme being, and provided a beneficial moral framework.Add an Image

The decision will also mean that druidry will have the status of a genuine faith.

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, was inducted as a Druid in 2002, an act which shows a surprising degree of prescience on his part. It provides him an employment opportunity for when the time comes – perhaps it has already come – when the Church of England is no longer recognized as a religion.