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The Church of England is losing its identity (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images))
Remember Consignia — that disastrous rebrand of the Post Office? It sounded more like a sexually transmitted disease or an obscure Roman battle than a postal service. The name Royal Mail was apparently too redolent of posties, stamps and letters. Founded originally by Henry VIII, it was deemed too old fashioned. Too Royalist, too establishment. And the name Post Office was too generic. In the DHL era, something exciting and new was required. The idea was to prepare the public for an era of diverse operations. Surprise, surprise — the public hated it. 16 months later, Consignia reverted to the Post Office.
Now another of Henry VIII’s creations has come up with a rebrand that is even worse. The Church of England is ditching the word church. Like the Royal Mail, it wants to prepare the public for an era of diverse operations. And the exciting new name for church is to be… I kid you not: “New Things”.
A recent study, as reported in the Church Times, of the word church — if I can still use that word — across 11 Dioceses of the Church of England (see, it’s tricky to avoid) has found that “in the past 10 years, about 900 ‘New Things’ have been started. None of the 11 dioceses used the word ‘church’ as its main descriptor of such developments.” In other words, the Church has given up on church. Not since Prince became Squiggle has there been such a daft revision.
And it has been a ruinously expensive business. At a time when ordinary parish churches such as mine are being asked for ever greater contributions to the central church coffers, the New Things corporate headquarters has ploughed at least £82.7 million into New Things. As the report explains, this “new ecclesial language” has happened “very quickly” and is “affecting an operant theology within the Church of England”. This is former oil executive Justin Welby’s principal contribution to the development of the Church of England. As the report admits, “loosed from theological roots, the conceptual framework inevitably looks for other sources for its guidance, namely business and management theory.”
Of course, what is going on here is more than just a name change. The Church of England has always been a strange beast, ecclesiologically. Henry VIII was instinctively a traditionalist. The coin in your pocket still has the letters FD after the King’s name, letters that stand for Fidei Defensor, Defender of the Faith. This title was given to Henry by the Pope before their falling out, and he remained proud of it, so kept it. Henry’s beef with Rome wasn’t so much theology — he just didn’t like being told what to do by some bloke in a far-away Italian city.
For Henry, the Reformation was about who was in charge, not whether the Church was still Catholic. The order of bishops, priests and deacons, the centrality of the eucharist, they all stayed. Inspired by the continental Reformation, which was always more ideologically driven, the evangelical Reformers wanted to go further, to get rid of all that Catholic ritualistic stuff. But they were held back. And so, the Church of England became a strange hybrid, both Catholic and Protestant.
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SubscribeOh dear, there seems to have been some misunderstanding…
The “new things” described in the report are a colection of initiatives and activities run by parishes that can’t be collectively described by a single term. In other words, they’re mostly not new churches, just stuff being organised by existing churches.
From the Church Times report:
“Of the 900 “new things”, 89 per cent were “integrated within the existing parish system” rather than existing as stand-alone “new” churches (for example, BMOs).”
They can’t say “church” because it isn’t church. “New things” is an appropriate and at least honest term because the conscious intent is to create something that is unconnected to, indeed actively disconnected from, the Church of the ages – and that includes the Church of the Apostles, i.e. the church that Christ actually founded. Unfortunately, Welby understands nothing of ecclesiology and is known to have zero interest in the subject, which ordinarily one might expect to be a bit of a disadvantage for the leader of a church which, officially at least, claims to be part of the Church Catholic.
P.S. Good to have you back, Giles.
What would Henry VIi or Elizabeth I do?
Henry the Six-and-a-Halfth?
Hal would chop people’s heads off and Elizabeth would have her excellent spymaster arrange accidents,sad but there y’ go. She didn’t care a flying fig what people privately thought so long as they kept schtum and didnt threaten the State which included her Royal Person
Turn over in their graves.
I doubt “the church that Christ actually founded” looked like anything like the abomination that currently infests in the Vatican. I often wonder what Jesus himself would actually make of it. I think there is a fair chance that his attitude would be “You morons, you misunderstood everything”.
Our Lord would paraphrase Karl Marx by saying “je ne suis pas chrétien”.
Good to know. Hopefully he’d translate it for the non-French speakers among us.
“I am not a Christian.”
Its not difficult to translate.
There is no mystery as to what the church should be based on if you believe the Bible. It’s exceedingly clear and spelled out in the New Testament. Denominations which use the NT as their guide, (we call them “evangelical”) don’t have an issue with “what is a church” because it’s there in black and white, in the book of Acts and the Epistles. Differences exist about historical interpretation of particular passages – such as why Paul advised against women in leadership, but since he also honored women by name as deacons and prophets, it doesn’t appear to be a matter of doctrine, more culture.
How this relates to Catholic churches and the Church of England is a wholly different matter. They don’t practice “Sola scriptura”. These denominations of Christianity separate Christians into a priesthood and a laity, which is unsupported in the New Testament. It’s a tradition of men. So, if you unmoor your church structure from the teaching of the Bible, to what do you turn for authenticity? That’s the dilemma that the C-of-E faces. What exactly is it?
No mystery but “differences exist”!. You don’t say! About 1,700 years of discord and often extreme violence. Very human, not God given.
Christianity evolved; it was not founded.
I believe it is still evolving competitively , which is a worry, as simplicity seems to me to the key, and keeping it local and responsive the that community where it is. located.
An excellent post, explaining things very well, and succinctly.
It was the church that decided which books would be included in the New Testament and which would be excluded. Seems that, according to “evangelicals” the product has swum free from its producer.
Spot on.
Exactly!
Jesus didn’t found the church, his disciples did. And it has precious little do with any of the organisations called ‘churches’ these days, or probably even with whatever Jesus intended to do in the first place.
“Jesus didn’t found the church, his disciples did.“ That’s a pretty bold assertion, contradicted by his own words as recorded in the Gospels – but then no doubt you dismiss them too. It’s not clear what criteria you apply in judging what evidence you’re prepared to accept, other than your own personal feelings.
It’s historically unarguable. Jesus wasn’t founding a new religion; he was Jewish in descent and culture.
Are you devoid of reading skills? Jesus is very clear, “on this rock [the declaration of His divinity] I found my church”.
“[H]e was Jewish in descent and culture.” Granted, but what does that prove? That he was incapable of thinking outside that box? There’s a clear trajectory in the Gospels from an early mission exclusively to the Jews (“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”), through a dramatic expansion of vision (perhaps hingeing upon the recognition of the faith of the Canaanite woman), ending with the mission being to the whole world (“go and make disciples of all nations”). I think one would be hard pushed to claim that what we end up with at the end of the Gospels is the same religion as the nationalistic Judaism into which Jesus was born and bred.
What is being done has nothing to do with evangelicals, and everything to do with liberals.
‘As the report admits, “loosed from theological roots, the conceptual framework inevitably looks for other sources for its guidance, namely business and management theory.”’
As did many of the previous innovations in the CofE that you agreed with and championed, Giles. You went with the prevailing culture, rather than Scripture and Tradition. Another example of a revolutionary upset that the current revolutionaries are going ‘too far’.
Did he? Have you any evidence of that?
But, regarding what we might call the philosophical central point, of course it is possible to “go too far”. The CoE firstly exists in the human mundane world. And “moderation in all things” is often a good approach to life.
Giles was pushing various liberal innovations for years, Andrew. He is well-known to those of us conservatives in the CofE.
Google is your friend. There’s plenty of receipts.
Time to repeal Reformation. Tudors would approve given New Things moral fluidity. Fire up the bonfires. Burn the heretics.
That is indeed coming but the heresy to be burned at the stake for will be sceptism or downright unbelief in the the new RELIGION,the sacred text of which is The Science. Already I have READ some words explicitly stating that disbelievers in Monkey Pox,ooh Matron,are we now all extras in a Carry On film,are killing or soon will be,Killing Grandmas. My favourite weekend activity.
The churches are like any other large organization these days, nothing more than self preserving bureaucracy by self-serving people to have little interest in the actual goal of the organization. Managerialism 101.
What you say is very true but it could be worth continuing the idea of relating the Church (capital ‘c’) with business in general.
The old Congregational churches, which have now disappeared existed for the community and were managed by the community for the community alone – there was no national hierarchy. They were loosely connected in that they paid roving priests to preside over services, the wardens sometimes met for inter-church discussions and they certainly preached Christianity. The key word in all of this is ‘community’ so if the church needed repairs the community had to pay.
The best business analogy is perhaps Starbucks versus MacDonalds.
There are over 100 congregational churches of the EFCC across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. There are alos many other congregations which are congregational, without being part of a union.
I was amused by your sentence “….if the church needed repairs the community had to pay.”
If my church needs repairs, the community must still pay, but the diocese wants its money first, so repairs have been neglected.
Well said!
Nothing escapes Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
He was great writer and some interesting insights into human nature, he was basically a poor man’s Robert Heinlein, and I mean that positively. His Iron Law was spot on!
I’m not surprised that The Church of England is disappearing since England itself is also going, going, gone…
Well there are still a couple that hold fast to traditional Christianity and unfashionable ideas such as the centrality of family to God’s plan, that we are to accommodate ourselves to God and not the other way around and that there are eternal consequences for actions. Of course they’ve also had the media machine working against them for a long time so they’re quite unfashionable but that’s usually a pretty good indicator these days of whats in the right.
However… if there is a god and it had a plan, one could pretty much say “it’s not working”.
Humanity’s ‘fault’ of course… just not worthy. (I jest.)
PS: please, please, someone post that “he moves in mysterious ways” as a counter jest.
Isn’t that a U2 song?
I don’t think you are at all familiar with what you are poking at. There is no one who thinks what you are laughing at.
And like many other large organisations people are finding ‘Organised Religion’ has become entirely divorced from its original purpose and much more concerned with bureaucratic matters.
Many people still want spiritual involvement but the Church of England has other concerns. Hence the appeal of New Age religion, or organic religion, or other spiritual practices.
Indeed, but it is amazing how positively people respond to authenticity and traditional religious practices done well and simply, inclusively and invitationally.
On the whole, yes. The CofE is a secualr, or apostate, worldly organisation with little relationship to the Christian church as it ought to be. However, it is disappointing to read the allegation that this ‘New Things’ is allegedly evangelical – it isn’t. Giles Fraser is attacking bible beliveing Christians for what is being done by raving liberals who really aren’t Christian at all. I do wonder at his reasoning for doing so, as it is blindingly obvious that this is the case.
It’s April 1 and Giles has written a spoof. This surely can’t be true.
Fair enough. The CofE was barely a church anyway, more a social club for the Middle Class.
Nonsense – except in Ascot, Virginia Water, and other wealthy enclaves.
But Charles’s Coronation Invitation told you everything at a glance and even more if studied a bit. It was very beautiful – and totally Pagan. It shouted out. I’ve got some fellow feeling for Kingie I admit. My feelings towards the beauty of the world feel more Pagan than trad. Christian but then that 17thC vicar Thomas Traherne wrote wonderful stuff about the beauty and loveliness of this world without going Pagan. And I like Kingies sympathy and interest in all faiths.
But sadly,that doesn’t work in real life. I’ve learned the hard way that even if you see someone’s point of view,it often pays to be obdurate or your comprehension will be taken as capitulation and you’ll lose. It’s not fair but life is like that. We were all impressed by how respectfully apprehensive Charles was at his Coronation but if he is Pagan then he will know that the Old King has to be ritually sacrificed,not just die in bed,sacrificed in order for his blood to revitalise the Land and ensure fertility represented by the new young King. No wonder he looked nervous. And what was that all about. The bit they quite properly didn’t show us. He was anointed they told us,not by a decorous few drops of oil on the head,like his Mum had. He was going to take all his upper clothes off and the churchmen were going to massage the oil all over his chest and upper body. To be honest it sounded vaguely sexual,very Vlad Putin,and well, Pagan,to me. Maybe I’ve read too much Golden Bough. All the popular smiley TV vicars never mention Jesus anyway. I’m not a huge fan of Jesus myself with his ridiculous continual injunctions against wanting money,having money,saving money,liking money,try wheeling your loaded trolley out of Tescos without paying. Oh I forgot God provides,all your lovely friends supply you with food etc because they love you,until one day they get fed up of you freeloading off them. But if you’ve got no friends you just starve. But of course all these contradictory Jesus sayings come from many different people just all bundled together. Now,it’s about LOVE mostly as LURVE. And that’s equally preposterous. Anyway Welby,who seems a nice man,is a Yid,so that’s a bit odd in itself.
Who is dissing my comment. Are you stupid or something.
Dissing is nothing…mine has disappeared !!
Need to write to the King. He is the only one who could just fire them all in one swift go. Of course the traditional punishment would be beheading/burning but I’m not sure the government would allow that any more. Welby and all those who go along with this should be ritually defrocked. They’d be happier with Pentecostalism anyway. Things were never like this in the days of good Queen Brenda.
More like Unitarian Universalism than Pentacostalism.
This is what happens when you live in heresy. Things get weird. Time to return to the Orthodox Church and be members of the Body of Christ.
“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” John 15:5-6
Time to return to the Orthodox Church.
Well, i read about Fr Seraphim Rose (which you kindly recommended) and it was pretty uninspiring, to say the least. Following such oddballs isn’t a sign of good health.
The chances of the Orthodox Church being “returned to” are roughly equivalent to
1:the number of atoms in the universe
There are a myriad of reasons why such movements fail, all of them entirely human.
Did you read about him, or read his actual work?
I would change it to the small-o orthodox, biblical Church, but otherwise agree 1000% with you about the fruit of living in heresy, if not flat-out apostasy (as much of the American Episcopal church has done for years). Why my family and I moved to a Reformed church from the Episcopal clown circus.
So, selecting your own preferred personal theology! How very liberal! In what traditional Christian society would this “choice” be conceivable, let alone permissable?!
Do you mean the Greek, Russian, Serbian or Coptic Orthodox church?
We might need a counter reformation to replace the New Things with the Old Things.
The Church is like the BBC, which is like the Members of Parliament, which is like the police, etc…
The people at the top are Utopians and they see the world differently. “They are able to ignore or despise the findings of experience or common sense, and to place at the centre of every deliberation a project whose absurdity they regard not as a defect but as a reproach against the one who would point it out ….. For the person who entrusts all problem-solving to a single final solution, reality is without hope and without solutions.”
The above is from Scruton who, I think, was quoting someone else. Essentially, the West has philosophised its way out of religion and there is no turning back to the way things were. Perhaps we should all be better if we embraced backward-facing religions where people have not thought themselves out of a purpose in life.
I like the idea of the Afterlife beginning with being kept in a queue by a recorded message: Your salvation is important to us etc. Modern purgatory I suppose.
Excellent! “All of our cherubim are busy but will get back to you at the earliest opportunity”.
Give me that old-time religion!
Christianity will be replaced by Islam eventually. Muslims wouldn’t fall for this nonsense.
They have their own…in spades, doubled and redoubled.
It would doubtless be “hate speech” and “incitement” to even risk repeating the words of Henry II about his frustration with his then archbishop. So I won’t.
I’ll just settle for asking why the shareholders of this business (since he does now admit it’s a business – see the quote from the report) aren’t asking for Welby’s resignation at the next AGM ? And when the vote on this reverse takeover of the C of E by “New Things” will take place ?
This type of nonsense will occur more frequently as the cultural Marxism pushed (I suspect sometimes unwittingly) by our universities takes hold of the clergy. Some in the Church of England is embarrassed by its links to Western Civilisation…
For almost 1500 years, for better or worse, the history of the British Isles has been shaped by Christianity. There has been an Alliance of one form or another between the church and the rulers of Britain since at least the time of the very first Archbishop of Canterbury in AD597. The Alliance has a chequered history – the institutional church in Britain has, in its time, contributed to a culture of persecution and waged religious war, even as individual British christians have pioneered the scientific method or championed the end of the trans-atlantic slave trade. Britain is popularly understood to be a “Christian country” and arguably more civilised as a result of its christian heritage. This evolving Alliance has, over the centuries, created a profound co-dependency between church and country, like two woodland vines twisting in and out of each other to the point where they can no longer be disentangled without uprooting both of them. This Alliance is not just about the establishment of the Church of England, it is actually much broader than the CofE and encompasses all groups that trace their heritage back to the patristic era of the church.
But this is now changing – the uprooting is well underway. Particularly since WW1 and WW2, the British state has been choosing a secular and multi-faith path which explicitly rejects this centuries-old Alliance. The institutional church is not only losing influence in the corridors of power, it is also increasingly irrelevant to the population at large. But the institutional church remains deeply invested in the Alliance, and like a jilted lover, it seeks to cling on to whatever influence and relevance remains. The Alliance is collapsing. As the nation slides further into secularism, so also must everything invested in the nation – this includes those parts of the institutional church for whom accepting the secular value set is “the unavoidable price of relevance”. There are serious consequences. The uprooting disturbs the nation as much as it disturbs the institutional church. By embracing the foundational lies of secular liberal democracy in preference to the wisdom of God, Britain is adopting attitudes and courses of action that are increasingly unwise. The nation appears to be adrift from reality and at times insanely so.
God is not a mere observer of events: those who reject his divine wisdom are given over to an unsound mind to make their own choices and experience the painful consequences of departing from divine wisdom. Insofar as the British church has broadly accepted the secular value set, this judgment applies as much to the British church as it applies to Britain. The Alliance between church and state (in its British form) was always unholy and its inevitable termination, which is very painful, should be acknowledged as an intervention of God rather than something to be resisted.
This is not a time to lament the church’s descent into irrelevance. This is not a time to rebuild the institutional church and attempt to re-establish the status of the church in the nation. We need to see the UK church’s current descent into irrelevance in the light of God’s plan to crush Satan under our feet. The conditions for irrelevance of the church in Britain today were set by the patristic church during the first four centuries AD. What we witness today are the latest manoeuvres in a spiritual conflict that has been developing over centuries. We need to recognise that this present generation faces a testing moment of decision as the strategic errors of the patristic church are being exposed and unravelled. How will we respond to the challenge?
Once we see what God is up to, we will be equipped to pray faithfully and to act faithfully. If we neglect to seek to discern the times and understand the plan of God in this generation, then we will be ignorant foot soldiers in this crucial battle, seeking to restore a status quo ante, that God does not want. Unless we are alive to the Spirit’s prompting, we will flounder around on the spiritual battlefield perplexed, worse than useless in spiritual combat, getting in the way of God’s plan and vulnerable to the enemy’s schemes.
There are some of us of very sound mind who consider that – historical description apart – to be utter nonsense. The sooner humanity can rid itself of the whole “creator” fallacy the better.
And… you will not out-spiritualise those of us who understand the true beauty of life and consciousness as something not “given to us” but which exists anyway, and is there to be explored.
Of course, each of us must make our choice.
The unsound mind offers an opportunity for repentance, if, like the prodigal, the conseqences of foolish choices bring a person to their senses. For those who persist in their embrace of the lie, there is a stage beyond the unsound mind – the strong delusion.
Dear oh dear! Ok, I don’t believe in Stonehenge Druidism either but your more traditionally acceptable irrational beliefs are no less absurd.
“Once we see what God is up to…” No doubt you will be among the first to enlighten us…..
People don’t believe this stuff because they aren’t forced to, and it is obvious bollocks….
Interesting response, thank you. The tragedy is, you appear to be proving my point.
I have read Giles article with interest and whilst I am sympathetic with the view that the sacraments should remain with the ordained clergy, I just want to make a couple of observations.
Firstly, lay ministers don’t just wander in off the street! As someone who was licensed as a lay minster last year in the CoE, I went through the same 4 year part time training as my fellow ordinands in my training Cohort, including doing a diploma in Theology, Ministry and Mission from Durham University, until they were ordained as Deacons.
Secondly, it annoys me when people talk of the Catholic Church as being the same as the early church of the apostles. The Catholic Church was the creation of a Roman Emperor as it served his own purposes! Let’s not forget our Lord’s words in the Gospel of Matthew:
“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
The Catholic church has certainly evolved in changed. The Protestant church have done so at least to the same degree.
This is hard to believe. It has to be a joke, but April 1 is still some way off???
“It sounded more like a sexually transmitted disease or an obscure Roman battle than a postal service.”
Thats hilarious! Well done, sir!
Giles skips over the real heart of this matter, which is that Jesus Christ is the only one that can save us from the nightmare that is coming. Our enemies know it. Otherwise why would they be doing this? In the absence (thus far) of out-and-out persecution of the children of Israel, the Enemy is irradiating their resources and refuges with managerialism, slogans and conceptual distortion.
The Church is not a wellbeing startup. It is Christ’s body on Earth. Desacralising it will have grave consequences. The only upshot is that the more its enemies show their hand, the bigger the backlash will become.
Desacralising it will have grave consequences.
Well, that made me laugh, thankyou!
Clearly the current Church of England is run by crackpots but:
1 Consignia was a rebrand of the Royal Mail which could not choose Post Office because that is a different company/organisation and it returned to being the Royal Mail.
2 Henry did not have his break with Rome because he “didn’t like being told what to do by some bloke in a far-away Italian city.” but because he realised that his duty to his country to avoid, on his death, civil war or some such serious disorder could only be achieved with any degree of certainty by him having a son. And that could only be achieved by divorcing Katherine and that could not be achieved with the Pope that Henry had to deal with. In fact this determination of Henry’s to do what was right for his country rather than what was easy for him is one of his most commendable actions.
Actually he didn’t want a divorce (that option was available and indeed offered by the Pope) as that would have meant that any future offspring could not succed to the throne.
What he wanted was an annulment which the Pope refused under pressure from Spain.
It’s not April 1st but surely you are joking, Giles.
“Are you having a registry office wedding?” “No, I’m getting married in New Things.”
There will have to be a schism. Welby belongs in an office block, not Lambeth Palace.
Welby chose management consultants not to give him objective advice but to make a case for what he and his Libertarian, guilt ridden, virtue signalling friends wanted so that they could be seen as ‘relevant’ to their secular atheist peers in politics and the media. They have failed strategically, financially, and pastorally but they do not care. The Save The Parish movement for example is trying to engage with the Anglican hierarchy on a transparent, reasonable, and evidenced basis but, because they are themselves people of great integrity and expect their senior clergy to be so also, have failed to appreciate that the hierarchy do not play according to the rules and break them whenever it suits them. It’s great to see ‘new things’ starting up BUT destroying the parish system by reducing the number of frontline priests and amalgamating parishes into huge groups will lead only to unaccountable authoritarian centralised diocesan bureaucracies. As Hayek said of economies – and the same applies to the C of E – ‘centralisation leads to tyranny’. Three important points: first, ordinary laity and frontline clergy have completely lost trust now in bishops and diocesan hierarchies because of what they themselves have experienced; and, secondly, one cannot get away from the fact – though the Lambeth machine has tried to bury the research and data – that those churches of whatever ‘churchmanship’ preaching orthodox Christian theology are growing and growing fast, especially among teens, 20s, and 30s. It is the theologically ‘Liberal’ ones which are declining; and, thirdly, is it at all surprising that orthodox believing churches would appoint lay leaders for their offshoots if the Liberal hierarchy will not give them a priest and a believing one? Necessity is the mother of invention and the Anglican hierarchy have only themselves to blame for the current malaise and decline. Come on, Giles, there is a lot more at stake than you mention in your article, painful though it may be for you to articulate it.
Personally, I don’t believe in God but I always thought it was a good idea that the Arch B of C should. I can’t help feeling he doesn’t.
What a brilliant comment.
‘New things’ is simply a phrase coined by the Centre for Church Planting Theology and Research in their recently published report ‘New Things: A theological investigation into the work of starting new churches across 11 dioceses in the Church of England .’
I just got out of Friday Mass, where Yahweh’s been up to a bit of grooming & economic coercion.
He buys His b***h a lot of New Things.
Guess what?
It doesn’t work.
The Church is doing fine in the global south. More Christians than ever. One day, UK Christians will flee there from Muslim pograms in the Islamic state of Britain.
What time of the year is it? Not the beginning of April?
A sinking ship. Swim, swim to Islam.
I can’t comment on Justin Welby, except to say he should keep out of politics, but what you say about business-management style is true across many denominations and independent churches.
I have downloaded the New Things paper. Looks like nothing more than kite flying to me.
But how many of us actually spend time in church, or helping start a new thing? Better to light a candle…
My main objection to the Catholic Church is the idea of a priestly class monopolizing access to the Eucharist. But thanks be to the Holy Spirit that we have alternatives these days.
My main objection to the Catholic Church is them covering up all the kiddy fiddlers
‘My main objection to the Catholic Church is them covering up all the kiddy fiddlers’ As have numerous other organisations, bodies and institutions and many a family, including my own.
I’m not sure “other groups have done it so why can’t we?” Is the greatest of defences when it comes to crimes of that nature
I am not defending anyone or anything, just pointing out that sexual abuse of children is widespread and has been for a long time.
Indeed, but not every organisation covered it up and actively hid and protected the abusers like the Catholic Church did
Is His Grace the ABC channeling his inner Monty Python? “New Things?” Seriously??
Help! Why has my comment – entirely inoffensive – totally disappeared? Can it be recalled from limbo? I do pay a subscription, after all.
It strikes me that this ‘New Things’ has no heart and no soul. Welby has been a disaster for the CoE. His response to Covid demonstrated that he is no Christian and has consistently failed the Church.
Because I’m a Catholic, maybe it’s unfair for me to ask, but I’ll ask anyway: Which is more threatening to the ecclesiology and traditions of the Church of England: a lay male presiding over Holy Communion, or a female priest looking faintly ridiculous in male vestments presiding over Holy Communion? Also, as I understand it, the evangelical wing of the C of E at least actually believes in the faith propositions of the Church of England as expressed in the 39 Articles. Evangelicals don’t claim that the resurrection of Christ was a “conjuring trick with bones” or get themselves ordained as druids. Their healthy disdain for female clergy sounds encouraging. I don’t know what else is on the list of “New Things,” but the evangelicals sound as though they are trying to breathe some genuine Christian life and faith into a church that is clearly on its last legs in the land of its birth.
Female Roman Catholic priests actually exist, validly ordained by real bishops. ‘google it’.
No they don’t
For the record, what the former Bishop of Durham actually said was that the Resurrection was NOT JUST a conjuring trick with old bones. He wished to put over the (surely not controversial) notion that it had a spiritual dimension and should have such a dimension in the hearts of the faithful. But trust the Press to twist his words.
No youngsters go to Church anymore anyway, in 20 years 90% of the parishioners will be with the Lord and all these discussions will be largely irrelevant.
The Church for most only exists as a ceremonial being anyway
You’ve obviously never been to an Aftican church. Lol
You haven’t visited many churches recently. Membership growing fast amongst teens, 20s and 30s except in theologically liberal ones
Need to do some proper research: the media and Liberal Anglicans don’t bother but just present their prejudices and fears.
You’re correct I haven’t visited many churches recently, and I don’t know anybody of working age who has either
I’m not a believer, but this is a superb article from the admirable, humane, tell-it-like-it-is Giles Fraser. It’s just pretty depressing.
This has to be a joke column..doesn’t it? What’s the date, April 1st?
Having had, for much of my life, a toehold in church, and having in recent years escaped, today I welcomed this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy). It encapsulates what worried me about church for all those years:
We must not portray you in king’s robes,
you drifting mist that brought forth the morning.
Once again from the old paintboxes
we take the same gold for scepter and crown
that has disguised you through the ages.
Piously we produce our images of you
tell they stand around you like a thousand walls.
And when our hearts would simply open,
our fervent hands hide you.
Madness – thanks Giles. What they don’t realise is that this management thinking paradigm is out of date and dysfunctional in business management itself!
Idiotic!
The church under Welby will no doubt be afraid of associating itself with God – who defies rebranding – and seek to abandon Him!
The greatest value of the C of E is that’s it’s been around for 500 years (yeah the Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Hindus beat us but 500 years ain’t bad).
Now that means being fuddy-duddies is in the job description. It’s what it says on the can. This constancy in the life of our nation is because, over centuries, the C of E has provided utility.
It is difficult to make it part of modern life but, tough, be difficult about women priests, adultery, homosexuality…
I’m no Christian and think they’re wrong on loads of things but we need the stick-in-the-muds. Just like we need the old fart drinking gin at the golf club writing to the Telegraph complaining that we’re going to hell in a handcart. Sometimes, we need friction yo makes us pause, think and develop our new ideas rather more clearly.
Without this, the C of E is a waste of nice old buildings.
I read this week about a “Rave in the Nave” at Canterbury Cathedral. Is this new thing a “New Thing”?
If the CoE is ‘loosed from its theological roots” it begs the question, what is the point of it?
I heard that the Dean and his partner could not find another suitable venue for their celebration. I gather too that the Israelites had a similar problem with the golden calf bonanza.
I think the Archbishop ‘s time in office has been and is a continuing disaster as he has presided over and actively encouraged the fragmentation of the Church. As an advocate of reconciliation and creative disagreement, he has failed both to keep the balance within the Church and to preach the Gospel, and has wasted huge sums of money in so doing.
A church is not a business nor a political party, but an inclusive and diverse community of the faithful called to be Christ’s body in world and to continue his ministry of love and service. The local do it.
I was embarrassed and shocked to be locked out of my Church during Covid, so I used the key a few times, and went in by the back door.
Are you aware of the case of Rev. Dr Bernard Randal? Rev. Dr Bernard Randall was a Church of England chaplain in a school.
He lost his job after preaching a moderate sermon where he upheld the Christian teaching on marriage and told pupils they shouldn’t feel forced to accept LGBT ideology – or any other ideology.
Even worse. He was reported by the Diocese of Derby to Prevent, the government’s counter-terrorism watchdog, and was blacklisted as a safeguarding risk to children!
Astonishingly, the Diocese argued that Bernard’s belief in the Bible was a “risk factor”.
The Church of England’s actions have robbed Bernard of the opportunity to live out his calling and minister within the CofE, also costing him his livelihood.
That was nearly 5 years ago.
Since then, Bernard has been cleared of wrongdoing by Prevent, the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO), the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA), and the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
Yet, despite upholding the Church’s own teachings, Bernard remains barred from ministering within the Church of England.
Only the CofE continues to drag its feet over giving Bernard his life back.
Excellent piece.
Just when we though ‘Consigna’ was a stupid term, another stupider one comes along.
Welby is destroying his own institution and he’s also destroying families by his support of trans guidance to children and all that rainbow nonsense. If he’s not able to steer the church in matters of morality, he might as well call the C of E ‘New Things’ because he’s not worthy of being archbishop of any proper church.
The practical upshot of which will be the full Islamisation of the UK within 100 years.