A New Liturgy for Church of Niafashisto (Anglican Communion)

A Prayer of Archbishop Nick Cocoh of the Niafashito Church (Anglican Communion)

Almighty God
It is my function
To give Extreme Unction
After I got him
Because I shot him
Amen.

First hymn

I Fight the good fight with all my might;
My gun is my Strength, and Christ my flight;
Lay down a life, and it shall be
Unction Extreme for eternity.

Run the straight race through bishops' choice,
Put in your votes, and make my hoist;
Career its way before me lies,
Christ is the plinth, and Christ my rise.

Cast votes aside, do as I guide,
I am arisen and will provide;
Colonel and Archbishop is my bread
One makes you live, the other leaves you dead.

Faint not nor fear, point blank is near,
I changeth not, and he's not deer.
Only believe, and thou shalt see
A bloody great gun go off at thee.

Almighty God
I have sinned against you
And quite a few
In thought, and word, and especially deed
Through strength, through planning, through my own deliberate fault
I am not really sorry
Because it was a Civil War
Cleanse the sins of those I shot
By the inspiration of my General
That we may perfectly know him
And magnify his many sins
In someone's name
Amen.


Next a hymn, to the popular Four Tops tune (please look at the big screen above):

Going choko down with Nicky Cocoh
If you stay too long
Yes you'll be going choko down with Nicky Cocoh
The tragic down there is so strong

Feel the pressure
Your back's against the wall
Firing squad is at you
You're just about to fall
If you're afraid to die
Afraid to take a glance
Better hide your feelings
Blindfold on you fool

'Cause you'll be going choko down with Nicky Cocoh
If you stay too long
Yes you'll be going choko down with Nicky Cocoh
The tragic down there is so strong

You can hear bodies bleeding
Through those warm warring nights
Memories are lost and found
Leaving broken hearts all over town

'Cause you'll be going choko down with Nicky Cocoh
If you stay too long
Yes you'll be going choko down with Nicky Cocoh
The tragic down there is so strong

They'll be pulling out your hair
Drowning in despair
With a whole lot of killing on your way to nowhere
Your search for paradise will be at an end
When you realise what a fool you've been

You'll be haunted by a face
Kissing a grip's embrace
Memories of fighting him
Holding gun tight every night
Was that the best part of your life?
Hearing his voice shout and blow
Choking as to please
Please just go
Just go! No! Just go!
Just go!

[Music]

You can see bodies bleeding
Through those warm warring nights
Memories are lost and found
Leaving broken hearts all over town
All over town

'Cause you'll be going choko down with Nicky Cocoh
If you stay too long
Yes you'll be going choko down with Nicky Cocoh
The tragic down there is so strong

Going choko down with Nicky Cocoh
If you stay too long
Yes you'll be going choko down with Nicky Cocoh
The tragic down there is so strong

[Original songwriters: Lamont Dozier, Phil Collins]

A Prayer

Thank you God for raising me up, to take the Church of Niafashisto to ever greater heights. Give thunderous blessings to his highest and your leader Aki Nolo, a carpenter raised to world status leader, like someone else we know a while back, and now give these blessings to me, a fighter not a lover, a military man who also knows that Muslims do not have a monopoly on violence, and let us condemn all manner of sin like homosexuality, liberalism, secularism, Islam and other Archbishops who cannot make up their minds. Give thanks that my election was passed peacefully and that, although not everyone voted and we don't deal in numbers, I got more than two thirds of the vote that we bothered to count.

The Piece of Gunshot

The Lord said, if you get in my way in this country, I will shoot you. So let us compare our guns and ammunition one with another, as a sign of who we are.

Your military means be always with you.
And also with you.

The service continues...

A Bit More Sociology

See my response to Frank M. Turner's piece on Anglicanism as an Imaginary Community. It is at the Daily Episcopalian at Episcopal Café.

The question Benedict Anderson, who produced the idea of an Imaginary Community, wanted to answer was what was the continued basis of loyalty to the Nation State, seen within Marxist Sociology as a transient bourgeois institution. Fascism and racism were simply answers that were not good enough, nor did he settle on ethnicity. Rather a community is imagined of insiders, limited and sovereign, for which all else falls outside and for which governance is for within. The institutions of governance can even overcome ethnicity should they be strong enough and command loyalty.

If you apply such to Anglicanism then it follows that it is limited, sovereign and should grow institutions of governance. Now this is the project that is happening now, with the ecumenical exception that the result can be presented to the Roman Catholic Church for identity as a worldwide Church.

The issue then is whether there is any looser and lesser Imagined Community available, and there is a sense in which the Anglican Communion has always been this and little else. Now the reality is the Archbishop of Canterbury's project, and the way to counter this strong Imagined Community is to drop the Covenant and be ecumenical more towards Old Catholicism, Lutheranism and those Churches once uncontained with origins inside historical Anglicanism.

Behold, A Primate!

Behold! A Primate is Arisen!

Press Release by Rev. Canon Fulof Sorroe

From the depths of mystery unto the spaceous fallen earth, a new leader for our time has arisen to lead the Church of Niafashisto (Anglican Communion). He is the nearly sixty year old - but doesn't look it - retired Colonel (with several kills under his belt) Archbishop of Bendi Province and Arsabout Diocese, the Most Reverential Nick N. Omugo Cocoh.

The divinely guided and therefore free of problems voting took place amongst the Niafashisto House of Bishops meeting at the Cathedral of Omma Biaslate Payyup.

He popped up tops! He got two thirds and whooped three other clerics, he did, in an atmosphere full of suspense like in a who dunnit detective novel book.

Nick Cocoh is the fourth Primate of the Church of Niafashisto (Anglican Communion), and replaces the third one, Archbishop Aki Nolo next year. So many tears will be rained upon the earth on that day of retirement that drought will be impossible!

No one shot each other during the election: it was peaceful, and the Colonel kept his gun in his holster. He told his competitors it was a good job they lost. Rev. Robert Maxwell (Of Frequent Resurrection) thus felt secure enough to announce the winner in succession to the Most Rev. Aki Nolo (Commander Over Niafashisto), and Rev. Maxwell said he would return to his yacht forthwith. He first gave Nick Cocoh a receipt for him to keep should someone question the result, but was assured that no one will.

Most Reverential Nick N. Omugo Cocoh attended the unknown Vicious Theological College in Avapan Ofkoco between 1976 and 1979. He became deacon soon after, a Canon in 1987, and a Colonel in 1991 and shot his first enemy soon after in the Civil War. He was then collated into a proper sequence until he became Bishop of Bendi Province before adding Arsabout as part of becoming Archbishop.

Nick Cocoh is noted for his anti-homosexuality speeches, attacking secular thinking, hating liberalism, undermining The Episcopal Church and mixing with Anglican separatists. The current Archbishop, Aki Nolo, welcoming his successor said, "There'll be no change round here, or anywhere else we go. It's business as usual."

Nick Cocoh said, "I look forward to meeting the Primate of All Anglicanism and telling him we don't have to go through him unless I permit it but he instead can come through me in my Church (Anglican Communion). No one comes to the Anglican Communion except through me," he said.

After the violence free election was completed, and bishops pledged their complete loyality, both men went off to receive advice from a couple of Conservative Evangelical writers in Britain and the United States about how to continue to interfere in and threaten other Anglican Churches.

Genesis-Revelation TV in Serious Breach

I am grateful to a comment from Gordon (not Gordon Pettie!) which, if left as a comment in its place, will be buried in an entry here made in summer. It is about Genesis-Revelation TV in serious breach of the OFCOM Code. It says, via the email:

Gordon has left a new comment on your post "Liberal Catholicism and Christian Zionism?":

They [Genesis - Revelation TV] have been in trouble with OFCOM again. This time for airing a programme called "The Land Cries Out for the Blood that Was Shed" which showed images of dismembered late aborted foetuses at 3:30pm, just prior to their afternoon children's programme. The full judgement can be found here in the OFCOM broadcast bulletin of 14th September 2009.

Interestingly their defence was:

1. It was shown in error (put apparently not stopped by anyone once it had started playing).

2. Their viewers don't agree with lots of what's on other channels so why should viewers of other channels have a right to censor things they disapprove of.

In other words they feel they are being persecuted - and that makes them even more vociferous.

It explains why last night one of them said "the Devil" was out to get them. I made a complaint just the once a while back after a telephone contributor attacked gays, Muslims and Roman Catholicism all in one go, and the presenter showed his enthusiasm for the comments, but a forensic look at his words by OFCOM just about allowed for other opinion to be expressed if it ever was going to be expressed, despite the likely offence felt originally, and it was in keeping with the expectation of that specialist channel at that time with a right to broadcast its stance. I thought it was supposed to be a pastoral programme (a late one) and indeed I've noticed since a stress made by presenters in that programme that it is for people of such Christian beliefs ringing with their difficulties in life. And there's nothing wrong with that at all.

Presumably now that there has been this serious breach, Genesis-Revelation TV is in for a rocket, particularly as a previous breach of the Code involved such a warning, so they will have to do some money raising.

But I'll give them this. For all their far out beliefs Genesis-Revelation TV do not go in for prosperity Christianity that you can hear on other channels, particularly preached at the KICC one, which is at fundraising and more to ask the gullible to send in their money so that they might receive lots more money by other ways if only their faith is strong enough. As I understand it, only United Christian Broadcasters and Genesis-Revelation TV are within OFCOM's regulatory procedures, but really OFCOM ought to find a way to deal with GOD TV and what it does. It has long and extraordinary days of fundraising bringing in all these characters, many of the prosperity gospel type, with a heavy sell for money. Somebody might correct me here but it seems bizarre that they can operate out of Sunderland and yet be outside regulatory control.

Righter Writes Again

Head of Sixth Form: Come in Righter.

Fred Frame Righter: Sir you wanted to see me, alone.

Head of Sixth Form: Yet another essay, Righter, except you thought you could slip this one in when handing in a notebook.

Fred Frame Righter: They are just comments, sir.

Head of Sixth Form: No, Righter, they are an essay in a notebook on Titus Andronicus that you handed in either in your lesson yesterday at one or today at nine, when it was noticed.

Fred Frame Righter: Honestly sir, it is not another essay.

Head of Sixth Form: You are asking your English Literature teacher to read another 907 words, Righter.

Fred Frame Righter: I and we have managed a lot more than that, sir.

Head of Sixth Form: Humm. But you see, Righter, it's the same old argument, and you claim to be representing your friends again. You seem to think that by repeating yourself, you keep making the argument. The argument being that classrooms are to this school what other schools are to the Local Education Authority. The argument was and is a dud, Righter.

Fred Frame Righter: Yes but I also move the argument on a bit, sir.

Head of Sixth Form: Yes, I noticed that, probably because you are getting nowhere with the repeated first argument. In this, er essay, you claim that the disagreement between classes and the Governors in this school different from all other schools.

Fred Frame Righter: Yes sir.

Head of Sixth Form: But you are the only ones making this disagreement!

Fred Frame Righter: Sir, some members of staff and the Head Boy too.

Head of Sixth Form: I think you'll find after their meeting that they urged the school as a whole to sign up to the Local Authority Agreement. And I note in your essay that you are not quite so sure yourself.

Fred Frame Righter: There is an argument to be had.

Head of Sixth Form: Look, boy, there is no argument to be had. That is my point. That was the point when some of our ex-teachers thought they could take their classes with them. Where are they now, laddie, other than having set up a school on their own? We simply put new teachers in their place.

Fred Frame Righter: My friends and I don't wish to leave and join their school, sir.

Head of Sixth Form: Then you abide by the rules of this school, and stop causing trouble Righter.

Fred Frame Righter: Sir, I do suggest that we ought to change how all schools are structured, sir. So that there is the Local Authority and it defines the ethos, sir, and then you have the classrooms. To this extent, sir, this school is ahead of the rest!

Head of Sixth Form: Righter, your argument is getting desperate and more and more bizarre. Look, you'd better have your book and concealed essay back. Hang on something else has dropped out. Oh no, not even more.

Fred Frame Righter: Fewer words, sir.

Head of Sixth Form: Doesn't look many fewer to me. Now go away and learn some of what your teachers are teaching, inside this school, with a headmaster Mr Jefferts Schori and his Governors. Now just go.

Fred Frame Righter: Yes sir, but...

Head of Sixth Form: Out!

Extraordinary Resignation

Groans and whoops of delight were mixed in an extraordinary service held yesterday at Barchester Cathedral, writes Johnny Lost-Davies, Ecclesiastical Correspondent.

Bishop Michael Ali-England in his farewell service caused gasps when he said, "Don't get the idea that I'm leaving. I'm going nowhere far. I am only leaving my diocese in order to spend more time doing religion."

The service built itself up an extraordinary finale when an elephant joined the final procession to take the bishop back into the 'real world'.

During the service, in a charming ceremony from some mediaeval time past, the bishop laid down his shepherds' crook saying, "O Lord, thanks for this, somebody else can have it."

The sermon was given by Lord Careless, understood to be a wandering bishop, and thus a model of impropriety for Bishop Ali-England from today onwards. He said, "I want to deliberately ignore my successor, the Archbishop of All England, who I regard as ruining all the work I have done. So I shall deliberately praise you, Michael, and that publicity seeking guy up in Ebor, like I seek publicity, supported by that son of mine. Is he here?"

"Yes dad. Thanks dad. Thanks for my career, dad."

"Let me just say," said Lord Careless (as he does so often on any subject), "how fully fantastic your Bishop Michael's rabble rousing has been, as he has talked about no go areas up north. I too have suffered no go areas, in fact we share the same one called Lambeth Palace. They won't let me in either! But what a leader Michael has been, without actually being a leader, unlike me."

The retiring bishop in an impromptu but formerly well scripted reply said, "We have as a Church succumbed too much to culture, but England is stupid ignoring its culture which should be Christian - except for too many babies being born to Muslims up north now that we don't have to have immigration to bump up the working population and pay the pensions. This is our new campaign to add to that against secularity and gays, so that we keep making a noise. I came here to warn you about all these, and now I am retiring to warn you about all these. And let me warn you now - if they don't get you when you're being put together by your actual mother and father (whatever happens to the father afterwards) they will get you when you get old (whatever happens to the children). It is time we looked in the Bible and then reject most of it for creating our idealised family, so that we can be all Victorian about our values, thanks to what once was exported from this country and its culture and that I have returned to you. And now, with your thanks, Lord Careless, I return the crook to you. Or is it that other fella and not you any more?."

For the final procession, taking the bishop ceremonially back into the outside world, an elephant emerged from the choir stalls into the room to lead everyone out. It was draped in a prepared large sheet with the GAFCON logo on each side.

Back in 1977

I'm currently preparing a piece for presentation to the In Depth Group on The Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick and published by SCM Press in 1977. It's mainly about the reaction. The month after it will be on Don Cupitt and then after that Doctrine Commissions of the Church of England, and after that some reactions from different camps to these theologies. It was not just an Anglican book but was ecumenical, and much was centred around the University of Birmingham.

Anyway, thanks to one member I have the Lincoln Diocesan Leaflet of the time. Simon Wilton Phipps was the Bishop from 1974 to 1987. He wrote this:

Lincoln Diocesan Leaflet
VOL. 4 No. 8 AUGUST 1977

The Bishop of Lincoln writes...

As I write, the new book The Myth of God Incarnate has just hit the book-stalls and the headlines. My guess is that it will also hit quite a lot of Christians smack between the eyes. So I want to set down some preliminary thoughts - preliminary, because I have not yet had time to read the book. And there's my first thought.

Quite a lot of people often get quite a lot of steam up in controversies, such as the one this book is likely to arouse, without in fact being sure of what they're getting steamed up about. This is not, I fancy, a book that the general public will read. It is not even a book, quite probably, that many clergy will actually read. If, therefore, we havent read it. let us be a bit careful about how we discuss it!

Unique uniqueness

Taking that to my own heart, my second thought is this. It is my guess, from at least reading some of the first reviews, that this book will seem to threaten much of what we conceive to be the basis of our Christian belief, i.e., what Clifford Longley in The Times calls "the unique uniqueness' of Jesus Christ. But let us remember that this is by no means the first time that a book has done this sort of thing to Christian beliefs. From the earliest Christian times this was going on. The Gospels themselves, and certainly St. Paul's letters, and the works of the early Christian thinkers we call 'The Fathers' were all engaging with different ideas which were cutting at the foundations of Christian convictions. And in the 19th century there were a number of controversies, fired off by books, which set a lot of Christian cats among other lots of Christian pigeons. And only a decade ago Honest to God did the same. And yet Christian experience and Christian witness and the Christian community have not been blown off the face of the earth.

Static View

My third thought is this. I think too many of us Christians are bad at living with 'dialectic. Dialectic' means something like this: you say "X" That causes me, in response, to say "Y". As a result of the discussion which follows, we are both led to discover "Z", an aspect of the truth we would never have discovered if, in the first place, you hadn't started off the discussion in a rather provocative way, which made me think some new thoughts for myself. The Oxford Dictionary says of Dialectic "the process of thought by which contradictions are seen to merge themselves in a higher truth that comprehends them. Do not too many Christians hold a static view of Truth - the Truth once delivered to the Saints, something we get taught and then hang on to for grim death. My uneasy feeling is that some of us clergy do this just as much as anyone else. But if infinite Truth is infinite Truth, there must be infinite new aspects of it to be discovered and explored and received. If we enter openly and adventurously and enthusiastically into the process of dialectic, we learn more of the Truth, rather than feeling and fearing that new insights are whittling more and more of it away. The people who wrote this book are people of real integrity. They may not be unerring in their view of things. But neither are we because no human beings ever can be unerring. We always do well to be open to the insights of others, so that they may throw light on our own.

Expectation

Now I look forward to reading the book! it is sure to make us think, perhaps make us angry. But let us not let it make us afraid. If we open it with expectation and not fear, it will surely enlarge our vision, deepen our convictions.

There's a bit of fence sitting, a little bit of space, an opportunity for movement but no movement... The press enjoy this sort of thing too.

I also have just the front page of a two page report from The Daily Telegraph, on the same week as the book was published. I see how the controversy was mixed up with Don Cupitt's Who Was Jesus? television programme. I have a book that Don Cupitt wrote after this series and The Myth of God Incarnate, and invaluable book called The Debate About Christ published by SCM Press in 1979. Anyway, back two years to this Daily Telegraph report.

Dr. Coggan Challenged to Explain Jesus book
By JOHN CAPON, Ecclesiastical Correspondent

THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, Dr. Donald Coggan, is under pressure from many sides to make an unequivocal statement reaffirming the Church's belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ.

A book by seven leading Christian theologians pub-lished on Friday challenged the traditional concept of Christ's divinity.

Dr. Coggan did not receive an advance copy of the book and is reading it this weekend.

If he decides to make a statement he has the ideal opportunity this week during the meeting in London of the General Synod, the Church's parliament.

The pressure began in April this year when Dr. Coggan received a heavy mail from the public protesting at the B.B.C. television programme "Who was Jesus? " It was compiled by the Rev. Don Cupitt, Dean of Emanuel College, Cambridge, a contributor to last weeks' book "The Myth of God Incarnate".

Historic faith

In the view of Its critics the overall effect of the programme was to question and undermine orthodox views of Christ as Divine Son of God and and to deny his bodily resurrection.

The same month, the 2,000 delegates to the National Evangelical Anglican Congress unanimously passed a resolution calling on the archbishops "in the light of current theological speculation and scepticism to confirm publicly that the Church of England still stands by its historic faith in the Christ of the scriptures and the creeds".

Press reports last week about "The Myth of God Incarnate" brought more sackfuls of mail to Lambeth Palace seeking such reassurance.

1963 parallel

There is no doubt of the archbishop's personal view of these controversial issues: his most recent book, appropriately entitled "Convictions,"...

It's like the Archbishop can pronounce and then everyone is happy, and the evangelicals do their bit as usual to stop the train. The cartoon on the same page at the time resonates today, given the story about the holocaust denier Roman Catholic Bishop Williamson.



This morning I went to the Unitarians to hear a chap from Wakefield preach on truth, in a sense of living in questions rather than living in answers, but he also extended it to the political conference season approaching and whether religion influences political views. In the evening I attended at the Anglicans to experience something called 'the invention of the cross' which involved the thick religion (see the Cupitt interview below on thick and thin religion), a combination of Isaiah that would lead to divine violence, some early Middle Ages magic and Paul's salvation by death all of which should be "disturbing" but which I found in content of readings and some hymns rather indigestable.