Tag Archives: Anglican Angst

Rowan Williams still at sea

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All his efforts concentrated in frantically Rowan without a paddle.

Since, in the essence of my being I am empathetic and soft hearted, I feel rather sorry for Rowan Williams as he throws in the towel as Archbishop of Canterbury. By any measure he has been a dismal failure – but not for lack of trying. The sad thing is, when not wasting his time by tilting at windmills, his trying has been directed at attempting to achieve the impossible: reconciling the irreconcilable, squaring the circle, synthesising a happy medium between zero and infinity .

As has become transparently apparent in North America, Anglican liberals and conservatives adhere to different religions: both call their beliefs “Christian” but that’s where the similarity ends. Rowan Williams has staunchly attempted to occupy a position mid-way between the two, a contributing factor to the incoherence of everything he says.

And he still hasn’t learned his lesson; he believes that if he had visited the “United States when things began to get difficult” it might have gone better. But without him doing the one thing he could not do – take a stand for one side or the other – it would not have made a blind bit of difference.

From here:

“Thinking back over things I don’t think I’ve got right over the last 10 years, I think it might have helped a lot if I’d gone sooner to the United States when things began to get difficult about the ordination of gay bishops, and engaged more directly with the American House of Bishops,” Williams said in September.

Anglicanism in 2010

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Once upon a time there was a family living in a house in the Province of Manglia. It was a clean house with clean children who drank clean water from the well owned by the landlord. The landlord maintained the well, following carefully the instructions in the big black Well Manual.

For many years the family lived happily and got on wonderfully with the landlord.

One day, when the well was due for its scheduled maintenance, the landlord (who, to tell the truth, was bored with the same old maintenance routine), decided to try something different, something that the Well Manual said Really Shouldn’t Be Done: he tossed a dead sheep down the well.

Before long, the family noticed that their once clean water didn’t taste quite right; they complained to the landlord, but he told them that the water just had one of many diverse flavours that they would eventually get used to. He pointed out that nobody likes change at first.

The family wasn’t happy, but the neighbouring Province of Ganglia generously routed some of the water from their clean well to the family. Now as everyone knows, strictly speaking, unauthorised pipelines across other landlords’ Provinces are Bad Manners, so although the family was happy, the landlord of Manglia was furious that the landlord of Ganglia had had the effrontery to question his prophetic, pastoral well-management innovations and ship in foreign water.

So the family and the landlord of Manglia both appealed to the Landlord of all the Provinces – known collectively as Tanglia because they are in a bit of a mess just like the Landlord’s eyebrows – who told the landlord of Manglia to fish the dead sheep out of the well and the landlord of Ganglia to stop interfering and keep his clean water to himself.

The landlord of Manglia responded by throwing another dead sheep down the well; by now he had captured the attention of other landlords who were beginning to think he was on to something. The landlord of Ganglia told the family, “don’t worry, plenty of clean water to go around – even if it is Bad Manners to say so”, upon which the landlord of Manglia decided to evict the family from their house so he could sell it to someone who likes water that smells of dead sheep.

The Landlord was furious and in private stamped his feet and gnashed his teeth; he wanted to throw both landlords down a well.

Of course, being the Landlord, he was obliged to maintain an air of decorum. To punish both landlords he told them that neither was invited to any more parties thrown by the Landlord, nor would they receive the Landlord’s traditional Christmas gift of lava bread made personally by the Landlord from oven-dried Swansea seaweed. That should sort them out, thought the Landlord, rubbing his hands in glee.

Or, to put it another way:

Dr Rowan Williams announced that provinces which had ignored his “pleading” for restraint would be banned from attending official discussions with other Christian denominations and prevented from voting on a key body on doctrine.

He admitted the 80 million-strong Anglican Communion was in a time of “substantial transition” but held back from taking the most serious step of expelling national churches from it.

His action, taken after years of patiently asking both conservatives and liberals to abide by agreed rules, will affect both sides in the dispute over whether the Bible permits openly homosexual clergy.

It has been triggered by the progressive Episcopal Church of the USA, which ordained its first lesbian bishop, the Rt Rev Mary Glasspool, earlier this month. The Episcopal Church also elected the first openly homosexual bishop in the Communion, the Rt Rev Gene Robinson, in 2003.

But the move will also hit orthodox provinces in the developing world – known as the Global South – that reacted to the liberal innovations in America and Canada by taking conservative American clergy and congregations out of their national churches and giving them roles in Africa and South America. This has triggered bitter legal battles over the fate of church buildings.

The Anglican Church of Canada is a laughingstock

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Even in Texas:

Ridiculously  False Statement

Tom, of Boomers fame, sent me this quote from Mark Steyn:

“Most mainline Protestant churches are, to one degree or another, post-Christian. If they no longer seem disposed to converting the unbelieving to Christ, they can at least convert them to the boggiest of soft-left clichés, on the grounds that if Jesus were alive today he’d most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally friendly car with an “Arms are for Hugging” sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams.”

There is absolutely no truth, whatsoever, in Mr. Steyn’s absurd analysis of Ms. Jefferts Schori’s thriving Episcopal Church and its tiny cousin, the ACoC (Anglican Church of Canada).

How cruel.

Anglican Earth Day Daftness

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It must be a comfort to Roman Catholic priests to know that if their theology becomes so outré that they are ejected from the Catholic Church, there will still be a home for them in Anglicanism. Mathew Fox, an ex Roman Catholic, is an Anglican priest in TEC where he feels quite at home; he pioneered the Techno Cosmic Mass:

An Episcopal priest and theologian who popularized the rave-like “Techno Cosmic Mass” and advocated goddess worship recently led a seminar on mysticism and Earth spirituality to coincide with Earth Day.

Warning that environmental degradation caused by raging against “Gaia” had to cease, the Rev. Matthew Fox made frequent references to “the Goddess” and the divine feminine during his environmentally-themed lecture and workshop, “Earth Spirituality and the Mystical Tradition.” The event was held in April at the Unitarian Universalist Church in the Washington suburb of Rockville, Maryland, and sponsored by the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation.

Fox’s seminar was a melding of Celtic spirituality, goddess worship, panentheism (which posits that God interpenetrates every part of nature, but also transcends nature), environmental activism, and a political rejection of American “empire,” peppered sporadically with digs against the Vatican. Making references to Christian mystics like Hildegard of Bingen alongside pagan deities and the animal world, Fox comfortably oscillated between threats to polar bears and the oppression patriarchy when expressing his views on the natural world.

Having children is equivalent to stealing says the Anglican Church

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The Anglican Church in Australia has decided that having children is bad for the environment, breaks the eighth commandment and is the equivalent of stealing.

Thus the Anglican Church soldiers on in its never-flagging efforts to devolve into an obscure, laughable and deranged eco-cult.

The Anglican Church wants Australians to have fewer children and has urged the federal government to scrap the baby bonus and cut immigration levels.

The General Synod of the Anglican Church has issued a warning that current rates of population growth are unsustainable and potentially out of step with church doctrine – including the eighth commandment ”thou shall not steal”.

In a significant intervention, the Anglican Public Affairs Commission has also warned concerned Christians that remaining silent ”is little different from supporting further overpopulation and ecological degradation”.

”Out of care for the whole Creation, particularly the poorest of humanity and the life forms who cannot speak for themselves … it is not responsible to stand by and remain silent,” a discussion paper by the commission warns.

”Unless we take account of the needs of future life on Earth, there is a case that we break the eighth commandment – ‘Thou shall not steal’.”

The discussion paper, prepared in March, claims that federal government financial incentives encouraging childbirth should be scrapped and replaced with improved support for parents, such as leave.

Another type of long-term committed relationship

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From here:Add an Image

A grandmother has shocked her friends and family after revealing she is having a baby with her own grandson.

Pearl Carter, 72, says she has never been happier after beginning an incestuous relationship with her 26-year-old grandchild Phil Bailey.

The pensioner, from Indiana, US, is using her pension to pay a surrogate mother so they can have a child, reports New Zealand’s New Idea magazine.

She said: “I’m not interested in anyone else’s opinion. I am in love with Phil and he’s in love with me.

Anglican bishops announced that Episcopal permission is to be given to a limited number of parishes, based on Episcopal discernment, to offer prayers and blessing (but not the nuptial blessing) to grandmother-grandson couples in stable, long-term, committed relationships, as an extension of the current pastoral norms.

For a Lent study, a Quebec Anglican Church invites imam to speak about Islam

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Just what every Anglican needs to meditate on during Lent: the basics of Islam:

Also, on three Tuesday evenings at 7:30, beginning Feb. 23, we welcome Dr. Ahmad Shafaat, the imam of the local mosque, who will teach us some basics about Islam. He will bring several members of his congregation to join us in conversation. Take the time for what interests you; everyone is welcome.

The series was called, “Understanding Islam” and:

Dr. Shafaat’s lectures dealt with the life of the prophet, the roots of Islam, and the prayer recited by the faithful five times daily. It begins, “In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, Master of the Day of Recompense.” Everything we have comes from God, Dr. Shafaat said, and our relationship to Creation is based on respect. The nature of God is indescribable but unmistakable, a transcendental reality.

As Anglicans we do need to remember, particularly during Lent, that Jesus died on the cross to help us understand Islam better.

Rowan Williams turning evangelism into “destinies converging” and other twaddle

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Rowan Williams continues to astound:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has condemned evangelist “bullies” who attempt to convert people of other faiths to Christianity.

Dr Rowan Williams said it was right to be suspicious of proselytism that involves “bullying, insensitive approaches” to other faiths.

In a speech at Guildford cathedral, Dr Williams criticised those who believed they had all the answers and treated non-Christians as if their traditions of reflection and imagination were of no interest to anyone. “God save us form that kind of approach,” he said.

But he added: “God save us also from the nervousness about our own conviction that doesn’t allow us to say we speak about Jesus because we believe he matters, we believe he matters, because we believe that in him human beings find their peace, their destinies converge, and their dignities are fully honoured.”

In his address, titled “The Finality of Christ in a Pluralist World”, Dr Williams addressed difficulties modern Christians have with Biblical texts which suggest that Christianity is the only path to salvation.

Dr Williams admitted that in the past four decades, the problems around the classical interpretation of these texts had become more prominent.

He asked: “What about all those people who never had a chance of hearing about Jesus?”

He also asked about the generations before Jesus and the many cultures untouched by Christianity.

“Can we believe in a just God, who in effect punishes people, for not being in the right place at the right time?”

He raised a political objection to the claim that Christ is the final truth about God and the Universe, suggesting it had helped justify “wicked” things such as crusading and colonialism.

“What could we possibly mean by saying that a truth expressed in the Middle East 2,000 years ago was truth applicable to everybody, everywhere?” he asked.

Belief in the uniqueness or finality of Christ, in the way it has usually been understood, is something that “sits very badly indeed, not just with a plural society – whatever that means – but with a society that regards itself as liberal or democratic”.

In the Gospels, Jesus said: “No one comes to the father, except through me.”

Dr Williams said that in this context: “The father cannot be shown as an object in the sky, something abstract, something you can point to.” Instead, God should be understood in the first or second person, walking with Jesus towards the cross and resurrection.”

The Archbishop’s speech was an attempt to reconcile the claims of the Bible about Jesus and Christianity with the multi-faith societies in which Christians around the world must live.

The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament urge believers to spread the “good news” or evangelise, but the need for good relations with other faiths in the secular world militates against proselytism.

Dr Williams said: “When we sit along side the Jew, the Buddhist, the Muslim, Hindu, when we sit alongside them, we expect to see in their humanity something that challenges and enlarges us.”

The Archbishop quoted the Koran: “And God did not elect to make everybody the same. God has made us to learn in dialogue.”

On the question of whether Christians could legitimately believe that people of other faiths could be saved, Dr Williams said believers were too reluctant to leave this to God to sort out.

“We have often a vague feeling that God hasn’t read the proper books,” he said. “I’m very content to let God be the judge of how far anyone outside the visible family of faith is related to Jesus or has turned towards the father.”

According to Rowan:

  • Jesus is not the only way to the Father in the sense that Christians have understood him to be for the last couple of millennia.
  • The problem of what happens to those who have never heard the Gospel has suddenly become so prominent that all previous explanations are inadequate.
  • Christians should not evangelise aggressively for fear of hurting people’s feelings.
  • Getting on harmoniously with other faiths is more important than sharing the Good News (whatever that is).
  • The fact that evil has been done in Christ’s name means he can’t be the final revelation of God to mankind; and the meaning of the universe cannot be found in him.

To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, if Jesus is who he claims to be, he is of ultimate importance; if he isn’t, he is of no importance at all. The one thing he cannot be is what Rowan is determined to make him: moderately important.

Next month, Rowan will give a lecture on why the Western Anglican Church is disappearing.

A gathering of demented Anglican women

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In New York:

Thousands of women from around the world, including more than 90 representing the Anglican Communion, will gather in New York March 1-12 for the 54th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women to undertake a 15-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

It takes a special blindness for women to rally under the banner of a city whose country is bent on their extermination. Naturally, Anglican women will be there in full force.

On the garbage dumps that surround Beijing, scavengers from time to time will find a newborn baby girl amid the stinking refuge.

Sometimes she is still alive.

Every year, say researchers, perhaps a million girl foetuses are aborted and tens of thousands of girl babies are abandoned.

Bridging divisions the Anglican way

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John Chapman, Bishop of Ottawa is going to quell the strife in his church by training his priests:

The Anglican Church in Canada is updating how it trains priests so they can minister to everyone from Bay Street stockbrokers to Baffin Island Inuit.

Up until now priests have only been trained to seek out and hunt down candidates for same-sex unions; now that demographic has been exhausted, they are going after stockbrokers.

Ottawa Bishop John Chapman, who is leading the initiative, believes a savvier clergy would help bridge the church’s current bitter divisions over issues such as gay priests.

I can’t think why no-one has come up with this before. If only the clergy were more “savvy” we’d all start agreeing with same-sex blessings. It’s so obvious.

“The genius of the Anglican Church has been its capacity to live in difference,” Chapman said in an interview.

Or, as is now the case, disintegrate in difference.

As much as the church is badly divided these days, at least people care, “and that’s not what I remember as a child. I don’t remember people working up that kind of energy about anything. It was still the club; it was the social life. You found yourself there every Sunday and you weren’t even sure why some times.

Now, at least, people know why they do not belong to the Anglican Church of Canada

“I can’t imagine my childhood church getting worked about human sexuality,” said Chapman. “These are one of the most exciting times; there is a passion for faith.”

It’s true, of course: the creeping heresy of the ACoC has created passion among Anglican Christians; so much passion that a new Anglican province has been formed. Thanks for the nudge, John.

But pastors need new skills in calming congregations at war over sexuality or steering communities through traumatic change like closing a church. “There is quite a variety of need … that has exploded in last 25 years and we have not, in terms of a common standard … kept pace with that.”

It’s hard to keep pace with dealing with the havoc you have created when you are expending so much energy in creating more, John.

In order to calm congregations, training in doping incense with teargas, crippling but non-lethal wielding of thuribles and the use of taser tipped bishops crooks has begun.

Those working with immigrants, in urban areas, or remote First Nations communities, all need unique skills if they are to keep the church vibrant.

“The Anglican Church is not … white Anglo-Saxon,” says Chapman.

“It’s very much a global church, represented in this country.”

The global Anglican church is the one thing that bishops like Chapman are ignoring; every request from the bulk of the Anglican Communion to stop same sex blessings and homosexual ordinations has only served to create perversely contorted justifications for continuing to do what it has been asked not to do. Chapman himself coined the phrase “experiential discernment” to explain why he was continuing to do what he ought not to; I understand that the Ottawa branch of the Hell’s Angels now tattoos that on every member’s arm as part of his initiation.

Recommendations will go to the national church’s faith, worship and ministry committee, which will develop a proposal for common standards. Chapman is hoping that Primate George Hiltz, head of the Anglican Church in Canada, will create a commission to address the problems.

“create a commission to address the problems” . In other words, nothing will be done.