It was great to be with the Primus, the Most Rev Mark Strange this morning in St Mary’s in which he talked about authority and what he’s been discovering since being elected as Primus.
Here’s his sermon:
Here’s the forum conversation we had after the service in which we talked about he Anglican Communion, the Scottish Episcopal Church, how we relate to the Church of Scotland and other churches in Scotland and lots more:
Here’s the Q and A with questions from the congregation:
My children just don’t understand it. Nor do they understand why I stay.
I suspect that the children of very many Christians in the UK these days don’t understand and don’t stay. We can see that laid out for us in page after page of diocesan and provincial statistics.
And still we are expected to cheer on Archbishops who propose amendements which would institutionalise treating women as having less authority than men and also Bishops who tell us that banning gay people from leadership roles is good.
In both these cases we are supposed to believe that these actions keep the church together. Meanwhile the children leave bewildered.
Hear what the Spirit says to the children.
What surprises me is that it’s the same term “evangelical” that went from connoting “student-ish” in the 90s to “happy” (reserving outright clappy for those of charismatic designation) to “evangelicals come in Open form too!” now to “traditionalist” in matters of Backwards Beyond Belief(TM).
Now I’m used to the arguments being “our tradition, restated more-so and louder” versus “put the Bible in context” – at least one party talking theologically.
For a fresh thought, is the CoE (in particular, but also the AC in general) a bit preoccupied with not losing any *one* bum-on-its-3-legged-seat? There is a tension in the dynamic that could be resolved well by a large-scale rotation in membership – redefine the denominational lines by issues not history – that leads to a slimy weasely position of “I sort of want to go but don’t have the honesty to get on with it so I’ll sit around being a thorn in the canonical flesh and blame the church for trying to push me out”.
Social evolution is too slow; that is where injustice lies.
I often ask me why I stay, and I’m in my late fifties. In the end, it is because I feel cheated without other people to worship with, and, well, to be a kind of thorn in the canonical flesh for the conservatives!!
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Liturgists and People Who Know What They Are Talking About have worked very hard to persuade people that we should be trying dissuade people from talking about Christenings and instead talk about the sacrament of baptism. Today the Church of England appears to have let the cat out of the bag with a post that…
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