The Principal of Pusey House, Oxford, the Revd Jonathan Baker, is to resign as a Freemason after being encouraged by the Archbishop of Canterbury to reconsider his membership before his consecration as the next Bishop of Ebbsfleet.
It was announced earlier this month…that Mr Baker would be one of the two new Provincial Episcopal Visitors, to replace Mgr Andrew Burnham, a leader of the RC Ordinariate, who seceded in January.
Mr Baker, who recently served as an Assistant Grand Chaplain to the Freemasons, posted a statement on the Ebbsfleet website last Friday, the day when he was contacted by a Sunday newspaper. He said that he had joined as a lay undergraduate in Oxford, and had found it to be “an organisation admirably committed to community life and involvement with a record of charitable giving second to none, especially among, for example, unfashionable areas of medical research”.
Of all the things on God’s green earth Rowan Williams could be concerned about, why does he pick this one to take a stand on? Is he an idiot or does he just play one on TV? BTW–I don’t care anything about free masonary. I would like the ABC to have some moral priorities on the things we all know he needs to take a stand on and hasn’t. My only conclusion is KJS gives him more money than whomever the head of the Free Masons might be.
While it is nice to know the ABC *CAN* take a stand on something, it makes it all the more damning that he hasn’t on issues that matter.
He had decided to resign “because of the particular charism of episcopal ministry and the burden that ministry bearsâ€.
But it was o.k. for RW to be associated with the Druids? What if he had asked Mr. Barker to leave his wife? Would he have consented? Now that he has broken his obligations, which he formerly declared to have taken freely, why should anyone trust him in the future. If RW thinks it is wrong for members of the episcopate to belong to the Fraternity, is it wrong for parochial and non-parochial clergy, or laymen? I’ll be curious to see how the UGLE respond.
#3 Welsh “Druidism” is an association of poets who write in and promote the Welsh language and its culture. It is not a religion or a secret society and makes no claim to be either. On the other hand the CofE has of late taken a hard line against the masonic order, which while not a religion is a secret society and in some of its parts promotes a form of Deism and can be a substitute for theism and revealed religion.
It is a good thing for Archbishop Geoffery Fisher that he didn’t have to interview with RW, as he was a lifelong Mason.
Masonry in the United States does not have the social support that it seems to have in England where some members of the royal family are Masons. Nor is membership common among Episcopal clergy, though I have known a number of Methodist clergy who are Masons. In Asheville the Masonic building at the north end of downtown is rented for a number of community events. I’ve been there for a wedding and for a meeting on homelessness.
No. 4’s comment is very helpful in clearing up these rumours of the Archbishop being a “Druid.” For quite some time now, having frequently seen these Druid references here and elsewhere from persons who are less than enthusiastic about Rowan Cantuar, I had assumed that he was a member of a motorcycle gang. It’s nice to be relieved of this concern.
Masonry is a secret spiritual society that is actually occult in nature. Its adherents take spiritual vows of loyalty that divide its members’ loyaties from Christ and this constitutes spiritual pollution and there are negative spiritual consequences to such vows.
The early church would have looked with horror and extreme disapproval these societies – and there are more than just the Masons. As the early church did, in healing and deliverance prayer ministry, we have all who would be spiritually cleansed and fully Christ’s to renounce all involvment with false and pagan religions, superstitious and occult practices and secret societies, etc….even ouija boards.
This is one of the few times I have agreed with Rowan Williams. I wish he were more spiritually cognizant of the multi-level dangers of sexual sin upon the human person, the church and society.
Masons in the US “officially” disavow that they are a religion. In Europe, some leaders have expressly emphasized that they are/were a religion. Today, they say they are not a religion “in most ways” but don’t fully separate themselves from earlier European Masonics who held otherwise.
I’m glad the ABC took the stand, but it is ridiculous that he won’t take a stand on the greater insidious danger of modernism in the AC and within ECUSA in particular.
While “theoretically less compromising” than in Europe, I don’t think any clergy should be Masons.
Well said, #2.
For some reason, ABC felt safe to take a stand on freemasonry, which I have no difficulty with. But it just begs the question why he appears so incapable of taking a stand on much else, except the promotion of liberalism within the church?