A bishop who is converting to Rome has likened the Church of England to a ”˜coffee chain going out of business’.
The Right Reverend Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet, said there were signs the Church was losing a sense of where it came from.
He said: ”˜If Costa Coffee, every time you went to a branch, did something different and you didn’t know what the product was, they would go out of business.
Right, because teaching and liturgy are always identical from parish to parish in Roman Catholicism… My, it’s awfully green on that side of the pasture.
Depends on what the green is, doesn’t it. And that the current pasture is unsustainable.
It is a witty statement, however, and will stick in the minds of countless people for a long, long time. The coffee bar comparison is apt, in a sense. The quality of the product varies so much from one outlet to another that one can’t have confidence in what will be served.
One doesn’t want to spoil Bishop Burnham’s amusing analogy, but the irony seems to have been lost on him that he comes from a tradition which has been serving cappuccino and espresso Romano for the last 150 odd years while the rest of us have been taking our coffee straight or au lait.
Dear people, he’s not talking specifically about variations from one parish to the next. He’s talking about all the ongoing experimentation that’s initiated on high and is urged on each parish to engage in– trial liturgies, women in collars, changes in basic theological/doctrinal underpinnings. Don’t everyone be like the press who, in England, assume it’s all about women bishops, and gay bishops in North America. It’s about the big picture of doctrinal rejection, a major part of which is our incremental buy-in of the sexual revolution. Parish-to-parish, and priest-to-priest, liturgical variations have always been with us (like Someone said of the poor). And that’s quite tolerable as long as orthodoxy is upheld. So what if some parishes use the Roman Rite? Many use no rite at all. It’s not changes in the way the coffee is served that’s the problem; it’s the brand, the flavour, the additives, the quality. He’s talking substance, not form.
What the bishop didn’t say is that the chain has altered its policies from the first days of operation. Back then if a bishop wanted to switch franchises it meant being burned alive, hung, drawn & quartered, etc. It’s a little easier these days to become a barista at the shop down the street.
He is saying both, Ian.
I agree with Ian+, #5. You go to a coffee shop and you can get espresso, au lait, latte, black, with milk/sugar etc. But the BASE is coffee. One doesn’t go to a coffee shop for topsoil, and if people were served topsoil, they’d protest or walk out, or both. And then the store would have to admit that it’s actually serving topsoil, or else go out of business. I suppose some would tolerate the coffee/topsoil bait-and-switch–there’s people out there who, depending on their agenda and energy level, enjoy the delusion. Not me…
Senior Priest (#3),
I agree that the comparison is both witty and very memorable. Moreover, I think it’s apt. And pretty devastating, really. I’ll remember it for a long time.
It reminds me of a similar commercial analogy used by American church historian George Marsden, an evangelical, who was asked back in the 1970s by a Newsweek reporter why he thought all the so-called mainline denominations were tanking in the US. Marsden began by noting that brand labels no longer meant much in the religious marketplace.
“It’s like buying gas for your car,” he said. “People have discovered that all that matters is the price and the range of octane and service levels you desire.” And then he added the punchline, which packed a wallop. “And the mainline churches no longer even offer high octane religion.”
Ouch. All too true.
Pageantmaster (#4),
Clever retort. Well done. Personally, I think the local churches that do offer a predictable, consistent, high quality product will flourish, whether you like your coffee black, or prefer a latte, etc.
David Handy+