Theo Hobson Liberal Anglicans must focus
[also in The Spectator The real problem facing Church of England liberals]
Mark Clavier Well-Tempered Formed for Faithfulness (8): Learning to Speak Again
Jenny Sinclair Together for the Common Good Whose Side is the Church On?
Felicity Cooke ViaMedia.News All About LLF: the February Synod Debate
Theo doesn’t sound very liberal, if he wants to purge the CofE of opponents of women’s ordination. That may be an arguable position, but don’t call it ‘liberal ‘.
Ahem, see re “The Paradox of Tolerance.”
In other words, intolerance of one form or another becomes inevitable, and pure liberalism impossible. Neither right nor left are behaving very liberally in the politics of our day, and this culture seems to be shaping the church.
Hobson says a few useful things, which is his way, without actually going to the centre of the issue. The reality is that there has been no attempt to grapple with what further calls the Spirit is placing on the Church since the threefold order was opened to women. For example, the work of parish clergy still has little to no provision for maternity or family leave. The Church of England episcopate still functions as a boys club, complete with dining societies (eg, Nobody’s Friends) and unexamined entanglements in the wider Establishment (various London clubs, including the worst of all,… Read more »
Theo Hobson regrets that Sarah Mullaly seems to have little theology and claims that C of E liberals lack “theological seriousness, and courage.” He argues for the Church to sort out the schism over the ordination of women – and quite right too. It’s a disgrace and sorting it out would indeed be a great step in the direction of sorting out the even more visible LLF disgrace. The Church can’t expect to carry much moral authority with these two issues unresolved (not to mention safeguarding failures). But from where I sit (outside the Church where I grew up) the… Read more »
Their is far more behind the word ‘formation’ in preparation for priesthood in the Church than merely functional ‘training’.
St Benedict refers the the ‘conversion of manners’ albeit in monastic life, however is also apposite in the preparation for ordination and continuing life of a priest.
Not quite sure what Roman Catholic Jenny Sinclair’s piece is doing here? Happy for her she found a church where she can avoid that which is “woke” {roll eyes} but I don’t see how it qualifies for TA.
[But here’s a hint: anyone of the legion of those rushing to condemn the “gender industry”—as contrasted to the tiny number of vulnerable transgender PEOPLE—is clearly a functionary of said industry!]
Have to say that I found this an odd read. There was a brief initial mention of the legacy of the ecumenical Sheppard-Worlock era, but thereafter it was all Catholic, backed by regular quotes from recent Popes. At times it seemed to verge on a rant against modern society.
There has been something lurking in my mind, here and many other discussions, concerning what the CoE believes in and how it projects itself. I no longer attend my local church for various reasons, but there is a statement of what it believes in here: https://stleonard-streatham.org.uk/about/what-we-believe/ The problem is that I can find little to disagree with, but also I find it mind numbingly vacuous. I am not at all criticising this particular church, they do excellent work, but can we do a bit better than say ‘we ought to love each other’? Is this statement typical of other CoE… Read more »
ps. i did a quick check – been a long time since i read many parts of the NT. Paul and Romans sets out much of the doctrine, but i do not see this as an outlier. St Peter wrote more or less the same things, It is in Acts, it is everywhere, in the Gospels. The cross and resurrection. Not a doctrine or theology, but a new life. We can discuss whether the cross and resurrection were actual and physical, or symbolic, but their centrality to what Christians believe in is surely not open to debate? Plus their meaning.… Read more »
What God wants is another story, but depends a bit on who or what God is. to talk about ‘ground of being’ as ‘wanting’ something is obvious nonsense, on the surface.
I fear we don’t despite all the theology being studied and written about, have an understanding or language for the modern thinking-but-not-academic person.
I don’t find much of Paul’s doctrine of salvation by faith in the epistles attributed to Peter, though surely not written by the Peter of the Gospels. The First Epistle is concerned with a just and undisruptive life, fearing God and honouring the Emperor. It does not share Paul’s enthusiasm for saving all Israel and closing the gap between Jew and ‘Greek’, it sees the Christians, now mainly ex-pagans, as the Israel of the day
I realise 1 Peter may not have been written by Peter. But to take a few verses from 1/2 Peter (and we all know that taking selected verses is dangerous): 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive… Read more »
ps. I remember back in the 1970’s when I was maybe 9, my mother took me to an interdenominational meeting where a priest was preaching, prior to an Ash Wednesday walk around the town (Epsom). All I can remember of the priest (an African man) was that he went on for a long time and seemed a bit enthusiastic. My mother’s comment was ‘I think he has been in Africa too long’. Which was strange given that he was of African heritage! He was definitely African, not west Indian. Maybe he was not a CoE minister. The normal sermon in… Read more »
Had you avoided fundamentalist/evangelical churches you might have been able to stay awake.
Philip Larkin had punchy words about parental misguidance.
No, my family attended a very middle of the road local church. St Martins Epsom. In earlier days we attended St Barnabas in Epsom, which was more Anglo-Catholic. Incense waver was very enthusiastic! If enthusiasm in worship, and variety in worship, could be combined with intelligent critical scriptural-based non-cliched sermons/teaching, we have a winner. My recollection was not that the sermons were unintelligent – but that anything outside of tortuous explanations of parables (which, IMHO, are mainly unexplainable) was ignored. The Epistles were a waste land. An excellent preacher was my old headmaster, John Dancy, who was not a priest… Read more »
I was reluctant to go into more personal detail. My confirmation by Bishop Henry Montgomery Campbell was in St Barnabas’, then, as you say, very high Anglo Catholic. Sadly it is no more. On a return visit decades later I took photographs of the original furnishings. But by my next visit all had changed: they were using the ASB, the interior stripped bare and the Lady Chapel and altar literally ‘removed’ – I’m reluctant to say destroyed, but that would not be far from the truth. I have now lived longer in the Winchester Diocese. I knew St Martin’s, Epsom… Read more »
Thanks, and yes we are getting very diverted. My time was a little later with Canon Purcell and Shrives. I used to use the organ to practise. Never met Felton Rapley. His successor – i once was playing the alleluia chorus on the organ for a youth-led service, midway through the pipes started to wheeze and then because silent. It turned out the organist, who had been watching me, accidently pressed the ‘off’ button. He was annoyed because he had not been told about the event. St Barnabas was lovely, and I later played the organ one weekend there. Father… Read more »
Oh yes – another funny story – the organist at St Barnabas got married, to everybody’s delight and surprise. He had a memorable wedding night – he told his new bride he needed to go and do some repairs on his organ!!
It’s an interesting observation that the Epistles are a bit of a waste land now. In Reformation times they were everything but now we are weary of disputes with the Catholics. They keep raising the question of the Christian-Jewish interface or intersection, a topic which now scares us
Apologies!!
That I do understand.
Subjected to several years in the early 60s of mind grindingly boring matins with duller than dull preaching, when we were dispatched from school to the middle to low parish church, I am amazed that a vocation to the priesthood ever crept into my soul!
Fine worship be it smoky or enthusiastic(!), combined with prepared intelligent and intellectually tenable preaching.
It seems increasingly hard to come by with the tsunami of theologically juvenile semi-trained clergy.
I think that the message of 1 Peter is summarised in the para beginning 1:13. Grace has been received through the revelation of Jesus, the blameless lamb, giving an opportunity for each person to change from an ‘ignorant’ pattern of life to a good one, awaiting the judgement of the Father who will judge each according to his work. No suggestion here of justification by faith rather than work, faith only has the function of prompting us to live well. Not Pauline teaching. I find by the way that I’m in agreement with the opening remarks of the Oxford Bible… Read more »
I pressed a little for a purpose.
There are, as I am sure you are well aware, deep chasms between evangelical teaching and what you describe above. I don’t really want to enter that debate. But debates over sexuality etc. are minor compared with the differences over basic reformed doctrine. Differences of course over the thirty-nine articles.
This is not to denigrate in any way the works of those who struggle with Pauline (I do not of course restrict it to Paul) teaching. I am simply noting it. As I say I myself am only on the edges of Christianity.
“though surely not written by the Peter of the Gospels” — this makes it sound like authorship in antiquity is something like post 17th-century book making in the West. Neither Peter or Paul “wrote” anything. Paul says as much when he speaks of ‘writing in his own hand in larger letters’ unlike the trained scribe to whom he was dictating (often named). This preoccupation with a thin, modernist, “I wrote this and get a royalty” mindset is miles away from how authorial attribution functioned in its own day. One can find fault with this or that, but to state baldly… Read more »
No profoundly relevant change happened in the seventeenth century. The connection between author and text has always been the same. Someone who scratches out his own words on a slate, someone who dictates to a skivvy, someone who presses keys on an iPad are all the same, putting their impress, perhaps their hearts and souls, into the formation of the text. In ancient times was just as much concern about identifying authors and detecting forgers as there is now. There was just as much pride in authorship and assertion of authorship as there is now, as one sees from the… Read more »
Fr Clavier works hard at his evaluations and he is a wise man aware of history and culture in the context in which he works. His proposals are sensible. Yet even in their measured hopefulness, one wonders if the Anglican ship has simply sailed. If so, it is more a matter of surveying what is left to save and accepting that new realities in Britain are overwhelming any previous contexts. The Church of England will be out of business in not a lot of time. Does anyone seriously doubt that? The locations of growth and energy don’t actually rely much… Read more »