Updated 17 October
The Church Times has this report: Persuade PCCs to take action if same-sex blessings move forward, Alliance tells its clergy
The Alliance document referred to is available here: Alliance Campaign Manual 250926.
Update:
Helen King has written about this document: This week in Living in Love and Faith: On the Alliance Campaign Manual
I am intrigued and disturbed by this word “persuasion” . It smacks of coercion and manipulation, and the implication is that a church leader (clearly male) should persuade a PCC to act in such a way or another. Its all very Trump-esque and feels like we are at a time when scripture dictates rather than liberates.
“Persuade” is a word chosen by the headline writers of The Church Times, not the manual writers of The Alliance. In the linked document that word is never used. I imagine they chose it because they think it has the connotations which you hear – The Church Times is pretty clear that it dislikes The Alliance.
The two go together. ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’
They have for me. The truth of God’s wlecome and inclusion has been totally freeing.
Indeed
Neither the Alliance, nor the evangelicals of the last 70 years, represent Scripture as a unity. If we believe (having each discerned spiritual teachings), then we represent it to ourselves.
365 days to chose from for their Action Day and they choose World Aids Day.
What has this to do with the discussion. It smacks of “victim” syndrome. Do you really think Alliance supporting Christians are so uncaring and hateful to choose a date that will deliberately have a hidden meaning? I suggest you reconsider this conspiracy scenario.
I may have misread the latest from the House of Bishops’ latest meeting report but I thought they had agreed that the decision to introduce bespoke services and allowing clergy to marry same sex partners would be subject to Canon 2b (or whichever it is), and that was an aim of the Alliance and some other groups. That proposal is unlikely to happen soon, I would have thought. The suite of prayers for use in services remain for use if desired but without any compulsion to use them (or penalty).
Incumbents typically strive for consensus on their PCCs, mindful of the requirement as we live together to have a measure of unity which allows the Church to work in its mission. Most PCCs navigate differences with charity, tolerance and kindness. Obviously, this unity is a biblical injunction as well. The Alliance ‘Campaign Manual’ takes a different tack and recommends nobbling each PCC member ahead of the official meeting. The recommendation put like this: “Church leaders to gather a small group to meet with each PCC member 1-to-1 to prepare for a PCC discussion and build support for a decision to… Read more »
“Church leaders to gather a small group to meet with each PCC member 1-to-1 to prepare for a PCC discussion and build support for a decision to action.” This is spiritual abuse.
Specks and logs – maybe you would like to take the log out of your own eye first. You seem happy to look over the matter of church abuse in the London diocese. Why – because the bishop happens to be a woman?
Your argument does not follow – it is two separate things. The Alliance document is advocating coercion.
or it’s good leadership. If I have a contentious issue coming before my PCC I will try to meet 1-1 with the people I expect to have most to say about it, so that we can give each other a good listening to.
And this is clearly not the approach advocated in the Alliance document.
Perhaps you give the council member the choice to meet just you and not a mob. Maybe you see an issue deeply and want the council member to see an issue deeply. Maybe you give them written background and time to appreciate it.
The schism is coming, isn’t it?
According to the GAFCON leaders the schism has already arrived! Just a matter of time to reach your own CofE, perhaps far before +Sarah is enthroned as the next ABC.
The Future Has Arrived – GAFCON: Global Anglicans
I wonder. The C of E has suffered very little schism in last 200 years despite considerable internal tensions. Individual departures yes. The only evangelical schism I can think of is the so called ” Western Schism” in the mid 19c ( see Grayson Carter’s book). Some conservative evangelicals have always seen the C of E as the ” best boat to fish from” or “a trusted brand name” as one pastor of a pretty semi-detached congregation put it. More likely conservative evangelicals considering the ministry may now begin to think they might have a better career elsewhere? .
I hope independents will demote them on arrival to defuse “entitlement” sentiments, no matter whatever sexual tastes they wish to project on their congregations!
Biblical straightforwardness in ecumenism among pew goers got distorted to serve strongarming especially the kid gloved variety.
The overgrown “Communion” will have schism, the C of E (not the same thing) will have departures from its clergy.
Wonderful historical description, especially for the ones outside of CofE, or even outside of the UK and Anglicanism in general, like me whom is just a Portuguese whom happens to have worked back in the day with former Lusitanian Church (Anglican Communion) Bishop +Fernando Soares and whom is mostly a lurker in this site with little interaction from time to time. It is factual that there are very few schisms in the last 150-200 years on the CofE, whatever the direction of said schism. Yes there were lots of individual departures, the most notable of them might have been +John… Read more »
Nobody’s going to force anyone to officiate at a same sex blessing ceremony much less a wedding. These are nasty people trying to queer (sic) the pitch for others.
I notice a new Communion is forming according to Gafcon, with new Head to be elected. Can we have a new thread on that?
I think what they’re actually claiming is that they are the *real* Anglican Communion and are “altering the bargain”, Darth Vader style, of the basis of communion. They want to abandon the instruments of communion in favour of the-Bible-as-interpreted-by-them.
Dr Mbanda’s letter talks of an inerrant Bible. Have any Provinces specifically committed themselves to inerrancy? Article 6 speaks only of sufficiency in things necessary for Salvation, the mainstream Anglican approach. It will be interesting to see how GAFCON theological/ biblical studies develop.
And Article 8 says that the Creeds are true because they are Biblical. It’s hard to see how this syllogism works unless the Bible itself is true. If so, there’s no need for any province to explicitly commit itself to a position which is already a logical necessity arising from the 39 Articles
A classic dead cat PR stunt! Why publish a story about a now obsolete document, if not to deflect attention.
I have followed TA for a long time. I would be surprised if your conspiratorial insinuation is fair.
The editors of TA publish all sorts of material across the range of positions at various times.
They are certainly not conservatives, but they are good journalists and they serve free speech with integrity
It wasn’t a comment on TA it was a comment on the Church Times. It is entirely predictable that there will be flood of anti Alliance sentiment after the disastrous LLF project failure and the fallout from this will be disastrous for the C of E not taking legal and theological advice at the outset. But it was not of the Alliance making, just incompetent leadership. This leadership is driving the church towards schism and the TA contributions are simply a reflection of this incompetence.
The Alliance’s concerted attempts (and those of their fellow travellers) to sabotage LLF, PLF and any recognition or acceptance of same-sex love by the CofE are absolutely the primary cause of this failure. Better leadership might have overcome that but it’s unlikely. It’s also entirely possible that the “legal advice” is simply a hand-washing cover for Episcopal cowardice rather than reflecting an intractable reality. Without knowing what questions were asked, who answered, and how, it’s hard to know.
On cue: Update from Helen King: Here I want to focus on the Alliance document….
Adrian, that is unfair.
Helen King asks a perfectly reasonable question. I support The Alliance and would encourage you to provide Helen with an answer
As Adrian isn’t answering, I see from CEEC that their concerns are not resolved, so I would suggest his response was premature https://ceec.info/house-of-bishops-acknowledges-theological-and-legal-impediments-to-standalone-services-and-clergy-same-sex-marriage/
Hi Helen,
I have no inside knowledge, but I am a conservative and an Alliance supporter.
I think the Alliance/CEEC have been taken by surprise – much like the rest of us.
I think they will be trying to make sense of the new situation. I doubt the “day of action” will go ahead.
The Manual obviously needs to be ditched. It looks like it was written by management consultants who have no idea how to relate to people.
Peter
Peter. Thanks for your comments on the lack of relational awareness in this manual. I agree with you. Only recently the reports on Iwerne, Smyth and Fletcher laid critiqued an authoritarian, hierarchical, male-centred approach to leadership in that conservative evangelical world which led to a culture ‘where people did not feel they could ask questions or hold differing views to the leaders, and an imbalance of power influence and control which increased the risk of abusive or poor behaviour.’ There was also an ‘exclusivity and a lack of diversity’ leading to ‘a uniformity of thought, creating a risk of leaders [unlikely] to… Read more »
factual statement, Adrian: letting readers know that the blog post was not going to cover all the recent developments
Interesting response. I was actually talking about the media response to the LLF failure and the Church Times ‘dead cat’ article in particular and then TA posts your article under the heading Update from Helen King. So I was responding the fact that TA chose to post your article at that moment, I was not commenting on the ‘factual statement’ itself.
TA published it shortly after I wrote it. That’s how it works.
Interesting, Adrian – so your reading, or your information, is that the Alliance Campaign is no longer ‘on’ now? Any evidence for that?
‘The Manual says the early stages of this were scheduled to happen between June and November, so let’s use the past tense here’ Your words not mine.
Oh Adrian! I used the past tense because it started in June so those stages are likely to have happened…
This whole campaign by the Alliance is all based on a decision the House of Bishops have not made. They have not bypassed the need for a 2/3 majority vote for bespoke services. Marriage was taken off the table years ago. Why did the Alliance not wait for the process to run its course? So what now for this campaign which must be close to warp speed at this point? And what future for the ‘orthodox’ bishops who are being told ‘thanks so much for all your support but we are leaving anyway’. And what of all those bishops who… Read more »
(i) It’s not as if others weren’t campaigning before the process is complete! The process began in response to campaigning from those who want to change the Church’s teaching and practice. (ii) I think it’s clear that if the Alliance had not been campaigning (and if Justin had not resigned) then the end of the process would have been different. I honestly thought they were wasting their time. It turns out that they weren’t. (iii) I genuinely don’t think those linked to The Alliance want to leave. They want to stay, see our church remain faithful to its heritage and… Read more »
I certainly agree The “Alliance” didn’t want to leave – their whole raison d’etre was finding a way to keep the CofE mistreating gay people and, if that failed, find a way to keep mistreating gay people and keep their vicarages, stipends and pensions at the same time. Threats to leave were only ever leverage to those ends and never going to be carried out on any scale.
Go on, keep it up guys. Beelzebub has presumably got a whole cage of devils set aside for this discussion
Interesting how “Pastoral Care” is always mentioned last in statements from the HoB about anything remotely controversial. One wonders what “radical welcome” looks like in a conservative context.
The radical welcome is everyone comes as sinners, even bishops. Bishops who don’t believe they are accountable for losing over 50million Christians of the worldwide Anglican communion. Who made that decision? Bishops who are happy to blame the Alliance for their failures, when their failure is to not understand or even more blatantly openly breaking their oath to uphold basic church law, doctrine and theology. Who holds them accountable? Isn’t this the lesson learned from church abuse scandals time and angain And who will hold the nominated ABC accountable for errors in handling serious safeguarding issues on her watch? No… Read more »
I wouldn’t employ you to carry out a casual analysis. I think you are missing many other confounding influences. Where is the data analysis?
woops. I meant causal.
The whole GAFCON thing is wanting their own way and they have used the pretext of Canterbury to achieve it. But it’s been there for years. It’s a bunch of stuff about boys who don’t want girls to be equal to them and to be able to push them down. This Biblical Inerrancy thing is not Anglican at all. Not in the 39 Articles, not in the BCP, etc. Anglicans accept Biblical scholarship. It is borrowed from 19th Century fundamentalism, which is where these people live and what they want. A kind of Anglican Pope in a book, Or a… Read more »
Quite. Remind me again what the T represents in TA?
Inerrancy has reasonable people running from the Gospel. As fast as they can. It makes the church appear ridiculous.
Where is the modern day St Augustine?
I thought a multidenominational sense of inerrancy is in meanings, conveyed by plenary verbal inspiration (even my agnostic teachers agreed), yet which meanings are grievously neglected. Leave aside that Jesus didn’t institute marriage. The whole sex in church thing and the distress in society is because spiritual leaderships tacitly endorsed secular elements’ normalising of predation. Past codependencies have to be laid to rest by an extended comprehension of Psalm 1 and the prayer of Daniel. Does fundamentalism – and vying to appear evangelical-adjacent – result in forgetting the power of Holy Spirit filled prayers to protect the young? Jesus (experimenting… Read more »
I think you are trying to say something important, but it would require me, at least, to study your words carefully. Even your first sentence leaves me confused. Any help available?
The problem lies in some noisy people’s dumbed-down projected conception of inerrancy, not in objective inerrancy (of meanings) as such, given that Jesus intended Old and New Testament meanings to be taken as a whole. I daresay the 39 Articles are framed to accommodate Bible meanings if one believes in them (I think that was no problem to some vicars I knew half a century ago).
I’m interested that Traditional Catholics are part of the Alliance. I wonder how many such parishes are really on board with this? I note also the Bishop of Fulham signed the Pilling Report. It was the conservative evangelical bishop who was the dissenter.
In The Times today a letter (actually commenting on the Chinese Embassy row) makes a comment that could be a description of how the Church of England has ended up where it has on same-sex relationships. ‘If anyone gets a reputation for giving way under pressure, one will always be under pressure. Bullies will always bully those they can bully. There comes a point where being reasonable becomes a weakness.’ That is the point we are at. The Alliance manual is more of the same. We need to start being more unreasonable.
Since women were first ordained, it has become clear that the ministry of women has been deeply blessed. Why has God not only failed to make our error plain, but allowed women ministers to do wonderful things? Given the evidence, how can anyone still insist that God himself rejects woman in the ministry? The conservatives, in their arguments and attitudes, have been intolerant, have diminished and denigrated women in a policy which is devoid of of Christian love and compassion. Women in the church tolerate those who steadfastly refuse to acknowledge their Godly calling, condemn and denigrate them as inferior.… Read more »