Minor and irrelevant comment on Colin’s first piece: Elizabeth Line trains (but not all of them) do stop at Taplow.
Simon W
20 days ago
I appreciate reading Colin’s posts but in this latest one he has misconstrued the two churches’ spirituality – neither are charismatic in their theology or affiliated to HTB and its network. Both the Maidenhead and Blackheath churches are firmly in the conservative evangelical fold in their theology and preaching, including around the ministry of women.
Many people confuse chorus-style worship led by a band (what some people derisively term ‘happy clappy) with charismatic worship. Clearly you aren’t one of them. Charismatic worship is more traditionally – i.e. for the last hundred years – understood to involve gifts of prophecy (in various forms), tongues, and sometimes healing.
Quite. It is perfectly possible to praise God (whatever that means) with Bach Choral Preludes as it is with charismatic worship.
Same, it is perfectly possible to enjoy blues singers from the 1940’s and rock bands from the 1970’s and ‘ghetto’ R&B singers from the 2000’s. Get over it.
I once played the latter at a service at Corpus Christi college Cambridge. The gradual building up of tension is truly amazing. May the Holy Ghost inspire and fill us all.
Do such churches allow male clergy ordained by a woman bishop to lead services, preach and celebrate holy communion? Just wondering what their understanding of ordination is?
Long ago a friend of mine was deaconess at St Mary’s Maidenhead, and took her turn at preaching. The church seems to have got more conservative since then.
Interesting Janet. We have veered in many different directions on this thread but I haven’t had an answer to my question. A Society parish would only allow a male priest to celebrate the Eucharist and some only a priest ordained by a PEV. In complementarian parishes are only priests ordained by the complementation bishop permitted to serve? Would they accept a male priest ordained by another ( perhaps more liberal ) bishop? I often wonder where this ” balkanisation” will end.
I fear that you are assuming that the Society exercises a certain “purity” in their parishes choices of priests which has long been impossible to maintain. Even a decade ago, the priest of one of their parishes near us shared the Vicarage with his wife who exercised her priestly ministry nearby. One of their beacon churches a couple of years in vacancy is being carried by an elderly long retired NSM, who has worshiped there all his life, and who has long supported women’s ordination despite the views of his PCC.
I think this is probably true in rural parishes especially ot where their are vacancies( and looking at the websites there seem to be a lot of vacancies and clergy serving 2, 3 or more churches.It would seem traditionalist catholicism is in decline ( and how many ordinands?). I’m not sure that is the case in Complementarian Evangelical parishes and would be interested to know what is going on in that constituency..Tbh the very fact we have these eccleisiola in ecclesial is a sadness to me.
Janet Tait
20 days ago
I was deeply saddened by both the tone and content of Mr Coward’s first article “A conversation about making Jesus known…” I was initially alerted to the tone by the gratuitous use of the word “nasty” in a description of the church’s spire. The church, as Mr Coward concedes is successful, with large congregation, multiple groups, open to and used by the community and financially viable . In short, everything most denominations, including the C of E , would hope for in a church. A church member is kind enough to engage in conversation. What follows appears to be a… Read more »
Humble suggestion to Colin – don’t put yourself through this, mate. Why not just go to Southwark Cathedral and enjoy the worship? I wonder if evangelicals go there to engage in post-service demolition work on the teaching and culture of that church? I’m guessing not, because they’re too busy growing the church in Maidenhead and Blackheath?
I don’t think the spire is nasty. There are several Wren churches which have similarly proportioned spires – St Margaret’s Lothbury, for example. The spire is the best part in my opinion. The rest of the building looks rather grim.
Pat ONeill
19 days ago
I am always surprised and perhaps a little dismayed that it took so long for CoE cathedrals and parishes to accept female choristers. In my youth in a US Roman Catholic parish, pre-Vatican II and far from liberal, it was MALE choir members who were few and far between. Was the CoE really so much more conservative about gender roles than even the American Catholic church?
I don’t think there is any real basis for your generalisation. There have been mixed choirs in C of E churches for the whole of my lifetime (now 84+ years) and they certainly existed, if not in the same form, in earlier generations. The male adult members of cathedral choirs have a totally different history and background. Before the Reformation in secular (non-monastic) cathedrals like Wells and Hereford they were priests, Vicars Choral, and their present lay successors are known as Lay Vicars. In monastic cathedrals like Winchester and Canterbury monks were replaced by Lay Clerks and, again, that term… Read more »
And no, they are not just being kind. Your opinion is yours, that’s fine. I don’t mind that, but others are happy with male altos and female altos singing. Personally, I get much joy out of praising God in that range.
Yes, I have sung in a cathedral choir, and in a college choir and now in school choirs where I teach. I am not at present in a cathedral choir – there don’t seem to be as many vacancies as there used to be for male altos, so I guess you may get your wish after all.
Have I expressed a wish? The male alto was a necessity in the days of the all male choir. Now there is an alternative and it is the preferred choice of just about every cathedral organist, not for reasons of ‘wokeness’ as you possibly surmise, but because the sound of a woman singing in her natural voice blends better with the natural voices rest of the choir than does that of a man singing falsetto.
Goodness, Malcolm! You’re really not very fond of us, are you? 1) Did I mention wokeness? That’s your projection on me, surely. If anything, I accept the evidence of my own experience that more women are taking the alto line to the exclusion of men for aesthetic, practical and not “woke” reasons. I assume you actually have data to back up the claim you made that this is in fact that female altos are the preferred choice of “every cathedral organist.” 2) It seems very strange to tell me that I *should* sing bass without it expressing a wish in… Read more »
Not sure who Malcolm is, but to throw in my twopennyworth, there is, in my experience, an audible difference between the sound of an all male choir – boy trebles and male A, T B compared with that of various mixed combinations- boy/girl trebles, female sops, mixed/female altos, male T, B. I don’t think that one is better than the other and hope there is space for both in the musical worship of the future church.
Quite right. *Matthew* not Malcolm. I am very sorry about that. As a bear of little brain, I am easily confused by names beginning with M, especially if I’m trying to rehearse a piece by Malcolm Sargent.
Thank you for your charitable view Despondent. I hope life treats you much better than your pseudonym.
Quite fascinated by the level of antipathy on display here by Matthew towards Male Alto/Counter-Tenor voices. It is almost as if he feels that male singing in this register is somehow “unmanly”.
To be fair to Matthew, I think he just doesn’t like the sound (even if he does present his opinion as fact) but then there are lots of different sounds just as in every other voice.To some, like Sir Michael Tippett (and me!), Alfred Deller sounds like one who rolls back the centuries just by the purity of his voice, to others, he sounds like Dame Edna Everage. I do understand his dislike of the “hooting” on the high notes or “murder on the high Cs” but that I find comes out with the overexcitement of one who seemingly gets… Read more »
No I do not think it is ‘unmanly’. I think it is unnecessary when there is a better option available. An male alto is always a re-purposed bass – natural tenors can rarely sing in that register – and I have sung alto myself through necessity. I don’t think I make a very good sound though and my daughter who regularly deps for cathedral choirs makes a much better and more natural sound. As our correspondence has acknowledged, there are very few openings for male altos nowadays, which would indicate that my *opinion* on the matter is at least quite… Read more »
And the world is richer, for example, for having both King’s College and Trinity College choirs in Cambridge (insert other equivalents as desired), isn’t it?
The alto line in the Balfour Gardiner is exactly the sort that should always be sung by women. It is way too high for men to do without hooting.
Thats why Statham left the altos out of the unison opening of the Mag in E minor. Men would ruin that top D in the opening.
Balfour Gardiner briefly taught at Winchester College, only one term I believe. He wrote his “Evening Hymn” while there and dedicated it to Dr William Sweeting, the College Music Master. It must be a moot point whether he contemplated any female voice being included during its first performance – highly unlikely, I would have thought in that all-male establishment.
No he did not anticipate it being sung by female voices, but then Haydn wrote all his keyboard sonatas except the last three for harpsichord or fortepiano. It does not mean that they don’t sound a lot better played on a modern pianoforte!
What a beautiful description of the joy of diverse human voices joining together in song – thank you.
Nigel Goodwin
19 days ago
I understand but feel uncomfortable with Colin’s description. As he says Neither the building nor the worship style are my cup of tea. Indeed, early in the article he talks about a truly nasty skinny spire stuck atop an elongated pedestal. When I walk into, say, Seville cathedral, I feel very uncomfortable and feel the images have very little to do with Jesus. I would also be bored to tears having a long service full of fatuous choruses, although choruses have their place, as a way to build communities. I enjoyed chorusus when on a charismatic seaside mission. In other… Read more »
I wish Colin could have found something positive. He seems to have based his views on a conversation with a single church member, and we all know individual church members can often have rather ‘distinct’ views. Colin already stated the person was vulnerable.
I find it a little strange that somebody who prefixes his name with Fr complains about misogyny. I am sure there is more to it, but in general I find the term ‘Father’ difficult, particularly when attached to somebody who is not my father. I’m not a hierarchical kind of person.
Of course in so far as we have to acknowledge our limited understanding of the true nature of god it is perfectly reasonable to assert that god has no gender, is beyond gender, indeed is beyond our comprehension. What then are we left with, but the teaching of Jesus who taught us to call god our father.
Well…. I believe there is a respectable argument that the word Jesus would have used is “abba” and that “abba” , whilst not gender-neutral, can also mean “nurturer” or “protector” and in the Semitic language context is more about parental function than anatomy. Though why anyone would spend even five minutes debating the nature of God’s anatomy is beyond me. Jesus also, by the way, told us to go into a quiet room and pray in private but that’s another, and much more important, discussion.
Within the membership of the body of Christ we are all related as brothers and sisters, presumably. Some of those sibling relationships can have a parental dimension too, if the relationship between Paul and Timothy gives us a scriptural model for this possibility. How that should be identified, named and conducted in the life of the contemporary church is, I think, an issue for wise, prayerful discernment, given the power dynamics involved. But not therefore simply to be dismissed?
Thanks for this. May I ask for some protocol advice please? My new incumbent likes people to call him ‘Father’, but I absolutely loathe the idea on principle for reasons too tedious to list here. He doesn’t like being called ‘Vicar’.
Appropriate inclusive, diverse and equality guidance somewhere says I should address people as they wish to be addressed. As a result, every time the Incumbent and I meet, there is an awkward sort of stutter. Would it be less socially awkward if I left and went to another church?
I sympathise. Our last incumbent called himself ‘Father’ (and signed himself ‘Fr X’ at the end of his letter in the monthly magazine) when this was contrary to the tradition of all the churches in the benefice. You mention loathing the idea of calling your new incumbent ‘Father’ “for reasons too tedious to list”, but there is surely one overriding reason, namely our Lord’s instruction “to the crowds and to his disciples” as recorded in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 23. At verse 9 Jesus said: “And do not call anyone on earth “father”, for you have one Father, and he is… Read more »
He doesn’t like it. Apparently it’s over-familiar. But perhaps he also needs to get over himself. I shall use his Christian name regardless. You are right to quote the Good Book first and foremost. Thank you. I don’t like it because it smacks of clericalism and the ‘Pedestal Effect’; I have learned in recent years that anything leaning towards clericalism is an evil which needs to be crushed. We are all encouraged to build a healthy safeguarding culture in the Church and this is one of the ways I can model it. But you are right. Matthew 23:9 first of… Read more »
No chastening (in any event, not my place) – just a brotherly suggestion from someone who has weathered the same dilemma. (I’d be interested to hear how your vicar responds if you do refer him to Matthew 23.9.)
You are right, too, to oppose anything smacking of ‘clericalism’ – rightly labelled an evil that the C of E needs to eliminate.
PS. Does your vicar address you (and others in the congregation) by your/their Christian names?
PS Yes he does, which is why it’s (in my mind) a deliberate power imbalance. In view of your (and others’) well-considered comments, references and ideas, I think I am going to explore this with him at an appropriate moment in June; I will report back on this thread. If we want a safer Church, I think my attitude must change, which includes committing to fight clericalism and humbug in all its forms. You can imagine how popular I’m going to be. PPS. You were right; I appreciate your fraternal action, esp. as you’ve obviously grappled with this before. You… Read more »
Thank you. Yes normally I would, but when queried by another parishioner, he (apparently) said that he wanted to maintain boundaries and avoid undue familiarity. (I’m being uncharitable perhaps but I think this is about power imbalances of which he may be unconscious.) As a result, I don’t call him anything other than perhaps sort-of-grunting in his general direction when necessary, which can seem a bit rude in PCC meetings. But then I worry about DEI and whether I am respecting his diversity, and whether I will end up cancelled. It’s one of those stupid things that floats around one’s… Read more »
In PCC meetings you can say “Chair” perhaps. (And yes, I’m another grumpy old man who doesn’t like the affectation “Father”, and similarly had a previous vicar, some years ago now, who insisted on being addressed as Father surname.)
Maurice Child, one of the great names of inter-war Anglo Catholicism, always insisted on being addressed as Mr rather than Father as he was not a religious. French secular clergy were at that time always addressed as Monsieur.
I did not know that! Thank you. And that actually accords with Crockford’s guidance too. Thank you. Very interesting. And also, gratefully, ammunition.
If all else fails, I’ll try “Monsieur” and see how far that gets me! I’ll keep you posted.
I grew up in a low-church TEC parish where the rector was always addressed as Mr. X. The parishioners were inordinately proud of the fact that their clergyman (as it was then) was Mr. X, and not Reverend X, the title of all the other non-RC clergy in town.
in the high Church in Wales parish in which I grew up all the priests (two of them and a curate) were called Father surname. And always had been. As a child I just accepted that was the case and now hearing someone being called “Father Frank” strikes me as odd. It’s very much a matter of local useage and not, perhaps, something to die in a ditch about. But I would certainly NOT agree that someone who addresses me as “Pam” should demand to be called anything other than “Tom” (well, unless his name was Richard…)
It is absolutely correct to address him as ‘Vicar’. I don’t see why he should find that difficult. I have never encouraged anyone to call me ‘Father’ and don’t ever sign myself as Father. Some of my congregation address me ad ‘Father’, some as ‘Vicar’ and some as ‘Matthew’. I really don’t mind. The only thing that really grates is being addressed in speech as ‘Reverend’. That is just incorrect.
Once you have persuaded undertakers (sorry, funeral directors) to drop the horrible appellation ‘Reverend Surname’, then you’ll know the Kingdom really has come near.
I agree. Crockford’s has guidance on how to address the clergy. The guidance is clear and very simple.
He doesn’t like ‘Vicar’ apparently because it is redolent of Miss Marple and “more tea, Vicar?” and it would make him into a comic figure. This suggests to me that Pride and Vanity are in play here.
I’m going to pursue this issue, I think. Thank you for your comment. I will report back on this thread when I have an answer.
Could you discuss it with him, explaining why you find calling him ‘Father’ so difficult? If you do that and he won’t give way, you could then call him by his Christian name, and he would at least know why you do it. If he’s any kind of pastor (which I know is not guaranteed!) he should be able to accept it if he understands your reasons.
And if he won’t accept it, you’ll know he’s someone you need to be very cautious of.
I think I’m going to do exactly that. Usually I prefer to stay silent with clergy rather than actively disagree them, but in light of everyone’s thoughtful comments on this thread and armed with Matt 23:9, I’m going to probe this a bit further.
Thank you for your comments on this and all other threads. I try not to comment, but I always read what you say and I usually agree. You make me smile. Thanks for resisting humbug.
AN Other, I’d be wary of arming yourself with Matt 23:9 as it exposes you to the charge of literalism. Jesus is not banning ‘father’, but its use by those seeking to inflate their status.
Janet, I had a 1950s Low Church upbringing. I’m grateful for the love of the Psalms it gave me (allowing you to be human before God), less so for its habit of resorting to knock-down proof texts (which could do the opposite). Matthew 23:9 is an example of this; Matthew 23:1-12 is not. I know of many Evangelicals who find this equally problematic.
But how do we tell? I’m sure ‘if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out’ is not meant to be taken literally. I’m supposing it’s OK to call our actual progenitors ‘father’, though taken literally Jesus seems to say otherwise. But I also assume ‘Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you’ is literal, as is ‘do to others as you would have them do to you’. But how do I know my own biases aren’t influencing which verses I take literally, and which not?
Is it a matter to decide privately? Or does the body of Christ receive Jesus’ words as having authority and interprets them in conversation with tradition and experience?
I think I may have (maybe regrettably) started on this topic – remember, my original comment was simply that someone who uses the term ‘Father’ also attacks misogyny, which I thought rather funny. When women priests insist on others calling them ‘Mother’, I will stop laughing!
I have yet to meet a woman priest who insisted on people calling her ‘Mother’. Though I did once know a woman priest who insisted on being called ‘Father’!
I do sometimes wonder if you and Nigel really get out very much. A trawl through church websites especially in Southwark and London dioceses will reveal a lot of parish clergy who are styled ‘Mother N’
I ought to add to my comment earlier this morning, that I would not dismiss out of hand the idea of calling a priest ‘Father’. I think there are strong arguments against it, but there might also sometimes be arguments for it. And where it’s a tradition over many years, changing that practice should be handled with sensitivity. But in the particular case we are discussing, titling vicars ‘Father’ is not part of local tradition and is being imposed on the parish by the priest for his own reasons. And one of those reasons, according to reports, is that he… Read more »
I’m happy to be called Allan or Fr Allan. I’ve never insisted on the latter, although in CoE school assemblies – after discussion with the headteachers – we settled on Fr Allan as Allan was deemed to informal (on the same principle that teachers aren’t called Mary or Jim). I don’t much care for ‘Vicar’ as it feeds the widespread belief that Anglican orders are bishops, vicars and curates – or in the HTB world: bishops, lead pastors and curates.
You aren’t requiring people to call you “Father’ (unlike the priest who is the subject of discussion here), so for you it doesn’t seem to be about status or distance. But why should we bother what people’s conception of Anglican orders is?
Our ordinals have always used the term ‘Reverend Father in God’, because it is relational; unlike ‘Bishop Bill’ which is functional. I know which quality I would want in my chief pastor. Does people’s conception of Anglican orders matter? Depends if your looking for a priest or a vicar/lead pastor. Again, as a member of the laity, I know which I would go to first. Others will differ. What is worrying is when many who are in orders know very little about Anglican ecclesiology. Years ago a FiF bishop remarked that female ‘clergy’ hadn’t a clue about priesthood. To which… Read more »
Years ago Henry Chadwick wrote for the Canterbury Convocation a paper on Ministerial Priesthood. I don’t think it was ever properly debated and certainly not in a wider forum unfortunately. I discussed it with Dean Chadwick in private correspondence which was very illuminating not least his comments on some of F.O.A.G’s work, evangelical attitudes and St Augustine. So illuminating that via his daughter the correspondence has gone to his archive held by a religious order in California (!). We could do with more theological heavyweight’s like Henry! I also remember John V Taylor in Synod ( November 87) giving a… Read more »
Charles Read would have a better idea of the situation, but I believe ecclesiology, along with liturgy, has become the poor relation in our TEIs. Given the shortage of our own heavyweights, we could look outside our own tradition. Stanley Hauerwas, in Hannah’s Child, writes of his wife, a Methodist presbyter: “For her the ministry is not the name of a ‘helping profession’. You do not need to be ordained to help people. Rather, she clearly thinks she was ordained to preside at the Eucharist.” I remember similar sentiments being expressed by the leader of my ordination retreat. But would… Read more »
In defence of Colin(who I do not know personally), I think the most important point he was making was this: “ The Church of England is decadent. It fuels the success of these growing, church-planting networks because they are the answer to the church’s desperate congregational and financial decline. In prioritising this unhealthy, abusive version of what is becoming the dominant contemporary Christian theology, the C of E is enshrining abuse within more and more congregations. No wonder the hierarchy are incapable of dealing successfully with the safeguarding crisis. The hierarchy doesn’t begin to understand what it is about its… Read more »
Speaking personally, I think it’s a little more complicated than that. Those of us who are in later life have often gained quite a distinctive understanding of God and find most churches a bit immature. Personally I usually refrain from comment about particular churches (reducing God to a prayer vending machine is one of my personal peeves) but I don’t think comment is necessarily wrong either if someone like Colin wishes to.
One of my closest friends was a member of St. Mary’s Maidenhead for a quarter of a century. I have worshipped there several times. By the way, St. Mary’s is not charismatic. It’s conservative evangelical. My friend was quite involved in the structures of the parish (including the literal structures—he’s an architect). He and his wife hosted a house group. My friend is by no means a fundamentalist, and since moving to Nottingham has gotten quite interested in contemplative prayer. But he found a lot of support and growth at St. Mary’s. When i was there with him, i was… Read more »
Tim, Whilst I understand your point of view, I think there are opposing arguments. I don’t think Colin’s aim in exploring these churches is as a way of boosting his own spiritual ago. It is more that those of us working in this area are very aware that many churches which appear at first glance to be welcoming and healthy and successful have a shadow side. They are welcoming and healthy if you fit the criteria, but can be less healthy or welcoming for those who may be disabled (see Realist’s post below) or LGBTQIA or have other challenging differences.… Read more »
Last edited 18 days ago by Simon Dawson
Realist
19 days ago
I’m saddened, but unsurprised, by Colin’s account of his church visits. I am genuinely pleased that he finds some that are truly welcoming to those for whom he advocates (and wish there were more). But I’m always mindful here of what my friends who are Christians with disabilities say – that many of the churches that have a welcoming and valuing approach to people who often find themselves rejected and judged also forget to take that approach to people with disabilities. It’s rarely direct discrimination but they excuse not prioritising equal access and adapted facilities, instead being content to accept… Read more »
Realist, I am very conscious of the fundamental necessity of those responsible for the design and management of church buildings to be conscious of easy accessibility for people with disabilities. I’m conscious every time I go to Southwark cathedral. Apart from Sunday mornings, access to the cathedral for everyone is via the courtyard on the north side of the cathedral, past the cafe and, once inside, past the gift shop, turn right and up a long ramp paved with stones naming every parish in the diocese, arriving at steeps down and a lift platform giving access to the cathedral into… Read more »
I don’t know what the laws are in the UK, but on my side of the pond, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) says a building cannot be designated as compliant with the law unless ALL facilities within it are compliant. That means just making ONE entrance handicapped accessible is not sufficient–all must be. ONE handicapped accessible toilet is not sufficient–all must be.
As you can imagine, this makes for some very expensive and extensive modifications in older buildings, even in a country considerably younger than yours.
I don’t know about the rest of the UK, but in England there are strict laws about what modifications you are permitted to make to heritage buildings. Probably most C of E churches come into that category, and churches 1,000 years old are not all that uncommon. In addition, many are surrounded by burial grounds which complicate the building of extensions. Church buildings can often be adapted but it’s not easy, and it’s expensive and time-consuming to get all the necessary permissions, to find builders qualified to work on ancient buildings, and to source sympathetic materials. Many on TA will… Read more »
From my own experience the difficulties in adapting listed buildings have become greater. Our DAC didn’t allow temporary ramps for disabled access. It took nearly a decade to get faculty approval for our listed building in a conservation area. But the effort was worth it as we have a light, welcoming and accessible multi-use building.
James
19 days ago
I don’t go to church to argue with people or ‘put them right’. I go to worship God with fellow Christians, and if I sensed that my understanding of Christianity would offend others, I wouldn’t go there. I don’t go to Catholic churches to tell them they are wrong about the eucharist, or to African Pentecostal churches to tell them they mis-represent the work of the Holy Spirit. Colin Coward sounds to me that he is acting in an unwise and judgmental way. He would be better staying in his own lane and worshipping with the likeminded rather than getting… Read more »
Well said! On holiday we have worshipped pretty much anywhere, from a shop front “house church” in Preston to St Gervaise in Paris and everything in between. We even once furtively crept into Ayia Sophia in Istanbul to say Morning Prayer before heading off to Mass at the Crimea Memorial Church. Frankly to quote Stephen Cottrell at his best: “Jesus is Lord and all the rest is commentary”.
The commentary might be crucial, though, when the claimed living out of Jesus’ Lordship over one’s life is done in incommensurate ways by different Christians, though? Matthew 7.21 comes to mind. No doubt Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain invoked Jesus as Lord with the same sincerity as Patriarch Kirill does now. Like me, their discipleship might benefit from the loving, correcting commentary of others?
Which begs the question: is it acceptable for an Anglican priest to use their own theological education to try to unsettle the faith of a lay person who has simply gone to church on a Sunday morning?
I find it quite life-giving really. Don’t you find something of ‘all being in the same lane’ when you attend Southwark Cathedral? i do find it quite interesting that Jesus is never represented as joining the congregation in the Temple for one of its sacrifices, though he is present in Jerusalem sometimes. He instructs his disciples in prayer but does not join them in Gethsemane or elsewhere. He addresses the synagogue but is not definitely said to have prayed there. But surely it isn’t Imitation of Christ to have no interest in just being enthusiastically, or just quietly, with other… Read more »
Martin, I’m not exactly sure in which direction your comment is heading, but you’ve opened other windows. Jesus instructed his disciples in prayer once (according to the record. He is recorded several times as rising early and going off alone up a hillside or wherever to pray. I find it both very curious that he chose to pray alone and also understandable. I’m an introvert and I prefer praying alone. I assume Jesus was a contemplative. He doesn’t seem to have inducted the disciples into his practice of solo contemplative prayer. Jesus went off alone in Gethsemane to pray. The… Read more »
Last night, awake at 2am, I wrote a general reply to the negative comments posted here about my blogs. I’m very glad to have provoked people into expressing themselves, negatively and positively in relation to my thoughts. For me, it’s better than fifty comments about pews or chairs of clerical garb. The presence of systemic, institutionalised homophobia and prejudice in the Church of England is a very serious matter for the whole Christian Church and for me personally. Misogyny and access for people with disabilities and transphobia are also critically important matters. The House of Bishops and the General Synod… Read more »
Isn’t a large part of the problem that walking into a Church of England church you have absolutely no idea what you are going to find there? This is especially the case if you are new to church. I admire Colin’s courage and curiosity in going into services which many of us would probably avoid at all costs. The fact that he may have mislabelled the specific Christian genus in his latest reviews should tell us a lot about just how confused and confusing the state of the Church of England pick and mix worship is right now. The fact… Read more »
Different supermarkets do clearly cater for distinct clienteles, don’t they? A combination of price points, range of products and ethos of the store attract some demographics and deter others. The marketization of the church has driven us in similar directions, perhaps. When I was growing up, Anglican diversity was often seen as our strength. Now it sounds as if both progressives and conservatives likely find it incoherent, unmanageable and unsustainable.
The CofE has become an ecclesastical version of Lidl. Much less choice. An own-brand range of cheap products. And a middle aisle containing a happy-clappy assortment of changeable objects.
I would have put LIDL as evangelical myself. Vastly efficient at catering to the mass market, and providing nearly everything such people need in one place. But only if you have your own transport and access to the town centre locations.
Are we becoming the Anglican version of Waitrose, Morrisons/ Tesco or Aldi? So we attend churches that meet our shopping styles. I attend my parish church, liberal Anglo-Catholic because there are few alternatives – and I believe from the point of witness that I should be seen to worship locally rather than being a Christian commuter – but if my local church were charismatic evangelical, that would really put my beleifs to the test. However, I believe that styles of worship are often more to do with aesthetics than ecclesiology!
I was prepared for confirmation by an AC priest who, when another candidate said, “Fr, once I’m confirmed I’ll come to your church,” replied, “You’ll do no such thing, you should worship in your parish church” – said knowing the candidate’s parish was Low Church. As you say, this is an act of witness. Tragically, the CofE is promoting the franchise model to the detriment of the local. But which is most likely to build community, Waitrose or the corner shop?
When I was growing up ( 1950’s) “comprehensiveness” wasn’t quite diversity.It seemed to me there was something recognizably C of E with Anglo-Catholic/ Evangelical/ Broad Church being emphases on that common core. The traditions have moved away from each other,” the polo mint church?” and seem to have less and less in common. Yet we are still supposedly a Church governed by Canon Law with clergy who promise to believe and teach the Christian Faith as the C of E has received it and only use those forms of service authorised by Canon. Chatting after an induction sometime ago a… Read more »
The Canons are unlikely to hold together a Church which sits lightly to its ecclesiology and in which the ecclesial imagination has shrunk and the ordained vocation devalued. Unity is relational: a ministry of presence, mutual recognition and shared life. Instead we have been panicked into adopting an alien ecclesial model: managerial and centralised. Is it too late for an Anglicanism that is territorial, not a franchise; where the Church is the diocese and its parishes; and in which the diocese has priority over the centre?
Alan, I like your image of a Church in which the ecclesiastical imagination has shrunk and your positive vision of a ministry of presence, mutual recognition and shared life. Each of these valuable qualities have effectively gone AWOL in the contemporary Church. They are qualities whose foundations take years and sometimes decades to build up. Eventually they will be returned to the Church, but there’s no sign at the moment of who will do the repair work, when and where?
Thank you, Colin. What I find particularly depressing is that there are good bishops out there who are uncomfortable with the CofE”s direction of travel, yet say nothing, still less “do the repair work”.
People disagree with you. They worship God in the manner the Holy Spirit declares to their hearts is good and right. They are nourished, reach out in love, and carry on their lives in Christ. What seems to be most in evidence that you know what is good and right, and that is without question. You have a geiger counter set to the truth and though it is your personal take on things, for you, it is incontravertable. You do not seem to have any sense that what you believe and judge as right, isn’t universally verifiable at all. I… Read more »
I don’t go to ‘progressive’ churches and ask people I don’t know to tell me about their LGBTetc beliefs. And then report about it as though my views are unassailable and universally self-authenticating. And theirs are ignorant and everyone knows that.
universally verifiable – I think in one of the conversations the issue of biblical teaching and what Jesus said came up. Sometimes on radio talk shows like LBC the issue of sexuality comes up, and I hide my head under the pillow in shame when somebody calls saying ‘as a Christian I believe bla bla bla is wrong’. My thought response is always ‘what did Jesus say about it?’. Equally, listening to Colin’s encounters, I am questioning with his approach. But my responses are mainly reactive, on both sides. What Jesus did or did not think regarding sexuality I leave… Read more »
Nigel – is being gay a sin or not? Is being in a sexual relationship with a man and enjoying sex a sin or not? I’m very clear about my answers to these two questions. I know the Christian Church is conflicted and usually gives a different answer. My blog gives an a very edited, selective account of two conversations, both of which lasted over an hour. In both conversations, I asked if the other person would like to tell me where in the Gospels Jesus makes any comment about LGBTQIA+ people or condemns homosexuality. I gave them time to… Read more »
Is being heterosexual a sin or not? Is being a human a sin? I’m not surprised they didn’t have a reply. I am fine with you asking questions, as I say I have been prompted to ask them myself, but don’t feel able to give an answer to your exact question. It is very difficult to say whether something was ever said or not – I avoid any answers which involve the words ‘never, always, none’. Moreover, the exact words Jesus is recorded as saying I treat as a Thinking Anglican, and also read other parts of the New Testament.… Read more »
Anglican Priest – Jeeeeez. “They worship God in the manner the Holy Spirit declares to their hearts is good and right.” Do you have a hotline to the congregation at St Mary’s Maidenhead through which you learn that all the people worshipping God there do so in a manner the Holy Spirit declares is good and right? This is really impressive. A united congregation, every individual conscious that the Holy Spirit is declaring in their hearts that their manner of worship is good and right. Your hotline tells you they are nourished and they reach out in love and they… Read more »
Possibly those attending eg St Mary’s also regularly examine their feelings, prejudices, and values and find them to be good, critical guides to the truth. Possibly also they regularly reflect on their experiences at St Mary’s, and believe God is calling them to worship there in spirit and in truth. And perhaps God is.
Equally possibly, in some years’ time they may feel God is calling them away from St Mary’s, or away from the kind of theology preached there. But maybe that time isn’t now.
Why has God called someone to hold beliefs now, then leads them away from them later? He sounds a very antagonist deity. Would it not be easier to say “people change their minds”, and stop projecting people’s changing opinions onto something else?
That’s not what I said at all. I made no comment on the views of the deity, only on the discernment of human beings, which we must make on an incomplete understanding, and always striving for a better understanding.
I didn’t say God calls them to hold those beliefs. I said they may truly believe that God calls them to worship there, and it’s possible God is in fact calling them there. And they may eventually feel God is calling them away. In my own experience, and in my observation of others, God is very patient with us as we learn and grow in the faith and in our knowledge of the Divine. He doesn’t expect us to be adults in the faith when we’re toddlers. And I know I’ve gained a lot from churches whose theology I now… Read more »
In those who are making progress in the spiritual life, from good to better, the good angel touches the soul gently, tenderly, and sweetly, as a drop of water entering a sponge.
I agree with much of your thinking, Colin, and as a conservative evangelical I share some of your frustration with our culture. But these are institutional issues and some require a vast depth of thought and learning to address. I’m a lay person and can’t remotely claim to have that expertise. But I’ve done enough reading in my lifetime for my faith not to be too shaken if a liberal begins to describe their reservations about plain readings of scripture. And I’ve been in enough difficult situations not to be too surprised when someone points out that the Lord asks… Read more »
well said. Let me try another tack – if one of my children, or an adult friend, starts expressing views learnt from social media (e.g. confusing being pro-Palestinians with wanting the eradication of Israel and antisemitism, or attitudes towards women), do I enter into a detailed political or historical discussion? It is likely to be pointless and end up as a shouting match. All one can do is to gently encourage a critical way of thinking. BTW, in my experience it is surprising how much anti-Semitism there is, and how many people want Jewish people removed ‘from the river to… Read more »
“BTW, in my experience it is surprising how much anti-Semitism there is, and how many people want Jewish people removed ‘from the river to the sea’.”
Isn’t that anti-Zionism, not necessarily anti-semitism? I recognise that can be a difficult or dangerous thing to suggest, but there is surely a distinction?
Unfortunately, I find that anti-Zionism quickly flows into anti-semitism.
I’m not sure if many people realise how bad it is in the UK.
I am staggered what comes out of the mouths of people close to me, whom I thought were discerning.
A poll to see how many people want the eradication of Israel might have dreadful results. Another poll whether Israel should ever have been set up in 1948 would have other results.
A poll to test modern anti-semitic tropes would be equally distrurbing.
I suggest that in the present day, anti-Zionism is properly channelled into political action concerning the Israeli state, its treatment of Arabs and their lands under its political control (the post-1948 occupied territories), and also its relationships with its Arab neighbours. Anti-semitism on the other hand attacks individual Jews and groups of Jews and their property and pushes towards the idea that “the Jewish people” are responsible for various real or imagined wrongs or problems in the world.
How is Zionism understood? To me it’s ’the belief that people who are Jewish, and they only, have an inherent or God-given right to a share in sovereignty over the Holy Land, others having a share only by the grace and generosity of the true heirs’. I think that that is more or less the belief that has been put into practice
I don’t think that a pollster would get more than 0.1% for ‘the eradication of Israel” in as many words, 2% for the transfer of the Palestinians perhaps, huge majorities for 2 state ‘solution’ that everyone who matters in the West and hardly anyone who matters in the Holy Land itself wants. Polls are finding greater sympathy for Palestinians than for Israelis, I am aware
I’m afraid that is not my experience. We all know about the many marches which have taken place in London. I have engaged debate with some. In all cases, when I ask ‘do you want the eradication of Israel’ the answer is silence. which I take to mean ‘yes’. Similar with some friends and family. Same with drivers who are asked to hoot if you agree. Even politicians can display extraordinary views. What they do not say is as important as what they do say. Labour very soon after the Hamas atrocity called for a ceasefire, yet they are repeatedly… Read more »
It’s a difficult situation. Let us suppose that a group of people from outside the UK decided to buy land in, say, Kent. Over a few generations they purchase a small but significant area and then decide that they are going to unilaterally declare independence from the UK, and defend their territory by military means, eventually extending their authority over the whole of Kent, even claiming Canterbury for their capital. Obviously not a precise parallel for all sorts of reasons. But at what point “must” the “right” of the settlers to Kent be recognised? At what point does it become… Read more »
I know. My dad wrote a chapter in his book on Britain and the United Nations on the issue. My point is simply that anti-Semitism is quite high in the UK at present, in my experience.
My main point, wrt. Colin’s article, is that dialogue can be very difficult.
I’m not sure your analogy is accurate, like almost all analogies.
The supposed ‘Anti semitism’ crisis is being amplified massively to disguise a much more serious problem of Islamophobia which is being encouraged at the highest levels. How often do Jews get told they don’t belong in this country or that they should go back to Poland or Belarus? That their religion should be banned? Or even that they should not participate in democratic process, or that their votes are somehow defective? That their culture is anti-British? This is more and more the experience of British Muslims.
Essentially, what has happened for centuries in that part of the world (and elsewhere). Brutal armed struggle for survival/dominance. Personally I’d rate the IDF’s imperfect rules of engagement to be less depraved than those of Hamas.
That you even ask I think may just demonstrate the media amplification of one kind of hate crime to the exclusion of another. Did you even hear about the murder of student Mohammed Al Qasim in Cambridge last summer?
How many Jews have been killed for being Jewish? Did the police shoot the man at the Manchester synagogue for being Jewish? I thought they just made a terrible mistake.
You don’t think the murders of Jews in the street and at worship, the torching of Jewish ambulances and businesses, the cancelling of Jewish speakers, artists, and students, indicate we have an antisemitism crisis?
I deplore both antisemitism and Islamophobia. It’s not an either/or.
Do you know for certain that the psychopath who went on on the rampage in London stabbed his victims because they were Jews? How could he tell them apart from any other white people on the street? Or was it just a random act of violence like the one on the train at Huntingdon?
Do you know who set the ambulances in fire and what their motive was?
At Heaton Park were the two deaths caused deliberately by the suspected assailant, or were they caused accidentally by the police?
We are being given a narrative before we have the facts.
He could tell they were Jewish because they were wearing distinctively Jewish clothing. I don’t know if the Muslim he had attacked earlier that day was obviously Muslim or not. The ambulances were also identifiably Jewish, and were parked outside a synagogue which was damaged in the attack. At Heaton Park, the murderer attacked people going into the synagogue, killed one and wounded others. A second man was killed by a police bullet, fired to prevent the terrorist from detonating a suspected bomb right outside the synagogue. Speakers and artistes have been cancelled specifically because they were Jewish. The people… Read more »
I’m almost sorry i started this side debate, but my purpose was to try to show how difficult it is to get alongside others and have a respectful discussion. How does one balance avoiding antagonism between different wings of the CoE whilst holding on to what one believes is the truth?
It’s not an either/or. Quite. Both are deplorable. Sadly our press doesn’t share your objectivity. Two murders 13 years ago – we all remember that of Lee Rigby by two Muslims, but does anyone remember that of 82 year old Mohammed Saleem, despite his killer going on to plant three bombs near mosques? The papers know how to tickle us where we itch.
In those circumstances that point would never come. Buying property isn’t buying sovereignty, on the contrary to buy property is to accept the existing laws of the place
They don’t want to endorse your form of words, of course, which suggests massacre. They do want to end the system which rather disadvantages Palestinians. If ‘Israel’ is the name for that system they want it replaced with one that is more humane. If ‘Israel’ is the name for the people living in that space then they don’t want any replacement.
I think your evidence shows that I was right. You haven’t found anyone who would proclaim ‘eradication’ or who would endorse the ideas that those words suggest
Yes. I want the eradication of Israel. That does not mean i want the eradication of the Jewish people, or even the displacement of any of the people who currently live between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. I want the dismantling if the apatheid state of Israel, and the establishment of a single democratic state for all its people. What name that state would take would be a matter for its people to decide. I do not believe that people who identify as Jews have a special right to a land called Israel any more than people who identify as… Read more »
Yes, Matthew, that is antisemitism in its ‘respectable’ garb. All down the ages, people have found reasons to hate the Jews: their greed, their lack of Christianity or Islam, their kidnapping Christian children for their blood – always a good reason. Where are the people campaigning for the dismantling of the thirty or so Muslim states?
/crickets
So people are only against Israel because they have a negative attitude to Jews? Or is it more probable that some people have a negative attitude to Jews because of the actions of Israel?
Anti-semitism pre-dates the modern state of Israel by hundreds of years. There’s always an excuse. And why should Jews living in e.g. England be blamed for actions taken by the Israeli government? Americans in London aren’t called ‘evil Yankee bitches’ because we disapprove of the US president.
The lack of religious liberty in Iran is shocking. That does not show that the claims for special Jewish rights are justified. Or are not outrageous.
Fictional reasons for hostility to Jews in times long past do not discredit disapproval for what people who are in fact Jewish are in reality doing.
Genesis 34 describes an Israelite campaign that aroused disapproval and resentment without really suggesting that this must be the result of prejudice
Jesus engaged with people pastorally and personally and Jesus confronted institutional issues and those who upheld ideas he disagreed with, sometimes in a very direct, confrontational way. Those who have a great deal of leaning and a vast depth of thought aren’t always very good at noticing when they become so focused on details of interpretation and translation and scholarship that they mist the most simple, obvious points. I believe I am feeding to the best of my awareness and ability and spiritual grounding in silence and attentive presence. Lay people are often better at cutting to the chase and… Read more »
“Jesus engaged with people pastorally and personally and Jesus confronted institutional issues and those who upheld ideas he disagreed with, sometimes in a very direct, confrontational way.”
What an extraordinary view of ordination!
‘Taking orders’ surely means taking orders. Have priests not freely chosen this life of obedience to the church, God and their vows? To equate obedience with being ‘very, very inhibited’ does a grave disservice to the many priests who faithfully persevere in the face of many difficulties.
Speaking as a pretty obedient priest surely this is a ‘yes…and no’. Richard Baxter, William Law, John and Charles Wesley, the early ritualists, all were Church of England clergy for whom Orders didn’t or couldn’t quite equal following orders, and I am glad of each one of them and have taken inspiration from all. Looking beyond Anglican clergy, from the Beguines to the Anabaptists, from Teresa of Avila to Mary Ramabai, from John if the Cross to John Bunyan, many of the Christians from whom I have gained the greatest inspiration have fallen foul of ecclesiastical authority. Surely in a… Read more »
Thank you Rob, you beat me to it in making this point. There is an active debate in the US at present about whether service men and women should obey the orders of their commanders, come what may, or whether they have a wider duty to refuse to obey orders they believe to be unlawful. It is a matter of personal discernment. Janet talks about “obedience to the church, God and their vows” as all being the same thing. But there have been many exemplary Christians through history who discerned that their wider duty to God required them to disobey… Read more »
Janet. I don’t think ‘taking holy orders’ does mean ‘taking orders’. But some do think this, and if it works, okay for them, but they can be dangerous and damaging to those they serve because what the Church institution orders is not always in line with the mystical, mysterious orders of God.
I agree with Janet on this – everything right with priests who serve God’s church through living its teachings. My frustration with conservative evangelicals is that we may not be conservative enough! Christianity turned the world upside down; and its founder was clear the church is a living, growing entity. There are always new chapters needing to be written. And they begin with the most serious exploration possible of the teaching and life of Jesus and the early church, and where He wants to go next. That requires institutional commitment, resourcing and responsibility. But individually it needs the quiet contemplation… Read more »
‘Many clergy are very, very inhibited, self-inhibited, through feeling they have to be obedient to the teachings of the institution or the Bible, and be obedient to God and their ordination vows. The best clergy in my life have been those who live more freely from such inhibitions.’
I’ll repeat what I wrote above. “I don’t go to ‘progressive’ churches and ask people I don’t know to tell me about their LGBTetc beliefs. And then report about it as though my views are unassailable and universally self-authenticating. And theirs are ignorant and everyone knows that.” That is my point. I make no assumptions that the people worshipping where you popped in were off the mark, needing your interventions and interrogations, were not worshipping in the Holy Spirit of God. We all know your positions and your views. Let others have theirs. Leave them alone. Especially when you note… Read more »
Anglican Priest, I don’t have a geiger counter set to truth. If I have any kind of geiger counter, it has become gradually set to ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’. Mostly, the needle swings in the unhealthy direction, whatever the culture and tradition of the parish. I think people are right to be confused and alarmed at the ideas I express in my blogs. I am certainly confused and alarmed at the condition and variety of Sunday morning worship competence and incompetence in church – but this has become the new normal, as I learnt after seven months of visiting over 70… Read more »
But who is asking you to roam the church land using what you regard as a healthy v unhealthy monitor? In addition, your ‘health’ may be far less obvious than you think it is. What is odd is that you don’t seem to understand that. You seem to think that what you mean by ‘health’ is univocal and commonly held. This leaving aside whether sincere Christian faith can be plumbed on this kind of axis. Are the saints more ‘healthy’? Why not find one church to worship and leave off the monitoring of others. Surely that would encourage spiritual ‘health’… Read more »
Anglican Priest (and Bob): God seems to be encouraging me to take the new opportunity presented to me, living in London with a Freedom Pass, to roam around exploring new places and churches, experiencing for myself what the Church of England parish presence is like in 2026. Other people have done the same, reporting on what they find and assessing its quality. I have my own assessment of what qualities healthy and unhealthy churches might have. I’m perfectly free in UK society to do this. I evaluate the difference between healthy and unhealthy based on things like is the teaching… Read more »
“Going to churches” is not going to church. Any spiritual director would tell you that.
“Quality Control Agent” is not the same as worship, on Sunday, in community, growing in relationship with fellow worshippers. And seeking God’s pardon and renewal.
Not analyzing the belief and conduct of others. Beam and mote territory.
Your 47 years of daily spiritual practice — under direction, with confession? Otherwise the danger of self-reinforcing is real.
Nor is “going to church” ANY guarantee of being engaged there by the kind of experience I seek as a disciple of Jesus. “Any spiritual director would tell you that”. Not in my experience. “Beam and mote territory”. Yes, of course, and such an easy, dismissive comment to lob in; one of the things I’m trying to identify in my work. “Under direction – with confession”. I have been under direction continuously for 45 years. I went to a more formal confession once; wasn’t helpful. I was also in counselling and therapy for over 15 years. Less easy to escape… Read more »
Colin Coward, upon reading your piece about making Jesus known I thought, now here is a guy with a Plato like way of going about things. ( see below). Plato engaged people in interrogative conversation, trying to get them to go beyond instances to underlying ideas– an annoying project aimed at surfacing what is true and which costs the “gadfly” greatly. You write: “I asked the member of the congregation which Jesus they were getting to know and make known – a cheeky question, I know. We had a conversation about the kind of Jesus the Gospels reveal. Unsurprisingly, we… Read more »
Ruairidh, I’m not used to being compared to Plato – quite like it, though. Yes, I experience myself as being something of a gadfly, called to be an irritant, a reminder to people of what is possible, “surfacing” what is possible and possibly more Christ-like, holy and creative
I like your idea of the gadfly who engages people in person and on their own turf, as you reference in your article. You get to see the body language for instance. People tend to be more secure on their own turf as well. An example from the Jesus of the Gospels that comes to mind is Luke 14, the so called symposium section, the banquet, where Jesus is depicted as engaging one of his interlocutors at his home.
Worth remembering that Plato’s ideal human society was a tyranny run by a philosopher king, with human breeding controlled by a rigged ballot – a sort of hideous combination of North Korea, MENSA and MAFS. All of which suggests his interrogative approach might not be the route to go down when considering questions of church governance and marriage.
My reference was from The Apology ( not The Republic) , and is intended as a literary allusion. Re: your point here see Book IX of The Republic, the distinction between the tyrannical personality and the true philosopher. I would say it is much more complicated than first glance comparisons suggest, with reading The dialogues of Plato as ancient literature a challenge.
Yes, it’s too long since I read any philosophy – another thing for when I retire! I like Aristotle more, but the theory of forms is really good – raising a vital question for Thinking Anglicans: Does a pew have the form of a chair?
re: chairs/pews, just lol ! I was introduced to Plato in uni by The Rev. Dr. Greg MacLeod ( Oxford/Louvain). In the last conversation I had with Greg a few months before he died, one of things he said to me was, ” Always stick with Aristotle, you can’t go wrong with Aristotle.”
Colin is in some ways doing two surveys in one. There are his primary observations on LGBTQI issues and the role of women in church leadership, where one might disagree with him, either in principle or on whether it’s useful for him to challenge other people’s sincerely held and non-vocalised views. Then his secondary observations on things like liturgy and music. Here, he’s picked up that many evangelical churches are not using a structured (or recognisably Anglican) liturgy, that the music can be very monocultural, and that services can give the appearance of spontaneity while actually being quite planned. Those… Read more »
Thank you, rerum novarum. It’s a relief to know that at least one person out there (and I know there are many more, often silent) who understands what I’m about. Worship today tends to be “done” according to one of two modes, both pre-formatted and pre-choreographed – Common Worship liturgical or evangelical supposedly spontaneous. Both are controlled by tradition and the people ‘at the front’. There are ways of integrating familiarity and variety, new and old, as you are well aware. It was possible in the seventies and eighties. Much more difficult in the current climate. Evangelicals get away with… Read more »
Following the liturgy also means you don’t use the same old words every week! Hymns, psalm, readings, sermon, prayers all change weekly. There is a variety of Eucharistic prayers and seasonal variations. Apart from the Creed and some of the responses it is only the overall structure that mostly doesn’t change. I suspect that is also true of much non-liturgical worship.
Agreed. I’ve experienced and benefited from non-liturgical worship that actually followed the structure of Anglican morning and evening prayer quite closely, but using different words, an approach that worked well in the hands of skilled ministers. But I’ve also experienced non-liturgical worship that lacked structure, reducing services to notices and a sermon with choruses in between.
And more than just a survey. The Socratic method is not just for the classroom. Colin here has taken it to the streets, or the pews ( or is it chairs?) as it were. Anyone can post comments on a blog site; but his idea of quizzing people in person like Plato’s Socrates, is intriguing. Sort of like Diogenes in search of an honest man.
‘… people come near to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based merely on human rules they have been taught.’ If it helps people worship with their hearts great, if not the ‘wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish’.
Your reference to Isaiah sparks a memory of a hymn I used to hear at University chapel at Catholic folks mass, “though the mountains may fall and the hills turn to dust the love of the lord will stand…” (link). Philosopher Bernard Lonergan notes that God’s Love flooding our hearts is prior (Romans). It is a prerequisite to moral conversion. Moral Conversion, of course, prompts questions, from one’s self but also from others. Such is a basic philosophical act. On that score some attention might be paid to Colin Coward’s other piece posted here i.e. The Visionary Wisdom Writers of… Read more »
When exegesis breaks down, we’re left with exhortation.
Rowland Wateridge
17 days ago
I suspect that my last visit to Maidenhead was before St Mary’s was built, so I only have photographs to go by. Frankly, to describe the spire as ‘nasty’ is an insult to the architect and to the church. In fact if I were a member of that church I would feel pretty offended by the gratuitous treatment this article and the comments generally here have engendered. It’s a modern building making a bold statement in contemporary style without pretending to be otherwise..
I won’t touch on the wider ‘theology’ issue. I think that has been sufficiently ventilated.
Mr support for Colin’s work in this field is known, so I need not repeat it.
But it may be worth pointing out that before ordination colin trained as an architect, and so perhaps he should be permitted to express his aesthetic opinion on church design.
And being welcomed into sacred places of worship without any intention of worship whilst also placing a burden onto ‘vulnerable people’ does not concern you? Wow.
Minor and irrelevant comment on Colin’s first piece: Elizabeth Line trains (but not all of them) do stop at Taplow.
I appreciate reading Colin’s posts but in this latest one he has misconstrued the two churches’ spirituality – neither are charismatic in their theology or affiliated to HTB and its network. Both the Maidenhead and Blackheath churches are firmly in the conservative evangelical fold in their theology and preaching, including around the ministry of women.
Many people confuse chorus-style worship led by a band (what some people derisively term ‘happy clappy) with charismatic worship. Clearly you aren’t one of them. Charismatic worship is more traditionally – i.e. for the last hundred years – understood to involve gifts of prophecy (in various forms), tongues, and sometimes healing.
Quite. It is perfectly possible to praise God (whatever that means) with Bach Choral Preludes as it is with charismatic worship.
Same, it is perfectly possible to enjoy blues singers from the 1940’s and rock bands from the 1970’s and ‘ghetto’ R&B singers from the 2000’s. Get over it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db1KFGXD0TI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYUewnRkGa4
I once played the latter at a service at Corpus Christi college Cambridge. The gradual building up of tension is truly amazing. May the Holy Ghost inspire and fill us all.
https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/bwv/bwv-671
Do such churches allow male clergy ordained by a woman bishop to lead services, preach and celebrate holy communion? Just wondering what their understanding of ordination is?
Long ago a friend of mine was deaconess at St Mary’s Maidenhead, and took her turn at preaching. The church seems to have got more conservative since then.
Interesting Janet. We have veered in many different directions on this thread but I haven’t had an answer to my question. A Society parish would only allow a male priest to celebrate the Eucharist and some only a priest ordained by a PEV. In complementarian parishes are only priests ordained by the complementation bishop permitted to serve? Would they accept a male priest ordained by another ( perhaps more liberal ) bishop? I often wonder where this ” balkanisation” will end.
I fear that you are assuming that the Society exercises a certain “purity” in their parishes choices of priests which has long been impossible to maintain. Even a decade ago, the priest of one of their parishes near us shared the Vicarage with his wife who exercised her priestly ministry nearby. One of their beacon churches a couple of years in vacancy is being carried by an elderly long retired NSM, who has worshiped there all his life, and who has long supported women’s ordination despite the views of his PCC.
I think this is probably true in rural parishes especially ot where their are vacancies( and looking at the websites there seem to be a lot of vacancies and clergy serving 2, 3 or more churches.It would seem traditionalist catholicism is in decline ( and how many ordinands?). I’m not sure that is the case in Complementarian Evangelical parishes and would be interested to know what is going on in that constituency..Tbh the very fact we have these eccleisiola in ecclesial is a sadness to me.
I was deeply saddened by both the tone and content of Mr Coward’s first article “A conversation about making Jesus known…” I was initially alerted to the tone by the gratuitous use of the word “nasty” in a description of the church’s spire. The church, as Mr Coward concedes is successful, with large congregation, multiple groups, open to and used by the community and financially viable . In short, everything most denominations, including the C of E , would hope for in a church. A church member is kind enough to engage in conversation. What follows appears to be a… Read more »
Humble suggestion to Colin – don’t put yourself through this, mate. Why not just go to Southwark Cathedral and enjoy the worship? I wonder if evangelicals go there to engage in post-service demolition work on the teaching and culture of that church? I’m guessing not, because they’re too busy growing the church in Maidenhead and Blackheath?
Exactly. I am far too busy working in my church and welcoming newcomers to go to other places to have arguments.
I couldn’t agree more Janet. It seems to me that Colin only approves of those churches that agree with him.
i could not agree more. Much more eloquently stated than my own post.
I don’t think the spire is nasty. There are several Wren churches which have similarly proportioned spires – St Margaret’s Lothbury, for example. The spire is the best part in my opinion. The rest of the building looks rather grim.
I am always surprised and perhaps a little dismayed that it took so long for CoE cathedrals and parishes to accept female choristers. In my youth in a US Roman Catholic parish, pre-Vatican II and far from liberal, it was MALE choir members who were few and far between. Was the CoE really so much more conservative about gender roles than even the American Catholic church?
The Church in Wales got there first: https://tinyurl.com/4phvc54d
I don’t think there is any real basis for your generalisation. There have been mixed choirs in C of E churches for the whole of my lifetime (now 84+ years) and they certainly existed, if not in the same form, in earlier generations. The male adult members of cathedral choirs have a totally different history and background. Before the Reformation in secular (non-monastic) cathedrals like Wells and Hereford they were priests, Vicars Choral, and their present lay successors are known as Lay Vicars. In monastic cathedrals like Winchester and Canterbury monks were replaced by Lay Clerks and, again, that term… Read more »
I would guess that most cathedrals now have adult women singing the alto part. They make a much more pleasant sound in that register than men.
I’m no longer mobile, but almost a decade ago I saw them at Chester, Lincoln, Norwich and York: less certain about Birmingham Anglican.
Your opinion is noted. Happily, others have told me that they disagree.
They are being kind. You would do better singing bass again.
No thank you. I can’t hit the low notes for bass.
And no, they are not just being kind. Your opinion is yours, that’s fine. I don’t mind that, but others are happy with male altos and female altos singing. Personally, I get much joy out of praising God in that range.
Do you sing in a cathedral choir though?
Yes, I have sung in a cathedral choir, and in a college choir and now in school choirs where I teach. I am not at present in a cathedral choir – there don’t seem to be as many vacancies as there used to be for male altos, so I guess you may get your wish after all.
Have I expressed a wish? The male alto was a necessity in the days of the all male choir. Now there is an alternative and it is the preferred choice of just about every cathedral organist, not for reasons of ‘wokeness’ as you possibly surmise, but because the sound of a woman singing in her natural voice blends better with the natural voices rest of the choir than does that of a man singing falsetto.
Goodness, Malcolm! You’re really not very fond of us, are you? 1) Did I mention wokeness? That’s your projection on me, surely. If anything, I accept the evidence of my own experience that more women are taking the alto line to the exclusion of men for aesthetic, practical and not “woke” reasons. I assume you actually have data to back up the claim you made that this is in fact that female altos are the preferred choice of “every cathedral organist.” 2) It seems very strange to tell me that I *should* sing bass without it expressing a wish in… Read more »
Not sure who Malcolm is, but to throw in my twopennyworth, there is, in my experience, an audible difference between the sound of an all male choir – boy trebles and male A, T B compared with that of various mixed combinations- boy/girl trebles, female sops, mixed/female altos, male T, B. I don’t think that one is better than the other and hope there is space for both in the musical worship of the future church.
Quite right. *Matthew* not Malcolm. I am very sorry about that. As a bear of little brain, I am easily confused by names beginning with M, especially if I’m trying to rehearse a piece by Malcolm Sargent.
Thank you for your charitable view Despondent. I hope life treats you much better than your pseudonym.
Quite fascinated by the level of antipathy on display here by Matthew towards Male Alto/Counter-Tenor voices. It is almost as if he feels that male singing in this register is somehow “unmanly”.
To be fair to Matthew, I think he just doesn’t like the sound (even if he does present his opinion as fact) but then there are lots of different sounds just as in every other voice.To some, like Sir Michael Tippett (and me!), Alfred Deller sounds like one who rolls back the centuries just by the purity of his voice, to others, he sounds like Dame Edna Everage. I do understand his dislike of the “hooting” on the high notes or “murder on the high Cs” but that I find comes out with the overexcitement of one who seemingly gets… Read more »
No I do not think it is ‘unmanly’. I think it is unnecessary when there is a better option available. An male alto is always a re-purposed bass – natural tenors can rarely sing in that register – and I have sung alto myself through necessity. I don’t think I make a very good sound though and my daughter who regularly deps for cathedral choirs makes a much better and more natural sound. As our correspondence has acknowledged, there are very few openings for male altos nowadays, which would indicate that my *opinion* on the matter is at least quite… Read more »
And the world is richer, for example, for having both King’s College and Trinity College choirs in Cambridge (insert other equivalents as desired), isn’t it?
The opening bars of his Magnificat in E minor suggest that Heathcote Statham didn’t either.
Thankfully, Balfour Gardiner in his evening hymn or Finzi in Lo the Full Final Sacrifice seem to want to make space for us.
The alto line in the Balfour Gardiner is exactly the sort that should always be sung by women. It is way too high for men to do without hooting.
Thats why Statham left the altos out of the unison opening of the Mag in E minor. Men would ruin that top D in the opening.
Thank you, again, Matthew, for your *opinion*. Other do not share it and, no, they are not “just being kind”.
Balfour Gardiner briefly taught at Winchester College, only one term I believe. He wrote his “Evening Hymn” while there and dedicated it to Dr William Sweeting, the College Music Master. It must be a moot point whether he contemplated any female voice being included during its first performance – highly unlikely, I would have thought in that all-male establishment.
No he did not anticipate it being sung by female voices, but then Haydn wrote all his keyboard sonatas except the last three for harpsichord or fortepiano. It does not mean that they don’t sound a lot better played on a modern pianoforte!
What a beautiful description of the joy of diverse human voices joining together in song – thank you.
I understand but feel uncomfortable with Colin’s description. As he says Neither the building nor the worship style are my cup of tea. Indeed, early in the article he talks about a truly nasty skinny spire stuck atop an elongated pedestal. When I walk into, say, Seville cathedral, I feel very uncomfortable and feel the images have very little to do with Jesus. I would also be bored to tears having a long service full of fatuous choruses, although choruses have their place, as a way to build communities. I enjoyed chorusus when on a charismatic seaside mission. In other… Read more »
How is misogyny and homophobia an acceptable part of diversity? Hate is hate wherever it is preached.
I wish Colin could have found something positive. He seems to have based his views on a conversation with a single church member, and we all know individual church members can often have rather ‘distinct’ views. Colin already stated the person was vulnerable.
I find it a little strange that somebody who prefixes his name with Fr complains about misogyny. I am sure there is more to it, but in general I find the term ‘Father’ difficult, particularly when attached to somebody who is not my father. I’m not a hierarchical kind of person.
You must find the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer particularly difficult.
The only words I struggle with are ‘Our’, ‘Father’, ‘heaven’, the rest is fine.
You complain about misogyny yet believe in a male God – whatever that means.
It’s fine, I accept your misogyny as part of the diversity.
Of course in so far as we have to acknowledge our limited understanding of the true nature of god it is perfectly reasonable to assert that god has no gender, is beyond gender, indeed is beyond our comprehension. What then are we left with, but the teaching of Jesus who taught us to call god our father.
Well…. I believe there is a respectable argument that the word Jesus would have used is “abba” and that “abba” , whilst not gender-neutral, can also mean “nurturer” or “protector” and in the Semitic language context is more about parental function than anatomy. Though why anyone would spend even five minutes debating the nature of God’s anatomy is beyond me. Jesus also, by the way, told us to go into a quiet room and pray in private but that’s another, and much more important, discussion.
There’s a big difference between calling God ‘Our Father’ and calling an unrelated human male ‘Father’.
Within the membership of the body of Christ we are all related as brothers and sisters, presumably. Some of those sibling relationships can have a parental dimension too, if the relationship between Paul and Timothy gives us a scriptural model for this possibility. How that should be identified, named and conducted in the life of the contemporary church is, I think, an issue for wise, prayerful discernment, given the power dynamics involved. But not therefore simply to be dismissed?
I didn’t dismiss it, I simply pointed out the difference.
Thanks for this. May I ask for some protocol advice please? My new incumbent likes people to call him ‘Father’, but I absolutely loathe the idea on principle for reasons too tedious to list here. He doesn’t like being called ‘Vicar’.
Appropriate inclusive, diverse and equality guidance somewhere says I should address people as they wish to be addressed. As a result, every time the Incumbent and I meet, there is an awkward sort of stutter. Would it be less socially awkward if I left and went to another church?
I sympathise. Our last incumbent called himself ‘Father’ (and signed himself ‘Fr X’ at the end of his letter in the monthly magazine) when this was contrary to the tradition of all the churches in the benefice. You mention loathing the idea of calling your new incumbent ‘Father’ “for reasons too tedious to list”, but there is surely one overriding reason, namely our Lord’s instruction “to the crowds and to his disciples” as recorded in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 23. At verse 9 Jesus said: “And do not call anyone on earth “father”, for you have one Father, and he is… Read more »
He doesn’t like it. Apparently it’s over-familiar. But perhaps he also needs to get over himself. I shall use his Christian name regardless. You are right to quote the Good Book first and foremost. Thank you. I don’t like it because it smacks of clericalism and the ‘Pedestal Effect’; I have learned in recent years that anything leaning towards clericalism is an evil which needs to be crushed. We are all encouraged to build a healthy safeguarding culture in the Church and this is one of the ways I can model it. But you are right. Matthew 23:9 first of… Read more »
No chastening (in any event, not my place) – just a brotherly suggestion from someone who has weathered the same dilemma. (I’d be interested to hear how your vicar responds if you do refer him to Matthew 23.9.)
You are right, too, to oppose anything smacking of ‘clericalism’ – rightly labelled an evil that the C of E needs to eliminate.
PS. Does your vicar address you (and others in the congregation) by your/their Christian names?
PS Yes he does, which is why it’s (in my mind) a deliberate power imbalance. In view of your (and others’) well-considered comments, references and ideas, I think I am going to explore this with him at an appropriate moment in June; I will report back on this thread. If we want a safer Church, I think my attitude must change, which includes committing to fight clericalism and humbug in all its forms. You can imagine how popular I’m going to be. PPS. You were right; I appreciate your fraternal action, esp. as you’ve obviously grappled with this before. You… Read more »
You could call him by his Christian name?
Thank you. Yes normally I would, but when queried by another parishioner, he (apparently) said that he wanted to maintain boundaries and avoid undue familiarity. (I’m being uncharitable perhaps but I think this is about power imbalances of which he may be unconscious.) As a result, I don’t call him anything other than perhaps sort-of-grunting in his general direction when necessary, which can seem a bit rude in PCC meetings. But then I worry about DEI and whether I am respecting his diversity, and whether I will end up cancelled. It’s one of those stupid things that floats around one’s… Read more »
In PCC meetings you can say “Chair” perhaps. (And yes, I’m another grumpy old man who doesn’t like the affectation “Father”, and similarly had a previous vicar, some years ago now, who insisted on being addressed as Father surname.)
The nuclear (and meticulously correct) option would be “Mister” + surname, of course.
Grumpy men, of all ages, unite!!!
Thanks for all that you do as Admin for us.
Maurice Child, one of the great names of inter-war Anglo Catholicism, always insisted on being addressed as Mr rather than Father as he was not a religious. French secular clergy were at that time always addressed as Monsieur.
I did not know that! Thank you. And that actually accords with Crockford’s guidance too. Thank you. Very interesting. And also, gratefully, ammunition.
If all else fails, I’ll try “Monsieur” and see how far that gets me! I’ll keep you posted.
I grew up in a low-church TEC parish where the rector was always addressed as Mr. X. The parishioners were inordinately proud of the fact that their clergyman (as it was then) was Mr. X, and not Reverend X, the title of all the other non-RC clergy in town.
in the high Church in Wales parish in which I grew up all the priests (two of them and a curate) were called Father surname. And always had been. As a child I just accepted that was the case and now hearing someone being called “Father Frank” strikes me as odd. It’s very much a matter of local useage and not, perhaps, something to die in a ditch about. But I would certainly NOT agree that someone who addresses me as “Pam” should demand to be called anything other than “Tom” (well, unless his name was Richard…)
Undue familiarity? We’re a family of sisters and brothers aren’t we?
Dear Despondent, Ah…. if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
;o)
Which Bible are you reading?
How about calling him Father Bill with the Father almost inaudible and the emphasis entirely on Bill (or whatever his name is)?
It is absolutely correct to address him as ‘Vicar’. I don’t see why he should find that difficult. I have never encouraged anyone to call me ‘Father’ and don’t ever sign myself as Father. Some of my congregation address me ad ‘Father’, some as ‘Vicar’ and some as ‘Matthew’. I really don’t mind. The only thing that really grates is being addressed in speech as ‘Reverend’. That is just incorrect.
Once you have persuaded undertakers (sorry, funeral directors) to drop the horrible appellation ‘Reverend Surname’, then you’ll know the Kingdom really has come near.
I agree. Crockford’s has guidance on how to address the clergy. The guidance is clear and very simple.
He doesn’t like ‘Vicar’ apparently because it is redolent of Miss Marple and “more tea, Vicar?” and it would make him into a comic figure. This suggests to me that Pride and Vanity are in play here.
I’m going to pursue this issue, I think. Thank you for your comment. I will report back on this thread when I have an answer.
Could you discuss it with him, explaining why you find calling him ‘Father’ so difficult? If you do that and he won’t give way, you could then call him by his Christian name, and he would at least know why you do it. If he’s any kind of pastor (which I know is not guaranteed!) he should be able to accept it if he understands your reasons.
And if he won’t accept it, you’ll know he’s someone you need to be very cautious of.
Wise words, Janet.
I think I’m going to do exactly that. Usually I prefer to stay silent with clergy rather than actively disagree them, but in light of everyone’s thoughtful comments on this thread and armed with Matt 23:9, I’m going to probe this a bit further.
Thank you for your comments on this and all other threads. I try not to comment, but I always read what you say and I usually agree. You make me smile. Thanks for resisting humbug.
AN Other, I’d be wary of arming yourself with Matt 23:9 as it exposes you to the charge of literalism. Jesus is not banning ‘father’, but its use by those seeking to inflate their status.
Which makes it very apt in this situation!
But does it? Matt 23:1-12, certainly. Matt 23:9, best kept for literalists and lawyers.
See my comment below.
But, how do we decide which of Jesus’ commands are to be literally obeyed, and which not?
Janet, I had a 1950s Low Church upbringing. I’m grateful for the love of the Psalms it gave me (allowing you to be human before God), less so for its habit of resorting to knock-down proof texts (which could do the opposite). Matthew 23:9 is an example of this; Matthew 23:1-12 is not. I know of many Evangelicals who find this equally problematic.
But how do we tell? I’m sure ‘if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out’ is not meant to be taken literally. I’m supposing it’s OK to call our actual progenitors ‘father’, though taken literally Jesus seems to say otherwise. But I also assume ‘Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you’ is literal, as is ‘do to others as you would have them do to you’. But how do I know my own biases aren’t influencing which verses I take literally, and which not?
Is it a matter to decide privately? Or does the body of Christ receive Jesus’ words as having authority and interprets them in conversation with tradition and experience?
Which part of the Body of Christ are we talking about? And is it always reliable?
I think I may have (maybe regrettably) started on this topic – remember, my original comment was simply that someone who uses the term ‘Father’ also attacks misogyny, which I thought rather funny. When women priests insist on others calling them ‘Mother’, I will stop laughing!
They very often do so insist.
I have yet to meet a woman priest who insisted on people calling her ‘Mother’. Though I did once know a woman priest who insisted on being called ‘Father’!
I do sometimes wonder if you and Nigel really get out very much. A trawl through church websites especially in Southwark and London dioceses will reveal a lot of parish clergy who are styled ‘Mother N’
I ought to add to my comment earlier this morning, that I would not dismiss out of hand the idea of calling a priest ‘Father’. I think there are strong arguments against it, but there might also sometimes be arguments for it. And where it’s a tradition over many years, changing that practice should be handled with sensitivity. But in the particular case we are discussing, titling vicars ‘Father’ is not part of local tradition and is being imposed on the parish by the priest for his own reasons. And one of those reasons, according to reports, is that he… Read more »
I’m happy to be called Allan or Fr Allan. I’ve never insisted on the latter, although in CoE school assemblies – after discussion with the headteachers – we settled on Fr Allan as Allan was deemed to informal (on the same principle that teachers aren’t called Mary or Jim). I don’t much care for ‘Vicar’ as it feeds the widespread belief that Anglican orders are bishops, vicars and curates – or in the HTB world: bishops, lead pastors and curates.
You aren’t requiring people to call you “Father’ (unlike the priest who is the subject of discussion here), so for you it doesn’t seem to be about status or distance. But why should we bother what people’s conception of Anglican orders is?
Our ordinals have always used the term ‘Reverend Father in God’, because it is relational; unlike ‘Bishop Bill’ which is functional. I know which quality I would want in my chief pastor. Does people’s conception of Anglican orders matter? Depends if your looking for a priest or a vicar/lead pastor. Again, as a member of the laity, I know which I would go to first. Others will differ. What is worrying is when many who are in orders know very little about Anglican ecclesiology. Years ago a FiF bishop remarked that female ‘clergy’ hadn’t a clue about priesthood. To which… Read more »
Years ago Henry Chadwick wrote for the Canterbury Convocation a paper on Ministerial Priesthood. I don’t think it was ever properly debated and certainly not in a wider forum unfortunately. I discussed it with Dean Chadwick in private correspondence which was very illuminating not least his comments on some of F.O.A.G’s work, evangelical attitudes and St Augustine. So illuminating that via his daughter the correspondence has gone to his archive held by a religious order in California (!). We could do with more theological heavyweight’s like Henry! I also remember John V Taylor in Synod ( November 87) giving a… Read more »
Charles Read would have a better idea of the situation, but I believe ecclesiology, along with liturgy, has become the poor relation in our TEIs. Given the shortage of our own heavyweights, we could look outside our own tradition. Stanley Hauerwas, in Hannah’s Child, writes of his wife, a Methodist presbyter: “For her the ministry is not the name of a ‘helping profession’. You do not need to be ordained to help people. Rather, she clearly thinks she was ordained to preside at the Eucharist.” I remember similar sentiments being expressed by the leader of my ordination retreat. But would… Read more »
Just plain ‘Bill’ is more relational than either.
A number of priests in the C of E like to be addressed as Mother. I presume Our Lord would have been OK with this?
In defence of Colin(who I do not know personally), I think the most important point he was making was this: “ The Church of England is decadent. It fuels the success of these growing, church-planting networks because they are the answer to the church’s desperate congregational and financial decline. In prioritising this unhealthy, abusive version of what is becoming the dominant contemporary Christian theology, the C of E is enshrining abuse within more and more congregations. No wonder the hierarchy are incapable of dealing successfully with the safeguarding crisis. The hierarchy doesn’t begin to understand what it is about its… Read more »
Speaking personally, I think it’s a little more complicated than that. Those of us who are in later life have often gained quite a distinctive understanding of God and find most churches a bit immature. Personally I usually refrain from comment about particular churches (reducing God to a prayer vending machine is one of my personal peeves) but I don’t think comment is necessarily wrong either if someone like Colin wishes to.
One of my closest friends was a member of St. Mary’s Maidenhead for a quarter of a century. I have worshipped there several times. By the way, St. Mary’s is not charismatic. It’s conservative evangelical. My friend was quite involved in the structures of the parish (including the literal structures—he’s an architect). He and his wife hosted a house group. My friend is by no means a fundamentalist, and since moving to Nottingham has gotten quite interested in contemplative prayer. But he found a lot of support and growth at St. Mary’s. When i was there with him, i was… Read more »
This is pretty much what I said yesterday but the editor has declined to publish my comment.
Tim, Whilst I understand your point of view, I think there are opposing arguments. I don’t think Colin’s aim in exploring these churches is as a way of boosting his own spiritual ago. It is more that those of us working in this area are very aware that many churches which appear at first glance to be welcoming and healthy and successful have a shadow side. They are welcoming and healthy if you fit the criteria, but can be less healthy or welcoming for those who may be disabled (see Realist’s post below) or LGBTQIA or have other challenging differences.… Read more »
I’m saddened, but unsurprised, by Colin’s account of his church visits. I am genuinely pleased that he finds some that are truly welcoming to those for whom he advocates (and wish there were more). But I’m always mindful here of what my friends who are Christians with disabilities say – that many of the churches that have a welcoming and valuing approach to people who often find themselves rejected and judged also forget to take that approach to people with disabilities. It’s rarely direct discrimination but they excuse not prioritising equal access and adapted facilities, instead being content to accept… Read more »
Realist, I am very conscious of the fundamental necessity of those responsible for the design and management of church buildings to be conscious of easy accessibility for people with disabilities. I’m conscious every time I go to Southwark cathedral. Apart from Sunday mornings, access to the cathedral for everyone is via the courtyard on the north side of the cathedral, past the cafe and, once inside, past the gift shop, turn right and up a long ramp paved with stones naming every parish in the diocese, arriving at steeps down and a lift platform giving access to the cathedral into… Read more »
I don’t know what the laws are in the UK, but on my side of the pond, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) says a building cannot be designated as compliant with the law unless ALL facilities within it are compliant. That means just making ONE entrance handicapped accessible is not sufficient–all must be. ONE handicapped accessible toilet is not sufficient–all must be.
As you can imagine, this makes for some very expensive and extensive modifications in older buildings, even in a country considerably younger than yours.
I don’t know about the rest of the UK, but in England there are strict laws about what modifications you are permitted to make to heritage buildings. Probably most C of E churches come into that category, and churches 1,000 years old are not all that uncommon. In addition, many are surrounded by burial grounds which complicate the building of extensions. Church buildings can often be adapted but it’s not easy, and it’s expensive and time-consuming to get all the necessary permissions, to find builders qualified to work on ancient buildings, and to source sympathetic materials. Many on TA will… Read more »
From my own experience the difficulties in adapting listed buildings have become greater. Our DAC didn’t allow temporary ramps for disabled access. It took nearly a decade to get faculty approval for our listed building in a conservation area. But the effort was worth it as we have a light, welcoming and accessible multi-use building.
I don’t go to church to argue with people or ‘put them right’. I go to worship God with fellow Christians, and if I sensed that my understanding of Christianity would offend others, I wouldn’t go there. I don’t go to Catholic churches to tell them they are wrong about the eucharist, or to African Pentecostal churches to tell them they mis-represent the work of the Holy Spirit. Colin Coward sounds to me that he is acting in an unwise and judgmental way. He would be better staying in his own lane and worshipping with the likeminded rather than getting… Read more »
James – like Jesus, I have no interest in staying in my own lane and worshipping with likeminded people. Such Christianity is deadly.
Well said! On holiday we have worshipped pretty much anywhere, from a shop front “house church” in Preston to St Gervaise in Paris and everything in between. We even once furtively crept into Ayia Sophia in Istanbul to say Morning Prayer before heading off to Mass at the Crimea Memorial Church. Frankly to quote Stephen Cottrell at his best: “Jesus is Lord and all the rest is commentary”.
This is my practice too, Nicholas. However, I don’t make a habit of initiating ‘gotcha’ conversations with people I don’t know while I’m there.
The commentary might be crucial, though, when the claimed living out of Jesus’ Lordship over one’s life is done in incommensurate ways by different Christians, though? Matthew 7.21 comes to mind. No doubt Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain invoked Jesus as Lord with the same sincerity as Patriarch Kirill does now. Like me, their discipleship might benefit from the loving, correcting commentary of others?
Which begs the question: is it acceptable for an Anglican priest to use their own theological education to try to unsettle the faith of a lay person who has simply gone to church on a Sunday morning?
Exactly.
The exchanges seem a bit creepy to me.
Let people go to church and worship God. Without a hall monitor lurking about.
I find it quite life-giving really. Don’t you find something of ‘all being in the same lane’ when you attend Southwark Cathedral? i do find it quite interesting that Jesus is never represented as joining the congregation in the Temple for one of its sacrifices, though he is present in Jerusalem sometimes. He instructs his disciples in prayer but does not join them in Gethsemane or elsewhere. He addresses the synagogue but is not definitely said to have prayed there. But surely it isn’t Imitation of Christ to have no interest in just being enthusiastically, or just quietly, with other… Read more »
Martin, I’m not exactly sure in which direction your comment is heading, but you’ve opened other windows. Jesus instructed his disciples in prayer once (according to the record. He is recorded several times as rising early and going off alone up a hillside or wherever to pray. I find it both very curious that he chose to pray alone and also understandable. I’m an introvert and I prefer praying alone. I assume Jesus was a contemplative. He doesn’t seem to have inducted the disciples into his practice of solo contemplative prayer. Jesus went off alone in Gethsemane to pray. The… Read more »
Last night, awake at 2am, I wrote a general reply to the negative comments posted here about my blogs. I’m very glad to have provoked people into expressing themselves, negatively and positively in relation to my thoughts. For me, it’s better than fifty comments about pews or chairs of clerical garb. The presence of systemic, institutionalised homophobia and prejudice in the Church of England is a very serious matter for the whole Christian Church and for me personally. Misogyny and access for people with disabilities and transphobia are also critically important matters. The House of Bishops and the General Synod… Read more »
Isn’t a large part of the problem that walking into a Church of England church you have absolutely no idea what you are going to find there? This is especially the case if you are new to church. I admire Colin’s courage and curiosity in going into services which many of us would probably avoid at all costs. The fact that he may have mislabelled the specific Christian genus in his latest reviews should tell us a lot about just how confused and confusing the state of the Church of England pick and mix worship is right now. The fact… Read more »
Different supermarkets do clearly cater for distinct clienteles, don’t they? A combination of price points, range of products and ethos of the store attract some demographics and deter others. The marketization of the church has driven us in similar directions, perhaps. When I was growing up, Anglican diversity was often seen as our strength. Now it sounds as if both progressives and conservatives likely find it incoherent, unmanageable and unsustainable.
The CofE has become an ecclesastical version of Lidl. Much less choice. An own-brand range of cheap products. And a middle aisle containing a happy-clappy assortment of changeable objects.
And a customer base of ordinary people trying to find a helpful way through life’s trials and tribulations?
I would have put LIDL as evangelical myself. Vastly efficient at catering to the mass market, and providing nearly everything such people need in one place. But only if you have your own transport and access to the town centre locations.
And that is offered as a compliment.
Are we becoming the Anglican version of Waitrose, Morrisons/ Tesco or Aldi? So we attend churches that meet our shopping styles. I attend my parish church, liberal Anglo-Catholic because there are few alternatives – and I believe from the point of witness that I should be seen to worship locally rather than being a Christian commuter – but if my local church were charismatic evangelical, that would really put my beleifs to the test. However, I believe that styles of worship are often more to do with aesthetics than ecclesiology!
I was prepared for confirmation by an AC priest who, when another candidate said, “Fr, once I’m confirmed I’ll come to your church,” replied, “You’ll do no such thing, you should worship in your parish church” – said knowing the candidate’s parish was Low Church. As you say, this is an act of witness. Tragically, the CofE is promoting the franchise model to the detriment of the local. But which is most likely to build community, Waitrose or the corner shop?
When I was growing up ( 1950’s) “comprehensiveness” wasn’t quite diversity.It seemed to me there was something recognizably C of E with Anglo-Catholic/ Evangelical/ Broad Church being emphases on that common core. The traditions have moved away from each other,” the polo mint church?” and seem to have less and less in common. Yet we are still supposedly a Church governed by Canon Law with clergy who promise to believe and teach the Christian Faith as the C of E has received it and only use those forms of service authorised by Canon. Chatting after an induction sometime ago a… Read more »
The Canons are unlikely to hold together a Church which sits lightly to its ecclesiology and in which the ecclesial imagination has shrunk and the ordained vocation devalued. Unity is relational: a ministry of presence, mutual recognition and shared life. Instead we have been panicked into adopting an alien ecclesial model: managerial and centralised. Is it too late for an Anglicanism that is territorial, not a franchise; where the Church is the diocese and its parishes; and in which the diocese has priority over the centre?
Alan, I like your image of a Church in which the ecclesiastical imagination has shrunk and your positive vision of a ministry of presence, mutual recognition and shared life. Each of these valuable qualities have effectively gone AWOL in the contemporary Church. They are qualities whose foundations take years and sometimes decades to build up. Eventually they will be returned to the Church, but there’s no sign at the moment of who will do the repair work, when and where?
Thank you, Colin. What I find particularly depressing is that there are good bishops out there who are uncomfortable with the CofE”s direction of travel, yet say nothing, still less “do the repair work”.
Supermarkets, even of the same chain, do stock different ranges of products in different localities, according to local tastes and budgets.
People disagree with you. They worship God in the manner the Holy Spirit declares to their hearts is good and right. They are nourished, reach out in love, and carry on their lives in Christ. What seems to be most in evidence that you know what is good and right, and that is without question. You have a geiger counter set to the truth and though it is your personal take on things, for you, it is incontravertable. You do not seem to have any sense that what you believe and judge as right, isn’t universally verifiable at all. I… Read more »
The same could be applied to you.
Of course it can! That is my point.
I don’t go to ‘progressive’ churches and ask people I don’t know to tell me about their LGBTetc beliefs. And then report about it as though my views are unassailable and universally self-authenticating. And theirs are ignorant and everyone knows that.
universally verifiable – I think in one of the conversations the issue of biblical teaching and what Jesus said came up. Sometimes on radio talk shows like LBC the issue of sexuality comes up, and I hide my head under the pillow in shame when somebody calls saying ‘as a Christian I believe bla bla bla is wrong’. My thought response is always ‘what did Jesus say about it?’. Equally, listening to Colin’s encounters, I am questioning with his approach. But my responses are mainly reactive, on both sides. What Jesus did or did not think regarding sexuality I leave… Read more »
Nigel – is being gay a sin or not? Is being in a sexual relationship with a man and enjoying sex a sin or not? I’m very clear about my answers to these two questions. I know the Christian Church is conflicted and usually gives a different answer. My blog gives an a very edited, selective account of two conversations, both of which lasted over an hour. In both conversations, I asked if the other person would like to tell me where in the Gospels Jesus makes any comment about LGBTQIA+ people or condemns homosexuality. I gave them time to… Read more »
Is being heterosexual a sin or not? Is being a human a sin? I’m not surprised they didn’t have a reply. I am fine with you asking questions, as I say I have been prompted to ask them myself, but don’t feel able to give an answer to your exact question. It is very difficult to say whether something was ever said or not – I avoid any answers which involve the words ‘never, always, none’. Moreover, the exact words Jesus is recorded as saying I treat as a Thinking Anglican, and also read other parts of the New Testament.… Read more »
Anglican Priest – Jeeeeez. “They worship God in the manner the Holy Spirit declares to their hearts is good and right.” Do you have a hotline to the congregation at St Mary’s Maidenhead through which you learn that all the people worshipping God there do so in a manner the Holy Spirit declares is good and right? This is really impressive. A united congregation, every individual conscious that the Holy Spirit is declaring in their hearts that their manner of worship is good and right. Your hotline tells you they are nourished and they reach out in love and they… Read more »
Possibly those attending eg St Mary’s also regularly examine their feelings, prejudices, and values and find them to be good, critical guides to the truth. Possibly also they regularly reflect on their experiences at St Mary’s, and believe God is calling them to worship there in spirit and in truth. And perhaps God is.
Equally possibly, in some years’ time they may feel God is calling them away from St Mary’s, or away from the kind of theology preached there. But maybe that time isn’t now.
Why has God called someone to hold beliefs now, then leads them away from them later? He sounds a very antagonist deity. Would it not be easier to say “people change their minds”, and stop projecting people’s changing opinions onto something else?
Or one might take a middle way between these two extremes and say that people discerned what God was saying differently.
I see. God has more than one opinion and we have to guess which is the correct one.
That’s not what I said at all. I made no comment on the views of the deity, only on the discernment of human beings, which we must make on an incomplete understanding, and always striving for a better understanding.
I didn’t say God calls them to hold those beliefs. I said they may truly believe that God calls them to worship there, and it’s possible God is in fact calling them there. And they may eventually feel God is calling them away. In my own experience, and in my observation of others, God is very patient with us as we learn and grow in the faith and in our knowledge of the Divine. He doesn’t expect us to be adults in the faith when we’re toddlers. And I know I’ve gained a lot from churches whose theology I now… Read more »
In those who are making progress in the spiritual life, from good to better, the good angel touches the soul gently, tenderly, and sweetly, as a drop of water entering a sponge.
St Ignatius Loyola
I love that!
I have moved a very long way from conservative evangelical teaching, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find much value in it. I am definitely not ‘sound’.
I agree with much of your thinking, Colin, and as a conservative evangelical I share some of your frustration with our culture. But these are institutional issues and some require a vast depth of thought and learning to address. I’m a lay person and can’t remotely claim to have that expertise. But I’ve done enough reading in my lifetime for my faith not to be too shaken if a liberal begins to describe their reservations about plain readings of scripture. And I’ve been in enough difficult situations not to be too surprised when someone points out that the Lord asks… Read more »
well said. Let me try another tack – if one of my children, or an adult friend, starts expressing views learnt from social media (e.g. confusing being pro-Palestinians with wanting the eradication of Israel and antisemitism, or attitudes towards women), do I enter into a detailed political or historical discussion? It is likely to be pointless and end up as a shouting match. All one can do is to gently encourage a critical way of thinking. BTW, in my experience it is surprising how much anti-Semitism there is, and how many people want Jewish people removed ‘from the river to… Read more »
“BTW, in my experience it is surprising how much anti-Semitism there is, and how many people want Jewish people removed ‘from the river to the sea’.”
Isn’t that anti-Zionism, not necessarily anti-semitism? I recognise that can be a difficult or dangerous thing to suggest, but there is surely a distinction?
Unfortunately, I find that anti-Zionism quickly flows into anti-semitism.
I’m not sure if many people realise how bad it is in the UK.
I am staggered what comes out of the mouths of people close to me, whom I thought were discerning.
A poll to see how many people want the eradication of Israel might have dreadful results. Another poll whether Israel should ever have been set up in 1948 would have other results.
A poll to test modern anti-semitic tropes would be equally distrurbing.
Maybe I have the wrong family/friends/locality.
I suggest that in the present day, anti-Zionism is properly channelled into political action concerning the Israeli state, its treatment of Arabs and their lands under its political control (the post-1948 occupied territories), and also its relationships with its Arab neighbours. Anti-semitism on the other hand attacks individual Jews and groups of Jews and their property and pushes towards the idea that “the Jewish people” are responsible for various real or imagined wrongs or problems in the world.
How is Zionism understood? To me it’s ’the belief that people who are Jewish, and they only, have an inherent or God-given right to a share in sovereignty over the Holy Land, others having a share only by the grace and generosity of the true heirs’. I think that that is more or less the belief that has been put into practice
I don’t think that a pollster would get more than 0.1% for ‘the eradication of Israel” in as many words, 2% for the transfer of the Palestinians perhaps, huge majorities for 2 state ‘solution’ that everyone who matters in the West and hardly anyone who matters in the Holy Land itself wants. Polls are finding greater sympathy for Palestinians than for Israelis, I am aware
I’m afraid that is not my experience. We all know about the many marches which have taken place in London. I have engaged debate with some. In all cases, when I ask ‘do you want the eradication of Israel’ the answer is silence. which I take to mean ‘yes’. Similar with some friends and family. Same with drivers who are asked to hoot if you agree. Even politicians can display extraordinary views. What they do not say is as important as what they do say. Labour very soon after the Hamas atrocity called for a ceasefire, yet they are repeatedly… Read more »
It’s a difficult situation. Let us suppose that a group of people from outside the UK decided to buy land in, say, Kent. Over a few generations they purchase a small but significant area and then decide that they are going to unilaterally declare independence from the UK, and defend their territory by military means, eventually extending their authority over the whole of Kent, even claiming Canterbury for their capital. Obviously not a precise parallel for all sorts of reasons. But at what point “must” the “right” of the settlers to Kent be recognised? At what point does it become… Read more »
I know. My dad wrote a chapter in his book on Britain and the United Nations on the issue. My point is simply that anti-Semitism is quite high in the UK at present, in my experience.
My main point, wrt. Colin’s article, is that dialogue can be very difficult.
I’m not sure your analogy is accurate, like almost all analogies.
The supposed ‘Anti semitism’ crisis is being amplified massively to disguise a much more serious problem of Islamophobia which is being encouraged at the highest levels. How often do Jews get told they don’t belong in this country or that they should go back to Poland or Belarus? That their religion should be banned? Or even that they should not participate in democratic process, or that their votes are somehow defective? That their culture is anti-British? This is more and more the experience of British Muslims.
How many Muslims have been killed in Britain simply for being Muslim?
How many knife wielding Jews have attacked crowds at random shouting ‘Shema Israel!’?
What on earth do you think is going on in Gaza and the West Bank?
Essentially, what has happened for centuries in that part of the world (and elsewhere). Brutal armed struggle for survival/dominance. Personally I’d rate the IDF’s imperfect rules of engagement to be less depraved than those of Hamas.
That you even ask I think may just demonstrate the media amplification of one kind of hate crime to the exclusion of another. Did you even hear about the murder of student Mohammed Al Qasim in Cambridge last summer?
How many Jews have been killed for being Jewish? Did the police shoot the man at the Manchester synagogue for being Jewish? I thought they just made a terrible mistake.
You don’t think the murders of Jews in the street and at worship, the torching of Jewish ambulances and businesses, the cancelling of Jewish speakers, artists, and students, indicate we have an antisemitism crisis?
I deplore both antisemitism and Islamophobia. It’s not an either/or.
Do you know for certain that the psychopath who went on on the rampage in London stabbed his victims because they were Jews? How could he tell them apart from any other white people on the street? Or was it just a random act of violence like the one on the train at Huntingdon?
Do you know who set the ambulances in fire and what their motive was?
At Heaton Park were the two deaths caused deliberately by the suspected assailant, or were they caused accidentally by the police?
We are being given a narrative before we have the facts.
Or choosing a narrative to attempt to deny the facts?
Tell me what the ‘facts’ are.
‘What is truth?’
He could tell they were Jewish because they were wearing distinctively Jewish clothing. I don’t know if the Muslim he had attacked earlier that day was obviously Muslim or not. The ambulances were also identifiably Jewish, and were parked outside a synagogue which was damaged in the attack. At Heaton Park, the murderer attacked people going into the synagogue, killed one and wounded others. A second man was killed by a police bullet, fired to prevent the terrorist from detonating a suspected bomb right outside the synagogue. Speakers and artistes have been cancelled specifically because they were Jewish. The people… Read more »
I’m almost sorry i started this side debate, but my purpose was to try to show how difficult it is to get alongside others and have a respectful discussion. How does one balance avoiding antagonism between different wings of the CoE whilst holding on to what one believes is the truth?
It’s not an either/or. Quite. Both are deplorable. Sadly our press doesn’t share your objectivity. Two murders 13 years ago – we all remember that of Lee Rigby by two Muslims, but does anyone remember that of 82 year old Mohammed Saleem, despite his killer going on to plant three bombs near mosques? The papers know how to tickle us where we itch.
In those circumstances that point would never come. Buying property isn’t buying sovereignty, on the contrary to buy property is to accept the existing laws of the place
They don’t want to endorse your form of words, of course, which suggests massacre. They do want to end the system which rather disadvantages Palestinians. If ‘Israel’ is the name for that system they want it replaced with one that is more humane. If ‘Israel’ is the name for the people living in that space then they don’t want any replacement.
I think your evidence shows that I was right. You haven’t found anyone who would proclaim ‘eradication’ or who would endorse the ideas that those words suggest
Yes. I want the eradication of Israel. That does not mean i want the eradication of the Jewish people, or even the displacement of any of the people who currently live between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. I want the dismantling if the apatheid state of Israel, and the establishment of a single democratic state for all its people. What name that state would take would be a matter for its people to decide. I do not believe that people who identify as Jews have a special right to a land called Israel any more than people who identify as… Read more »
Yes, Matthew, that is antisemitism in its ‘respectable’ garb. All down the ages, people have found reasons to hate the Jews: their greed, their lack of Christianity or Islam, their kidnapping Christian children for their blood – always a good reason. Where are the people campaigning for the dismantling of the thirty or so Muslim states?
/crickets
So people are only against Israel because they have a negative attitude to Jews? Or is it more probable that some people have a negative attitude to Jews because of the actions of Israel?
I would welcome publication here of a contemporary Anglican view of the post-Gaza Middle East problems
Anti-semitism pre-dates the modern state of Israel by hundreds of years. There’s always an excuse. And why should Jews living in e.g. England be blamed for actions taken by the Israeli government? Americans in London aren’t called ‘evil Yankee bitches’ because we disapprove of the US president.
The lack of religious liberty in Iran is shocking. That does not show that the claims for special Jewish rights are justified. Or are not outrageous.
Fictional reasons for hostility to Jews in times long past do not discredit disapproval for what people who are in fact Jewish are in reality doing.
Genesis 34 describes an Israelite campaign that aroused disapproval and resentment without really suggesting that this must be the result of prejudice
You seem to be conflating Jews with Israelis. Which is like blaming all ethnic Arabs for the deeds of Osama bin Laden.
Jesus engaged with people pastorally and personally and Jesus confronted institutional issues and those who upheld ideas he disagreed with, sometimes in a very direct, confrontational way. Those who have a great deal of leaning and a vast depth of thought aren’t always very good at noticing when they become so focused on details of interpretation and translation and scholarship that they mist the most simple, obvious points. I believe I am feeding to the best of my awareness and ability and spiritual grounding in silence and attentive presence. Lay people are often better at cutting to the chase and… Read more »
“Jesus engaged with people pastorally and personally and Jesus confronted institutional issues and those who upheld ideas he disagreed with, sometimes in a very direct, confrontational way.”
And may His Holy Name be praised.
Colin Coward is not Him.
Anglican Priest: Colin Coward is aware that he is not Jesus or God
Controversy is certainly not in itself foreign to Christianity, one must accept
What an extraordinary view of ordination!
‘Taking orders’ surely means taking orders. Have priests not freely chosen this life of obedience to the church, God and their vows? To equate obedience with being ‘very, very inhibited’ does a grave disservice to the many priests who faithfully persevere in the face of many difficulties.
Speaking as a pretty obedient priest surely this is a ‘yes…and no’. Richard Baxter, William Law, John and Charles Wesley, the early ritualists, all were Church of England clergy for whom Orders didn’t or couldn’t quite equal following orders, and I am glad of each one of them and have taken inspiration from all. Looking beyond Anglican clergy, from the Beguines to the Anabaptists, from Teresa of Avila to Mary Ramabai, from John if the Cross to John Bunyan, many of the Christians from whom I have gained the greatest inspiration have fallen foul of ecclesiastical authority. Surely in a… Read more »
Thank you Rob, you beat me to it in making this point. There is an active debate in the US at present about whether service men and women should obey the orders of their commanders, come what may, or whether they have a wider duty to refuse to obey orders they believe to be unlawful. It is a matter of personal discernment. Janet talks about “obedience to the church, God and their vows” as all being the same thing. But there have been many exemplary Christians through history who discerned that their wider duty to God required them to disobey… Read more »
Thank you for these comments which have helped me think more widely and historically , rather than just from a personal viewpoint.
Janet. I don’t think ‘taking holy orders’ does mean ‘taking orders’. But some do think this, and if it works, okay for them, but they can be dangerous and damaging to those they serve because what the Church institution orders is not always in line with the mystical, mysterious orders of God.
I agree with Janet on this – everything right with priests who serve God’s church through living its teachings. My frustration with conservative evangelicals is that we may not be conservative enough! Christianity turned the world upside down; and its founder was clear the church is a living, growing entity. There are always new chapters needing to be written. And they begin with the most serious exploration possible of the teaching and life of Jesus and the early church, and where He wants to go next. That requires institutional commitment, resourcing and responsibility. But individually it needs the quiet contemplation… Read more »
‘Many clergy are very, very inhibited, self-inhibited, through feeling they have to be obedient to the teachings of the institution or the Bible, and be obedient to God and their ordination vows. The best clergy in my life have been those who live more freely from such inhibitions.’
Words fail me.
May I suggest Judges 21.25 as an apt summary.
Thank you
I’ll repeat what I wrote above. “I don’t go to ‘progressive’ churches and ask people I don’t know to tell me about their LGBTetc beliefs. And then report about it as though my views are unassailable and universally self-authenticating. And theirs are ignorant and everyone knows that.” That is my point. I make no assumptions that the people worshipping where you popped in were off the mark, needing your interventions and interrogations, were not worshipping in the Holy Spirit of God. We all know your positions and your views. Let others have theirs. Leave them alone. Especially when you note… Read more »
Anglican Priest, I don’t have a geiger counter set to truth. If I have any kind of geiger counter, it has become gradually set to ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’. Mostly, the needle swings in the unhealthy direction, whatever the culture and tradition of the parish. I think people are right to be confused and alarmed at the ideas I express in my blogs. I am certainly confused and alarmed at the condition and variety of Sunday morning worship competence and incompetence in church – but this has become the new normal, as I learnt after seven months of visiting over 70… Read more »
But who is asking you to roam the church land using what you regard as a healthy v unhealthy monitor? In addition, your ‘health’ may be far less obvious than you think it is. What is odd is that you don’t seem to understand that. You seem to think that what you mean by ‘health’ is univocal and commonly held. This leaving aside whether sincere Christian faith can be plumbed on this kind of axis. Are the saints more ‘healthy’? Why not find one church to worship and leave off the monitoring of others. Surely that would encourage spiritual ‘health’… Read more »
Well said Anglican Priest.
Anglican Priest (and Bob): God seems to be encouraging me to take the new opportunity presented to me, living in London with a Freedom Pass, to roam around exploring new places and churches, experiencing for myself what the Church of England parish presence is like in 2026. Other people have done the same, reporting on what they find and assessing its quality. I have my own assessment of what qualities healthy and unhealthy churches might have. I’m perfectly free in UK society to do this. I evaluate the difference between healthy and unhealthy based on things like is the teaching… Read more »
“Going to churches” is not going to church. Any spiritual director would tell you that.
“Quality Control Agent” is not the same as worship, on Sunday, in community, growing in relationship with fellow worshippers. And seeking God’s pardon and renewal.
Not analyzing the belief and conduct of others. Beam and mote territory.
Your 47 years of daily spiritual practice — under direction, with confession? Otherwise the danger of self-reinforcing is real.
Less me at the center of things.
Nor is “going to church” ANY guarantee of being engaged there by the kind of experience I seek as a disciple of Jesus. “Any spiritual director would tell you that”. Not in my experience. “Beam and mote territory”. Yes, of course, and such an easy, dismissive comment to lob in; one of the things I’m trying to identify in my work. “Under direction – with confession”. I have been under direction continuously for 45 years. I went to a more formal confession once; wasn’t helpful. I was also in counselling and therapy for over 15 years. Less easy to escape… Read more »
“Nor is “going to church” ANY guarantee of being engaged there by the kind of experience I seek as a disciple of Jesus.”
I think that speaks volumes.
Colin Coward, upon reading your piece about making Jesus known I thought, now here is a guy with a Plato like way of going about things. ( see below). Plato engaged people in interrogative conversation, trying to get them to go beyond instances to underlying ideas– an annoying project aimed at surfacing what is true and which costs the “gadfly” greatly. You write: “I asked the member of the congregation which Jesus they were getting to know and make known – a cheeky question, I know. We had a conversation about the kind of Jesus the Gospels reveal. Unsurprisingly, we… Read more »
Ruairidh, I’m not used to being compared to Plato – quite like it, though. Yes, I experience myself as being something of a gadfly, called to be an irritant, a reminder to people of what is possible, “surfacing” what is possible and possibly more Christ-like, holy and creative
I like your idea of the gadfly who engages people in person and on their own turf, as you reference in your article. You get to see the body language for instance. People tend to be more secure on their own turf as well. An example from the Jesus of the Gospels that comes to mind is Luke 14, the so called symposium section, the banquet, where Jesus is depicted as engaging one of his interlocutors at his home.
Worth remembering that Plato’s ideal human society was a tyranny run by a philosopher king, with human breeding controlled by a rigged ballot – a sort of hideous combination of North Korea, MENSA and MAFS. All of which suggests his interrogative approach might not be the route to go down when considering questions of church governance and marriage.
My reference was from The Apology ( not The Republic) , and is intended as a literary allusion. Re: your point here see Book IX of The Republic, the distinction between the tyrannical personality and the true philosopher. I would say it is much more complicated than first glance comparisons suggest, with reading The dialogues of Plato as ancient literature a challenge.
Yes, it’s too long since I read any philosophy – another thing for when I retire! I like Aristotle more, but the theory of forms is really good – raising a vital question for Thinking Anglicans: Does a pew have the form of a chair?
re: chairs/pews, just lol ! I was introduced to Plato in uni by The Rev. Dr. Greg MacLeod ( Oxford/Louvain). In the last conversation I had with Greg a few months before he died, one of things he said to me was, ” Always stick with Aristotle, you can’t go wrong with Aristotle.”
Greg MacLeod – Wikipedia
Thank you. In a oner.
Colin is in some ways doing two surveys in one. There are his primary observations on LGBTQI issues and the role of women in church leadership, where one might disagree with him, either in principle or on whether it’s useful for him to challenge other people’s sincerely held and non-vocalised views. Then his secondary observations on things like liturgy and music. Here, he’s picked up that many evangelical churches are not using a structured (or recognisably Anglican) liturgy, that the music can be very monocultural, and that services can give the appearance of spontaneity while actually being quite planned. Those… Read more »
Thank you, rerum novarum. It’s a relief to know that at least one person out there (and I know there are many more, often silent) who understands what I’m about. Worship today tends to be “done” according to one of two modes, both pre-formatted and pre-choreographed – Common Worship liturgical or evangelical supposedly spontaneous. Both are controlled by tradition and the people ‘at the front’. There are ways of integrating familiarity and variety, new and old, as you are well aware. It was possible in the seventies and eighties. Much more difficult in the current climate. Evangelicals get away with… Read more »
Following the liturgy also means you don’t use the same old words every week! Hymns, psalm, readings, sermon, prayers all change weekly. There is a variety of Eucharistic prayers and seasonal variations. Apart from the Creed and some of the responses it is only the overall structure that mostly doesn’t change. I suspect that is also true of much non-liturgical worship.
Agreed. I’ve experienced and benefited from non-liturgical worship that actually followed the structure of Anglican morning and evening prayer quite closely, but using different words, an approach that worked well in the hands of skilled ministers. But I’ve also experienced non-liturgical worship that lacked structure, reducing services to notices and a sermon with choruses in between.
And more than just a survey. The Socratic method is not just for the classroom. Colin here has taken it to the streets, or the pews ( or is it chairs?) as it were. Anyone can post comments on a blog site; but his idea of quizzing people in person like Plato’s Socrates, is intriguing. Sort of like Diogenes in search of an honest man.
‘… people come near to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based merely on human rules they have been taught.’ If it helps people worship with their hearts great, if not the ‘wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish’.
Paul’s experience in Athens comes to mind. When he cut to the chase, some scoffed, others temporized.
Your reference to Isaiah sparks a memory of a hymn I used to hear at University chapel at Catholic folks mass, “though the mountains may fall and the hills turn to dust the love of the lord will stand…” (link). Philosopher Bernard Lonergan notes that God’s Love flooding our hearts is prior (Romans). It is a prerequisite to moral conversion. Moral Conversion, of course, prompts questions, from one’s self but also from others. Such is a basic philosophical act. On that score some attention might be paid to Colin Coward’s other piece posted here i.e. The Visionary Wisdom Writers of… Read more »
That was my point. ‘Can the pot say to the potter, “you know nothing?”’ Isaiah called it right.
When exegesis breaks down, we’re left with exhortation.
I suspect that my last visit to Maidenhead was before St Mary’s was built, so I only have photographs to go by. Frankly, to describe the spire as ‘nasty’ is an insult to the architect and to the church. In fact if I were a member of that church I would feel pretty offended by the gratuitous treatment this article and the comments generally here have engendered. It’s a modern building making a bold statement in contemporary style without pretending to be otherwise..
I won’t touch on the wider ‘theology’ issue. I think that has been sufficiently ventilated.
Mr support for Colin’s work in this field is known, so I need not repeat it.
But it may be worth pointing out that before ordination colin trained as an architect, and so perhaps he should be permitted to express his aesthetic opinion on church design.
Fair enough. I won’t say more except that it might have been expressed differently.
And being welcomed into sacred places of worship without any intention of worship whilst also placing a burden onto ‘vulnerable people’ does not concern you? Wow.