Setting Up a Liberal Group?

This possibility arises of starting a group when there are so many independent and liberal movements today. A growing movement is the Progressive Christianity Network, and then there are Sea of Faith Groups. Both are still thinly spread, but clusters are appearing. There could even be liberal religious groups like church fellowships. I have looked into a range of them, in asking why they cannot get together, and looked at even those where some get ordained and consecrated via several lines of apostolic succession - producing their own small religious communities like churches. Then there are simple discussion groups (talking, reading) or perhaps activity groups (practical or spiritual).

However, if the people starting such a group are already in an existing one one, like a church, then sensitivity is needed. If the group forms inside the church, it may look as if it is a potential takeover, or defensive, or against the ethos of the church (if opposite or mixed), but if it forms outside it might be seen as competition, schismatic and divisive.

Sometimes a group may have the active support of the minister and leaders, or at least an understanding. The degree of attachment the group has to church depends to some extent on the absence of hostility from minister and other leading people.

Also it may involve connections with more than one church, and more than one minister or ministers of one denomination. Conversation routes may then be very complex, a multitude of sensitivities and motives (real and imagined) arise, and keeping channels open may be quite complex. For example, some in one denomination may ask if a group is a front for another denomination and wonder who knows most about what.

It could be that the greatest need for a liberal group is in a locality where the local church simply does not incorporate the liberal aspect within its walls. If not then setting up such a group will be unattached to that existing body.

So how to do it: well a group should have a clear, specific, public agenda (the constitution can be more general or imported). It should be launched in public in an open meeting that all who want may attend. The group should at least be semi-detached if not detached from an existing church or churches but someone answer questions about its progress or otherwise to a church body or bodies as a matter of courtesy and openness. It is still worth keeping channels open in the face of local hostility whilst defending against actual disruption.

Starting a specifically liberal group is a challenge to some people who doubt the legitimacy of liberal religion. This is why they are wanted! Such a group is seen often as undermining, or a cop-out, or shows (say, to evangelicals) an evangelistic opportunity that the liberal people simply reject. Still one can be open about its purposes and what it is doing.

What cannot be compromised, once it is set up, is the agenda of the group, its intellectual and other sources and its intentions. Disruption is not permitted, even if questions are and there is space (for a time at least) for oppositional points. Nor can there be restriction on its appeal for new members from outside, on a liberal basis of contribution and not people to be 'evangelised'. A principal need is a safe space for people to express doubts, to formulate faith alternatives, and think things through in different ways. The group decides, not others, whether there is any value, for example, in 'upholding the Incarnation' or what understanding, if any, is given to resurrection or other doctrines, or how far to incorporate the insights of other faiths and philosophies. It decides how faith is to be understood, or (more likely) the degree of active toleration given to individuals to give different views.

It may be that a church already has a discussion or some form of activity group. There may even be a liberal hue to it, as another group in the same church may have a Catholic or evangelical hue to it. Good, but such an internal group can never simply become one of a liberal agenda (unless this identifies the church). Such a group must always operate to a wider ethos of the church it is in. It may indeed be obliged to uphold certain doctrines or dogmas in some public manner.

At some point the new group may want to sign up to an existing network, or have an association or membership. Then its ethos becomes drawn from that body more obviously and completely. It would be a case of keeping good relations with others where it built good relationships (if it did).

Groups go through highs and lows. One important matter is not to think that the world can be changed. A discussion group is just that - it talks. There is no point saying later, "Well nothing is being achieved." It is if people are talking. It may help to read, or share the preparation of papers. Be a seminar! A group that worships is the same - it succeeds if it worships. A group that does practical action might have to be more ambitious in the doing, and even more ambitious is wanting to achieve combinations of these. Matters should be kept simple and achievable.

Another useful characteristic for a successful group is to have a historical root. This is to say, know where the present is and future direction according to what was the case. Blog entries on religious groups previous to this one (below) are all about sources and connections.

It is a frustration when people are 'not on the same wavelength'. The liberal group (like many another) sets out to achieve this. It can draw on many more sources than of the one denomination, and can say things that might frighten the horses elsewhere.

It may achieve a safe place, even a forward-going place, if it is under pressure in the religious situation in a locality. In such a situation, so what if it became a congregation? It offers actual choice. If this happened where there was no such pressure in the locality, then it would be a failing in one or more local churches to have such an extended new development beyond. Such a situation would not come about where the people who set up a semi-detached group are already catered for within that church; it is just that in their added group they can specialise and go beyond provision.

Menzies Falls

I liked Menzies Campbell, but was torn about him because there was that sense he could not do it, and a real fear that the Liberal Democrats would go backwards. The LD worthies wanted Ming to win the leadership, but it was the wrong choice - probably, and the probably turned out to be so. I am as much a Liberal Democrat as is possible to be without actually joining up. I consistently like their policies, though I think they are overdoing the green thing - green taxes could be regressive taxes, for example.

One of two skills would have saved him. One was a good performer in the House of Commons. He did often pick the right subject, but it lacked delivery. You could tell how hard he was trying, with his increasingly pithy questions, but it looked like he was trying hard. The other was a reach into the public in a way Charles Kennedy achieved. Kennedy was not rated in the House of Commons, but he could beat many a politician outside. Yet Charles Kennedy could not be imagined as a Prime Minister. You could imagine Menzies Campbell as a Prime Minister, but he seemed to be ten years too late at least, and lacked that charisma of draw. Yes he did preside over a very good Scottish by-election, but he did not have general appeal. Unlike the other two leaders, he hardly benefited from the party conference. I imagined the next election, with seats lost, and Campbell resigning, and all for what?

Campbell did intend to run to the election in two or so years time. I don't agree that it was all based round an election sooner rather than later. I think Campbell would have done better in an election soon than in these recent polls, and would have used the professionalism put into the party, and his building a team, and his own position. Yet once Gordon Brown did his 31 years later version of "waiting at the church", the spotlight fell on to Menzies Campbell.

In policy terms Iraq Campbell's main success was also his untimely millstone around the neck; once Brown started withdrawing more troops and showed an intention to close Iraq down from a British point of view (spinning of course, but reductions would be shown) Campbell lost his main policy punch. It was as if that was his job, foreign affairs, and that was that. There was more than that, with solidity elsewhere too, but it sounded like yesterday's record.

However the Liberal Democrats do not mess about. Campbell could see the writing on the wall when the light fell on him. He knew that the delayed election cut the ground from under him. Once he has to go, he goes quickly. It is payment by results, and the sack comes swiftly. The Liberal Democrats have developed a ruthless streak for the leader, for by-elections and for marginal seats.

Interesting how he has left - by not saying anything. He's gone home, no doubt to transfer to another kind of life. Well it falls on to the Acting Leader to have long days (Vince Cable is very impressive, but exactly the same reasons prevents him being an actual leader - David Steel is right that Menzies Campbell at the resignation of Kennedy should have been only acting leader) . Of the contenders, I still think Chris Huhne is the strategist, from a business background. Nick Clegg seems to be OK but may be too telegenic and lack gravitas. Huhne could be regarded as an effective leader, and he may just have the breadth of a political vision to mark out a future strategy. He may be able to make Brown look old-school and Cameron vacuous.

Spirituality

A chance to see Elena and talk a bit longer, and have a more civilised journey to a job interview near Portsmouth, means I am missing another of the church's In-Depth Group meeting. So I have provided an apology and short presentation.

I tried to think of spirituality as across religions, though clearly this is based on Christian liturgy:

Spirituality: How Repetition Relates to Change

It is a series of logical steps, whereby an expression that varies only slightly to take account of the self and the environment, done by a group, draws on a historical, history-like or story moment of such significance that it receives a divine quality, and that is then drawn into the individual and the group and, by reinforcement, is effective to produce a new world view, creating a new reality.

In other words, it is relating to something around the theory of liturgy and liturgy being active.

Click on the link above or go to the website and then Learning - Religion - Denominations/ St Mary's Church Barton-upon-Humber (scroll down), In-Depth Group Paper (October)

Here's Another One

It's another one of those daft quizzes, again at quizfarm.com, this time not so much about religion as about philosophy. Here is my result, and I rather agree with it:

What is Your World View?

You scored as Postmodernist Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 88% Cultural Creative 81% Existentialist 75% Romanticist 50% Idealist 44% Modernist 38% Materialist 31% Fundamentalist 25%

Regarding Independent Catholics

I need to express here my many thanks to Bishop John Kersey of The Liberal Rite and the Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship for his assistance to me in commenting on my essay about Free Catholicism and Liberal Catholicism. His comments were detailed and showed an extensive knowledge of the movements and personalities in the Independent Sacramental Movement (and I suspect that he knows plenty about all the others too, from correspondence).

Incidentally my essay is a commentary; the actual detail is better covered in pages provided by the Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship (which John Kersey administers). There is only so much value in copying what is already there, and that is towards the argument I want to make - an argument increasingly open I should say. I started off with many assumptions, then had these challenged by ranging around the various sources, and then had these challenged again by further detail and explanation.

I suppose I am somewhat drawn to this Free Catholic and Liberal Catholic matrix of groups (via their consecrations and ordinations, and then various patterns of beliefs) and then I do some head scratching.

If there is a common position among them, then it is that valid consecrations and ordinations, that place an individual into a relationship with a valid bishop and his or her group (incardination) is the means by which grace is delivered through the sacraments, about which there is then leeway on content of belief (including even real presence - I got that wrong). In other words, the liberalism that results is in the space generated once there is this grace. It is utterly anti-literalist. Then, there is the related preference for the spiritual and even universal - the mystic - over the historical, and this even includes the lines of consecrations and ordinations considered as valid by Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Independent Catholics.

The universalism is a route to Theosophy that was, and is, still important in many groups - though this is often misrepresented. So is the Spiritualism of H. P. Nicholson and a working it via his own beliefs through to an effective Liberal Catholic position. As is pointed out to me, even in the origins of the Liberal Catholic Church (the most Theosophical), James Ingall Wedgwood thought Theosophy would become one day less important as the basic Catholic system continued - that of valid and placed consecrations and ordinations. As is also pointed out to me, additional consecrations sub conditione are principally about attaching ones ministry to more valid lines from other Catholic traditions (as well as, say, Anglican Catholics worried about their Orders getting themselves attached by re-ordination to one of these valid lines).

This is where I scratch my head. First I do because if a line is more sound spiritually rather than historically (the way that a family tree becomes its identity into which we are set, never mind what the milkman did one day in the past and the resultant child was passed off as the husband's), then this can mean that the main Anglican (as ever) line might still be spiritually sound. Nevertheless, it is this validity that they find important, and what allows these groups (and individuals attached) to find their identity, and therefore ties Independent Catholic groups in with the lines of consecration that allow the rejection of Papal dogma and Eastern sterility. Presumably issues of validity come down to historical record where available, and argument going back into the mists of time.

From a Roman Catholic point of view, and Eastern Orthodox, there are valid but illicit bishops - and then there are those who share the faith but without valid orders. But theirs is but one opinion, which raises a quick head scratch, I suppose, about why one should want to follow Roman views about validity at all (unless it is also your own view) when such comes with the added tag of illicit.

The third head scratch is over the rejection of Protestantism and the priesthood of all believers and its double routes of both literalism and liberalism. Liberalism was derived from theological revisionist movements from reading the Bible literally (discovering no doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible, that it is extra Biblical and later) and then, later, biblical criticism and moving from the Bible to individual conscience. Arguably the thrust of liberalism within Christianity comes from the Protestant side, and indeed in part also comes from those groups that gave up episcopal governance.

Unitarian liberalism comes, early, and later, from this: and from the desire for broad based geographical ministry (the parish). In between Unitarian liberalism had a different source, which was the ideology of the Enlightenment and how it fused into the first Unitarian biblical literalists. This is the world of John Locke's ideas and related.

There is, of course, Catholic modernism, of grace and space, but any working out of a broad based Christianity (such as by Hans Kung) begins to look somewhat in agreement with Protestant scholarship.

The liberal inspiration that generated the Free Catholicism of Joseph Morgan Lloyd Thomas was the Protestant revisionism within the Presbyterian Richard Baxter, and on to the broad universalism of James Martineau in connection with that. This connects with, in Anglican terms, the Broad Church rather than High Church. Nevertheless, it overlaps with High Church, and the move towards symbolic individualism (collectively - if evolving - liturgical, individually interpreted) by James Martineau was taken a further step into High Church or the Catholic side by J. M. Lloyd Thomas and W. E. Orchard.

So here is a fourth head scratch: this liberalism does, of course, question the rigidity of having these Orders, whether the liberalism is Protestant or Enlightenment in origin. Reasoning asks, and questions, what are you doing having elaborate liturgies and hands on heads? Does this rely on magic and the supernatural?

This is why Weberian Sociology sees hands on heads and liturgies as traditional authority, whereas liberalism is modernist (or bureaucratic authority, or after Weber). Interestingly The Liberal Rite is itself human relations authority in its Troeltsch-Mysticism (he linked this voluntary organisation of freely made religious groups to the Enlightenment) and congregationalist basis. There is a clash here, and it is in maintaining the fixed basis of the Orders being defended: supernatural or magic. They can be is a means of identity, and inherited practice.

This is the peculiar thing. Without seeking to defend it, for all its expressions of Catholic and Protestant dogma, these elements qualify one another in the Church of England and introduce liberal doubt about not only its dogma but also the need to maintain valid lines. In some ways the Church of England becomes more liberal on some points of organisation than the Independent Catholics. The Church of England is more muddled and confused with all its overlaps, whereas Free and Liberal Catholicism seems to have a clearer separation between the need to maintain valid lines of consecration (where it can) and the liberal content of faith - whether Unitarian or Theosophical inspired (or both). It may be that such a separation is not so possible with the impact of the modern and postmodern, although a variant of John Milbank's Radical Orthodoxy or perhaps Lindbeck's (or Liechty's, as this would be liberal, ethical and broad) Postliberalism might be a get out of jail card here).

Anyway, one upshot of this is that an Anglican who stresses High Church principles can never be quite so high and clear as the Free and Liberal Catholics, not without re-ordination, unless they also value the Reformed tradition as a qualifier of such claims or the liberal tradition that questions everything. Another matter is I am persuaded that the Church of England has engaged in black propaganda against the Independent Catholic Movement (some of my earlier assumptions) and much of this can be easily dismissed. The Movement originated in particular by Arnold Harris Matthew (and, also important, Ulric Vernon Herford) are genuine and sincere and followed necessary paths according to convictions not ambitions.

Lots of source webpages are here including a range from The Liberal Rite and the Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship.

Independent Catholics

For about a fortnight now I have been working on an essay to bring together information on Independent Catholicism, that is those Churches or Rites (often very tiny) that have bishops in apostolic succession with Roman Catholic lines of bishops but are independent of the Roman Catholic Church. The definition of "independent" excludes the Orthodox and the Anglican. Some lines go through these too, and some go via other Churches. There are quite a number of such Churches and bishops, and many are called wandering bishops.

Of particular interest, however, is the development of liberalism with these Catholic orders, and for this there are two streams: the Free Catholic, inspired by Unitarianism going off in that direction, and particularly Joseph Morgan Lloyd Thomas, and the Liberal Catholic, with the infusion of Theosophy, via James Ingall Wedgwood and Charles Webster Leadbeater. There is also a pre-theosophical strand here, just before these two, in the impact of Arnold Harris Mathew, of the British version of the Old Catholic Church - and he was for a time a Unitarian. Another important character is Ulric Vernon Herford, a Unitarian turned Liberal Catholic. In 2006/ 2007 there seems to be a little bit of an organised revival going on and thus the developments of the early twentieth century are being revived. There are clear Unitarian roots to some of these developments, managed by individuals, and there is the ongoing small Liberal Catholic Church International (where theosophy is now optional) and the Open Episcopal Church, which looks back to before Theosophy and one supposes wants to be as with the Old Catholic Church. All these groups are liberal, and all are not Reformed but only Catholic (once clear of Unitarianism, and Free Catholic Unitarianism is somewhat rejected by the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches). In other words they are clerical and this clericalism upholds real presence (bread and wine), another belief these groups seem to share.

This is another example of the influence of the broad and anti-denominationalist James Martineau, who died in 1900 (pictured right as an elderly gentleman). Martineau inspired J. M. Lloyd Thomas with his liturgical conservatism, individualist open belief subjectivism, and a broad Church outlook. It is also one line of the outlook of the Presbyterian Richard Baxter. Nevertheless J. M. Lloyd Thomas and W. E. Orchard took this outlook into the heights of Catholicism.

My essay looks into this in detail, and shows a disjuncture between Catholicism in orders and liberalism in belief without an active Reformed agent. The question is one of identity and form, and what is a sideline of Christianity, and one route revived that is finding a rich worship whilst rejecting selective literalism and dogma.

The essay is found in the Learning Area - Religion - Denominations - Independent Catholicism.

Incidentally, in the light of the new work on such Independent Catholicism, and with a consideration of Unitarian events in the United States 1870-1882, the talk given to Sea of Faith Yorkshire on 22 September 2007 has been revised for its continued life on the World Wide Web. It is found here but I have left the original talk unchanged here for the sake of a record of what was given. These are in the Learning Area - Religion - Academic - Sociology of Progressive Religious Groups .

Wycliffe Wreckage and The Strategy

It's hard to keep up with the destructive goings on spilling out of Wycliffe Hall.

It is the college undergoing revolution in order to strategically tackle the open evangelicals first and then "the liberals". The revolutionary Dr Turnbull is having quite an effect: 40 per cent of staff members have left already with a management style of the bull in a china shop. I have updated my webpage about the goings on of this good example of a conservative evangelical strategy, to have the right kind of ministers trained to tackle the Church of England. There is the interview with Eeva John, who has written two letters at least about the dismissals, and Clare McInnes has gone public too, because she reckons the minutes of the governing Council meetings do not reflect what went on in terms of her own objections. The University of Oxford also thinks that Wycliffe Hall is no place for Oxford undergraduates and that, as a small place, it is particularly suffering from such tensions inside the Hall.

Meanwhile the Archbishop of Canterbury visited The Episcopal Church (TEC) House of Bishops (HOB), and TEC HOB decided to extend its previous position it had agreed to (not to approve active gay relationship bishops, not to authorise gay blessings) in order to keep in with the Anglican Communion, and the Joint Standing Committee (with a tiny bit of dissent) has said well done. Some Primates (around the British Isles, for example) have said it has done enough as well. Nevertheless the Africans remain itchy, and many primates have not spoken yet. The Common Cause Partnership of dissenting congregations leaving The Episcopal Church has decided to try and work more closely together, despite some members being vehemently opposed to ordaining women, some in favour, and with lines of bishops going out to different Anglican centres of authority - it is incredibly messy and any new denomination a candidate for splitting itself. What matters is what these African provinces, which have said Canterbury is not so important, y'know, are going to do with their troops now they have been marched to the top of the hill. Are they going to declare not just TEC out of communion, but do as threatened and set up an alternative centre for an Anglican Communion made in their own image? An essential step for this is to declare the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York in league with the leadership of TEC and having assisted their lack of response (as they see it) to various demands. Every so often I take a look at Anglican Mainstream, just to monitor Chris Sugden's latest words of hostility, to see when the action is coming.

In other words, is Chris Sugden going to get on with it, like Richard Turnbull has made his start, in the world of the Conservative Evangelical trying to bring about a sectarian revolution in the Church of England - or outside it?