{"id":27924,"date":"2020-01-26T08:36:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-26T13:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=27924"},"modified":"2020-01-26T08:51:01","modified_gmt":"2020-01-26T13:51:01","slug":"bishop-of-niagara-has-the-solution-to-church-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/bishop-of-niagara-has-the-solution-to-church-decline\/","title":{"rendered":"Bishop of Niagara has the solution to church decline"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an open letter to her flock, Susan Bell, bishop of the Diocese of Niagara has set a record for the most<\/em> italicised words ever<\/em> to appear in a diocesan epistle.<\/em> She used those italics to emphasis that the prediction that her denomination will cease to exist by 2040 is a call, not to hand-wringing, but to fighting a \u201cclimate crisis\u201d. In doing so we will be \u201cworking to establish the kingdom of God\u201d.<\/p>\n

The message was delivered to the bishop by a beatific vision of St. Greta of Thunberg, patron saint of the church of the immaculate imminent extinction.<\/p>\n

From here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"I want to talk to you about the future; and about some intimations about what we might be being called to <\/em>\u2013 and maybe what we\u2019re being called away from<\/em>.\u00a0 All of that is much<\/em> more interesting than the hand-wringing of recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Is this a crisis?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 A holy one, I believe. \u00a0The question is, how do we respond?\u00a0 Well we are Christ-followers<\/em> and so I\u2019d humbly suggest that we need to do just that:\u00a0 follow Jesus and listen for God\u2019s voice to guide us.<\/p>\n

I am firmly of the belief that God has gifted us with this time.\u00a0 I am not being Pollyanna.\u00a0 I mean this.\u00a0 We have come to the end of a time in which the Church was a dominant force in our culture.\u00a0 That is an undisputed fact.\u00a0 And yet not one that should make us despair.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had a good run.<\/p>\n

But I also believe that we are being called to deep engagement with our faith and simultaneously, and our behavior as a culture.\u00a0 As an example, take the climate crisis.\u00a0 What does the mission of God look like in the light of that?\u00a0 If, as N.T. Wright has recently written, New Testament Christians believed that in Jesus the Christ, God was bringing earth and heaven together, \u201cmaking creation new, restoring the world from all its pathologies,\u201d then working to establish the kingdom of God is rightly the work of all believers. \u00a0This sounds to me like a robust mandate for a theology which will support bold and sustained Christian action to address the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

This is a recovery of a strong Christology, which leads to a renewed sense of both Christ\u2019s work among humanity and a template for our own Christian vocations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an open letter to her flock, Susan Bell, bishop of the Diocese of Niagara has set a record for the most italicised words ever to appear in a diocesan epistle. She used those italics to emphasis that the prediction … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[2553,2156],"class_list":["post-27924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diocese-of-niagara","tag-bishop-susan-bell","tag-global-warming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}