Thoughts Of A Former Anglican

[poliphilo]

I started writing an angry piece about the Church of England and gay marriage and then pulled up short. What was the point?  I left the church a quarter century ago because everything about it was so annoying and that really should have been the end of the matter. How does it hurt me that it's placing itself "on the wrong side of history" again? It's what it does. What it's persistently done. It's not as if it'll win.  

It's the assumption of the moral and spiritual high ground that offends me most- that people who know so little about God should presume to speak on behalf of Him/Her/It. Bah! I persist (I don't know why) in expecting better of them. It saddens me that all they seem to care about is what goes on in other people's bedrooms.

I have, I suppose, a vision of what the Church might be. A city set upon a hill. The New Jerusalem. A light to the world. I joined the gang with that vision in mind and quickly found it was all about- other things. 

Individual Christians do sometimes embody that vision. The Church does its best to smother them.

Happily the Church matters less and less. A Tory PM is defying it in the knowledge that it can't really hurt him. How odd that I should be backing a Tory P.M against the Church!

I worry about the buildings. I love old churches. They hold the history and culture of their communities and some of them are (or contain) amazing works of art.  Who will maintain them when the silly old Anglicans are so reduced they can't afford to keep the roofs on? 

Comments

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

I spent my honeymoon in the Trossachs district of Scotland, where several of the churches had been converted into museum spaces, to the horror of the local faithful. To me though, it seemed a lovely symmetry -- the thatrical architecture of performance religion turned over to the theatrical recreation of ages past.

We have a turn-of-century Catholic church in a neighboring borough that is ground zero for a big civic fight at present. The church sold the property, and now the developers want to level the structure and put up a strip mall. Needless to say, the townspeople are LIVID at this idea, but it's not yet clear if anybody can do anything to stop it.

As a witch, I'm not that attached to the idea of God's House for his Mouthpiece. As an artist and craftsman, however, I am sick at the idea of that beautiful creation being thrown away because someone feels they need another goddamned McDonalds.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid we're going to face more and more of these dilemmas.

Obviously we can't keep all our redundant churches, but...