Jul 18
Lambeth leadership
The bishops are “in retreat”and the Archbishop is acting as their retreat speaker, guiding them back to God, Jesus, and their episcopal calling and the Church’s. Where’s the smiting and excommunication? Call that Christian leadership?
July 19th, 2008 at 3:13 am
Don’t believe everything you read.
You ask “where’s the smiting and excommunication?”
I ask “where are the Nigerian and Ugandan bishops”?
By the way, there are 28 million Anglicans in the Church of Nigeria and Church of Uganda, versus 25 million in the Church of England.
July 19th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Is this a new Rabbinic teaching you wish Christians to adopt? The majority is always right?
You ask where the Nigerian and Ugandan bishops are. I presume they’re off somewhere doing a bit of smiting. Early and perhaps not fully reliable reports have suggested that Peter Akinola threatened to do a bit of smiting to the one bishop (and his family) who’d come to England in defiance of his decree
July 19th, 2008 at 8:51 am
If there are ‘25 million in the Church of England’, I’m a Dutchman.
Usual Sunday attendance is c. 900,000 (about 100k better than Tec), and considerably fewer than mosque attendance in the UK.
Where do the Rabbis say the majority is always right? Moses and most of Judaism would have difficulty with that idea. Also, better to check out sources about people before posting claims on the internet.
July 19th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Mark, I really would like to know why conservative Christians around the globe are determined to present any form of Christianity except their own in the worst possible light, and to leap on every dubious story in the somewhat untrustworthy media. You’ve done it in statements about “liberals” and now you doing it in the “more Moslems than Christians” mode. See here for a range of responses to this story explaining why the mosque figures are wrong, and along the way why Sunday attendance is not the whole story. (For example, in this parish alone, we have about thirty people attending midweek who don’t attend on a Sunday, and probably about a hundred people who attend roughly fortnightly or three-weekly for a range of reasons.)
July 19th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Doug, I didn’t say ‘More Moslems [I prefer the spelling 'Muslims'] than Christians’, I said more Muslims in mosque than Anglicans in church - and my data comes from Peter Brierley of UK Christian Research, who I understand is a pretty reliable researcher:
http://www.christiantoday.co.uk/article/new.study.finds.mosque.goers.to.double.church.attendance/3858.htm
I understand the UK has about 9% church attendance when you add together RCs, Methodists, Pentecostalists etc. This is a lot better than say, Sweden, where church attendance is about 3%, but Brierley doesn’t think the auguries are good. As for Islam, they are younger and have a higher birth rate than the indigenous population in Europe (which is below replacement level in many countries) and it’s a decidely male-led religion; and as all observers note, in any religion if father worships, the sons are likely to follow. That’s what future projections are based on.
I am very glad to hear of people involved outside of Sundays and mission-minded churches having midweek and Saturday evening services etc. Of course there are dangers of fragmentation as well, but we have to be flexible and proactive in an uncongenial, post-Christendom culture.
July 20th, 2008 at 4:30 am
Is this a new Rabbinic teaching you wish Christians to adopt? The majority is always right?
Is this some sort of religiously bigoted swipe?
Seriously, I thought that majority rule was an Anglican value, which is how previously P.E.V bishops were withdrawn, and those who oppose women bishops are now suddenly no longer “loyal Anglicans.” Now, that’s intense — it is not bad enough one side loses, but you are declared disloyal and a heretic in the process.
Actually, haven’t you folks been voting since Nicea?
As far as the spiritual value of the retreat is concerned, let me quote from this enlightened bishop: “On f*****g retreat with all those w*****s? No f*****g way!” (In fact, the entire blog post is worth reading for an insight into the Anglican mindset — gotta see the Christian love in the idea of uninviting a 75 year old at the 11th hour.
July 20th, 2008 at 9:03 am
“gotta see the Christian love in the idea of uninviting a 75 year old at the 11th hour
Is this some sort of religiously bigoted swipe?
Oops, sorry, couldn’t resist. Yeah, I read Gledhill’s piece, and thought that without naming the bishop it was just stirring. I watched the video clip interview with Bp Salmon. As far as I could see the interviewer, the inaptly named Virtue, was trying to get him to say he’d been turned away, and the bishop was instead insisting he voluntarily withdrew. The reason, as far as I could make out, (it didn’t seem that clear) was that when the invitations went out he was the bishop of his diocese, and since then he has retired and someone else is the bishop now. The bureaucracy took a bit of time to catch up with this. So, as Tina Turner might say, what’s love got to do with it?
July 21st, 2008 at 12:01 am
Ruth’s just annoyed because, in the actual retreat and conference so far, she has yet to find a fight to write about.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:19 am
“Ruth’s just annoyed because, in the actual retreat and conference so far, she has yet to find a fight to write about.”
What’s there to fight about, since the Americans who consecrated Robinson in defiance of the Primates at DES and Dromantine are there, and the bishops of most of the practicing Anglicans in the world are not? Lambeth ‘98 spoke and it’s been ignored by the North Americans, as well as those English bishops who licence practicing homosexual clergy (’dont ask, don’t tell’). Anglicans around the world are drawing the appropriate conclusions.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:38 am
Mark,
If you haven’t got anything constructive to say, don’t say it. There are other blogs where belligerent people who like being aggressive specialise in hanging out slagging others off. This is not one of them.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:59 am
Doug, please point out what is untrue, unfair or ad hominem in what I said (as opposed to ‘I don’t like the implications’) and I’ll gladly withdraw it. I don’t think I’ve criticized anyone by name - and certainly not Ruth Gledhill. I hope you wouldn’t think the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale was being ‘aggressive’. I prefer to debate facts, not speculate disparagingly about people’s motives or characters. Brother, are you sure you are fair and objective toward people you disagree with, such as conservative Christians, both catholic and evangelical?
July 21st, 2008 at 11:32 am
Mark, I didn’t say “unfair” or “untrue” or “ad hominem”. I’m sure we both agree those are unacceptable. I said “belligerent” and “aggressive”. That may not be your attitude, and blogs certainly don’t handle tone very well, and it may just be your writing style, but your tone does strike me as characterised by aggression. This is my online home, you may not agree with my rules, but I expect you to accept them.
July 21st, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Doug: Tu quoque, mi frater? What you call in my “tone” ‘aggressive’ others might call ‘robust’. Tomahto, tomayto. As I said, I prefer to stick to factual arguments, not personalities. This is the only value of a comments section if a blog is to anything other than an amen corner. I learn the most from people I disagree with. They may not change my mind but they do make me think more clearly, and I’m grateful for that. What I perceive in your postings (correct me if I’m wrong) is a certain negativity toward conservative viewpoints which doesn’t engage with the arguments so much as the presumed motives of those who hold them (’narrow minded’, ‘mean’ etc). That was the point of my concluding question.
You will know that on a great many issues (sexuality, abortion, women in church leadership etc), evangelicals are very close to Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. So you should be equally critical of RCs and EO. Are you?
July 21st, 2008 at 12:52 pm
There you go again, being belligerent. I don’t have a problem with conservative viewpoints except the one that says “my viewpoint is a biblical fact, and your viewpoint is a liberal conspiracy”.
You will know that on a great many issues (the ecomony, war, the death penalty etc.) liberals are very close to Roman Catholics. I don’t think that says anything, except the mirror image of your point. I don’t think listing issues in evangelical, conservative, liberal catholic packages, or whatever, takes us any further forward, certainly not for someone who wants to stick to “factual arguments”.
July 21st, 2008 at 1:40 pm
‘Belligerent’, moi? Doug, my brother, are we divided by the same language? Are you not engaged in your posts in a war against what you see to be ignorance, obscurantism, heresy, mean-spirited and sinful Christians etc? Does that not make you a ‘belligerent’? The term is not a bad one (according to the first entry in my dictionary), if there really is a spiritual/cultural war going on and a genuine casus belli exists.
I would hope you do in fact have a fairminded attitude to conservative attitudes, and would add these two further comments:
1. Conservative (both evangelicals and catholic theologians, including Orthodox) do believe, at least in principle, that they are bound by the consentient teaching of the Bible because they understand it to be God’s Word. Liberals by and large do not agree that the Bible, in its canonical wholeness, is the Word of God but more properly a witness to that Word. They do so for reasons I think I reasonably grasp: moral and philosophical objections to the teachings of the Bible and problems raised by the phenomena of the biblical text. Liberals don’t have to bind themselves to the text, because, as (soon to be former?) Bishop Charles Bennison said, ‘The Church wrote the Bible and the Church can rewrite it.’
But if you can show me that an interpretation really is what the Bible writer is teaching, however much I dislike it, I should be bound to accept it as true. As Luther said, ‘My conscience is captive to the Word of God.’
2. “You will know that on a great many issues (the ecomony, war, the death penalty etc.) liberals are very close to Roman Catholics.”
This is confusing contemporary social pronouncements with doctrine. There is no Catholic doctrine on ‘the economy’ (whatever that means), whereas there has for centuries been a consistent Catholic defense of the Just War and the death penalty (Avery Dulles is very clear on this). The Catholic Church has never been and never could be pacifist or abolitionist in principle on the death penalty; opposition at some historical moment can only be on pragmatic or prudential grounds. Catholic teaching on homosexuality has never changed, as you know.
July 21st, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I think this will be my last comment on this thread.
You say: “If there really is a spiritual/cultural war going on and a genuine casus belli exists”. It seems to me you think there is a war. I don’t accept it as one, and am not engaged in it as one. This blog is not a battleground. If you continue to treat it as one, I will encourage readers to ignore you unless you offer courteous and reasonable arguments. Why do North Americans insist on exporting their wars to the rest of the world?
You say: “if you can show me that an interpretation really is what the Bible writer is teaching, however much I dislike it, I should be bound to accept it as true”.
I don’t believe that’s how it happens. I think we come to be convinced something is a true interpretation, even if we start off disliking it, and then become convinced that the interpretation is what “the Bible teaches”.
Incidentally I also think Dulles is wrong on the death penalty (or did he just say this about war?). JP2 threw traditional Catholic teaching overboard on the death penalty, and the RC Church will have to work out how to reconcile the past and present, but JP2 was definitely not simply offering a pragmatic response, but developing his core teaching on the human person.
July 21st, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Doug, here’s Dulles on the death penalty and JP2:
http://www.cathnews.com/news/202/69.php
There’s a much better piece in ‘First Things’ but I can’t access it at present.
The present pope, just as much as his predecessor, does seem to think there is a cultural/social war going on for ‘the western’ and in particular the European soul, to judge from his words at the World Youth Day in Sydney. So it’s not just a ‘North American’ thing. Occupied France was fairly quiet, if I recall my history, because the price of resistance was fairly high.