I am a conventional bloke really. When I find something that works I tend to stick with it. So when an overseas trip fell through at quite short notice and I decided to book a retreat it was a blow to find my favourite place couldn’t take me. At short notice I found myself heading for the Welsh Coast and a Jesuit-run week.
God was, of course, in all the places I’d expected to find him. There He was in my daily meetings with my spiritual director. He was up on the mountains – even when the fog descended – and on a glorious, almost deserted sunny beach. He was in the faces of my fellow retreatants as we ate our meals in silence. And of course He was there each day in the Eucharist as bread and wine were taken, offered, broken and consumed. None of that was any surprise. I do a retreat most years. Often it is in an Ignatian style and it is always wonderful for prayer to be the constant of the day rather than fighting for its share of space among all the other priorities.
What surprised me was how close I felt to God in a less usual setting. Each evening, after supper we gathered to sit in complete silence for half an hour with the sacrament set out before us.
The Eucharist is a drama. But this was a stillness. The Eucharist is a constant flow of words, music and actions. Here Christ was with us in silence. The time was set aside simply for us to be there with Christ. And to shun our usual responses of word and action in order to enter into a deeper adoration.
For an Anglican this is of course deeply controversial stuff. The final paragraph of article 25 begins “the sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them.” I don’t sit lightly to the Articles of Religion. Not only have I from time to time to assent to their place within Anglican tradition, I also regularly require others to so assent in my presence.
As I know from regular, daily reading of the scriptures, words not only convey meaning but also often hide, confuse or distort it. And never more so than when the writer and the reader live in very different contexts. For the Anglican Reformers the issue was not simply that lay people were gazing at the sacrament but that this had pushed the receiving of communion into a much lower place. People would rarely receive, would often leave the church once the Host had been elevated or even as a devotion go from church to church simply to be present for the consecration. A devotional practice that seems to have more in common with bird watching than genuine Eucharistic devotion.
I felt in my own devotions not a desire to replace the receiving the Sacrament but a delight to find it complemented. My time was not spent gazing on the Host but seeing it as a lens through which to see the One who gave himself for me and for many. A time to pause and be with Him in His self offering and in His passion. Sometimes, as St. Peter articulated on the Mount of the Transfiguration, it is simply “good to be here”. That moment of intimacy with Christ cannot be clung onto, as Peter himself was to discover. But it can be savoured whilst it is there. The sacrament becomes like an Icon – a window onto the Divine – but even more so because its relationship to that which it represents is closer than for any holy picture or religious ornament.
The primary purpose of the sacrament lies in the full drama of the Eucharist. Climaxing in the sharing of the elements by the substantive body of the congregation. The reformers rightly draw us back to this central truth. But at a time when we struggle to resist Forster’s jibe of “poor, talkative Christianity” and in a world ever busier, maybe devotion that brings us into the stillness of the presence of Christ is what many of us need.
And perhaps next year too I should plan my retreat at the very last moment.
1 CommentInclusive Church has issued a newsletter, the full text of which is below the fold.
On Thursday 2 September, there will be a seminar entitled Inclusive Church – One Year On – details of this are listed at the end of the newsletter.
update
Posters advertising the seminar can be downloaded from:
Poster as a .jpg file here (100K)
Poster as a pdf file (60K)
In a few days I shall be embarking on a pilgrimage. It will take me to Groszowice, a small town in Silesia in Poland. Like many pilgrims, I shall be looking for the comfort of a church when I arrive, and for some better understanding of who I am and where I am going. I suppose like many pilgrims also, I have no real certainty that I shall get that better understanding, and I am not altogether sure that my journey will give me comfort – but of course I am hoping that it will.
In fact, this is a personal family pilgrimage. My father was born in Groszowice (or ‘Groschowitz’) to a Prussian-Polish family in the early 20th century. In the second World War he was a German soldier, and at the end of the War his family property was confiscated as Silesia was transferred from Germany to Poland in the post-Yalta carve-up of Europe. Unlike some others I have met with a similar personal history, my father accepted this outcome of German fascist adventures and atrocities stoically, and at no point in his later life — lived in Germany and Ireland — did he ever indicate any resentment at the loss of his family possessions. Eventually he returned to visit his birthplace, and expressed satisfaction at how well it had been maintained.
I have never been there myself, but some six years after my father’s death I have decided to visit the place where he was born and grew up and about which he spoke often. I am not a ‘roots’ person, and so in all truth I don’t have any fixed idea of what I shall find. But to my great surprise, I am approaching the visit with rather more emotion than I had anticipated, and the idea of seeing my father’s house, and seeing the graves of his (and my) ancestors is turning this into an unexpectedly sentimental journey.
I suspect that not many of us can approach some lost heritage with indifference. We may neglect and ignore it for a long time, but bring us face to face with it and it will produce a reaction — perhaps one of awe, or of revulsion, or of a sense of loss, or of frustration, or of suspicion, or of love. For myself, I am not yet sure which of these it will be.
By a quirk of recent events, I am travelling to Poland just as a German pressure group is lodging legal claims for the return of or compensation for lost properties in Silesia. I shall have to emphasise that this is not my mission. I am not going in order to claim the heritage as my property. And this has reminded me that none of us should make such claims, because in doing so we trespass on the heritage of others. Our memories must co-exist, as must we.
Many of the squabbles in Anglicanism over the past year or two have been about lodging claims to exclusive heritage rights. Some of these claims are made by people who have not yet made, and perhaps have no intention of making, the pilgrimage to the source. And beyond Anglicanism, groups are placing flags in territories in which nobody should be claiming exclusive rights.
The Roman Catholic church of the perhaps rather short-lived Vatican II era spoke about the ‘pilgrim church’. Many of today’s would-be pilgrims appear to be marching in formation and singing battle songs. Maybe we should all be seeking to go on that great pilgrimage of uncertainty, of not quite knowing who we are or where we are going, of unknown emotions — but knowing that others are on the same journey; different people, different aspirations, but with the same rights. And then maybe we can accept the past as the past, and move on.
When I arrive in Silesia, I shall visit (at his invitation) the Archbishop of Opole (my father would have called it ‘Oppeln’). He has written to me to say that ‘if you grieve at the loss of your father’s posessions, then I can reassure you that, here in Silesia and everywhere else, you are welcome as a family member in our Father’s house.’
2 CommentsAs the background to the decision to remove Sadaam Hussain by force emerges, it becomes clearer that there were no grounds on which Britain or the USA could claim that this was a just war. There were no weapons that posed an external threat, and no plans to develop any.
True, Sadaam was a terrible tyrant, but the world has seen plenty of these. They aren’t often removed if the only threat they pose is to their own people, whether in SE Asia, in Africa, or in Latin America. Indeed, the USA has a shameful record of having supported some of these. Sadaam’s government was supported by the West whilst he waged a war on Iran which involved the use of chemical weapons.
We also know that the Iraqi regime gave no support to Al Quaida, and would have suppressed any act of terrorism. So, to decide to overthrow Sadaam in the aftermath of 9-11 now appears completely illogical.
It now looks as though the decision to go to war was fuelled by the failure of the USA to eradicate the sources of terrorism. The most powerful nation on earth simply wanted an excuse to show what its overpowering weaponry could do, and take the eyes of the American public away from the intelligence failures which had both allowed the 9-11 events, and provided faulty information about the dangers posed by Baghdad.
George Bush needed a victim, a scapegoat for his own failures, and found it in Sadaam Hussain. He convinced Tony Blair, but he failed to convince most of the European Union, failed to convince the United Nations, and failed to convince a million demonstrators in Britain.
It was clear from the way the war was prosecuted that this was a piece of scapegoating, rather than a liberation for the Iraqi people. Much of the infrastructure of the ancient city of Baghdad was needlessly destroyed. The army, who hadn’t been seriously mobilised in any strength, was disbanded. The ensuing power vacuum allowed looting and lawlessness on a grand scale, sowing the seeds of strong opposition to the invaders.
The idea of finding a scapegoat was always a mistake. It was an ancient idea of the Jews that once a year, in an elaborate ritual, the sins of the people could be driven out by loading them on to the back of a hapless animal, which was driven out into the desert. Surely a moment’s rational thought is enough to show that a dumb animal cannot carry the sins of human beings. A goat is quite incapable of making people good. It might, given an impressive enough ritual, have convinced people 3,000 years ago. It might have made them feel good about themselves. But today the idea of making a scapegoat of someone is morally bankrupt.
It was wrong for Christian nations to go to war on this kind of basis. As Christians — and the national leaders concerned own to a personal faith in God – we have shamed ourselves in the eyes of both other Christians, and those who hold other faiths. At the time, when the myth of the weapons of mass destruction seemed credible, a million people in our own country demonstrated against what they saw as an unjust war, and a terrible mistake. Today, we have sown the wind, and reaped the whirlwind. We have set nations against us. We have driven willing volunteers into the hands of the terrorists. Though Tony Blair might claim Iraq is safer today, the world, and the West in particular, are surely less safe.
The lesson that needs to be learned is that nothing good will ever be achieved by making scapegoats. It doesn’t remove sin, or ultimately make people feel good about themselves. As Christians we should know that making scapegoats doesn’t work. Forgiveness of sins is the free gift of God through Jesus Christ.
There is a large body of literature which explores ideas of scapegoating from a Christian perspective. Much of it is indebted to the work of Rene Girard, who developed his understanding in the field of literature, drawing significantly on writing as diverse as Shakespeare’s plays, Greek tragedy and modern novels. For an except from Girard’s book I see Satan fall like lightning, see chapter 12 entitled Scapegoat.
See also a discussion of Girard’s work in relation to the Christian understanding of Atonement, and the implications of Girard’s theories on some current theological issues.
8 CommentsI’ve had the same mad conversation no less than five times in the last month, which is enough to suggest that others may not think the idea is so barmy, and that maybe I should take it more seriously than I do.
To backtrack a little, we’re talking about the slow disintegration of the Church of England. This is not an attractive prospect for me, and not only because I have a career and a pension riding on it. I happen to believe in a lot of what the CofE represents, which probably comes as no surprise to even a casual reader, but I am nevertheless increasingly pessimistic about its prospects for surviving in the way we have known it.
Where it affects us is whether we think there should continue to be a local church in every community in the land. In this part of the world we live in a deanery of sixteen parishes. Within living memory, each parish had its own clergyman, and Stansted also had usually two curates, so eighteen full-time clerics for sixteen parishes. These days, for the same sixteen parishes there are five full-time clergy. In fifteen years there will be three full-time clergy for the same number of parishes with increasing populations.
Back in the days when clergy were a less endangered species, it was possible for their church councils to say that, if they took care of the roof, the fête and the flower festival, the vicar could go and visit, do The God Bit and bring people to church. Those individuals who didn’t like franchising their faith to the clergy became Methodists or Quakers but, for the rest, this undemanding arrangement worked reasonably well. Reasonably well, that is, until clergy become thin on the ground, which creates a vacuum.
This empty space, to be fair, has come upon rural churches at a quicker pace than they are used to working; in fact it has come more quickly than any of us would like. Even for the most devout of us, it is one thing to recognise the gap, it is quite something else to fly in the face of old instincts and prejudices and presume to offer oneself to meet the need. In small communities this is an even larger step because, as we all know, there is nothing like a village for remembering the human frailties of its inhabitants ‘til well after they have taken up residence in the churchyard.
So, we must keep the church going, but we don’t quite know how. So we reach for widely held beliefs which are ready to hand: ‘The church is the centre of the community’ is one of these. This belief is held by sane people who hold down serious and responsible jobs. It is a view which only makes sense if the community is all Christian, and the kind of Christian which expresses its faith through formal organisations like a parish church.
The mad idea with which I started is also widely held in all three parishes, and even beyond, as I had the conversation in another diocese last week. It says that, if the parish church can put on social events in church to attract local people, somehow this will encourage them to become active members of the church, and so will stay the process of decline, now that we do not have local clergy to go and round up the lapsed.
Now I have no objection to social events and look forward to more of them in my parishes, but their provision does not address the core malaise of the church. The root problem is that most people, given free choice, do not publicly practice Christian faith. This is not just the much lamented young, it has been true for a long time. People born in the 1920s, 30s and 40s mostly are not regular church attenders for most of their lives. I know this as I bury a good number of them in the course of a year. Their offspring struggle with the language of a Christian burial ritual because it speaks using images and metaphors whose meaning just escapes them. Fewer people in church means that there are fewer individuals who feel a call to holy orders. With fewer in holy orders, there is a sense of communities being beached by the church, and so giving goes down, which in turn means fewer clergy taking on more parishes, which then see less of them, they become disaffected and the spiral goes on. If I were to stay here until retirement, I can quite see my parish growing to include half of the deanery.
There is hope for rural parishes, but the route is not an easy one, and the days of an undemanding faith are over. We need somehow to grasp the idea that people do not become practicing Christians by accident. There may even be some who choose a church because they like the cleric who serves there, but that’s not a true faith as it will evaporate when that cleric moves on and, surprise, surprise, the cleric is not God.
A local church is attractive only if it is engaged in its core business, and this is about ordinary fallible people stumbling around, along with their no less fallible cleric, trying to listen for the echoes of God’s footsteps in their own lives, and then sharing what they find with others. This is how a church is grown, and it doesn’t need a local cleric constantly to hand for that to begin.
2 CommentsA couple of days ago, I found myself on the stage of the town hall in the company of the local MP, giving out ‘certificates of excellence’ to a steady stream of primary school children. Nothing unusual there, you may say. It’s the sort of thing vicars do.
But that’s the problem. It certainly fitted with the expectations of the local vicar with which I grew up, when the incumbent was part of the structure of the community, widely recognised as one of the neighbourhood’s ‘great and good’, a suitable authority figure for school prize-giving, and to be invited to civic events of every kind. He (of course) was there as the representative of the established church (and of the Establishment) in a country which described itself as Christian, no matter how small a percentarge of the population were active members of a church.
On Wednesday, however, I was giving out certificates to children, only a tiny proportion of whom would have any connexion with Christian faith; the great majority with a faith commitment were Muslim. I was part of the presenting team in my capacity as an LEA-appointed governor in a community school. That I also happen to be the local vicar is incidental.
And yet I was wearing my clerical collar, identifiably a leader in the Christian community, and a sign of continued Christian presence in and commitment to a neighbourhood where residual attachment to church and church-going is dwindling rapidly as the population changes.
In this area, there is a shortage of volunteers to take up governorships in local schools. Working for the well-being of the community in which I find myself is a natural part of my ministry, fitting with the long Anglican tradition of service particularly in the inner city. School governorship is a very practical opportunity to use my skills and experience in a field where they will be of value. It also gives me the chance to make relationships with children, parents, and colleagues whom I would not otherwise encounter – and who perhaps would rarely have any occasion to engage with someone who has a public commitment to the Christian faith.
The difference from the old days is that I cannot assume any right to that opportunity or those relationships. The old rules of establishment no longer hold. I must earn my place at the table, by whatever personal gifts I might bring and by an understanding of the gospel which connects to the hopes and fears of staff, parents, children and governors of the school. And I find myself wondering when and if I will be joined on the governing body by the local imam; when will he be the natural person to invite onto the platform, and should he be so already?
0 CommentsAmong all the presents I received at my ordination as deacon in 1983 perhaps the most unusual was a poster. It depicted a group of people around a table engaged to varying degrees in some sort of argument. The caption was simply, “God so loved the world that he didn’t send a committee”.
The poster is long gone, but the sentiments are still engraved on my heart. They come bubbling back to the foreground every time I’m confronted with a meeting agenda that looks poorly planned, confused, or lacking in clear purpose. So when the thick wad of papers for the forthcoming Church of England General Synod tumbled onto my doormat, that ordination present came back so clearly into my mind that I could almost describe every face on it.
Now I’m not, and never have been, a member of General Synod. So I need to test my reactions lest they are simply the natural suspicion most of us have towards clubs of which we are not a member. But just maybe the perspective of a non-member may have something to offer.
I don’t see my ordination poster as being an argument for abandoning all committees. There is a lot of work that can only effectively be progressed through a process of debate by duly authorised representatives. But it asks of any piece of committee business some sharp questions. Chief among these is “What will be different after this agenda item has been concluded? Close behind it comes “Is this the most efficient and effective way to achieve that difference?” and “Is the difference justified in terms of the costs entailed?” None of this is specific to General Synod – it applies just as much to a local church council, to a specialist charity and to the board of a multinational corporation.
In the heady days of my youth I was a member of a small Labour Party branch in a safe Conservative area. I still remember the night when, after lengthy debate and much proffering of amendments we voted through our simple and clear resolution to the problems of the Middle East. In terms of impact this item had considerably less than the same meeting’s traditional raffle of four cans of cheap lager. There’s much on the current Synod agenda reminiscent of those old political gatherings.
Worthy motions, that were I a member I would doubtless support, will be proposed, amended, and passed overwhelmingly. Members will feel somewhat better informed (a good thing) and that they have been part of something that will – simply because an august body has pronounced – make a difference (false – and therefore a bad thing).
The age has gone when councils or synods could, by passing resolutions, raise a topic above the threshold of public consciousness. Even Parliament, with all its resources, only influences opinion when it debates a subject already in the spotlight. Like it or not, the media are far more interested in reporting the views of individuals already in the public eye. People can be questioned, they can give a human dimension to an issue, and they can elaborate and go deeper in response to challenge. Whilst Synod members work through their preparatory papers, I’ve just produced a Press Release, in conjunction with other Bishops, on the Arms Trade. I suspect it will get rather more coverage in local media than any of the Justice Issues on the York Synod Agenda.
Emboldened by having removed all the worthy public issues for synodical debate let me turn my sights onto another target – the Private Member’s Motion – and dismiss it with brevity. Frankly, if I can’t get the backing of my Diocesan Synod for my concerns, I shouldn’t be taking them all the way to a National body. Too often they are simply a mechanism by which the disgruntled get to ride their hobbyhorses at everybody’s time and expense.
My final candidates for agenda pruning are those items that may well require general assent, but instead are subject to a detailed scrutiny that is achieved more efficiently elsewhere – indeed often the Synod debate duplicates this. I have yet to encounter a piece of Liturgy that has been significantly improved by General Synod.
In recent times Synod has improved itself by pruning its members. It was increasingly absurd that every single diocese had an archdeacon as a voting member. Indeed it was little more than a “payroll vote” giving the hierarchy a substantial caucus within the House of Clergy – perhaps at times a decisive caucus. Now is the time to take the same pruning shears to the agenda. With the goal being, that if we could reduce Synod to an annual gathering (like the Methodist Conference) or even less frequent (the ECUSA general Convention meets every three years) – it would not only be cheaper and more efficient but might actually attract the wider and more representative membership it so pointedly lacks.
2 CommentsHaving no personal memories of D Day, and being required to take a service to commemorate the anniversary, I asked someone who took part in the landings about his memories. Bert suggested a hymn for the service, one that was unknown to me.
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood for the good or evil side;
Some great Cause, God’s New Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by for ever ‘twixt that darkness and that light
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust.
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, And ‘tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.
By the light of burning martyrs, Christ, thy bleeding feet we track,
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back.
New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward who would keep abreast of truth.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, beneath the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
James Russell Lowell
Bert had sung this as a schoolboy in rural Essex, and learned it long before he would be involved in ridding Europe of the tyranny of the Nazi regime. The hymn was actually written by an American, who I believe was strongly opposed to slavery, at the time of the American Civil War. Yet how appropriate it was to the conflict in Europe of 60 years ago.
It’s a pity the hymn went out of fashion, for it highlights to a need to remain vigilant in the cause of truth. Significantly, it points out that truth may not always require a simple repetition of an age old wisdom. No doubt Lowell was thinking particularly of slavery, which was accepted as normal in much of the society of his day, when he wrote New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth. But the message remains appropriate to the need to fight against fascism 60 years ago, and to the different challenges and concerns of our day.
They were curiously juxtaposed in Rome last week in the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the city from Fascism. The occasion had been planned to mark the gratitude of the Italian people, and recall how welcome the British and American troops had been as they arrived in Rome then. But the celebration was also marked by demonstrations against American policy today, highlighting the very different way in which war had been waged in Iraq.
I watched events on the news with mixed feelings. If Rome had not been liberated, there could have been no demonstrations of that sort today. But perhaps it was the moment to point out that ‘new occasions teach new duties’.
7 CommentsThis will be the last report here on the week’s synodical proceedings in Canada.
Reports in British papers:
The Church Times has this report by David Harris (the content has been updated from the version that appears in the printed paper) Canada debates same-sex unions
In the Guardian Stephen Bates has Canadian Anglicans put off gay blessings which is subtitled
Synod avoids internal split and worldwide evangelical revulsion
Jonathan Petre in the Telegraph has Anglicans delay vote on gay blessings notes the overwhelming strength of the vote in favour of adding the “sanctity” clause against the “tiny majority” for the deferral proposal.
The Press Association has Canadian Anglicans Back ‘Sanctity’ of Gay Relationships
0 CommentsToday, the General Synod of the Church of Canada passed an addition to the motion approved yesterday that “affirms the integrity and sanctity of committed adult same-sex relationships.”
Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued a press release which welcomed the decision by the Canadian General Synod to defer a decision on the question of same sex blessings until 2007.
Official Press Release Anglican synod ‘affirms’ integrity of same-sex relationships
Anglican Journal Synod ‘affirms’ same-sex relationships
Toronto Globe and Mail Anglicans clash again over same-sex couples
Toronto Star Anglicans affirm adult same-sex relationships
Associated Press Canadian Church Affirms Same-Sex Unions
Today’s further move by the Synod has angered many conservatives:
Orthodox Anglicans astounded at back-door approval of same-sex relationships
Statement to faithful Canadian Anglicans from Archbishop Drexel Gomez
Update Friday morning
Anglican Journal Nine bishops ‘express sorrow’ at synod’s actions
The Anglican Church of Canada has decided to delay a decision on same-sex blessings until 2007.
The wording of the revised motion is here. Clergy and laity voted 142-118 and bishops voted 22-12 in favour of deferral. A further debate will occur Thursday concerning an additional proposal to “affirm the integrity and sanctity of committed adult same-sex relationships.”
Press Association Canada’s Anglicans Delay Action on Gay Blessings
BBC Canadian gay union vote put off
Anglican Journal Synod defers decision on blessings – Will decide tomorrow on ‘integrity’ of gay relationships and Reaction to synod’s vote to defer a decision on same-sex blessings
Toronto Globe and Mail Anglicans put sex issue on hold and Anglicans hesitate to bless same-sex unions
Toronto Star Anglicans defer same-sex decision and Anglicans retreat from conflict
Associated Press Canadian Church Nixes Gay Marriage Issue.
According to Associated Press Religion Writer Richard Ostling in Canadian Church Nixes Gay Marriage Issue the Canadian General Synod will consider an alternative proposal to the one originally scheduled for a vote tonight.
A proposal authorizing Anglican Church of Canada dioceses to provide blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples was pulled Wednesday, just hours before a scheduled vote on the matter at a national church meeting.
The move reflected caution and confusion among church delegates over the impact the go-ahead would have on the Canadian church – and internationally in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion of which it’s a part.
It remained possible that liberals would try to restore the original proposal to allow “local option” on gay policies, meaning each diocese gets to decide for itself whether to allow the blessing ceremonies.
A revised proposal calls for a two-year study of whether same-sex rituals are “a matter of doctrine,” delaying action till the next national meeting in 2007. That measure appeared to be gaining momentum on Wednesday afternoon.
If the 2007 meeting decides doctrine is involved but wants to allow same-sex unions, that would require amendment of church law at two consecutive meetings – further delaying any approval until at least 2010.
But according to Oliver Moore in the Toronto Globe and Mail in Anglican activists water down same-sex motion the original proposal has not been withdrawn, but draft amendments have been submitted.
0 Comments“It was actually the same people who moved the original motion,” Anglican spokeswoman Lorrie Chortyk told globeandmail.com. “A layperson from the diocese of Toronto and it was seconded by the Bishop of the diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.”
Ms. Chortyk denied reports that the original motion had been discarded because of its divisiveness.
“They haven’t discussed it all. It’s happening tonight from seven to nine,” she explained in a telephone interview from St. Catherines, Ont. “The original motion hasn’t even been presented yet. So nothing’s been tossed out or decided.”
Ms. Chortyk said that the 300 delegates at the meeting will have the chance Wednesday evening to vote first on whether to accept the motion as amended. If they do, it will be discussed and then voted upon.
If not, the original motion called that the issue be left to the discretion of the individual bishops.
In comments earlier Wednesday, the new head of the Canadian church had predicted that the original motion wouldn’t survive the day.
“There is a motion before the synod and discussion goes on through the day,” Primate Andrew Hutchison told CBC Newsworld early in the morning.
“But I think it’s quite unlikely that the motion will survive in its present form. It’s been subject to a number of amendments and I think, in the final analysis, we may end up voting on quite a different motion.”
Updated 6 pm London time
Later today the Canadian General Synod will decide what to do about same-sex blessings. (Internet live coverage here.) Official synod background paper here.
News Release: Anglican debate on same-sex blessings opens with a plea to delay decision
This event is discussed in British newspapers, two of whom have correspondents on the scene:
Telegraph Jonathan Petre New liberal primate as gay vote approaches
Guardian Stephen Bates Church faces split on gay blessings
Canadian reports:
Toronto Globe and Mail Debate shows Anglicans split on gay unions
CBC News Decision day for Anglican same-sex unions
Reuters:
Canadian Anglicans to vote on same-sex blessings
Associated Press:
Canadian Anglicans’ new leader notes complexities on eve of gay showdown
The Canadian General Synod has elected Andrew Hutchison as the new Primate of Canada.
Official press release: Archbishop Andrew Hutchison of Montreal elected 12th Primate of Anglican Church of Canada
Anglican Journal:
Synod elects Montreal archbishop as primate
Reaction to the election of Archbishop Andrew Hutchison as primate
New primate’s interest in peacemaking runs deep
Associated Press via the Guardian: Canada’s Anglicans Pick Liberal Leader
Toronto Globe and Mail: Anglicans pick trailblazer to lead flock
Toronto Star: Anglicans pick liberal as leader
CBC News: Anglicans choose leader who supports same-sex unions
1 CommentThe 2004 General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada is meeting now. Their convention website gives detailed coverage including webcasts, and the Anglican Journal reports from the convention are posted here. The webcasts all are in .wmv format (Microsoft Media Player).
There are news reports today in two British newspapers:
In the Guardian Stephen Bates reports Canada’s Anglicans debate blessing of gay unions.
In the Telegraph Jonathan Petre says Williams envoy hopes to turn gay marriage vote.
Both these stories report the speech made to the synod by Gregory Cameron, who is secretary to the Lambeth Commission.
This speech can be seen and heard on a recorded webcast downloadable here, but as this is a 7.5M download, a full transcript also appears below.
Also below that is a copy of the relevant portion of the Presidential Address (full webcast is 13.7 Mb, downloadable here) to which reference is made several times in Gregory Cameron’s remarks.
Update 11 June Official version of this speech is now on ACO website here.
Some Canadian news reports:
Toronto Star
Anglican schism feared over same-sex blessings
Anglicans clear way for vote on leader
Montreal Gazette
Gay Anglican priest elected to high post at synod
Vancouver Sun
Anglicans elect gay B.C. priest to Synod
And an internet naming angle reported in the Anglican Journal:
Who owns the name ‘Anglican’?
The photographs of American soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq gave me pause for all sorts of reasons, not least because some of the soldiers are Christians.
It has been an interesting turn of events that, while I was growing up, my teachers were predicting the end of religion. Belief in God was a throwback to magical thinking and feudal society, so I was taught. Yet, it turns out these days, religion is as much of a force in world events as it has ever been.
I think that blaming soldiers for abuses is to treat the symptom but not the cause. Soldiers are everything and nothing; we have no idea how they are prepared, if at all, for the complexities of the roles they are expected to fulfil.
What I have found deeply troubling is reading how fundamentalist Christianity has permeated the centres of power in the United States.
The absence of any US commitment to environmental politics, for example, can be traced to a deeply held belief in the current administration that, if Jesus is coming back to judge the world and reduce it to a cinder, why bother saving the rain forest? The same idea of judgement encourages a sense of the world being divided into the saved and the damned, the good and the bad: we are good, and all the evil in the world is out there somewhere.
Once you take on this mindset, then the abuse of prisoners follows from this. The only circumstance in which abuse can be justified is that they are the enemy and they represent all that we consider to be evil. Once you’ve made that decision, the rest is easy, they have no rights, they can be treated however we feel like, they deserve whatever they get, we are the righteous, we are the chosen. It doesn’t matter if you lock suspects up in Guantanamo Bay for two years with no basic human rights.
Keeping all the evil in the world Out There somewhere is very comforting. People have grown huge church congregations by gathering those huddled together, set apart from the evils of the world. I want to take a different Christian view.
Deep at the heart of Christian faith is a view of life from the perspective of the victim. Imagine how Christian faith looks to the prisoner on the receiving end of a GI boot. Maybe two years ago he was on the receiving end of one of Saddam’s boots, now it’s a Christian one. How do we look to them, what must they make of the wonderful new world and values that liberation has brought.
Christianity says that it is possible to do something about the evil in the world. You don’t stop evil by deciding it is only to be found somewhere else, and that its source is somebody else. When Christians gather to worship, we routinely make the space to consider how we look to others, and to allow God to show us the evil within ourselves.
I can say, and I believe, that Saddam Hussein is an evil man, and I don’t expect anyone to disagree with me. But I can keep saying that, and the world doesn’t change, we just feel cosy that the evil is being committed by someone else.
What happens if I ask what an Iraqi prisoner sees when he looks at me, or looks at people who act on my government’s behalf? What does he think of the values of my world, as he sees them acted out on him? What happens if I ask whether there is any truth in what he describes when he looks at my world? And what can I do about it?
5 CommentsUniversity Sermon 2nd May 2004 preached by Revd Dr Giles Fraser
University Church, Oxford
In the years leading up to 1519, Martin Luther experienced what might be described as both mental breakdown and theological breakthrough:
“I did not love God” he said “I hated the just God” and was indignant towards Him, if not in wicked revolt, at least in silent blasphemy.”
Martin Luther’s admission that he had come to hate the God in whom he believed sparked a theological revolution that was to transform the political geography of Europe. What was it that he hated? For Luther, service to a God who demanded human beings earn His love had become service to a heartless despot, impossible to please. Consequently, the confessional had become a private hell of never being good enough, of never earning enough merit to satisfy the unattainable demands required for salvation. This was the shadow-side of the Pelagian’s breezy moral optimism. Luther’s deep sense of the extent of human inadequacy made him appreciate that a God who dealt with human beings strictly on the basis of merit, strictly on the basis of what they deserved, was always going to be a God of punishment. Rowan Williams writes: “this experience was an experience of hell, a condition of moral and spiritual hopelessness. The God who presides over this appalling world is a God who asks the impossible and punishes savagely if it is not realised”. In the years leading up to 1519, Luther came to see his former understanding of Christianity as inherently abusive, and the psychology of the confessional as a destructive cycle whereby the abused child constantly returns to the abusive heavenly father for comfort.
In exposing this cycle of abuse Luther blew apart the theological establishment. Parallels with arguments that are now transforming the political geography of Anglicanism are remarkable. For the debate about homosexuality is a great deal more than a debate about sex. It’s a debate about the nature of God’s love for human beings that has much in common with debates that drove the Reformation. For the message the Church has given to gay Christians is the message Luther came to see as inherently abusive: God does not love you as you are – you need to be completely and fundamentally – and perhaps even impossibly – different before He will love you.
Consider the Bishop of Chester, Dr Peter Forster’s advice to gay Christians that they should find a way of being cured of their homosexuality. Having investigated allegations, the Crown Prosecution Service decided his comments did not amount to a prosecutable offensive – the Public Order Act of 1986 only applies to the incitement to racial hatred. Nonetheless, his remarks deserve the deepest theological censure. For gay Christians who have tried to become acceptable to God by subjecting themselves to electric shock therapy, or by being bombarded with pornography – thus to “cure” themselves of homosexuality – have been forced into precisely the sort of private hell Luther experienced in the confessional. The Bishop of Chester’s theology serves only to describe a cruel and abusive God who cares little for the emotional or spiritual welfare of His children.
18 CommentsWhilst on holiday in Spain I had the opportunity to see what local papers were saying about the recent ban in Barcelona on bullfighting. The very idea that Spain might be banning what the world had thought of as its national sport seemed almost impossible — that is, until you remember what they paid for David Beckham. Maybe bullfighting isn’t the draw it was, either for tourists or locals.
The press began by noting that cock fighting, bear baiting, bull baiting and dog fighting were, like bullfighting, once far more widespread, but across Europe a growing horror of such cruelty to animals had gradually reached everywhere.
The bull doesn’t naturally fight. It’s a gentle herbivore, and, as a domesticated animal, has been bred over hundreds of generations for its gentleness. All idea of fighting is foreign to it. The cows allow us to milk them, and cattle have been our best friends for thousands of years. It doesn’t ‘fight’ at all until lances have been hurled into its back. There is no contest in taking a sword to such a creature. It’s like taking a machine gun to a boy who throws stones.
In Spain, bullfighting had become identified with extreme right wing, oppressive government. It had come to symbolise the oppression of ordinary people, of minorities, of those who were different. So, it was unsurprising that the Catalans, whose language and whose culture had been suppressed in Franco’s time should see themselves as such an minority, and side with the noble, suffering bull, rather than with the murderous weapons of the bullfighter in his suit of lights.
Oppressive regimes glory in portraying punishment and killing as a sign of their power. This is what was at the heart of the circuses of ancient Rome. Ritualised execution in such a state could be the fate of anyone who was different, as Christian martyrs of the first, third or 20th century have testified.
Sports which involve killing brutalise those who take part, and all those who watch.
Now, the Catalans appear to have had enough. In a secret ballot which probably surprised everyone, they outlawed the old national sport. I expect they will be followed by similar votes from people in the other marginalized areas of Spain, and eventually the whole nation will turn against the blood lust of this barbaric sport.
And when they do, we shall need to ask ourselves whether, in order to demonstrate that ours, too, is a civilised society, and part of a modern Europe with decent values, we should ban the sport of hunting wild creatures with dogs.
8 Commentsinclusivechurch.net has announced plans to observe 20 June 2004 as Inclusive Church Sunday. Details of the plans can be found here.
The arrangements include an order of service for a liturgy are built into Common Worship Order One, with Eucharistic Prayer G.
There are also sermon notes prepared for inclusivechurch by Canon Jeffrey John.
0 CommentsOnly the Telegraph could sustain the St Albans story into another Sunday.
Evangelicals threaten to ‘ruin’ C of E over gay canon which begins:
Evangelical Anglican churches are threatening the Church of England with financial ruin in protest at the appointment of Canon Jeffrey John, a homosexual, as the Dean of St Albans Cathedral.
The BBC’s Sunday radio programme took a broader view, with:
Deans
Several cathedral Deans have been lively characters with a national profile. And colourful deans aren’t just the stuff of church history: as Christopher Landau has been finding out, even in Anthony Trollope’s fictional town of Barchester, controversy surrounded a dean’s appointment.
Listen (5m 31s – Real Audio)
