Tag Archives: Justin Welby

TEC changes the definition of marriage; Justin Welby is deeply concerned

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From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury today expressed deep concern about the stress for the Anglican Communion following the US Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops’ resolution to change the definition of marriage in the canons so that any reference to marriage as between a man and a woman is removed.

While recognising the prerogative of The Episcopal Church to address issues appropriate to its own context, Archbishop Justin Welby said that its decision will cause distress for some and have ramifications for the Anglican Communion as a whole, as well as for its ecumenical and interfaith relationships.

Other than the fact that I am still waiting with considerable anticipation for an archbishop to voice a shallow concern, what I find most interesting about this is that Welby’s worry is not so much whether it is Biblically sound to redefine marriage, but whether TEC’s decision will hasten the demise of the pallid but still twitching carcass belonging to what used to be the Anglican Communion.

In order to remain credible, and in the absence of any more potent stricture on TEC than deep concern from Canterbury, what choice will Provinces that take the Gospel seriously have but to further distance themselves from TEC – and Canterbury?

Incidentally, does anyone doubt that the Anglican Church of Canada will follow in TEC’s footsteps? Anyone?

Justin Welby peddles “inclusive capitalism”

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I was under the naïve impression that there was nothing left to which the overused to the point of meaninglessness adjective “inclusive” could be applied – but I was wrong.

From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury today calls on business and market leaders to be less self-serving and to adopt a new model known as “inclusive capitalism”.

[…..]

“Rather than just seeking a return on investment, there has to be a generosity that reaches out.”

Any model of capitalism that relied solely on self-interest would lead to the collapse of society, he warns, writing in the Telegraph.

“Altruism, the imitation of the God who acts in love that does not seek return, is a crucial part of a stable and functional society.”

To what organisation should we look for inspiration in eschewing financial self-interest and seeking no return on investments? The Church of England, of course:

The Church Commissioners hold investments whose value was approaching £6.7 billion at the end of 2014.

[…..]

Their long term target is a return of at least RPI [inflation] plus 5% over the long term.

A paradigm of inclusive capitalism: it includes £6.7 billion and 5% return over inflation.

Archbishop of Canterbury hosts multi-faith Lambeth schmooze

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It should be the beginning of a joke and, in a way, I suppose it is: a Muslim, Jew, Sikh, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Jainist and Christian all walk into Lambeth Palace; they look at the Christian and decide he doesn’t belong.

From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury last night hosted a reception for inter-religious and community leaders at Lambeth Palace.

Speaking at the annual event, which brings together members different faith groups to foster relationships, Archbishop Justin Welby reflected on the theme of reconciliation, which is one of his ministry priorities.

The event was attended by a wide range of people from Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Jain and Christian traditions.

I can think of a number of reasons why Welby might do this, none of which have anything to do with the hope of converting anyone, least of all the visitors, to Christianity.

The first is to demonstrate the pride with which Western Anglicanism holds firm to the proposition that it doesn’t much matter what anyone believes, so long as we can all get along.

The second is to disabuse those who are under the mistaken impression that the Anglican trinitarian god has three persons named Diversity, Inclusion and Equality; no, the one true Anglican god is now named Reconciliation.

The third is related to the first and second. If Jesus had simply learned to get along with everyone, to reconcile with them, he wouldn’t have ended up on that embarrassing  cross, removing a major stumbling block in our getting along with Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Buddhists and Jainists.

Fourth, Justin Welby has finally realised that it is easier to find agreement between Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Buddhists and Jainists than between Anglicans.

I write in jest, of course. To be absolutely serious, Welby himself tells us what this was really all about: the need to create a space that is relational:  a convenient void into which one can jettison unwanted relations. What could be clearer than that?

Justin Welby: the secret of being an archbishop is to be reconciled to your own embarrassment

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From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said it is “embarrassing” that posts in the Church of England are being advertised for less than the living wage despite the Church’s declared commitment to the principle.

[….]

The living wage commitment was included in the controversial bishops’ pastoral letter, ‘Who is my Neighbour?’, released last week.
Speaking at a conference in Birmingham today for business and Church leaders, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that the revelation was “embarrassing”. However, the Press Association reported: “But in the light of transparency, which I welcome, I will say we are a complex institution and every parish church and cathedral is an independent charity, as is every diocese.

“We don’t have a centralised method of control.

“I’m not very keen on centralised control where, from far away, you tell people what to do.”

If only Welby took the same view when it comes to the government. The Pastoral Letter issued by Church of England Bishops expends a torrent of verbiage on telling everyone what to do – when it isn’t waxing lyrical on the virtues of centralised control.

As it happens, I reported on the Church’s stingy salaries in July 2014, so Welby has no excuse for being unaware of this: he just needs to read Anglican Samizdat.

Justin Welby wants businesses to pay more tax

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He is upset that businesses are using foreign countries with more attractive tax laws as a haven for tax saving.

From here:

The Archbishop kept his strongest comments for the role taxes play in ensuring that companies contribute to the societies in which they operate.

“There has always been the principle that you pay the tax where you earn the money,” he told me.

“If you earn the money in a country, the revenue service of that country needs to get a fair share of what you have earned.”

Welby’s point about contributing to the society in which a business operates by paying tax in that country would be more convincing if the Church of England didn’t receive extravagant tax breaks. The church collects £1 billion a year in donations, spends £189 million in salaries, has an investment portfolio worth £5.5 billion and receives £84 million in Gift Aid tax rebates.

The church, of course, is a charity and does not operate for profit – although the £5.5 billion looks suspiciously like profit to me. In spite of its spiritual aspirations – none of which seem particularly in evidence these days – as an organisation, the CofE runs as a business.

It doesn’t help that in 2012 when the government threatened to impose VAT tax on church building renovations, the church pleaded to be exempt from that tax, too.

To be clear: I don’t think churches should have to pay tax. However, since churches are in that privileged position in our society, a church leader who whines about businesses minimising their taxes deserves all the ridicule we can muster: his organisation is a consummate tax dodger.

Justin Welby the socialist

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From here:

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby opened the discussion, which was part of the Trinity’s Institute’s conference on Creating Common Good: A Practical Conference on Economic Inequality, Jan. 22 to 25. Examining scriptures from both the New and Old Testaments, he said, “There is an ambivalence, an acceptance of wealth as blessing and yet a hesitation, a doubt, a fear about its consequences.”

Of course, examples of people who have created great wealth and used it for the common good, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, spring to mind and are reason to give thanks, he acknowledged. There is no biblical injunction against all personal wealth but, he said, there is an injunction against “the systematic and indefinite accumulation of grossly unequal [wealth in] societies.”  That, he said, “always leads to abuse, even if every wealthy person is generous, because the asymmetries of power means that wealth allocation becomes a matter of paternalism not a basic issue of justice.”

There has never been – nor, I contend will there ever be – a society in which there is not an allocation of grossly unequal wealth. The difference between capitalist inequality, an inequality from which, as a salaried archbishop Welby derives considerable benefit, and socialist inequality is that the poor in capitalist countries tend to be far better off than the poor in socialist countries.

As Winston Churchill observed, the only equality that socialism manages to spread is equal misery – apart from the ruling elite, of course, who appropriate grossly unequal wealth.

I can’t help wondering if Welby believes his own Gospel – the one where the poor are blessed and a camel going through the eye of a needle is easier than a rich person going to heaven. In Welby’s red Christianity, the rich young ruler would not be invited to sell everything he had and give the proceeds to the poor: his wealth would have already been confiscated by the state, depriving him of the choice. But that’s what socialism is all about: removing choice.

Canadian Primate says 2018 Lambeth unlikely

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Justin Welby doesn’t want to hold another Lambeth conference only to discover a large number of bishops absenting themselves because they are upset with the presence of the Anglican Church of Canada and TEC; both provinces have wandered away from received Christian truth according to Primates from the Global South. As a result, Justin Welby is meeting with the Primates, ostensibly to listen to their concerns, and, no doubt, to try and convince them to show up.

Fred Hiltz thinks this is “okay”; anyone adept at reading between the lines will notice a concealed “just” in front of the “okay”. Hiltz isn’t very happy about it: it isn’t “okay” at all. The reason is simple enough: the Global South Primates have little use for the obfuscating tactics of Western Anglicanism: Indabas, the listening process, holy listening, facilitated conversations and other such claptrap. They will tell Welby exactly what they think of TEC’s and the ACoC’s elevation of homo-erotic gratification to the status of holy  – and it won’t be pretty.

Reading what Hiltz said gives the impression that Welby and Hiltz are simpatico – I hesitate to imply that Welby is in the pocket of the North American Primates. The Global South and Hiltz are, of course, antipathetic, if not downright mutually hostile.

Hiltz said that sort of consultation is “okay,” but noted that it is a change from the way the meeting has been called in the past. “He may want to style it so that it is the Archbishop of Canterbury in consultation with and support of the primates, but historically it is the Archbishop that convenes a Lambeth Conference, and then people decide whether they will come or not, including some primates.”

Justin Welby and the Idolatry of Reconciliation

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I’ve been sitting on the balcony of our apartment in Brisbane enjoying watching the river traffic and strolling along the river walk: OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA _DSC0172-2 _DSC0245Although this is more entertaining than dwelling on the convulsions of the terminally sick Anglican Communion, I have taken the odd moment to listen to the ever louder death rattle.

Justin Welby is so keen on reconciliation, I had thought him a Reconciliation Fundamentalist; it seems to be worse than that, though. I suspect that when the time comes for man to judge the fallen angels, Welby will plead the case for a good disagreement rather than outright damnation.

Just as there is no reconciling good with evil, there is no reconciling the faux-Christianity of the Anglican Church of Canada and TEC with the genuine article. To pretend otherwise is to make an idol of reconciliation.

From here:

The ACNA is a “fellow member of the church of Christ in the world,” but added the “ACNA is a separate church. It is not part of the Anglican Communion.”

[……]

“We are committed ecumenically to reconciliation of the churches, to visible unity this is John 17 particularly the last few verses. That is a profound commitment, a profound emotional and theological commitment. Where there is the possibility of reconciliation with ecumenical partners, ACNA is clearly an ecumenical partner, it is a fellow member of the church of Christ in the world, as with all ecumenical partners we seek reconciliation.”

Justin Welby hopes women bishops won’t be an ecumenical stumbling block

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From here:

In a letter sent to Pope Francis, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said he hopes the vote to allow the ordination of women bishops would not prove a stumbling block to future “full communion” between the Anglican and Catholic churches.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the Most Rev Justin Welby admitted in the letter that the vote at the General Synod earlier this month to allow women bishops was a “further difficulty” as far unity is concerned.

In the letter to Francis and other church leaders from around the world, the Archbishop said: “We are aware that our other ecumenical partners may find this a further difficulty on the journey towards full communion.

“There is, however, much that unites us, and I pray that the bonds of friendship will continue to be strengthened and that our understanding of each other’s traditions will grow. It is clear to me that whilst our theological dialogue will face new challenges, there is nonetheless so much troubling our world today that our common witness to the Gospel is of more importance than ever.”

I’m sure Justin Welby is correct in saying that a unified witness to the Gospel is needed now more than ever. It seems to me, though, that when the Church of England voted in favour of women bishops, they were setting their own parochial agenda above the unified witness to the Gospel to which they claim to be so committed. Justin Welby was not ignorant of the fact that ordaining women bishops would further fracture Christian unity: women bishops were more important that a common witness to the Gospel and, in that sense, more important than the Gospel itself.

Justin Welby declares that gay marriage is great

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Justin Welby, for reasons known only to himself, decided to be interviewed by PinkNews, a “gay news service”. What he said was revealing:

When asked if he had a ‘message’ for Britain’s LGBT community, Archbishop Welby told PinkNews.co.uk: “As you know I have said, and got a fair amount of flak for it within parts of the Church, we have to accept, and quite rightly, that the same-sex marriage act is law, and that it’s right and proper, it’s the law of the land, and that’s great.

This has prompted Lambeth Palace to call on its ready supply of advanced hermeneutics to obnubilate what Welby said in order rob it of its obvious meaning and render it harmless:

Lambeth Palace insisted that despite the initiative, the Archbishop remained opposed in principle to same-sex marriage and that he had been speaking about the right of Parliament to change the law when he used the word “great”.

No-one still in possession of his faculties could possibly believe Lambeth’s reinterpretation of what Webly plainly said, in spite of the fact that Lambeth’s theologians have been honing their obfuscatory skills on the Biblical texts for decades; so I’m quite certain Welby will be sent for clerical woolly-speak re-education when he returns home. And he won’t be let out again without his handlers.