Anglican Follies

[poliphilo]

I can't help but be sorry for the current embarrassments of the Anglican Church. I was raised in it, I used to work for it and it owns all those lovely, medieval buildings. It's a sheep-headed,  rackety, old institution but harmless- as churches go- and at its best promotes a spirituality that's reflective, tolerant and sweet-natured. It has or, rather,  had a genius for compromise. Eyebrows may have been raised over Fr Chasuble's young male lodger but nothing was ever done about it. Mischievous bishops could preach about the Death of God and no-one moved to unseat them.  Evangelicals, liberals, catholics and careerist worldlings all managed- with a little enjoyable feuding and sniping- to rub along together. Ah, well, nothing lasts forever.

And maybe this trouble is all for the best. The worldwide Anglican communion is a product of Empire. And why should the imperial church survive when the Empire itself has gone? Why should Africans conform to English norms of piety and virtue? What's happening now could be interpreted- with the church lagging behind the world by about 50 years (as usual)- as part of the process of decolonisation.

The latest news is that the conservative bishops gathered in Jerusalem are proposing to create a not quite schismatic church within a church- evangelical, fundamentalist, homophobe- and with its centre of authority somewhere other than Canterbury.  It sounds unworkable to me. Also essentially unEnglish.

Just let them go-  make a clean break of it- and take the Bishop of Rochester with them.

But nothing is ever that simple, is it? 

Messes like this take generations to clear up. Look at Zimbabwe.

England is a small country. How nice if the Anglican church could also be small again- based in England with a few Anglophile branches overseas- if it could return to being local:  unworldly-wise, slightly comic, charming.  

The sunlight sloping across vicarage lawns- as in Trollope, as in Agatha Christie, as in The Vicar of Dibley. 

Enough nostalgia!  Why should I worry?  I'm not an Anglican any more...

Or perhaps I am.  Is it possible to wash off the waters of baptism? Is it desirable?

I had a pagan friend once- he's on LJ; I tiptoe round him, hoping he won't spot me- who used to say he was going to write to the Pope asking to be excommunicated. He was a very pretentious, self-important young man. I may once have hated my religious upbringing as much as he hated his- but not any more.

Comments

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I call myself an Anglican because I feel it is my culture and background even though I am an agnostic and don't identify as Christian.

Unfortunately the Church is a human institution masquerading as God and people seem to feel a difference in opinion (to be glib!) is something threatening heaven.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A lot of people feel this way.

There's a lot that's beautiful in Anglicanism- the Authorised Version of the Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, the 18th century hymns: we all have a stake in these things.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I do agree with everything you said. The African churches shouldn't be allowed to spoil what the English church has, which as you say is a wonderful ability to be all things to all people and somehow hold it all together and make it work. We don't want to be dictated to by the African fundamentalists, just as they don't want to be dictated to by us.

Like you, this really shouldn't bother me. I now identify as a Zen Quaker and was brought up Methodist. But I was Christened in an Anglican church and my brother is an ordained Anglican priest and I don't want the Anglican church to destroyed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It looks like there'll be some sort of nightmarish compromise solution- with the evangelicals setting up an organisation not wholly divorced from the continuing Anglican communion headed by Canterbury. This too, I suppose, will be in the all-accomodating spirit of Anglicanism.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I think those who are zealous enough to call those who condone the Episcopal decision about the bishop heretics will not opt for a compromise. I believe they will leave the church. I believe they want to.

And, really, perhaps they must--for their sake and for the Episcopal church's sake (I say Episcopal because the Anglican church in America is basically--if I am not mistaken--the home of this splinter group).

There is one thing this sad time has done I think: made us all move beyond mumbling through the prayer book and begin to question and think about what we really believe. This alone makes the shuddering through the church worthwhile, maybe.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Maybe....

Like you, I've been trying to see the positive side of this debacle.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Your pagan friend was almost certainly excommunicate latae sententiae anyway; certain acts such as heresy or being an apostate carry with them an automatic excommunication with no need for the Pope (or indeed his local bishop) to get involved.

The worst of it from his perspective? Being excommunicate doesn't stop you being a Catholic; it just stops you from taking part in Church society.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Once a catholic, always a catholic.

It seems no-one escapes. Not even atheistical scourges of clerical hypocrisy like my hero, Luis Bunuel.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Yup. :-)

The RCC says that Baptism is a contract between you and God, and they don't have the power to break that contract.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Logical- as always.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

It's probably the thing I find most fascinating about the RCC - once you've bought into the central illogicality of the belief, it's all tremendously self-consistent.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's Thomism for you.

[wolfshift.livejournal.com]

Yet again, we homos are the End of the World as We Know It.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes. Stupid, isn't it?

And shaming for the Church.

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

Akinola sez: "We want one thing and one thing only - to restore communion and fellowship. It has failed." Yes, but communion and fellowship on *their* terms--agree with us, or you are not of our fellowship.

*grinds teeth*

I wish I didn't care about the Anglican Church, but of course I do--it shaped my sensibilites and that will never go away. It is painful to think that this intolerant bastard is of the same heritage that gave us Tallis and Byrd, Donne and Herbert, Charles Williams and Dorothy Sayers.

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

not intending to be provocative, and
I hope also not being so, but
a good many of those people were
Tories weren't they? Perhaps it is
their creativity which allows them
to 'get away' with it?

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I get your point, Bishop. "Those people" meaning the Anglican luminaries I cited? Yes, they were all creative folks; for me the Anglican contributions to music and literature remain reasons to love Anglicanism. And yes, they were Royalists, not radicals. I'm not insensible to the political issues in the current controversies; I'm just not sure I care about them.

various and on writing

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

fair enough... no I suppose my thought was
just that they could not be enlisted to a liberal
position really. But that as you say that was
not your intention.
I am sure you are right to avoid as you say
the politics and controversies
I think as surely they are hard to discuss without
becoming isolated from faith and that interiority
which is the ground where Truth beyond all of this
can be accessed or perhaps better can
have access(awkward phrasing
sorry trying to word with attention but that then
it becomes prolix).
well enough from me...
and good luck with writing!, responding much more
simply to your post of the other day about problematics
of writing
yours
+S

Re: various and on writing

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that Anglicans, both North and South, have lost the creative, poetic way of thinking which created the great music and literature of the Anglican past; have lost the historic Anglican tolerance for ambiguity, relativity, and disagreements in interpretation; have become as literal and fundamentalist as the Evangelical Protestants of American origin. That is what upsets me about the current controversies, and I usually try to avoid them because the news makes me sad, angry, and perhaps prone to being contentious.

And thanks for the good wishes!

Re: various and on writing

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well said.

Poor Archbishop Williams- who is an Anglican of the old type- a careful theologian and published poet- is ill-equipped to handle this mess.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm trying not to take sides (though of course I do have a side) but it seems such a secondary issue to fall out over.

There have always been gay clergy, gay bishops too. If they were all sacked tomorrow the Church would find itself with a manpower crisis. In the "good old days" there was a gentleman's agreement not to get het up about people's private lives.

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

In the "good old days" there was a gentleman's agreement not to get het up about people's private lives.

I suppose one could say there was also a gentleman's agreement to stay in the closet and not parade one's perversion in the streets. But I won't say that.

I will say that I am thoroughly disgusted with the Church's myopic fixation on sexual behavior as the be-all and end-all of theology, ethics, and religion as a whole. And by "the Church" here I mean pretty much the whole of Western Christianity today. Please excuse me if I sound bitchy--I know you and I are basically in agreement, but these bloody literalists infuriate me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They infuriate me too.

When I became a priest- back in the 70s- the C of E was a very different institution. Year by year it seems to have become shriller and sillier and more superficial.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I would add T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden to your list. Also John Betjeman, Rose Macaulay and Stevie Smith- the last two being unbelievers steeped in Anglican sensibility.

reply for Pope proposed to request to be excommunicated

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

Do it yourself ...
or,wait, you already have
haven't you? Are you
saying it didn't work out?

Re: reply for Pope proposed to request to be excommunicated

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Heh, heh, heh....

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

"Is it possible to wash off the waters of baptism?"
When I removed myself from the RC church at the age of 13, I did not believe it made me a Catholic just because a priest sprinkled some water on my head and said a few words. After all, I did not choose it for myself. At 13, I chose Protestant Christianity because of Martin Luther's tenet that it is faith that saves, not works. Years later I CHOSE to be baptized by a Protestant pastor. I believe that second baptism was an outward sign of my long-ago commitment.
Lesson: We may choose something for our babies, but at some time in their futures they will make their own choices, which are not necessarily our own.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Most people find it very hard to rid themselves of early religious conditioning. Even if they lose their faith or change it, they still hear the voice of their mother church whispering away in the background.

I'm certainly finding this to be true.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Definitely true! After all, we do not wish to throw out the baby with the baptismal water. Heh, heh...

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I baptised Kate with spit in the hospital! :)

She got re-baptised later, but I was an earnest young mother who wanted--I'd never thought things through--her to be "safe" from--whatever--limbo?

In any case, I just wanted to begin her life with prayer, and that was perfectly sane and sensible.

Kate isn't interested in organized religion at all. It's like being a musician whose children hate piano lessons: baffling.

I mean, the church and its trappings have always meant the world to me, the core of my life.

But one reason I love the Episcopal church is that it's introverted enough that it allows for private thinking that may not fit the standard rubrics.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Anglican church has a unique sensibility. The schismatics are people with a tin ear. Their branch of the church never produces anything of value in music, art, literature: they're too shrill, noisy, unthinking.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

As you may remember, I have an intense reason to be interested in this Jerusalem situation--my daughter-in-law, a vocational deacon, is "staying with her bishop" and will therefore be leaving the Episcopal church, probably in October if that's when the official pull-out happens. Her bishop is in Jerusalem right now.

I wish very much--how useless, to wish others believed just like me!--that things were different. I love my daughter-in-law very much even as I strongly disagree with this stand they are making.

As for me, I am in agreement with you in that those who wish to leave because their beliefs differ should leave--this group is essentially going down A path that no longer reflects the views of the current Episcopal church (imho).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

One thing I want to know is, who is going to own the buildings and other assets? Is the Church going to be bankrupted with law suits?

If people thought more about the nature of God- if they were a little more mystical in their outlook- I don't think these things would happen. A church that gets all het up about who sleeps with who is an unGodly church.