And fails.
According to its own prophetic statistical insight, the Anglican Church of Canada will be exanimate by 2040. The new primate understands this, so is consoling faithful clergy whose hearing aids are turned on with these words:
In the face of falling membership and financial challenges, Canadian Anglicans should feel encouraged that there remains a role for their church in the world—and that their God will always be faithful to them, Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, said Thursday, Nov. 7, in her first address as primate to the Council of General Synod (CoGS).
Solidifying the role of the church in the world by becoming more like the world is what has brought the ACoC to the brink of extinction in the first place, so recommending becoming even more entrenched in temporal fads is not going to help. Yet here we go:
Many of the church’s values, such as its “deep commitment to community” and its gifts of confession and forgiveness also give it a unique voice on societal issues, such as political polarization and justice, she said.
Bishops seem to be embarrassed by transcendent questions like:
Why am I here? What happens when I die, will I still exist? How do I get to heaven? How can my sins be forgiven? Are there such things as miracles?
If all I want is a “deep commitment to community” I can join the local lawn bowling club and, after my octogenarian substitute for exercise, go to the bar to confess to the bartender. After a suitable degree of inebriation, I can expound with a “unique voice on societal issues, such as political polarization and justice”. How can the church compete with that?
Oh yes, by doing this:
Nicholls said one of the tasks she wanted the church to focus on in coming years was fighting racism.
How about doing something unpopular like fighting abortion?
In behavioral psychology, human or animal, doing something else, typically comforting, or in this case virtue signalling, when the primary purpose is frustrated, is called “displacement activity”. It could also be called “thrashing”, a term in computer science for the days when addressed memory space was virtual, being mainly held on secondary storage such as disk. When demand for addressed memory was high, there could arise a pathological excess of swapping pages of addressed memory between primary storage and secondary, preventing much of anything useful being done. The junior ranks in such an environment would often refer to the contortions and chicaneries of senior administrators metaphorically as “thrashing”. In the army of my father’s time it was known as a “flap”, used as ‘there is a flap on”. (Slang: to become excited or confused, especially under stress.)
Spiritually weak churches shift to politics to remain relevant and have a “mission”. Unfortunately (for them), the surrounding secular society views them as irrelevant. As for membership, as Mark Steyn has said, any church that validates all your passions is a church nobody needs.
The AcoC began its decline in the early 60’s. Coincidentally it was at this same time that the Book of Common Prayer dropped a few lines of Holy Scripture from it list of daily readings. Since that time the AcoC has tried various “new things” such as woman ordination, which is clearly against the Word of God (1 Tim 3). The more the AcoC tries to fit in with the fallen world the more it declines, like a bad tree bearing bad fruit it is being cut down and cast into the fire. How truly sad that the people left in the AcoC are unable to see this.
The Anglican Church of Canada probably began to decline after the publication of Pierre Berton’s The Comfortable Pew in 1965 and the Death of God movement in North America.
I don’t know…but he seems like a nice looking gentleman ….
It is obvious that with a very few exceptions the clergy and bishops do not know how to grow a church. They are trying to validate everyone rather than teaching that we are to be transformed by Christ and in Christ. Given this the bishops should look at reducing the number of dioceses. Based on the statistics they can easily be cut in half. But this reduces the number of bishops by the same amount. Then maybe the fewer number of members won’t have to support a blotted hierarchy that sucks them dry and pulls money away from local ministry. A friend of mine who is a member of the UCC says the money they pay to the presbyter is below 5% ours is over 25%.
Until the ACoC forcibly removes the current so-called bishops but actual apostates there can be no hope for recovery. The only road to recovery is to fully accept the authority of Scripture and return to the GOSPEL. Just as we cannot worship both God and Satan any church claiming to be Christian cannot attempt to do so. The only way for recovery is the removal of these APOSTATES and return to the authority of GOD’S word.