Tag Archives: Church of England

Average Sunday attendance in the Church of England

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From here:

The Church of England attracts fewer than 800,000 worshippers to its churches on a typical Sunday, according to new estimates yesterday.

Numbers in the pews have fallen to less than half the levels of the 1960s, the count showed.

The signs of continuing decline in support for the CofE follow census evidence of a widespread fall in allegiance to Christianity, with numbers calling themselves Christian dropping by more than four million in a decade.

The Church’s figure for ‘usual Sunday attendance’, the method used since the 1930s to measure congregations, found CofE churches had 795,800 worshippers on Sundays in 2012. The numbers were 9,000 down on the previous year.

They indicate that repeated efforts by the Church to modernise its services and its image – through a series of modern language rewrites of its prayer book, attempts by its leaders to appeal to supposed public concern with poverty, and efforts to make its government more efficient – have not succeeded in drawing young people.

The statistics upon which this article is based can be found here. Here is the graph of “usual Sunday attendance”:

CofE ASA

I must admit, the decline is not as precipitous as I had expected; not nearly as severe as in North American Anglicanism. The Anglican Church of Canada, presumably to save itself the embarrassment, has not published detailed attendance figures since 2001.

Church of England bats sacrifice to Sterculius

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From here:

CANTERBURY, England — Bats are making life unbearable for congregations by defecating on worshippers from roofs as well as bell towers, according to a report to the Church Buildings Council of the Church of England.

It’s a shame the CofE doesn’t accept this as an expression of diversity; it’s just as well Canada has the solution.

Church of England vicar wants to marry his male partner

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From here:

Cain-ForeshewA gay vicar from Kilburn has vowed to marry his partner of 14 years despite the risk that he could be thrown out of the Church of England.

Fr Andrew Cain from St Mary’s with All Souls, revealed his engagement to fiancé Stephen Foreshew, an atheist, on Valentine’s Day.

He stated firmly that he planned to ignore edicts sent down from his own church leaders that described marriage as only a “lifelong union between one man and one woman”.

I have a suggestion for Messrs. Cain and Foreshew: move to Canada. Since the Anglican Church of Canada worships the triune god of Inclusion, Diversity and Homo-erotic sex, along with assorted demigods  – eco-justice, utopianism and smudging among others – you will be welcomed with open arms. The additional benefit of your wife-husband being an atheist would make you a shoe-in. I’d start with an application to the Diocese of Montreal, if I were you.

The Church of England does believe in demons after all

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The Church of England doesn’t talk that much about demons during its General Synod. Since the church is removing the devil from baptismal liturgies, it isn’t too surprising that his minions don’t get much time at Synod. Until now.

According to the Right Reverend Stephen Croft, the “great demon of our day” is climate change – what else – and the damage it will do is “unimaginable”. A couple of thousand years ago it took a whole legion of demons to throw a bunch of pigs over a cliff; such has Mephistophelian potency burgeoned since Rowan’s retirement, now all it takes is one demon to destroy the entire planet.

And people say the Church of England has lost touch with the pulse of modernity.

From here:

“The issue of climate change is real and it is happening.”

Canon Goddard pointed out the moral case from a Christian point of view: “Care for the Earth, as a gift of the Creator, is in many ways foundational for the Gospel. We have the responsibility, expressed for example in the Genesis story and in the covenant with Noah, to care for God’s creation.”

He added: “Climate Change is a moral issue because the rich world has disproportionately contributed to it and the poor world is disproportionately suffering.”

Many members of the General Synod supported this motion with the Bishop of Sheffield, the Right Reverend Stephen Croft saying: “The threat of climate change is a giant evil, a great demon of our day. The damage this great demon will do to this beautiful earth if unchecked, is unimaginable.”

Rowan, Justin and Either/Or

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Justin Welby’s recipe for holding the Anglican Communion together was elucidated in his address to synod:

Already I can hear the arguments being pushed back at me, about compromise, about the wishy-washiness of reconciliation, to quote something I read recently.  But this sort of love, and the reconciliation between differing groups that it demands and implies, is not comfortable and soft and wishy-washy.  Facilitated conversations may be a clumsy phrase, but it has at its heart a search for good disagreement.

[…..]

We have received a report with disagreement in it on sexuality, through the group led by Sir Joseph Pilling.  There is great fear among some, here and round the world, that that will lead to the betrayal of our traditions, to the denial of the authority of scripture, to apostasy, not to use too strong a word. And there is also a great fear that our decisions will lead us to the rejection of LGBT people, to irrelevance in a changing society, to behaviour that many see akin to racism. Both those fears are alive and well in this room today.

We have to find a way forward that is one of holiness and obedience to the call of God and enables us to fulfil our purposes.  This cannot be done through fear. How we go forward matters deeply, as does where we arrive.

In attempting to resolve the disagreements in his church about sexuality, Rowan Williams tried to find a middle ground between the opposing views. He used Indaba groups to do this. He didn’t succeed partly because there was no middle ground to find and partly because, even if it had been found, anyone with any common sense knew that once the mythical entity was spotted, it would immediately start to drift leftward.

Justin Welby has astutely noticed that Rowan’s efforts were a dismal failure so, rather than look for a half-way point between opposing views, he is seeking, through the odious tedium euphemistically known as “facilitated conversations”, to convince polar opposites to coexist within one organisation – he calls it “good disagreement”. What will prevent the whole thing flying apart is “love” – it’s all you need, after all.

At heart, I am a simple minded computer technician and, through bitter experience, I have been forced to reach the conclusion that if I write a program in which false and true propositions are compelled to coexist, disaster will ensue. Programmers are renowned for being sentimentally attached to their creations but, no matter how much love I pour into it, a routine whose rules of logic include (1 ∨ 0  =  0) ∧ (1 ∨ 0 = 1) = 1 is destined for spectacular failure.

Now, you may say, that’s all very well for computers; they are by nature binary, almost Kierkegaardian in their Either/Or obsessiveness. When it comes to sexuality and the Church one must expect diverse opinions, differing interpretations, loving disagreement. Complete nonsense. If the church can’t come up with a unified view on a subject which it has been pondering for 2000 years, something whose boundaries are clearly prescribed by the book it claims to follow, something – morality – in which it supposedly specialises, then it is time for the clergy to call it day, dissolve their institutional church and find more useful employment.

The Anglican wave of the future: composting toilets

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In a flash of rare brilliance, the Church of England has found a new way to entice the next generation of Anglicans into its churches: the opportunity to do number two in a church supplied composting toilet. It doesn’t get any more seeker friendly than that.

I do think the church might still be able to go one step further, though; especially parishes with adjacent allotments.

From here:

In our office we have a large map entitled ‘Devon’s Green Churches’ which contains a series of dots and stars covering the county from Ilfracombe to Ivybridge. Each symbol represents a church with a composting toilet or solar panels, or has completed an energy survey, or is registered as fair-trade or an ‘eco-congregation’, or runs a wood-burning heating system, and so on. They are examples of church eco projects. In total there are more than 200 coloured symbols and we add more each few weeks.

A London Anglican Church is now accepting bitcoins

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stmartinschurchSt Martin’s Anglican Church in the UK has started accepting bitcoins, the peer to peer Internet currency favoured by money launderers, organised crime and drug dealers.

Apparently, the church wants to be “in touch with what’s going on around us” and, in a way, I suppose it has succeeded. Anything to be relevant.

From here:

A London church has become the first in the country to accept internet currency Bitcoins in its collection plate.

The Rev Chris Brice of St Martin’s Anglican Parish Church in Gospel Oak said the innovation showed that “we are people in touch with what’s going on around us”.

The Church of England hair-splitting pantomime farce

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In a recent interview, Justin Welby, channelling the shade of Rowan Williams, declared that same-sex unions are perfectly fine – commendable even – with him but same sex marriages are not. He offered no explanation – perhaps because there isn’t one:

My own view on same-sex marriage is one thing; my own view on same-sex unions is: I recognize, again I have said in public, the immense quality and profound love and commitment of many same-sex unions. I don’t think that marriage is the appropriate way forward.

He omitted the word “yet” after “forward”; I know he was thinking it, though.

The same-sex part begins around 13:30:

The Church of England introduces the Politically Correct Baptism

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In a new Church of England baptismal rite, sin is out, as is the devil. Instead we have the impersonal “evil, and all its many forms.”

“Submit to Christ as Lord” is out, too because…. well, these days, who wants to submit to anything.

This Christianity Lite has been concocted because it is easier to understand and it is more likely to attract people. In reality, it says to baptismal candidates that they are either too stupid to understand the real meaning of baptism or too far gone to want to go through with it.

A special insult is reserved for women who, it is supposed, having been brainwashed by the zeitgeist to “object to the idea of submission”, can no longer think for themselves and, so, are incapable of understanding that submitting to their Maker is probably in their best interest.

From here:

Parents and godparents no longer have to ‘repent sins’ and ‘reject the devil’ during christenings after the Church of England rewrote the solemn ceremony.

The new wording is designed to be easier to understand – but critics are stunned at such a fundamental change to a cornerstone of their faith, saying the new ‘dumbed-down’ version ‘strikes at the heart’ of what baptism means.

In the original version, the vicar asks: ‘Do you reject the devil and all rebellion against God?’

Prompting the reply: ‘I reject them.’ They then ask: ‘Do you repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour?’, with the answer: ‘I repent of them.’

But under the divisive reforms, backed by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and already being practised in 1,000 parishes, parents and godparents are asked to ‘reject evil, and all its many forms, and all its empty promises’ – with no mention of the devil or sin.

The new text, to be tested in a trial lasting until Easter, also drops the word ‘submit’ in the phrase ‘Do you submit to Christ as Lord?’ because it is thought to have become ‘problematical’, especially among women who object to the idea of submission.

Canterbury and Vatican to play cricket

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From here:

The head of the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has accepted a challenge from the Vatican to play their first ever cricket match.

I am anticipating the Archbishop of Canterbury suggesting that, rather than play an actual match where someone has to lose, both sides should participate in a continuing Indaba, find a middle ground – known in cricketing parlance as a silly mid-wicket – thereby indefinitely postponing pointless confrontation while projecting the illusion of useful activity – without any of the risk. Besides, to take part in a real match, you need real balls.