Overseers and CEEC (Epiphanies guidelines apply)
Ronald Binge
Shipmate
No mention of the commissioning of 'overseers' at All Souls Langham Place for the CofE Evangelical Council so far. So, here it is. Schismatic? Another Society?
Comments
Linked to this is the increasingly common assertion that only they are 'orthodox' and that those who disagree with them are not (which logically means that all dissenters are heretics). The definition of 'orthodox Christianity' now seems to hinge on sexual matters more than beliefs about God, Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit.
It's particularly egregious when they can manage to swallow their huge disagreements over the ordination of women and tolerate different views on divorce. The claim that these tepid prayers of blessing are beyond the pail is just not credible. It speaks to power play rather than theological conviction: this is the issue where they think they have enough support to throw their weight around.
Eh. This is a strange complaint running alongside the one that they are too doctrinaire. I can find plenty to critique, but this isn't it imo.
I think inconsistency and performative outrage are both fair criticisms.
Alternatively what's happened is that regardless of their original positions on both those issues they have - in actual practice - shifted a fair way.
If your complaint is that they are - instead - trying to have both their cake and eat it .. well I give you the Anglican Church.
What they're demanding goes beyond even that, though: they're demanding an entirely separate province. The flying bishops are at least under the authority of the Archbishop of the province.
Well, they are and they aren't. In some ways it's just another round of evangelicals in an episocopal church failing to believe in the episcopacy.
https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/ceec-commissions-overseers/
https://ceec.info/ceec-commissions-first-set-of-overseers/
Yes but, and I was very much of that wing at the time, the Trad Catholics did demand a third province*, the alternative episcopal oversight was what they *settled* for.
To that extent, this feels like first shots rather than 'take it or leave it' - though I'm not a conservative evangelical so don't know if it's right to feel that or not.
*In fact, IIRC they demanded it twice - 1992 at the time of women's ordination, and then again at the time of women's ability to become bishops (2014? ish?)
I no longer go to church, although (if asked) I guess I might still class myself as a fairly High Church Anglican, but I'm probably not missing anything.
But I think it's fair to point out that the conservative evangelical wing of the CofE (and Anglican Communion more generally) is no more monolithic than any other segment or faction.
Someone observed to me the other day that all Anglo-Catholics were Tories, simply because those he'd met were. He was surprised when I pointed out that I knew clergy and laity from that tradition who certainly weren't.
But caveats aside, I do see both glorious and inglorious inconsistencies across Anglicanism in all its forms, not just on these issues but almost anything and everything else.
How the heck anyone can reconcile all the anomalies/inconsistencies call them what you will, is beyond me.
It seems to me that plenty of people at one 'end' or the other would be happier (relatively) somewhere else - be it Rome, Constantinople, Geneva...
Disestablishment might help to some extent but I think it goes deeper than that.
Anglicanism was (is?) a great experiment and it may have more to bring out of the test-tube yet.
I may be simplistic but I've for a long time wondered why some Anglicans don't hive off to independent fellowships of one form or other or cross the Bosphorus or Tiber.
But then, I can't imagine what the Anglicans would look like if they only had a MOtR or 'broad church' wing as it were.
I'm Anglo Catholic and am definitely not a Tory. What I am concerned about is attempts to use sexuality as a demarcation line, or worse, a push for GAFCON influence/oversight.
For con-evos the line has been that the CofE is a "good boat to fish from" which was ok while they were content to get on with fishing. Now they're intent on grabbing the tiller it's more of a problem. For conservative ACs there is the issue that Roman and Eastern bishops will treat the oath of canonical obedience as something actually to be followed and the priests can't just do what they like, as has rather become the norm in the CofE. And for all parties (including the remaining handful of actual liberals/atheists) there is the pressing practical issue of buildings, stipends and pensions, with which the CofE remains well supplied.
This constant preoccupation with sexuality is, frankly, tedious, and I'm glad that I no longer have any part in the equally tedious arguments for and against...
Sure. I get all that but I'm not so sure the conservative evangelicals want to 'grab the tiller' in the sense of wanting to steer the entire ship for the entire voyage, so much as, as they see it, preventing it from running aground.
But yes, clergy doing their own thing has been an issue for sometime irrespective of issues of sexuality. I attended a very impressive but ecclesialogically inconsistent Anglo-Catholic service recently where the incumbent prayed for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Welsh bishops (it was in Wales) and the Ecumenical Patriarch (but not the Pope).
The liturgy itself seemed a strange hybrid of his own devising which contained very little I recognised from other Anglo-Catholic services I've attended. It was quite something. But I don't know what it was.
ETA: and they can be inspected on the CEEC site and various other places, including blogs, as far as the eye can see, or stomach can stand. My stomach's capacity is the limiting factor in my case.
But more broadly, and I'm not necessarily referring to sexuality issues here, it strikes me that both the evangelical (in its conservative and charismatic forms) and Anglo-Catholic wings (in all the variety we find there) can veer towards control-freakery.
I was stopped from leading the intercessions in the 11am service in an evangelical parish because I did so in 'too traditional' a way. I was allowed to do it at the 9am service with the oldies.
At the other end of the spectrum I've known clergy enforce particular liturgical actions with almost military precision to the extent you'd imagine those who didn't conform to face firing squads at dawn.
Liberal as in "liberal theology" a la Don Cupitt, John Shelby Spong, or Richard Holloway; or (like me) theologically orthodox but socially liberal? The former was who I was clumsily aiming at.
The Church of England is multifarious, in a way I try to continue to believe is a feature rather than a bug. There comes a point, however, at which containing rank contradictions becomes too much, too essential a split to be survivable. It's a matter of discernment, but at the moment the idea of discerning whether this point has been reached seems to have been excluded entirely.
Yes and one could envisage a scenario in which they had taken the episcopacy and Synod a lot more seriously and run a Federalist Society like strategy inside the CofE. The problem for them is that being aggressively low church and loving the social cachet that comes with being part of the state church runs somewhat counter to that strategy.
Couldn't agree more.
I vary, from time to time. I'm more conservative than Cupitt or Holloway at their most non-literalist, but I'm certainly not a literalist about a great many things. Ultimately, to my mind, all religion is a metaphor which we believe is an accurate reflection of ultimate reality. Which bits are accurate and how far they are indeed accurate is the definition of faith.
And yes, socially liberal, based on the perception of Christianity as having emptied morals - i.e. the definition of abstract principles, into ethics rooted in individual people and situations. But then, for me, that is the natural outworking of the Incarnation. God emptied himself into creation, and so creation is where we find his reality.
Yes, I sympathise (FWIW). As I said, I'm glad that, as a straight man, I'm out of it now, but I do appreciate that it's hard for those still inside, so to speak.
I am old enough to remember the feeling in the 60s/70s among ConEvos that they had no voice in the CofE against the prevailing Anglo-Catholic and "South Bank" factions. Times have changed!
This thread is largely about subjects that are usually reserved for Epiphanies.
Consequently, Epiphanies guidelines will be applied as long as it remains in Purgatory.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
"Unity" is pretty high up the list of core principles and doctrines of the CofE. Much effort is devoted to preserving it.
Interesting. It led me to wonder if (the) conservative evangelicals recognise Charles R as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England (and maybe Defender of the Faith).
Thanks for this - I find it thought-provoking.
The amount of bigotry and bile which has been tolerated in the name of unity is one of the sins of which hierarchs will be called to repent. And probably one of the most shocking. Justice has been totally sacrificed in the name of the unity of an institution which, contrary to its most cherished assumption, is not coterminous with the kingdom of God.
I can't say I've ever noticed anyone within the Anglican Communion, of whatever persuasion, opine that their Church is coterminous with the Kingdom of God in its entirety.
Perhaps I've missed something.
Some Anglicans certainly assume that they should be the 'default' option, just as the Conservative Party can have an 'entitled' view of itself as the 'Party of Government.'
That's part of the Establishment legacy, of course and it can even be found in a residual form in disestablished Anglican Churches such as The Church in Wales.
That kind of tendency isn't unique to Anglicans of course. There are parallels elsewhere.
On the issue of conservative evangelicals and the monarchy, I get the impression that most would be moderately royalist (with some exceptions) and would simply cough politely and look the other way if you mentioned the King as Supreme Governor.
They'd say, 'Christ is the Head of the Church,' and change the subject to something more congenial.
Ask them about 'Charles, King and Martyr' and they'd either look at you daft (as we'd say in South Wales) or roll their eyes wearily.
I'd agree that diversity is a feature not a bug within the Anglican Communion and it's proven remarkably elastic for many, many years considering all the pressures, tensions and tugs in different directions.
How much longer it can do so is a moot point.
Quite how they do all this is mere detail...
In my experience, "prayer for unity" often comes with an ambiguous subtext. "Don't rock the boat", "don't be different". And occasionally straightforward emotional blackmail.
I think the emotional blackmail, when present, is pretty clearly stated upfront. To me "unity" means you don't try to divide the church over disagreements, you don't seek to "purify" the church by excluding others. You can argue, even strongly, for your view, and you can swim the river of your choosing to join others who share your view, but you accept in doing so that you can't take assets with you.
Another thing which is definitely a matter of discernment, and therefore about which different opinions will necessarily exist, but I do feel very strongly that the last person standing shouldn't always be the one to dictate the pace.
I think the Belhar Confession, which came from the context of apartheid and the resulting segregation of churches, is instructive. According to the Belhar Confession, unity is
After a discussion of what that unity involves and looks like, the confession continues:
The confession also says:
The full English text of the Belhar Confession can be found here. It is worth a read.
Hmm - I read this with agreement but really?
So when the Methodists wandered off it was the CofE that broke away? Or those who left more recently for the Ordinariate?
Or is it blunt majoritarianism?
I think you're reading an "always" into @ThunderBunk 's words that isn't there.
Fair, although they’ve got ‘assumption’ and ‘can’ in consecutive sentences.
Another way of looking at it is it’s only when you’ve got the ‘last person standing’ that you can take a view on who is right. And even then not always accurately!
It can be, sure, but those who “stay behind” often claim to be cleaving to the faith as they received it, and to be eschewing unnecessary movement.