Who cares if the Church of England tears itself apart this weekend? Its million active members in Britain are barely ahead of the Roman Catholics, from whose church it separated five centuries ago, and the 930,000 practising Muslims. Only 15% of babies are now baptised into the Church of England and few of them are likely to graduate to church membership.
Schism is the occupational disease of religion. If, through the defection of ecclesiastical conservatives, West Indians and Africans, there are soon to be two Anglican churches in place of one, most Britons will just not notice. But their established church remains a substantial national institution, custodian of British values even to the many who do not patronise it. When it suffers an attack of episcopal knife crime, a message goes out that “the centre cannot hold”.
The cause of the conflict, the gender and sexual orientation of bishops, is as arcane as the Pelagian heresy. It is sadly ironic that the church should be headed at this time by an archbishop, Rowan Williams, whose personality seems more ideally cast for martyrdom than leadership. His saintly pain at the refusal of the contending parties to hear his lofty platitudes has become a national agony.
[blockquote]Many find it unbelievable that a movement dedicated to peace, love and brotherhood should in 2008 find itself debating the ecclesiastical significance of 1st-century texts on sexual behaviour. […] The origins of this dispute thus lie not so much in the biblical understanding of sexuality but rather in Anglicanism’s inability to handle global diversity in human behaviour. There is no way African cultures will regard sex in the same way as Asians or Europeans. Why does the church pretend otherwise?[/blockquote]Well, if the church is just a social club dedicated to the pursuit of an entirely culturally defined set of justice issues, I guess Simon Jenkins is absolutely spot on in his critique.
But then of course it then would not be orientated towards a God, but towards man; much less to the God revealed supremely in Jesus Christ through the scriptural witness. As such, it can neither be called Christian, nor even be called a church in the proper sense. If that emasculated spiritualisation of prevailing culture is all you are determined to leave of the Church of England, Simon, driven by some “broad church” idolatry – if that’s the agenda, then why are you surprised that Christians (aka “conservatives”) are worrying about having to leave it behind?
Quite honestly, this seems to me to be a piece of playing to the elitist gallery who loathe and despise all things religious in Britain. Tolerance, whatever that means, is now the great god in so much of this country, and that tolerance has a strong flavor of rolling over and playing dead about it. It also leads to the kind of illogicalities we find here where the attitude of some within the church are projected onto all, and the ones who have clarity of doctrine HAVE to be by the very nature of their believing the least tolerant, caring, loving, and so forth. It has to be said that some orthodox Christians don’t do a lot to help their cause.
I was at a gathering on Friday with an Anglican and a Roman Catholic colleague. The Roman Catholic expressed the exasperation that there are so many good things happening in the churches (of all denominations) up and land and these never get reported — only the other stuff. We Anglicans said Amen! The media here have their agenda, and woe betide if the facts inconveniently get in the way!
Sir Simon Jenkins – who has recently been made head of the National Trust and is author of one of the most successful church architecture guides of all time – says what most people in England (that is, most who go to church only occasionally) are also saying.
It is clear that the Church of England has to sort itself out if it is to retain its reach as a national church.
#3 badman, I guess most people are saying that – if indeed they are – because this is how the issue gets presented to them by the predominantly liberal press. Simon Jenkins, no doubt, means it when he says that the origin is “not so much in the biblical understanding”. For him and many (most?) others that may be true, and that is [i]precisely the problem[/i].
For (loosely speaking) the GAFCON crowd, biblical interpretation and divine authority are [i]precisely[/i] the issues at stake. Read from this perspective, Simon’s assertion (‘really, we all used to get along just fine with our theological differences and it’s merely a conflict of cultures’) is a clear expression of the presenting crisis. Thus the assertion demonstrates its own falsehood.
Taking a step back, it’s ironical to see how reappraisers and reasserters seem to inhabit completely different vocabularies, completely different perspectives, at times even – dare I say it? – completely different faiths. Too much of the discussion, in the press and elsewhere, shows no understanding whatever of the reigning perspective on the other side. The present piece is no exception to this and it is merely shallow and parochial as a result.
We agree that the CoE has some sorting out to do. What shape that will take is another matter. Let me just say that faith is not a commercial product to be modified according to focus groups’ whims, that the Kingdom of God is not a democracy, and that the bible seems to value faithfulness rather more highly than popularity.