CoE Traditionalist Bishops Hold Fast

[commenter]

I am partisan as far as the CofE is concerned, however, because I think it (she) is one of the strongest forces against “brutality and ignorance” in Britain.

Brutality and ignorance are growing, because compassion and wisdom are being redefined. Even the Bible, or history is quoted to justify this redefinition process. The Church can’t combat brutality and ignorance unless they have the ability to defend the definition of genuine compassion and wisdom. The Church’s ability to reliably defend absolutes of Truth and Goodness, against the redefiners, depends first on God, but also on independence from popular opinion of the moment, sometimes even the popular opinion of its own members, who in the era of mass media are often heavily influenced by the redefiners.

Within the C of E, will Fr. North have the support to hold that standard?

 

[Picky_Picky]

Brutality and ignorance are growing, because compassion and wisdom are being redefined. Even the Bible, or history is quoted to justify this redefinition process. The Church can’t combat brutality and ignorance unless they have the ability to defend the definition of genuine compassion and wisdom. The Church’s ability to reliably defend absolutes of Truth and Goodness, against the redefiners, depends first on God, but also on independence from popular opinion of the moment, sometimes even the popular opinion of its own members, who in the era of mass media are often heavily influenced by the redefiners.

Within the C of E, will Fr. North have the support to hold that standard?

I’m afraid I don’t agree with your first sentence and then, perhaps, trip over my own feet in those subsequent. I do think it possible that the redefiners are not automatically disbarred from access to the truth. I don’t think my opinion of matters theological counts a jot. I do think the Church of England represents much that is good about the society in which I live, and I am convinced that her struggle to embrace the breadth of our society is to be supported even by such as me.

But I certainly accept that my opinion is just chaff.

 

[Thorolfr]

But we should at least give credit that most at least of the Church of England is committed to the flourishing of all parts of the church. As Archbishop Welby told General Synod before that principle was endorsed: “If you don’t believe it, don’t say it.”

I do hope that the Church of England flourishes. After reading University of Dundee Professor Callum Brown’s book, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800-2000 (Routledge, 2001), I’ve been rather concerned about the health of Christianity in Britain. According to Brown (pp. 3-4):

In the year 2000 less than 8 per cent of people attend Sunday worship in any week, less than a quarter are members of any church, and fewer than a tenth of children attend Sunday school. Fewer than half of couples get married in church, and about a third of couples cohabit without marriage. In England only a fifth of babies get baptised in the Church of England, and in Scotland one estimate is that about a fifth are baptised in either the Church of Scotland or the Roman Catholic Church. By some estimates, as few a 3 percent of people regularly attend church in some counties of England, and in most the non-churchgoers represent over 90 per cent of the population. If church participation is falling, all the figures for Christian affiliation are at their lowest point in recorded history. Christian church membership accounts for less than 12 per cent of the people and is falling.

I hope that things turn around.

 

[Mystophilus]

A church wherein you have two parties accepting two different lines of succession seems to me like a church that is naturally splitting into two churches, which are related to each other, but only in communion. I mean, if you’re going to have conservative Bishops ordain conservative Bishops and Liberal Bishops ordain Liberal Bishops, do you have one church or two churches?

So long as they can interact outside of installations and ordinations, they can remain one Church, cooperating and acting sometimes in unison and sometimes in parallel.

We Anglicans have had a lot of practice in accommodating a wide range of opinions: my parish includes people who do not believe in God, people who believe in God but not in the authority of the Bible, people who believe in interesting interpretations of the Bible, and people who only believe in the KJV; another nearby parish will not accept women priests, while yet another nearby one has a gay priest and advertises church services specifically for gay people.

 

[Indifferently]

So long as they can interact outside of installations and ordinations, they can remain one Church, cooperating and acting sometimes in unison and sometimes in parallel.

We Anglicans have had a lot of practice in accommodating a wide range of opinions: my parish includes people who do not believe in God, people who believe in God but not in the authority of the Bible, people who believe in interesting interpretations of the Bible, and people who only believe in the KJV; another nearby parish will not accept women priests, while yet another nearby one has a gay priest and advertises church services specifically for gay people.

Part of my job as a preacher is painting vivid pictures of hell. It’s a fairly effective means of quenching diversity of opinion about God and his Word.

 

[liturgyluver]

I do hope that the Church of England flourishes. After reading University of Dundee Professor Callum Brown’s book, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800-2000 (Routledge, 2001), I’ve been rather concerned about the health of Christianity in Britain. According to Brown (pp. 3-4):

I hope that things turn around.

In some ways they have already. Though some Dioceses are declining, in many others the decline has halted and some areas are growing. In London, for example church attendance in the the Anglican Church has grown by over 16% in the last 7 years, and church membership has almost doubled since the low point in 1990. Much is often made of the fact that Anglican Church attendance is lower than Catholic attendance but that has been the case for many, many years. In the Catholic Church mass attendance is the UK at 23% is actually one of the highest in Europe. When my relatives visit from Italy, they are amazed that the church is full of families and that if you don’t arrive 10 minutes before the 10.30 mass you won’t get a seat.

One of the issues for the Church od England, I think, is that the parish system and competition betwen churchmanship traditions in Victorian times has simply produced too many churches - 17,000 churches in England alone. Someone once said that Catholics go to mass and Anglicans go to church so there are many who cling on to their churches in rurual areas when demographic changes suggest that merger would be more sustainable.

 

[Mystophilus]

Part of my job as a preacher is painting vivid pictures of hell. It’s a fairly effective means of quenching diversity of opinion about God and his Word.

As long as your parishioners remain sentient, there will be a diversity of opinion. All that you can suppress is the expression of it.

 

[Indifferently]

As long as your parishioners remain sentient, there will be a diversity of opinion. All that you can suppress is the expression of it.

God’s Word kills and makes alive. Denying him and his Word is not an intellectual issue; it is a sin issue.

 

[Mystophilus]

God’s Word kills and makes alive. Denying him and his Word is not an intellectual issue; it is a sin issue.

Other people’s differing from your opinions about God is not their denying him.

 

[commenter]

interesting thread

 

[Picky_Picky]

Father, now Bishop, Philip North seems to think there is hope in the past week’s developments:

“We had all the bishops together, including Bishop Libby, gathered around in prayer for the Holy Spirit, and I got a real sense of the unity of the Church, and of the precedents that have been set this last week: eight extraordinary days in York Minster, which have seen the consecration, to great joy amongst many Anglicans, of the first woman, and then what’s happened today, which has shown that there’s a future for those who in good conscience can’t accept that development.”

More here:

churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/30-january/news/uk/this-shows-there-s-a-future-for-us-says-new-traditionalist-bishop

 

[ChurchSoldier]

Brutality and ignorance are growing, because compassion and wisdom are being redefined. Even the Bible, or history is quoted to justify this redefinition process. The Church can’t combat brutality and ignorance unless they have the ability to defend the definition of genuine compassion and wisdom. The Church’s ability to reliably defend absolutes of Truth and Goodness, against the redefiners, depends first on God, but also on independence from popular opinion of the moment, sometimes even the popular opinion of its own members, who in the era of mass media are often heavily influenced by the redefiners.

How true.

 

[seanman611]

If I’m not mistaken, it seems that the progressives in the CofE are very disappointed that women bishops are not being forced on every diocese in the CofE.

I hate to be negative, but how long will this set-up to appease traditionalists last before it becomes mandatory? In TEC, it was not mandatory in the beginning, however, it became mandatory in most places quite quickly and in a matter of decades in other places. Currently, no diocese in TEC refuses to ordain women, although there are individual parishes that are holding out, which surely won’t last forever. There were a number of dioceses that left around 2006-2007 due to the national church forcing the issue on them (San Joaquin, Quincy, and Fort Worth).

If the progressives, or anybody else for that matter, think that following the lead of TEC is a good thing, then they must be completely out of their minds. However, it seems that the CofE is on a very similar path and trajectory. In TEC, we have seen a 25% loss in average Sunday attendance in a matter of a decade. What do the progressives blame it one? Demographic shifts…I wish I had the luxury of constantly sticking my head in the sand!

 

[Picky_Picky]

If I’m not mistaken, it seems that the progressives in the CofE are very disappointed that women bishops are not being forced on every diocese in the CofE.

I hate to be negative, but how long will this set-up to appease traditionalists last before it becomes mandatory? In TEC, it was not mandatory in the beginning, however, it became mandatory in most places quite quickly and in a matter of decades in other places. Currently, no diocese in TEC refuses to ordain women, although there are individual parishes that are holding out, which surely won’t last forever. There were a number of dioceses that left around 2006-2007 due to the national church forcing the issue on them (San Joaquin, Quincy, and Fort Worth).

If the progressives, or anybody else for that matter, think that following the lead of TEC is a good thing, then they must be completely out of their minds. However, it seems that the CofE is on a very similar path and trajectory. In TEC, we have seen a 25% loss in average Sunday attendance in a matter of a decade. What do the progressives blame it one? Demographic shifts…I wish I had the luxury of constantly sticking my head in the sand!

There seems a deep wish west of the ocean for this all to end in disaster. My impression is that east of the ocean the mood is different: much work has been done to achieve the unity that was shown when Bishop North embraced the other bishops – notably including Bishop Lane, whom he personally asked to be present – after his ordination. The broad mass of the CofE, I believe, wants this to work and is confident that it can. Women were first ordained as priests by the CofE more than 20 years ago, with safeguards for those unhappy with it. That arrangement has held. Women priests have not been forced on parishes opposed to them. The latest arrangements, to consecrate women bishops, were drawn up and agreed in General Synod by representatives of both views. The CofE has committed itself to the flourishing of all traditions within its scope.

I think it may be that your view is very US-centric. Why should you think that the CofE’s decisions are based on “following TEC’s lead”? The CofE has a mind of its own, you know.

 

[Picky_Picky]

Indifferently, who is of the Reformed wing of the CofE, was I think present at York yesterday. It would be good to hear a first-hand account.

 

[Novocastrian]

The CofE has a mind of its own, you know.

It has several!

 

[seanman611]

There seems a deep wish west of the ocean for this all to end in disaster. My impression is that east of the ocean the mood is different: much work has been done to achieve the unity that was shown when Bishop North embraced the other bishops – notably including Bishop Lane, whom he personally asked to be present – after his ordination. The broad mass of the CofE, I believe, wants this to work and is confident that it can. Women were first ordained as priests by the CofE more than 20 years ago, with safeguards for those unhappy with it. That arrangement has held. Women priests have not been forced on parishes opposed to them. The latest arrangements, to consecrate women bishops, were drawn up and agreed in General Synod by representatives of both views. The CofE has committed itself to the flourishing of all traditions within its scope.

I absolutely don’t wish to see anything end in disaster and TEC should be an example to all other denominations on what not to do. That said, I don’t fully understand the mood in England and what the state of things are when it comes to divergent views within the CofE. That said, the progressive Anglicans in England seem be just as rabid as the progressive Episcopalians in the States. Maybe the safeguards will last and I sincerely hope they do and I hope the situation turns out radically different that the U.S. situation. That said, I don’t think the progressives will be happy until they have achieved total “victory” over the traditionalists.

I think it may be that your view is very US-centric. Why should you think that the CofE’s decisions are based on “following TEC’s lead”? The CofE has a mind of its own, you know.

Perhaps my view is US-centric, however, seeing the example across the pond should motivate the CofE to do everything they can not to emulate TEC.

 

[Novocastrian]

That said, I don’t think the progressives will be happy until they have achieved total “victory” over the traditionalists.

I think there are a minority of ‘progressives’ who think and act this way. For the most part, it’s not yet like this. There’s less of a culture war in the English Church(es) than in their American equivalents, as far as I can tell.

 

[Picky_Picky]

It has several!

Ah, indeed!

 

[Indifferently]

I was at the service yesterday. I could not help but think that the whole thing was hopelessly compromised.

We who are Reformed have much less of a focus, it seems, on the “magic words” and actions than Bishop North and many of his Anglo-Catholic colleagues, and instead emphasize male headship and sexual complementarity.

When we have, as we had yesterday, a female deacon reading the Gospel lesson, and the female Dean of the Cathedral reading the Epistle lesson, and a few other liturgical functions being performed by women in offices to which we do not believe they belong, what are we doing? When we have a woman deacon ministering at the Lord’s Table alongside the celebrating Bishop, what are we doing? When we have Libby Lane, a woman bishop, knelt in prayer, wearing episcopal convocation robes identical to those of the male bishops surrounding her, whilst Bishop North is consecrated, what are we doing?

If we truly believe in the principles that lie behind our opposition to the ordination of women, then we should not be making these kinds of concessions. If we truly believe the ordination of women to be wrong, then not only should we not be ordaining women, we should also not be giving the impression that the alternative view is of equal legitimacy, nor should we be allowing women to exercise (even minor) liturgical responsibilities whilst wearing the badges of office to which we do not believe they are entitled.