Church of England to Consider Female Bishops, Blessing Gay Unions: What Would Wesley Do?

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Church of England, John Sentamu, John Stott, John Wesley, Roger Scruton, Thomas Cranmer

By Brian Miller @briankenmiller

In the preface to the Book of Common Prayer Thomas Cranmer observed that, “There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted.”

Unfortunately, the sentiment seems to be ringing true even for the Church that Cranmer helped institute, the Church of England. The General Synod, which will meet on July 5, is largely expected to pass legislation that will allow the consecration of women Bishops. The Synod’s general secretary, William Fittall, described the failed attempt to pass the legislation at the Synod’s previous meeting as a “train wreck.” He has further stated that, “One train crash is extremely bad; two would be quite unacceptable.”

The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has additionally expressed his belief that the Church should support civil unions, which is another issue that is expected to be brought for debate at the General Synod.

The drastic changes on issues that until recently were considered fundamental leaves orthodox believers, especially those who consider themselves Anglican, pondering how to react, and torn between their loyalties to the Church visible and invisible. Should they remain associated with such an institution, or secede to form a new Church? Fortunately, this is not the first time in history that men have struggled with the question, and the Anglican tradition provides examples of many great men who wrestled with their own church and managed to leave remarkable theological legacies as a witness to those of us who follow in their steps.

While visiting various churches across England, the legal theorist William Blackstone once remarked that he “did not hear a single discourse which had more Christianity in it than the writings of Cicero.” Incidentally, this was around the time John Wesley began his ministry.

Wesley is of course, remembered as the theological father of the Methodist church. However, Wesley died considering himself to still be a member of the Church of England. In fact, on the day he delivered his first outdoor sermon, Wesley recorded in his journal his hesitancy to preach outside of a church building, as he feared true salvation could not be found outside of the established Church. Wesley supplied many reasons for remaining in the Church, and among those he listed the importance of unity, to ensure that unbelievers would not be turned away from the Gospel because of inner strife.

However, perhaps most interestingly, Wesley mentions the mission of the Christian. He claims the first duty of the Christian minister in England is “to the lost Sheep of the Church of England.” Wesley saw the mission field not just as something across the ocean, but also as beginning right at home in his own Church.

The Anglican philosopher Roger Scruton has described the Church of England as “a church which takes its historical nature seriously, acknowledging that its duty is less to spread the gospel among mankind than to sanctify a specific community.” Indeed, the Anglican Church’s link with the English community is deep, and its influence is impossible to deny even in the present. The Book of Common Prayer and The King James Bible, for instance, have both had an immeasurable impact upon the English language and culture. The Church is undoubtedly an English Church.

None of this is to discount the command of the Great Commission, but on the contrary, to focus and therefore further it. Scruton is simply echoing John Wesley, who said:

“We look upon England as that Part of the World, and the Church as that Part of England, to which all we who are born and have been brought up therein, owe our first and chief Regard. We feel in ourselves a strong Storgh, a Kind of Natural Affection for our Country, which we apprehend Christianity was never designed either to root out or to impair. We have a more peculiar Concern for our Brethren, for that Part of our Countrymen , to whom we have been joined from our Youth up, by Ties of a Religious as well as a Civil Nature.”

This of course, also leads to the question of what is a believer to do when confronted with a Church that is linked to an ever increasingly secular state. The House of Bishops of the General Synod has noted that “Parliament is impatient” in regards to the issue of women’s ordination, and that the longer the Church delays in enacting the legislation, the greater the risk that Parliament will intervene.

Faced with such an increasingly hostile government, there will no doubt be many orthodox Anglicans who will become uncomfortable belonging to a Church linked to the state at all. T.S. Eliot, when confronting fellow Christians who held just those sentiments, cautioned that “we must pause to reflect that a Church, once disestablished, cannot easily be reestablished, and that the very act of disestablishment separates it more definitely and irrevocably from the life of the nation than if it had never been established.”

Eliot shared Wesley’s and Scruton’s belief that the church should minister to a specific community, and that it should endeavor to comprehend the whole of that community. If the state is becoming increasingly secular, then it now more than ever needs the influence of the Church. If the Church is becoming increasingly liberal, then it now more than ever needs the influence of the orthodox. If the Church of England will not minister to England, then who will?

I wish to finally give the example of the late Rev. John Stott. In 1966, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones gave a speech to the National Assembly of Evangelicals in which he seemed to call on ministers to leave the “mixed” denominations in favor of forming free evangelical churches in communion with one other. The Rev. John Stott argued against this sentiment by saying “I believe that history is against Dr. Jones in that others have tried to do this very thing. I believe that Scripture is against him in that the remnant was within the Church and not outside it.”

Years later, Rev. Stott met the Dr. for a friendly visit, and their exchange is reported to have included a discussion on their debate from years past. John Stott said to the Dr., “you give the impression that you think we evangelical Anglicans are unprincipled in our commitment to the Church of England. You use expressions like ‘mixed denomination’ and ‘comprehensive church’ as if we gloried in this. Speaking for myself, I’m first and foremost an evangelical.”

Dr. Lloyd-Jones followed by asking, “Would you ever leave the Church of England?” To which Stott replied, “Yes indeed, I could envisage such a situation, if the church itself compromised officially one of the central doctrines of the faith. I’m not committed to the Church of England irrevocably.”

Many today will likely see the approval of gay-unions and the consecration of female bishops as such a central tenant of the faith. Whether it is an error large enough to justify secession, I confess I do not know. I have endeavored merely to show that there are many Anglicans of immense stature who have grappled with the question of secession. In doing so, they serve as a light and guide to those facing the same question today, and almost uniformly remind us to ask ourselves whom it is we are to minister to.

(Brian Miller is a student at George Mason University Law School.)

Church of England Envisions a Church for Pagans

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Alexander Griswold, Anglicanism, Christianity, Church of England, Paganism, Wicca

Crowds gather at dawn amongst the stones at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England for the Summer Solstice (Photo credit: Lewis Whyld/PA)

By Alexander Griswold (@HashtagGriswold)

It sounds like a parody, but the Church of England has found yet another questionable way to stabilize declining attendance numbers; designing churches for entirely different religions. As The Telegraph reports, the Church of England has decided to train members to found what they envision as “almost a pagan church where Christianity [is] very much in the centre.”

Details about what the proposed “Christian” pagan worship would look like are not found in the Telegraph or Christian Post coverage, but there is enough to raise red flags of concern.

Christians are called to reach out to people of all faiths to share the Good News, and how we present God’s promise for humanity should necessarily differ on who we are reaching out to. Jesus could quote Scripture to the Jewish authorities, but he also reached out to Gentiles using miracles and allegory. But framing Christianity to appeal to different religions should not result in downplaying our basic and fundamental beliefs. If there’s any truth to The Telegraph’s claims that ministers are being trained to create “new forms of Anglicanism suitable for people of alternative beliefs,” this is an extremely dangerous and unhelpful idea.

The harsh truth is that most of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity and paganism are simply irreconcilable. Paganism comes in many different flavors, among them pantheism, shamanism, Wiccanism, polytheism, Gaia worship, and animism. Some forms of paganism have a monotheistic flavor (such as the beliefs of some Native American tribes), but by and large, Christians and pagans simply cannot see eye-to-eye on the most defining features of our faith the way Christians and Jews or Christians and Muslims might be able to. What sort of church can be “almost pagan” and amenable to “alternative beliefs,” but also refuse to budge on the basic truth that there is one God and only one path to salvation?

Common ground between the two religions that the Church of England looks to seize upon is “spirituality.” Rev. Steve Hollinghurst, who is advising the Church of England on the creation on the new church, claims that while the UK is no longer a Christian country, “spirituality is very much on the agenda for many.” My fear is that the Church of England aims to sell pagans on a form of Christianity tailor-made to the “spiritual but not religious” crowd: heavy on positive feelings and spirituality, but light on any actual theology, responsibility, or consequences. After all, this is precisely the type of religion pagans have already chosen. In Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth, UK religious scholar Graham Harvey notes that, despite their spirituality, most pagans care little about developing a coherent set of beliefs or moral codes.

“Pagans spend little time deliberately contemplating the formation of their religion. They rarely indulge in theology… people who discover the appropriateness of naming themselves Pagan are not thereby compelled to accept a codified set of beliefs or practices.” (2000, p. 1)

If the Church of England seeks pagan converts, selling itself as another wishy-washy anything-goes religion would be folly. After all, the pagan community incorporates dozens of varied beliefs. When some pagans worships Gaia, some worship the Wiccan mother goddess, and some worship the Roman pantheon, why does the Church of England expect that the worship of the God of Abraham will stand out as anything but another deity to arbitrarily believe in?

The only way to appeal to potential pagan converts is to make very clear the distinction between our two religions. Christians must not whitewash what the Bible teaches: that being a follower of Jesus Christ requires devotion, discipline, belief, and a strict set of morality. We must show how maintaining a strict moral code enriches our earthly life and that belief in the Christian God is the only way to an eternal, blessed life.

The Church of England is doing a disservice to the men and women they reach out to, imperiling their very souls in the name of kindness. When Jesus called His first disciples, the Bible tells us that they left everything they were carrying to follow Him (Luke 5:11, Luke 5:28). Later, He bids two men to leave their families behind. When one man asks to first bury his father, Jesus implores him to “let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:59-62). Even today, those wish to truly follow Him must leave behind their previous lives. The Church of England is trying to meet unbelievers halfway, telling them they can follow Jesus but still bring some of their heretical baggage along for the trip.

Christian denominations should not resort to twisting or downplaying the central teachings of Christianity just to make their own falling attendance numbers look better. Not only will it fail to attract pagans to begin with, it risks alienating regular parishioners who recognize that their Church is selling its own members short on the full message of Jesus Christ. The Church of England is right to bring the news of Jesus Christ to the pagan community, and I wish them success. But I pray the message they bring is the authentically Christian one that’s attracted converts for 2000 years.

UPDATE: Rev. Steve Hollinghurst, one of the Church of England officials quoted, has responded to this blog post. You may read his response here.

Bishop of London’s Speech at Margaret Thatcher’s Funeral (Full Text)

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Church of England, Margaret Thatcher, Right Rev Richard Chartres

(Photo credit: Answers.com)

The Right Rev. Richard Chartres delivered the following comments at today’s funeral for former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Baroness Margaret Thatcher:

After the storm of a life lived in the heat of political controversy, there is a great calm.

The storm of conflicting opinions centres on the Mrs Thatcher who became a symbolic figure – even an “ism”. Today the remains of the real Margaret Hilda Thatcher are here at her funeral service. Lying here, she is one of us, subject to the common destiny of all human beings.

There is an important place for debating policies and legacy; for assessing the impact of political decisions on the everyday lives of individuals and communities. Parliament held a frank debate last week – but here and today is neither the time nor the place. This, at Lady Thatcher’s personal request, is a funeral service, not a memorial service with the customary eulogies.

And at such a time, the parson should not aspire to the judgments which are proper to the politician; instead, this is a place for ordinary human compassion of the kind that is reconciling. It is also the place for the simple truths which transcend political debate. And above all it is the place for hope.

It must be very difficult for those members of her family and those closely associated with her to recognise the wife, the mother and the grandmother in the mythological figure. Our hearts go out to Mark and Carol and to their families, and also to those who cared for Lady Thatcher with such devotion especially in her later years.

One thing that everyone has noted is the courtesy and personal kindness which she showed to those who worked for her, as well as her capacity to reach out to the young, and often also to those who were not, in the world’s eyes, “important”.

The letter from a young boy early on in her time as prime minister is a typical example. Nine-year-old David wrote to say: “Last night when we were saying prayers, my daddy said everyone has done wrong things except Jesus and I said I don’t think you have done bad things because you are the prime minister. Am I right or is my daddy?”

Now perhaps the most remarkable thing is that the prime inister replied in her own hand in a very straightforward letter which took the question seriously. She said: “However good we try to be, we can never be as kind, gentle and wise as Jesus. There will be times when we do or say something we wish we hadn’t done and we shall be sorry and try not to do it again.”

She was always reaching out, she was trying to help in characteristically un-coded terms. I was once sitting next to her at some City function and in the midst of describing how Hayek’s Road to Serfdom had influenced her thinking, she suddenly grasped my wrist and said very emphatically, “Don’t touch the duck paté, bishop – it’s very fattening.”

She described her own religious upbringing in a lecture she gave in the nearby church of St Lawrence Jewry. She said: “We often went to church twice on a Sunday, as well as on other occasions during the week. We were taught there always to make up our own minds and never take the easy way of following the crowd.”

Her upbringing of course was in the Methodism to which this country owes a huge debt. When it was time to challenge the political and economic status quo in nineteenth century Britain, it was so often the Methodists who took the lead. The Tolpuddle Martyrs, for example, were led not by proto-Marxists but by Methodist lay preachers.

Today’s first lesson describes the struggle with the principalities and powers.

Perseverance in struggle and the courage to be were characteristic ofMargaret Thatcher.

In a setting like this, in the presence of the leaders of the nations, or any representatives of nations and countries throughout the world, it is easy to forget the immense hurdles she had to climb. Beginning in the upper floors of her father’s grocer’s shop in Grantham, through Oxford as a scientist and, later, as part of the team that invented Mr Whippy ice cream, she embarked upon a political career. By the time she entered parliament in 1959 she was part of a cohort of only 4% of women in the House of Commons. She had experienced many rebuffs along the way, often on the shortlist for candidates only to be disqualified by prejudice against a woman – and, worse, a woman with children.

But she applied herself to her work with formidable energy and passion and continued to reflect on how faith and politics related to one another.

In the Lawrence Jewry lecture she said that: “Christianity offers no easy solutions to political and economic issues. It teaches us that we cannot achieve a compassionate society simply by passing new laws and appointing more staff to administer them.”

She was very aware that there are prior dispositions which are needed to make market economics and democratic institutions function well: the habits of truth-telling, mutual sympathy, and the capacity to co-operate. These decisions and dispositions are incubated and given power by our relationships. In her words: “The basic ties of the family are at the heart of our society and are the nursery of civic virtue.” Such moral and spiritual capital is accumulated over many generations but can be easily eroded.

Life is a struggle to make the right choices and to achieve liberation from dependence, whether material or psychological. This genuine independence is the essential pre-condition for living in an other-centred way, beyond ourselves. The word Margaret Thatcher used at St Lawrence Jewry was “interdependence”.

She referred to the Christian doctrine, “that we are all members one of another, expressed in the concept of the Church on earth as the Body of Christ. From this we learn our interdependence and the great truth that we do not achieve happiness or salvation in isolation from each other but as members of society.”

Her later remark about there being no such thing as “society” has been misunderstood and refers in her mind to some impersonal entity to which we are tempted to surrender our independence.

It is entirely right that in the dean’s bidding there was a reference to “the life-long companionship she enjoyed with Denis”. As we all know, the manner of her leaving office was traumatic but the loss of Denis was a grievous blow indeed, and then there was a struggle with increasing debility from which she has now been liberated.

The natural cycle leads inevitably to decay, but the dominant note of any Christian funeral service, after the sorrow and after the memories, is hope.

It is almost as perplexing to identify the “real me” in life as it is in death. The atoms that make up our bodies are changing all the time, through wear and tear, eating and drinking. We are atomically distinct from what we were when we were young. What unites Margaret Roberts of Grantham with Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, what constitutes her identity? The complex pattern of memories, aspirations and actions which make up a character were carried for a time by the atoms of her body, but we believe they are also stored up in the Cloud of God’s being.

In faithful relationships, when two people live together, they grow around one another and the one becomes a part of the other. We are given the freedom to be ourselves and, as human beings, to be drawn freely into an ever closer relationship with the divine nature. Everything which has turned to love in our lives will be stored up in the memory of God. First there is the struggle for freedom and independence and then there is the self-giving and the acceptance of inter-dependence.

In the gospel passage read by the prime minister, Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life”. That “I am” is the voice of the divine being.

Jesus Christ does not bring information or mere advice but embodies the reality of divine love. God so loved the world that he was generous: he did not intervene from the outside but gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ, and became one of us.

What, in the end, makes our lives seem valuable after the storm and the stress has passed away and there is a great calm? The questions most frequently asked at such a time concern us all. How loving have I been? How faithful in personal relationships? Have I discovered joy within myself, or am I still looking for it in externals outside myself?

Margaret Thatcher had a sense of this, which she expressed in her address to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland when she said: “I leave you with the earnest hope that may we all come nearer to that other country whose ‘ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace’.”

TS Eliot, in the poem quoted in this service sheet, says: “The communication/Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”

In this Easter season death is revealed, not as a full stop but as the way into another dimension of life. As Eliot puts it: “What we call the beginning is often the end/And to make an end is to make a beginning./The end is where we start from.”

Rest eternal grant unto her O Lord and let light perpetual shine upon her.

This blog post originally appeared on the Guardian website. 

Thomas à Becket, We Have Need of Thee

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Anglican, Anglican Communion, Anglicanism, Barton Gingerich, Church, Church of England, female ordination, history, ordination, theology, women bishops, women priests

Effigy of St. Thomas of Canterbury (Photo Credit: The Times)

The initial outrage and fallout from the Church of England’s decision to reject women bishops seems to have reached its close. Newspapers on the right and the left shrieked in disdain at such a backwards institution for not toeing the feminist line. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Archbishop-to-be Justin Welby, and orthodox heavyweight N. T. Wright (who audaciously quoted C. S. Lewis in favor of a position that the Anglican layman explicitly opposed) all voiced support for female episcopal leaders. Official spokespeople for the successful minority opposition generally cited concerns over compromises and relief of conscience rather than theology when they interacted with the press. The radical Canon Giles Fraser vitiated his own brethren as “modern-day puritans…life-denying fun-sponges obsessed with being right and with other people not having sex.” These hurtful accusations have received a stiff censure from the American Anglican Council. In short, quarts of ink and thousands of digital information bits have been spilled over the matter. Despite the accusations of irrelevance, the mother church of the world’s third largest Christian communion is still nothing to be sneezed at by concerned believers, regardless of denominational stripe.

In the shadows, however, the traditionalists breathed a quiet sigh of relief. On the practical side, ecumenical relations with Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and growing conservative Protestant traditions would have been strained. However, the reasons for negative votes depended upon theological and party commitments. For the Anglican sphere, the conservative evangelical concern was deontological; the high church was metaphysical. Low churchmen opposed the measures because they thought the Bible commands them to—that it forbids women in positions of church authority over men. They worried that the hermeneutical gymnastics required to sidestep St. Paul’s ordination standards in the epistles would simply be unsustainable when applied to the rest of Scripture. Soon, cultural historicism would give way to the full agenda of theological liberalism. High churchmen—especially the Anglo-Catholics—chafed at the innovations thanks to their sacramental theology. For them (like Roman Catholics), women bishops—and, by extension, priests—are impossible by definition. The pro-female ordination arguments strike the High Church faction as Gnostic—that the immaterial (spirit, intention, desire) is more important than physical and that the limits of human nature can be overcome or ignored. Whether these hangups have merit is debatable–few seem willing to debate on the basis of theological inquiry. Instead, these views are shuffled away from view for the sake of cultural relevance.

Nevertheless, orthodox Anglicans of all stripes got concerned with the “keep up with the progressive culture” language that was used to berate delegates. As Forward in Faith’s Bishop Keith Ackerman stated on Issues, Etc., “It is not the culture that converts the Church. It is the Church that converts the culture.” Soon, state-church critics at such sources as First Things and Real Clear Religion pounced on an opportunity to validate the American Way of non-established churches. There is much to discuss here; each model of church-state relations seems to have significant tradeoffs. After all, the two realms have interacted with each other from the very foundation of the Church; ecclesiastical officials have been highly intertwined with those of the state at least since the days of Constantine (if not before). Magisterial Protestantism had been founded as a way to stifle heresy; the intimate ties of the Roman Catholic Church with other countries functioned in much the same way. America’s dissenter Protestant heritage holds both opportunities (which are quite obvious in this situation) as well as drawbacks. For instance, the plethora of churches militates against most kinds of catholicity. Church discipline from nearly any congregation seems moot—one can simply walk down the street to a different denominations church if his membership is revoked or his is forbidden from Communion.

So, what to say about English Anglicans now in their current situation—within a state church facing strong social criticism? It seems even a majority of the Church of England’s members wanted women bishops. However, they did not get their way. Prohibition against women bishops remains official church policy. How much good will severe criticism be? Obviously, the votes indicate there are many unhappy people within the English Church. How should they react?

A similar situation has happened before—with a St. Thomas of Canterbury. People often forget one of the reasons why this popular saint fell out of favor with the king’s court: St. Thomas refused to send clergy to secular courts for trial. Instead, clergy were sent to ecclesiastical courts to be tried according to canon law. This was part of the Church’s attempt to expand the archbishopric again. Thomas—generally considered a longtime ally of the king—essentially threw away his friendship with the monarch to save what may have been several unsavory clerical characters from secular trial. I doubt he was very happy about this position, but he put loyalty to his Church above social acceptability.

Thomas’ continual favor of the Church against the kingly powers eventually cost him his life. We celebrate him as a hero today, not necessarily because we agreed with his own policies (I for one favor sending clergy to secular courts for secular crimes) but for his unwavering stand by the Church and her teaching. So, today, when the Church stands against the state’s desires and society’s expectations, we should see English Christians continuing in this tradition, right? Isn’t it time for solidarity amongst the faithful? This should be something that members of the Church of England have to face up to (regardless of position) and instead shield their dissenting brethren from cultural outrage, right?

Wrong.

Instead, we have vitriol against those who dared oppose the cultural consensus and the “inevitable” egalitarian future. The world now watches its favorite sport: Christians hurting Christians out of malice. If such a stance against episcopal innovation is a crime against all female-kind, then the Church has been a woman’s greatest enemy for nearly 2,000 years [spoiler: it has not]. Now’s not the time to throw stones against fellow Christians. There has been a severe lack of theological rationale (especially on the progressivist side), and the condemnation of traditionalists destroys opportunities for helpful dialogue. I humbly submit that now is the time to be unpopular; now is the time for a Thomas à Becket.

You can find Bart Gingerich, Research Assistant, on Twitter at @bjgingerich.

Church of England Narrowly Rejects Women Bishops

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Anglican, Barton Gingerich, Church of England, episcopal standards, women bishops

(Photo Credit: The Telegraph)

Today, the General Synod for the Church of England rejectedthe ordination of women bishops by a mere handful of votes. So ends for now a nearly 12 year legislative process to upend standards for episcopal office. Much of the controversy surrounded the provision of stand-in bishops for parishes opposed to women’s ordination.

Passage of the ordination innovations required a 2/3 majority in all houses. The votes were 44 for and two against in the house of bishops, 148 for and 45 against in the house of clergy, and 132 for and 74 against in the house of laity. The vote in the house of laity, at 64%, was just short of the required majority.

Some British Anglicans hoped the passage of this motion would be another step of enlightened progress. They also worry about the cultural image this will grant the Church in modern British society with its failure. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams himself voiced outspoken support. A minority breathes a sigh of relief. This group–primarily made up of Anglo-Catholics and other High Churchmen–was concerned about the ecumenical ramifications that may portend from ordinal novelties, the validity of female apostleship, a rupture with traditional interpretation, and a trespass against scriptural obedience.