I saw this at Father Tim Fountain site where he got an email from Louie Crew playing up these malcontents new website. These were the talking points:
[blockquote] o Bring historic changes to the nature of Anglicanism. [Louie and his “crew†certainly want nothing to do with historic changes!]
o Trade a vibrant and colorful Anglicanism for drab uniformity. [Louie’s AC might be rainbow colored. Vibrant? Not by a long shot. ]
o Impede local mission and destroy creative evangelism. [Is Louie supposed to use the e-word?]
o Trade local oversight for centralized decision making. [I wonder if the liberals will be eating their words when Mrs. Schori sets up her The Episcopal Communion as a strict tyranny.] [/blockquote]
The list of the ne’er do wells organizing the movement is found [url=http://www.noanglicancovenant.org/about.html ]here[/url].
[i]”We’ve taken a small but vibrant denomination and turned it into a moribund cesspool of litigation and licentiousness. Let’s do the same with Anglican Communion!”[/i]
It makes me half support the waste-of-time Covenant just to irritate these types. But the battle will be won, not be more paper resolutions, but by evangelization – something the malcontents have no clue how to do.
Baby Blue’s got it too. She points out that its the same circle of activists with yet another “coalition” letterhead. What I said there:
[blockquote] The same small group is well served by a bunch of old money to burn and a church membership that is aged and concerned with a bit of peace and comfort after life’s long labors. TEC has no critical mass of people concerned about anything beyond the current generation. The most influential groups are a) the small group of activists funding their LGBT drama hobby and b) the aged members who want a bit of familiar comfort. There’s the governing symbiosis in TEC right now. [/blockquote]
[blockquote]The Coalition comprises dedicated Christians, many of them bloggers[/blockquote]
Heh, most of them are the ever-irate blowhards from over at Simple Simon’s and the Mad Priest’s! What a hoot – out ride the Moan Rangers
benjamin #5 they’re the same folks who tell people about a “three legged stool” on which reason = personal experience and stands in judgement over Scripture for the church’s life.
Hooker argued [i] against [/i] the Puritan view of individual conscience standing over civil and ecclesiastical law. TEC’s “prophetic actions” in contravention of its own canons can’t be justified from Hooker.
But these activists know that the aged people in the pews don’t know Hooker from Houdini and could care less – they just want the comfort of familiar fellowship for the years they have. And the activists are fine with that model of church as long as it gives them the material stuff to act our their psychodrama.
Thank you #7. ‘Reason’ for Hooker is something like the reformation principle that God has so outfitted his people that scripture can speak to them, reasonably, and so without need of a special ecclesial arbitor (Rome). But as you indicate, the Puritans are those who turned ‘individual conscience’ into a special standing — this point needs to be hammered home, because, of course, the progressives in our church are, in actual fact, Hooker’s Puritan opponents.
Blowhards is right – they have pompously embargoed their press release – this is ever more risible, but no doubt they had a lot of fun putting it all together, making flags out of mummy’s old dresses, dressing up in cardboard armor, and putting fingerpaint on one another for camouflage.
What surprises me is that they seem to have given up the thought that they (through TEC money and political maneuvering) might not be able to simply take over whatever instrumentalities the Covenant would work through and make them devices for the propagation of their own notions. Does this signal a loss of nerve?
All this is very heartening, no doubt, to someone, someplace. It’s just that I rather like the Anglican Communion, in a nostalgic, culturally conditioned sort of way. Thank you for your witty postings, as always, Pageantmaster.
As stated on several occasions, the covenant will not lift the Anglican Communion from the tar pit of revision that is slowly and steadily pulling it down. Even if said covenant was heartily endorsed by all, the next chapter would be “interpretation” according to whatever meaning can be imported to promote the correct agenda.
The hope of recovering the value of the covenant resides in its place within a new Fellowship of the Anglican Church – one that bases unity in truth, is governed by a central council, and participated in by churches who are willing to be accountable to one another and to God.
You have to give credit to the Africans and the rest of the Global South for seeing the truth years ago, and not being suckered into playing all these interminable Western procedural games.
I would like to see someone follow-up on Fr. Frank Fuller’s comment #13 above.
Are these anti-covenant folk seeing some teeth in the covenant that they are passively admitting to in their attempt to stop it?
Personally, I am not so hopeful but I’d love to be wrong. In reality, I don’t know if all the goofiness is worth sticking around to see what happens. After all, I think the standard response of the revisionists to the orthodox is, “What, I thought all you people left by now.”
Isn’t now the time when someone comments that if some crowd on either side of the issue find the current covenant objectionable, then it must be eminently reasonable and moderate?
😉
(Of course – with never an acknowledgement of (i) consistent triangulation to the left; (ii) the history of intereference with any hint at discipline; (iii) the meaninglessness of the current draft; (iv) the subversion of the instruments – including that in charge of any discipline; ad infinitum)
“International campaign started to Stop Anglican Covenant” OK, I suppose this could be considered international but I would call it both a small and a skewed sample of the WWAC once again getting an unrepresentative voice. I would like to offer a segment of their theme song “Don’t fence me in”.
[blockquote]I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses
And I can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences
Don’t fence me in.[/blockquote]
This whole campaign against the Covenant would be totally ludicrous, if there weren’t so many self-deceived leaders in TEC and apparently the CoE (etc.) who are sympathetic to the ridiculous viewpoint it represents.
Thanks especially to Fr. Tim’s #7, and Dr. Seitz’ #9, with which I’m in full accord. Not to mention robroy (#3), of course, with whom I’m almost always in hearty accord.
Our foes can’t interpret Hooker any better than they can Scripture. In good post-modern fashion, they take words on paper as mere ink blots that they can deconstruct and re-interpret in any old way they like. They are totally captive to the antinomian Zeitgeist. They epitomize the sort of false teachers castigated in Jude 4 for turning the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ into mere licenciousness, where anthing goes.
But if I may say so, I only wish that what these illiberal liberals accuse the Covenant of were true. I wish it did in fact provide a means by which we could “narrow the acceptable range of belief and practice within Anglicanism.” We desperately need a way to put the Doctrine and Discipline back into the historic Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of Anglicanism. But what these bitter opponents of the Covenant consider the heart of “historic” Anglicanism is merely the traditional vagueness and unwillingness to exercise any real discipline that has marked western Anglicanism all too often in the last hundred years or so.
Probably too late, but #s 7 & 9, given Hooker’s strong natural law emphasis wouldn’t “reason” also be our capacity to grasp and participate in God’s order, the logos? And again, on the Puritan platform, Scripture becomes, in effect, an arbitrary authority with no connection to historical reason or the natural law. Personal conscience then becomes equally arbitrary and, ultimately, antinomian. The basic insight that the no covenant platform is a complete inversion of Hooker is sound; however, I believe you are being uncharitable to the Puritans by associating them with that crew!
#26–the point has been made by others: ‘reason’ and even ‘natural law’ meant something different for Hooker than for Locke. That is why scripture and reason are not ‘choices’ — use one and if doesn’t work, go to the other…Reason and ‘natural law’ are subsets of the doctrine of creation, whereas in the modern period, for many they are a sort of gallop poll of what people are thinking at the time: SS relationships are good and natural, because people experience them that way — or so some hold. Of course natural law as divinely given is more like gravity. You know the joke about the man who has jumped out of the window and the question is asked as he whizzies by, ‘How’s it going?’ to which he replies, ‘So far, so good.’
Ho hum. Don’t they realize that the undeclared campaign is already accomplishing that mission?
Why bother? Who cares! The AC is all over.
I saw this at Father Tim Fountain site where he got an email from Louie Crew playing up these malcontents new website. These were the talking points:
[blockquote] o Bring historic changes to the nature of Anglicanism. [Louie and his “crew†certainly want nothing to do with historic changes!]
o Trade a vibrant and colorful Anglicanism for drab uniformity. [Louie’s AC might be rainbow colored. Vibrant? Not by a long shot. ]
o Impede local mission and destroy creative evangelism. [Is Louie supposed to use the e-word?]
o Trade local oversight for centralized decision making. [I wonder if the liberals will be eating their words when Mrs. Schori sets up her The Episcopal Communion as a strict tyranny.] [/blockquote]
The list of the ne’er do wells organizing the movement is found [url=http://www.noanglicancovenant.org/about.html ]here[/url].
[i]”We’ve taken a small but vibrant denomination and turned it into a moribund cesspool of litigation and licentiousness. Let’s do the same with Anglican Communion!”[/i]
It makes me half support the waste-of-time Covenant just to irritate these types. But the battle will be won, not be more paper resolutions, but by evangelization – something the malcontents have no clue how to do.
Baby Blue’s got it too. She points out that its the same circle of activists with yet another “coalition” letterhead. What I said there:
[blockquote] The same small group is well served by a bunch of old money to burn and a church membership that is aged and concerned with a bit of peace and comfort after life’s long labors. TEC has no critical mass of people concerned about anything beyond the current generation. The most influential groups are a) the small group of activists funding their LGBT drama hobby and b) the aged members who want a bit of familiar comfort. There’s the governing symbiosis in TEC right now. [/blockquote]
Not to raise the level of dialogue here, but…have these anti-Covenant folks read Hooker? He wrote about law and obedience, not about comprehension.
[blockquote]The Coalition comprises dedicated Christians, many of them bloggers[/blockquote]
Heh, most of them are the ever-irate blowhards from over at Simple Simon’s and the Mad Priest’s! What a hoot – out ride the Moan Rangers
benjamin #5 they’re the same folks who tell people about a “three legged stool” on which reason = personal experience and stands in judgement over Scripture for the church’s life.
Hooker argued [i] against [/i] the Puritan view of individual conscience standing over civil and ecclesiastical law. TEC’s “prophetic actions” in contravention of its own canons can’t be justified from Hooker.
But these activists know that the aged people in the pews don’t know Hooker from Houdini and could care less – they just want the comfort of familiar fellowship for the years they have. And the activists are fine with that model of church as long as it gives them the material stuff to act our their psychodrama.
Diddy-um-diddy-um-diddy-um-tum-tum
Thank you #7. ‘Reason’ for Hooker is something like the reformation principle that God has so outfitted his people that scripture can speak to them, reasonably, and so without need of a special ecclesial arbitor (Rome). But as you indicate, the Puritans are those who turned ‘individual conscience’ into a special standing — this point needs to be hammered home, because, of course, the progressives in our church are, in actual fact, Hooker’s Puritan opponents.
Who were those masked men?
And they have a facebook page, No Anglican Covenant (which I only know about because one of my facebook friends became a fan of it today).
Blowhards is right – they have pompously embargoed their press release – this is ever more risible, but no doubt they had a lot of fun putting it all together, making flags out of mummy’s old dresses, dressing up in cardboard armor, and putting fingerpaint on one another for camouflage.
What surprises me is that they seem to have given up the thought that they (through TEC money and political maneuvering) might not be able to simply take over whatever instrumentalities the Covenant would work through and make them devices for the propagation of their own notions. Does this signal a loss of nerve?
The Masked Men Father Tim, seen on BabyBlue’s.
I see they have wheeled out retired old failure Peter Selby, former Bishop of Worcester Sauce.
What a sad bunch.
Expect the usual unctuous articles in the Times, Guardian. etc by their little chums, bigging them up.
All this is very heartening, no doubt, to someone, someplace. It’s just that I rather like the Anglican Communion, in a nostalgic, culturally conditioned sort of way. Thank you for your witty postings, as always, Pageantmaster.
#7. Timothy Fountain,
“three legged stool†I think that now means rock, scissors and paper for TEC.
As stated on several occasions, the covenant will not lift the Anglican Communion from the tar pit of revision that is slowly and steadily pulling it down. Even if said covenant was heartily endorsed by all, the next chapter would be “interpretation” according to whatever meaning can be imported to promote the correct agenda.
The hope of recovering the value of the covenant resides in its place within a new Fellowship of the Anglican Church – one that bases unity in truth, is governed by a central council, and participated in by churches who are willing to be accountable to one another and to God.
#17. Fr. Dale,
That is hysterical! I am totally “borrowing” this sometime in the future. Thank you for this.
You have to give credit to the Africans and the rest of the Global South for seeing the truth years ago, and not being suckered into playing all these interminable Western procedural games.
I would like to see someone follow-up on Fr. Frank Fuller’s comment #13 above.
Are these anti-covenant folk seeing some teeth in the covenant that they are passively admitting to in their attempt to stop it?
Personally, I am not so hopeful but I’d love to be wrong. In reality, I don’t know if all the goofiness is worth sticking around to see what happens. After all, I think the standard response of the revisionists to the orthodox is, “What, I thought all you people left by now.”
Isn’t now the time when someone comments that if some crowd on either side of the issue find the current covenant objectionable, then it must be eminently reasonable and moderate?
😉
(Of course – with never an acknowledgement of (i) consistent triangulation to the left; (ii) the history of intereference with any hint at discipline; (iii) the meaninglessness of the current draft; (iv) the subversion of the instruments – including that in charge of any discipline; ad infinitum)
“International campaign started to Stop Anglican Covenant” OK, I suppose this could be considered international but I would call it both a small and a skewed sample of the WWAC once again getting an unrepresentative voice. I would like to offer a segment of their theme song “Don’t fence me in”.
[blockquote]I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses
And I can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences
Don’t fence me in.[/blockquote]
This whole campaign against the Covenant would be totally ludicrous, if there weren’t so many self-deceived leaders in TEC and apparently the CoE (etc.) who are sympathetic to the ridiculous viewpoint it represents.
Thanks especially to Fr. Tim’s #7, and Dr. Seitz’ #9, with which I’m in full accord. Not to mention robroy (#3), of course, with whom I’m almost always in hearty accord.
Our foes can’t interpret Hooker any better than they can Scripture. In good post-modern fashion, they take words on paper as mere ink blots that they can deconstruct and re-interpret in any old way they like. They are totally captive to the antinomian Zeitgeist. They epitomize the sort of false teachers castigated in Jude 4 for turning the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ into mere licenciousness, where anthing goes.
But if I may say so, I only wish that what these illiberal liberals accuse the Covenant of were true. I wish it did in fact provide a means by which we could “narrow the acceptable range of belief and practice within Anglicanism.” We desperately need a way to put the Doctrine and Discipline back into the historic Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of Anglicanism. But what these bitter opponents of the Covenant consider the heart of “historic” Anglicanism is merely the traditional vagueness and unwillingness to exercise any real discipline that has marked western Anglicanism all too often in the last hundred years or so.
David Handy+
Amen, #9….
Probably too late, but #s 7 & 9, given Hooker’s strong natural law emphasis wouldn’t “reason” also be our capacity to grasp and participate in God’s order, the logos? And again, on the Puritan platform, Scripture becomes, in effect, an arbitrary authority with no connection to historical reason or the natural law. Personal conscience then becomes equally arbitrary and, ultimately, antinomian. The basic insight that the no covenant platform is a complete inversion of Hooker is sound; however, I believe you are being uncharitable to the Puritans by associating them with that crew!
We certainly wouldn’t want a covenant to put a stop to this:
http://www.toronto.anglican.ca/images/up-N47_Pastoral_Guidelines_Final_2010.pdf
#26–the point has been made by others: ‘reason’ and even ‘natural law’ meant something different for Hooker than for Locke. That is why scripture and reason are not ‘choices’ — use one and if doesn’t work, go to the other…Reason and ‘natural law’ are subsets of the doctrine of creation, whereas in the modern period, for many they are a sort of gallop poll of what people are thinking at the time: SS relationships are good and natural, because people experience them that way — or so some hold. Of course natural law as divinely given is more like gravity. You know the joke about the man who has jumped out of the window and the question is asked as he whizzies by, ‘How’s it going?’ to which he replies, ‘So far, so good.’
27. cseitz,
I believe the phrase “generous pastoral response” was first crafted in TEC.
And it didn’t mean a thing…..completely gutless.