North America First

The Global Anglican Fugure Conference (GAFCON) website has had an update and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) website has come into being.

As part of its goals the FCA claims:

The second goal is a consequence of the first. It is to provide aid to those faithful Anglicans who have been forced to disaffiliate from their original spiritual homes by false teaching and practice.

They need recognition and authentication. They need to be kept in the Anglican family. Obviously, it is the Primates' Council that is involved with this work, beginning with the situation in North America.

Ah, right. Where's next then?

The Primates Council is the self-selecting section of the Primates Meeting (soon meeting in February) that has decided to give power to itself, and will recognise the peculiar collection of bodies that make up (or will) the Anglican Church of North America, that would intend to replace other Anglican Churches, but is rather more likely to sail off into its own schismatic waters.

The breakaway weakens the perceived need and purpose of a Covenant among the remaining Communion, or pushes it towards a watering down (because of the time put into it and the saving face) and indeed allows the rest of the Communion to rebalance away from FCA/ ACNA and what it represents towards the Communion's earlier understandings of its voluntary and friendly gathering.

All of which means that FCA will regard its job as even more pressing in terms of its entryism elsewhere, and this now seems to involve other denominations:

We thank God that our work amongst Anglicans has already been an inspiration to people of other churches and denominations who are faced with similar struggles against a worldly Christianity.

Thug Nation of the Earth

It must be clear that Israel had no military objectives in Gaza. It knew, as soon as it left, that the tunnels would be rebuilt - and they are being. It knew that rockets could still be fired. Now, after keeping the journalists out, journalists have gone in, and we are being shown what happened. The misnamed Israel Defence Force simply went around flattening place after place, killing innocents as well as any set targets, but mainly frightening everyone and adding to trauma.

The European Union poured billions into Gaza, and all that has been demolished by the Israelis. So we ought as Europeans to regard Israel with distance. It may have decent citizens, but its government is an example of state terrorism. After all, what is terrorism other than fear and uncertainty among civilians that they may be injured or killed? The fear must have been appalling, and then picking up the dead.

A great deal of humanitarian assistance is needed, but the Europeans will be reluctant to put in replacement development money until there is a comprehensive settlement that unifies Palestine (though it looks more like going the direction of Bangladesh and Pakistan as time goes on) and institutes peace with Israel. We must have Israel constrained too.

It is beginning to look like the setting up of Israel as a state was a mistake back after the Second World War, with hindsight. It seems that the legacy of the terrorists that set up the state goes on and on. It should be a properly operating democracy and a beacon to the region, but it is little of the sort.

There was no just war here: no military objectives at all. Israel got the nod from the dreadful indeed atrocious George Bush, and gave the Gazans a good thumping, and then left before this new American President took office, leaving a wasteland behind it. Tony Blair, Bush's poodle, remained his poodle as he went around the Middle East achieving precisely nothing and not addressing Hamas and its bitterness.

Have we learnt anything about Israel? Can we treat this country at a distance? Can we do this without any resorting to racism and attacks on a religion - there must be none of this. The Jewish people have an honourable multi-layered history and one of persecution, and a cradle of civilisation. The Jews assisted the English and then were tricked and massacred in York. They were part of the flowering of southern Spain under Islamic rule before being crushed by the trickery of Ferdinand: the Jews received the swiftest and worst treatment. Germany turned from one of the most progressive places for Jews and contribution to culture into a hellhole. We know all this and it stains world history: but Israel, this modern country, behaves like a thug, and it only adds more to the pain.

Gaza is Israel's prison camp or ghetto for a tribe it despises, and it seems that's not good enough: it goes in to the prison and smashes it up.

Old Church New Church

So, if I was the only ordained and church council member in this world, until I reformed the Church, what Church would I prefer?

First of all it would use ancient language and worship forms, because the nature of religious language has always sought legitimacy and authority and to do its work by an appeal into the past. Plus, we moderns have a dearth of religious forms in the present.

However, there is still a duty to reform liturgies to bring them from the feudal past into the industrial and post-industrial ages, and furthermore at least to reflect something of democracy and liberty. We should not be frightened to move away from King and Lord language, for example, but also move festivals from the simply agricultural based.

Whilst creeds and articles are part of the inheritance of the Church as a whole, I'd keep them in their glass covered cases. Then, while some liturgies were clearly more traditional and proclamational, with uses of "according to scripture" etc., others would take more account of contemporary theology and movements.

For example, whilst one liturgy might contain:

Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.

Another might shift the focus and state:

We, the baptised people, died and rose
And move towards fulfilment.

I note how many people in intercessory prayers now say, "We remember.." and "We think about...", and therefore it seems to me that much liturgy should be consistent with this ordinary way of thinking. In other words, theological language should be given a clear religious humanist twist, this on top of its democratic and liberal turn.

At the same time (for we postmoderns) we don't forget the place of the story and poetry in the spiritual life. Liturgy is not an exercise in history, social science or science, however much these may be incorporated, but in the dramatic movement.

Intercession remains in that it brings forward real concerns and real names as a focus for faith and for the world. We should always remember that liturgy and ritual are for a purpose of renewal and binding, and this should be the principal focii. It is like a cleansing, going in, doing the main event, and coming out to go out into the wider world. Ritual with tokens is a gift-exchange above and beyond but into all other exchanges - those exchanges involving from members a keen sense of social and ethical purpose.

Before that central ritual can come several supporting readings and a talk. Music and the arts generally are important for spiritual uplift, with different emphases on quality and accessibility. The central ritual can be made spare to emphasise its special nature, and so there are shorter services of liturgy containing readings, talk, prayers and at times musical involvement too.

The Bible is presently over-emphasised, and really Paul is given far too much place. So I would have readings from several sources. There ought to be far more emphasis too on the Jewishness of Jesus, and his and his family's thought forms ought to be reflected better. The Greek side, so to speak, can look after itself.

There is an important place for other religious and philosophical insights. What God means can be enlarged, and made multiple. So can the idea of the Holy Spirit as a creative motivator. The trinitarian terms are still available, but they can loosen up consistent with but not limited to the first ways these terms were understood (though I concede the difficulty of grasping ancient thought-forms).

I would have bishops and priests, with all the councils, as a partly rational and diverse way of organising the Church with checks and balances. They are facilitators for building up worshipping and serving communities. However, I would scrap the promises beyond a general commitment to faithfulness and towards developing a spiritual life and seeking self-honesty. There might be a general commitment to the ways, means and decisions of the Church, according to conscience.

I would emphasise individual conscience as the principal doctrinal position for bishops, priests and lay people. In other words, I would make explicit the fact that we as individuals rightly decide what we believe. Thus ministers, lay and ordained, would preach with knowledge and responsibility to who is in the congregation, engaging in dialogue with others, probably but not necessarily drawing on the readings. Sermons ought to have moments of talk-back at the end for quick responses, with suggestions for further discussion.

The main rituals of the Church would be open to all. In other words, the sharing of bread and wine would be without entry conditions. The meaning of the sharing of bread and wine would be open to interpretation, from a feast of nature to the real presence of Christ.

Prayer also would be explicitly understood individually, from a form of contemplation, to meditation, to addressing a hearing God.

Some churches would be no more than homes or rented places, others would be owned and decorated and inherited and historic. Some would be simple and some elaborate.

It is interesting how when you visit church members in houses how many have images of Buddha and Krishna as well as Christ. That ought to be so in churches as well. They are all objects of reflection and devotion. Candles and colours are obvious aids, and something of a yearly spiritual timetable can be maintained.

I would emphasise religious education and discussion for members, that people who want to be involved further could go into groups for discussions and further spiritual practice. Children would learn about their own faith and, as they got older, comparisons with other faiths, as well as thinking about how to apply their personal faith to community involvement.

So now this is set up we can get everyone ministering and deciding, and off we go.

Go For It

Let's hope it all works out.

Institutional Vichy Blancmange

There is a new word in town used by one branch of Anglo-Catholics for the other: Vichy. This word comes from the Daily Telegraph and is picked up. The context is the parting of the ways of Forward in Faith (FiF) type Anglo-Catholics with a Church of England that approves women bishops and only provides a code of practice. Damien Thompson in that Daily Telegraph piece says that such Anglo-Catholics have to bypass English Roman Catholic bishops (who want to get on with the Church of England as is), and seek out friends in Rome. However, going over to Rome is only by individual decisions, and some will go Orthodox and some leave to nowhere.

There is an article by David Smart in Ebbsfleet Extra for February which states:

...it is certain that eventually the Church of England will have women bishops. It is also certain now that there will be a Parting of the Ways among Anglican Catholics...

In the long run the choices that have to be made are the same for both clergy and laity, and though differing in detail they will be equally costly for both. There are no longer any easy answers, only painful ones. I do, however, have a sense that at the moment the clergy have a clearer sense of what has happened and its consequences. We laity, though fully aware of the gravity of the situation, are perhaps slower in coming to terms with it.

The different directions concern the FiF type Catholics and their individual decisions. Some will go. Some will hang on: laity with no other church to attend and social networks in place, clergy with perhaps families and being nakedly obvious about keeping a pay packet coming in.

Those who decide to stay can stay, using a code of practice, but those who can't will just have to leave. The boundaries are changed by women becoming bishops: those once excluded are included, and those once included become excluded or marginalised. The Church of England operates a division of inclusion anyway; there are virtually no effective tests of lay membership: you just nod to baptismal promises from time to time, and read out the Apostles Creed. (It says "I"; the other one says "we".) But clergy make stronger and more extensive promises, and have a higher test of inclusion. I think this is inconsistent, but I don't make the rules.

From a different perspective I face the same problem. My views are, basically, non-realist and Western religious: in the end they remain of an evolutionary Unitarian character. No quantity of absorption into Anglican liturgies and singing along makes a difference to that basic, underlying theology. Religious practice benefits from a pathway, but it is a kind of holy fiction. That's it. I'm torn between postmodern wrapping and doing a bit of historical research for a missing kernel. The Church of England has a generosity towards people like me as lay people, but because I've never practised a kind of total postmodern presentational package, I have been prevented in approaching Anglican ministry. I am told I can make such promises, in that it all depends what they mean, but I don't think I can as part of the Anglican division of labour. It's from that position that the rot sets in, and down it goes, and the obvious point exists that there ought to be a non-dogmatic, different way of doing symbolic worship that does a religious task without offending the intellect.

In the end those like me have to decide whether to put up with what we don't like or do something else.

Interesting: am I a Vichy liberal Anglican? Well Vichy is a place of mineral springs, so it might mean watered down, but it could also mean refreshing. Henri Pétain collaborated with another invaded power, probably on the basis of thinking this was the best way to preserve something of France. Of course the use of Vichy towards Anglo-Catholics of the Affirming Catholicism type suggests a traitor to the real cause, to real Anglo-Catholicism and real resistance (and historically a proper definition of France). So, in my case, instead of going back to the Unitarians, a real resistance, I collaborate with a Church that is an occupying power over too much other religion, spreading itself across like a big blob of blancmange. On the other hand, the Church of England is not an enemy, and the word Vichy hardly seems appropriate. Institutions do not possess the whole of what seems right: they add too much, they lack too much, and individuals fit in awkwardly with institutions. I do whether Anglican or Unitarian, but the sheer weight of dogma in the Church of England and its division by clericalism is rather overwhelming. It needs to be clearer than liturgy is not theology, though it has forces at work that want to make life narrower not broader.

In the end the institution sits lightly on individual decisions: few get removed. Liberals especially have always been very reluctant to leave. The FiF Catholics have obviously decided that they will have to be somewhere else but it is individuals who will make the decision, and not all will go.

Locally and Transitions

This morning was the annual trip to the local Methodist church for the town's exchange visit, a return visit from their visit in the Anglican direction a fortnight ago. Starting half an hour later, some Anglicans will have regarded it as a morning off, but then some regard the would have been half hour later all-age morning worship on this third Sunday as a morning off. I do, I will admit. I went to it once.

They invite the Anglicans to the Methodist Covenant service. The Anglicans who went numbered about the same as the Methodists in attendance. The Methodists come and swell the Anglican numbers, but each church alone easily absorbs two churches' worth of attenders on a Sunday morning.

I have been to two of these Covenant services before, which shows the length of my current more active phase regarding Anglican involvement. On those occasions I went forward to its rail for the Lord's Supper celebration, and this time I did not - consistent with how I am in the Anglican church at present. I've defended Methodist communions when Anglicans have thought them dodgy; I am by nature ecumenical. I prefer the Anglican approach, though I also prefer real bread.

This not going forward was made more awkward because of who took the service, someone I knew in the earliest 1980s with his ministry, with whom I had a run in over spreading my liberal views (nothing has changed) and with whom I was later reconciled. It would have been good relationally to have gone forward because I regard ministry as personal. It is just one of those things that he ended up and retired near where I ended up. So I was able to say later why I didn't go to the communion in that I am on the edge at present, and "floating about". He said I'm very welcome, but that assumes I'm dissatisfied with the Anglicans. There is a lot to be dissatisfied with the Anglicans about, but I'm not locally. It's the whole thing: Christianity, actually. (By the way, the cartoon is not of the retired minister: it's someone else with once Methodist connections and I'm giving it a day out in public).

The retired minister is, it is safe to say, of the old school: and that means the service was very well presented, calm, moderate in tone, and so well paced. This is a person who you could tell had everything he said and did running deep, and he would not slip up because this has been well and carefully trodden with no doubt a vast treasury of comments to draw upon. He communicated well. The sermon was a lesson in simple sermon messages well delivered.

There are a number of other reflections. One is the Methodist service book with the Covenant Service inside. It is well superior to Common Worship. In some cases the language is better, but what makes it superior is that it is easy to follow. In Common Worship (until you've learnt it, like I have enough) you jump about the book trying to find out where you are. The worst of it is when a celebrant says it is Eucharistic Prayer A and then a preface is used that's not there and anyone not in the know gets lost again. I think the Church of England tries its hardest to keep new people out.

Another reflection is that even in the Covenant Service no formal creed was recited, and this is a good thing. There was a very good, neat, explanation of the Trinity, though dangerously tritheistic until an end bit. But even with this, I was mumbling through parts of the service like never before. I knew this would happen: that once the fall-away starts, the decline turns into a kind of collapse. Beware of the dogma, and although there is less here than in the Anglican service, it is all parcelled up.

Anglicanism is very complex because, despite the dogma hitting you between the eyes, so many seem to regard it as water off a duck's back. After all, so did I, more than I might have believed possible. Also the added symbolic and theatrical nature in Anglicanism provides another focus while the water runs off. People get very sophisticated in interpretation. There is less pressure in a Methodist service, but more of what you see is more of what you get. I realise there are trends and tendencies in Methodism, as a new now Anglican friend tells me in more detail, but even so it feels more straightforward.

There is another reflection, though, and it is that of Methodism as a dying tradition. I thought at the end, "Gimme that old time religion," even if it was of good quality. You look at that congregation and there were more Sunday school helpers that went out than there were children to help. The actual minister there is what I'd call a 'raving evangelical'. ('Raving' indicates my negative response; I'd call today's style traditional Methodism: he is though ecumenical.) That's one reason why I don't go there on other occasions.

There was a United Reformed Church in the town, but it is long dead, and similarly I can't see the Methodist church there turning around. No doubt a similar collapse is happening all around the country - there will be better places and weak places, but in general you keep rationalising until the internal structures start to creak. I remember people who went to this retired minister's church in the earliest 1980s, and of those I still know not one of them is a church attender now.

I've just discovered that the Progressive Christianity Network is growing and dividing, such that there could soon be a local presence. It's a small grouping, but it is expanding. This is interesting in itself. It is a liberal and radical group from agnostics to those Christians who want open discussion, and people just meet where they do and make their own agendas. I would be interested. Maybe this is the way of the future, but you would think it possible to have a few reasonably healthy meeting places in the towns of Britain regarding religious worship. It's just that somehow they have become dislodged, that they have come off the rails. There are no grounds for complacency anywhere, even if we are less obsessed with numbers and more concerned with community service.

The world has changed, and these places haven't. All through this Covenant service points were being made about our dependency and I kept asking the dumb question: what about? Apparently, we cannot do what we want to do, without God's help. About what, and how does that make any difference? It all sounds consistent, it all appears logical, but it is not about anything. I have a state of life, a state of difficulty in getting through, to which this stuff makes no difference whatsoever except as some sort of palliative. Our preacher told us that without God, we can do nothing, and without us, God will do nothing. Just stop there. We do lots of things, but clearly God fell asleep a long time ago, and we do plenty. This religious language is, I suggest, a load of actual, realisable, nonsense, even though it was extremely well communicated by someone who has it deep in his soul. Say it and nod your head - but there is nothing there, nothing there at all.

Update from the Evening

This evening I went to the parish Eucharist. We got to the sermon by a preacher about to go on retreat, and he wanted to emphasise differently from last week "the vertical", the God relationship, "technically the transcendent" (and I thought that's not vertical), which is harder to talk about than the love and service we should do, emphasised last week, or "the horizontal". It wasn't anything said particularly, but I came to a full stop. I stood and sat (not to look out of place) but I didn't say the creed as I won't, but then came to full stop. I didn't sing any more, I didn't speak or sing any of the Eucharist text, didn't go forward (as I won't) and said no prayer responses and sang no hymns. I just came to a full stop. So that's that then? I don't know. I'll go, I should probably join in again in a fragmented way, or I may sit at the back and listen. It wasn't intended - it just happened.

World News Latest

So Israel, after knocking the shit out of Gaza, declares its own ceasefire. Presumably nothing to do with the timing of the otherwise financially bankrupted nation that bankrolls Israel and gave it the nod? Down in the land of the Bible, where satellite religious stations have got excited some more about the coming End, the abused into the ghetto abuses even more, as it has for so long, and then the new abused can't live in any sense of peace, and anyway ups its own militancy when what's left of the strip of land is razed to load of rubble.

Those Fathers of the United States were very far seeing. An appalling Presidency is now forced by its country's own law to come to an end, and what a disaster he has been. We had to rely on the internal machinations of a party machine to remove the poodle, now scurrying around with great ineffect in the Middle East because the boss gave the nod for a bit of a clean up before he left. I bet Blair was pleased to receive his dog medal given personally and I'm only surprised Bush didn't give him a kiss. I bet Tony enjoyed it, like when I eat the chocolate money you can buy at Lidl.

Meanwhile, good news on the UK financial front. Some 824 (not chocolate) staters have been found in a broken jar in a field in Suffolk and valued by an archaeologist at worth between half and million and a million pounds sterling equivalent in its day. Obviously those Celts of the day (the tribe also lived where I live) didn't trust the banks at the time, sticking them in a jar in the ground, and one can understand it because inflation means the haul isn't worth that much today, though someone will get rich according to treasure trove rules. Me, I'm reduced to free entries on television competitions that give away money - well, once or twice.