Dear Stephen
In our working relationship, I have always sought to be open and honest with you. I have also always sought to follow Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18: if you have an issue with a brother, go to him first privately, and only if he will not listen should you then go to others, and make it public.
That is why I wrote to you and spoke with you about why I could not share Communion with you in 2023. In February 2023, you stated on Radio 4 that ‘we’ now believed that sexual intimacy could take place in any relationship that was permanent, faithful, and stable, which is a clear contradiction of the doctrine of the Church of England, that ‘according to the teaching of our Lord’ marriage is between one man and one woman, and that (in repeated statements from the House of Bishops and other bodies over many years) sexual intimacy outside that was sinful.
After a number of conversations, and repeated requests by email, you finally replied, but simply to insist that these two contradictory things were in fact not contradictory—that you did both believe your statement made on Radio 4, and that you also believed the doctrine of the Church.
It felt very much as though you had to say these two things to keep happy two different groups. It would not be acceptable to orthodox Anglicans to have an archbishop who did not believe the doctrine of the Church—but it would not be acceptable to those who want to see change in doctrine for you to withdraw your previous comment. I am not sure either group thinks this is an honest position to hold.
But I am writing this open letter in response to your interview in the Church Times last Friday, since this practice of saying contradictory things was very evident there, and it sets the backdrop against which we meet this week at General Synod.
I found it curious that you quite quickly raised the question of David Tudor. You mention him as an example of the pain of living with a challenging safeguarding situations but being prevented from taking action because of inadequate processes and systems. You have said in public, and said to me in person, that you found the situation ‘intolerable’, and that ‘I did all that I could’.
But both of those are clearly not true. You say that you have ‘no recollection’ of calling him a ‘Rolls Royce priest’, but others recall this clearly. You say that you ‘did not hold him up an exemplar’, but you renewed him as Area Dean not once but twice. Diocesan documentation makes it clear that this was your own decision as bishop, and not something that was delegated. You claim that he was made a canon ‘because of a policy in the diocese’. But that was a policy you yourself introduced (and which your successor in the diocese reversed), and it would not be hard to understand the consequences of it.
Your claims that you ‘beat myself up’ and ‘deeply regret that’ are wholly unconvincing; the facts of what happened are incompatible with the claims you now make, which seem designed to protect your own reputation.
To now claim that this experience means you ‘know better than anyone’ that change is needed is quite incredible—and I suspect many would find it offensive. The idea that your failure to act in relation to David Tudor makes you uniquely qualified to lead change in the Church is extraordinary.
In relation to the bishop of Warrington, Bev Mason, you stated:
“Nobody asked or required the Bishop of Warrington, [and] certainly not me … to take some extended sabbatical leave”, adding that she said “what she needed was space”.
However, Bev herself has now made a public comment contradicting this:
I persistently sought due process to bring this matter to a conclusion. Extended study leave was suggested by the archbishop of York’s office on three occasions as a pastoral response to my formal safeguarding disclosure against the Bishop of Liverpool. At the third suggestion by the Archbishop of York, in mid August 2023, I agreed and commenced the study leave on 7th September 2023.
I understand that you have claimed that these two statements are not contradictory—which I don’t think any normal reader would accept. It seems as though one of you is not telling the truth.
In relation to the CNC process, your Times interview states:
Cottrell said he was “very aware of the power dynamics” of being an archbishop on the committee but said his role as its chairman was “to enable other voices to be heard”.
Yet three different members of that CNC have privately raised concerns that the dynamic was very different, that you used your position as chair and archbishop to push through the appointment of someone whom you had known for many years, whom you had sponsored in ministry, and whom you had appointed both as archdeacon and then as area bishop. One of them felt so strongly about it, that this person decided to share the concerns anonymously in public, believing (with the support of legal advice) that the confidentiality of the process should take second place to the very serious issues involved.
I felt I should come forward with my memories of Liverpool CNC, which has deeply disturbed me. I believe there was an abuse of process…I believe there was bullying of the elected members…[One female committee member] told us she had changed her mind during the rounds of voting. She had laid aside her concerns over safeguarding based on the guidance provided by Stephen Cottrell, and supported by Steven Croft. This appeared to me as evidence of coercion by Stephen Cottrell and Steven Croft…
It was suggested that the safeguarding issue identified regarding John Perumbalath was a basis to reject the candidate. But Stephen Cottrell urged members to keep him in the process. Steven Croft agreed … I was shocked by this attitude to safeguarding, effectively that a candidate identified as a safeguarding risk is acceptable because Stephen Cottrell says so.
Once again, your own account and the account of this whistleblower cannot both be true. One of you is not telling the truth. Actually, more than that—if what you say is true, than all three of the concerned members must, independently, not be telling the truth, despite the fact that each of them is a respected figure both within and beyond the Church. Others on other CNCs have made similar comments to me in private. Are they all lying?
I am glad that you mention the importance of transparency and accountability. But as archbishop, you have been instrumental in avoiding making the discussions of the House of Bishops over the last two years either transparent or accountable. The minutes of the last year’s meetings have just been made available—but only after repeated requests and huge pressure. And where, still, is the publication of the legal advice which you and others have claimed allows your proposals? ( I have been told that you did help the process of having minutes published—but why now, not two years ago? And why not the legal advice and other papers?)
I am glad, too, that you talk of all the good things that are happening on the ground. What you don’t mention is the extent to which local clergy and laity are discouraged, demoralised, and sometimes even in despair, at the headlines which have repeatedly mentioned both you and Justin.
The problem here is the issue of trust. We had a long, important, and challenging paper at July Synod, which seems to have disappeared from the radar, on the lack of trust there is in the Church—and in particular the lack of trust in senior leadership in the Church. The contradictions in your own statements, the lack of plausibility of your own claims, and the conflict between the claims you make and the claims of others who seem truthful all undermine that trust. How can someone whom people do not trust lead us through change?
This is most evident in your comments about the LLF process. You describe this process as if the outcome is pre-determined—that we will, in time have ‘what we now call a “bespoke service” in church, or a priest getting married to a same-sex partner’. In stating this, you are driving a coach and horses through due process; you are ignoring past legal assessments that either of these things would be ‘indicative of a departure from the doctrine of the Church’; and you are setting aside the statement made only last month from the episcopal reference group of the Faith and Order Commission (FAOC) that marriage is between one man and one woman, and that both context and content of services must be considered to ensure there is no departure from doctrine.
You say that you are committed to listening. Well, those of us who do actually believe the doctrine of the Church ‘according to the teaching of our Lord’ would like you to listen to this: we find your approach here both autocratic and patronising. Autocratic because you state you are committed to this goal regardless, and patronising because you pat us on the head with language of ‘provision for conscience’ (though I note you don’t make that allowance for future episcopal appointments). It is not our conscience that is the problem; it is yours. You seem determined to continue the splits in the Anglican Communion, and our movement away from the consensus view of the church catholic, whilst all the time talking of unity.
To push through divisive change in a dishonest way and then blame those who point this out as responsible for division is, I think, called ‘gaslighting’ (though the term is bandied about too much). But claiming that the ‘Church of Jesus Christ’ is a place where we ‘live together with conscientious disagreement’ is quite disingenuous. You assume that this issue must be a ‘thing indifferent’ (something rejected by the Bishop in Europe as chair of FAOC)—as long as you get your way. This is all about power.
In amongst all this, the comment I found most staggering was this one:
What does accountability look like? “I don’t think any of us quite know.”
Actually, quite a few people think they do know—but they can see that you do not. Every time there is an issue raised where responsibility sits with you, and with other senior bishops, you deflect it, and say it is the ‘responsibility of the whole church’. No, it isn’t. When bishops misuse power, and hide in secret meetings, and deflect responsibility, then those responsible need to be held accountable.
Clergy stipends and pension dropped by 28% in real terms over the last ten years, contributing to rock-bottom morale as well as practical hardship. Are you responsible? You sat in meeting after meeting where this reduction was approved, and never once opposed it. When my PMM was passed on this issue was passed a year ago, you came up to me and said ‘You have persuaded me.’ Why did you need persuading when you are supposed to be a shepherd to the shepherds?
Confidence in ministry has plummeted, as shown by the catastrophic fall in vocations. Are you responsible? Should you be accountable for this? A large part of the reason for this is the LLF process which you have driven through despite the uncertainty this has created.
The recent survey of attitudes has shown that confidence in the Church of England as an institution has also collapsed.
The CoE’s favorability rating dropped to 25% in a Feb. 2–3 YouGov survey of adults in England, Scotland and Wales, compared to 32% in November last year. Unfavorable views rose from 39% in November to now 49%.
This has been driven by scandals in which you are often named. Are you responsible? Will you be held accountable? Of course, we will all face judgement before God one day. But isn’t this only made real when we are accountable to one another before God?
All through the interview, you appear to be claiming that you are committed to solving the problems that the Church faces. But all through, you miss two key facts.
The first is that we don’t actually need a particular archbishop to rescue us. The changes in safeguarding, financial restructuring, youth ministry, and so on are all being led by other people. I am sure they would be glad to have the support of an archbishop, but they don’t need it. We will actually manage fine.
The second thing you miss is that, far from solving the problems, you are the problem—at least when you speak and act the way you are doing. You have been at the heart of the secrecy of the House of Bishops. You have been central in pushing through the divisive and damaging proposals to change our understanding of marriage. You have featured at the centre of the recent scandals about safeguarding, clergy conduct, and the exercise of power. How can the one who has caused these problems be the one to solve them?
What we need as a Church is a fresh honesty, openness, and integrity. We need leaders who will not hold on to power, but will step aside when trust is lost, and when they are the centre of the stories that are causing so much offence.
In your Christmas sermon, you said that
God’s Church itself needs to come again to the manger and strip off her finery and kneel in penitence and adoration. And be changed.
Yes, God’s Church does need to do this. And as part of that, we need leaders who do this themselves. Don’t just talk about humility, show us.
“God’s Church itself needs to come again to the manger and strip off her finery and kneel in penitence and adoration. And be changed.”
Bizarrely he was dressed in very expensive vestments when he said this. Sackcloth would have been appropriate. The truth is, he is not up to the job: hie is educationally and intellectually weak, managerially poor, and spiritually very compromised. He does not understand theology or the mission of the Church.
If Welby had to resign over failure to act over Smyth, a layman, Cottrell needs to resign tenfold over his actual actions concerning clergy. His judgment has been appalling.
And that’s not even taking into account his terrible mistreatment of faithful clergy in Chelmsford over the ‘Mermaids’ affair.
Indeed. Was it you who described him as the worst of all worlds: the theology of a libral and the authoritarianism of a Catholic?
Well, it certainly sounds like me!
James and Anton, Cottrell is a member of the ‘Society of Catholic Priests’, Justin Welby was the group’s patron), and he’s also a member of ‘Affirming Catholicism’. The objectives of these associations is to promote the formation and support of priestly spirituality and Catholic evangelism.
These groups are neither ‘fish nor fowl’ (well. depending on one’s spelling of the latter). They affirm modernist Christian “perspectives” on women’s ordination and sexual (im)morality, whilst “balancing” this with traditional Catholicism in matters of liturgy and theology concerning the sacraments. And, as if that’s not confusing enough, they also believe the ‘traditional’ restrictions on who may receive the sacraments (matrimony) should be “re-examined”.
How could he not be confused theologically and intellectually?
[As for the matter of David Tudor, I don’t believe it to be as straightforward as “bad” Bishop Cottrell and “good” Bishop Hartley – though being something of a maverick myself, I am inclined to agree with Bishop Hartley. There are times when vulnerable people are at risk that common-sense has to overrule procedures and legal advice ]
Well, Charles Curran, for one, would agree, as would those who see him as their hero. that the Catholic Church is “authoritarian”. Curran was removed from the faculty of the Catholic University of America in 1986 as a dissident against the Catholic Church’s moral teaching. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Curran continually taught and wrote against the church’s teaching on premarital sex, masturbation, contraception, abortion, homosexual acts, divorce, euthanasia, and in vitro fertilisation. His influence is still substantial today.
The argument goes: the Catholic Church is “authoritarian” because it is a rigid institution that relies on punitive measures to achieve conformity. Yet the reality is, it allows considerable dissent and leeway amongst theologians.
Pope Francis is considered by ‘Traditionalists” to be a liberal heretic because he is attempting to loosen Rome’s control of Catholic teaching and re-establish an earlier perceived golden era where there was said to be a greater balance between personal conscience, pastoral discernment, the sense of the faithful, and theological freedom. Sexual morality is the modern ‘battle-ground.’ In reality, all this seems to be achieving is confusion and ambiguity. Perhaps, just perhaps, earlier lay and clerical Christians, and theologians, were simply more connected with their faith and our modern, more enlightened times presents greater temptations to dissent?
Your problem is that since Catholicism freely adds further requirements of belief to scripture, it cannot appeal to scripture. Unless scripture is clearly violated, Catholics who want change can simply say “This is the next addition”.
A word from the pew – I have long thought that the episcopal dressing-up box is dusted with some kind of moth powder that addles episcopal brains. Also, at the cost of being just a tad patronising, I don’t think that many of them are particularly bright. Years ago I had a semester’s study in the Jesuit seminary in Manilla, Philippines (folk knew I was a hot prot – and were very gracious!). The quality of mind was amazing and in startling contrast to our platitudinous episcopacy.
What somebody wrote on ‘Thinking (!) Anglicans”:
“Do I understand this correctly? +Warrington has been on study leave, acting as a chaplain in Europe, for 18 months, because ++York was not willing to take action against +Liverpool despite knowing of significant safeguarding concerns?
Justin Welby resigned as ++Canterbury because he took insufficient action in respect of the disclosure of abuse decades earlier by John Smyth, who was not a priest or employee of the Church of England, where the abuse took place at a youth ministry run by a parachurch organisation that was not part of any Church of England management structure.
Stephen Cottrell has taken insufficient action in at least two cases, David Tudor who was an Anglican priest who he had authority over as a diocesan bishop, and John Perumbalath, whose appointment he played a major role in, and who he had authority over as archbishop.
Why hasn’t Cottrell resigned?”
This will obviously be the talk behind the scenes of this week’s General Synod.
Why just behind the scenes? Could a vote of no confidence (based on dishonesty and abuse of power not political positions) succeed?
As I understand the way Synod is stage-managed, no such motion would get near to being debated.
In the case of David Tudor, this is correct. In the case of John Perumbalath it is not correct. These two cases are not comparable.
That is partly to assume J Welby *should have resigned (therein lies the fallacy). It is the same fallacy as in ‘UK has abortion so for equality’s sake so should N Ireland’ – an ‘argument’ that could clearly be reversed.
Otherwise I agree.
A good piece Ian, as always. Bold, frank, factual, addressing the issues. Goodness, what a mess the CofE is in. My only hope is in the de facto third province to represent Anglicans in England well and to uphold our historical faith
Thanks. I would rather the whole Church uphold the historic faith!
It has been hard to follow – or indeed accept! – the ramifications of all the recent scandals in the Church of England, but I am grateful to you, Ian, for this and earlier posts that not only make the situation so much clearer but also challenge those in authority to face up to their failings. May those among them who have ears, let them hear!
I still remember well a Good Friday March of Witness and subsequent service in Chelmsford town centre (we were not then a city) at which the then newly appointed Bishop Stephen gave a masterly and powerful evangelistic talk. I knew that he and I would not agree on same sex relationships (although his position was not then as clear as it has become since), I knew that we would diverge theologically at some points, but I felt that here was a man whose heart for the gospel I could respect. How sad then to have witnessed the central gospel message of salvation through the ‘foolishness of the cross’ becoming distorted and undermined; in practice, despite the words of the Christmas sermon, his presentation is now shaped by power rather than being expressed through humble service.
What is it about York? Sentamu was once a man who described freemasonry as witchcraft and advocated biblical sexual morality. By the time he finished he was for same-sex civil partnerships and condoned sex before marriage as like checking out a cow before buying it!
The only way you can read this open letter is to come to the conclusion that Stephen Cottrell on a safeguarding issues alone is entirely unfit to be in the office of a Senior Bishop – and that if he continues on this trajectory he will bring down the entire House of Bishops with him and reduce that House to a pile of rubble all around him. Even Philip North with all his whimsical and rhapsodic eulogising over the “penitence of the House” must now recognise the clear direction of travel and that is one entrainment to escape from while he still has the opportunity and his integrity intact. Should Stephen Cottrell resign? Yes, because if these charges are true he is no longer fit to be in office.
I don’t think it’s a malign influence in York! Many of the current problems have their roots in Chelmsford not least the Tudor and Perumbalath sagas. For me it’s about being caught up in power structures, and we all know what Lord Acton said about power:
‘I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.’
Too negative? Too cynical? Possibly, but why did Jesus warn against seeking power?
On monarchs… it’s often missed that the National Anthem has a conditional clause in it.
..and ever give us cause to sing with heart and voice “God save the King”
Kings and Bishops should never be judged differently to the hoi polloi
Wasn’t York Minster struck by lightening in 1984 causing the destruction of the south transept? This was shortly after the consecration of David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham who denied the the virgin birth and the physical, bodily resurrection of Christ. These articles of faith were than no more “great Catholic symbols”, not historical events, and needed to be understood “in the light of the best current knowledge.”
Yes, the roof of the south transept of York Minster was wrecked by a fire which started during a thunderstorm in the small hours of Monday July 9th 1984. I have looked in the cathedral archives to check some of the wilder supernatural claims about this fire, and they proved to be nonsense. The timing remains remarkable, however, for apostate David Jenkins had been consecrated Bishop of Durham in the Minster the previous Friday.
Witnesses reported abundant lightning in the vicinity, but nobody saw the Minster get struck and in any case it had plenty of lightning conductors. But a computer simulation run in the physics department at York University showed that the electric field in the roof cavity – greater during a thunderstorm – was capable of inducing sparking in a particular junction box, which got the blame.
PS Leeds University not York, sorry.
God works in mysterious ways, if not always miraculously or directly.
When Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation in 11th February 2013 – the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes – two separate bolts of lightning struck St Peter’s. Scientists concluded that given its structure and design, if there is lightning around St Peter’s has a high chance of getting a bolt. There was more stormy activity around than is normal, so the chances of a strike were high. The event was extraordinary, not scientifically inexplicable.
On the 7th October, 2016 – the feast day of Our Lady of the Rosary, previously known as Our Lady of Victory – lightening again struck the Vatican. This was a few months after the publican of ‘Amoris Laetitia’ which called for a softening of the Church’s moral doctrines.
On 17th December 2023, lightning struck the statue of St. Peter on the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Rosary, which is located in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, the former diocese of the current Pope Francis. The lightning broke the halo on the head of the Apostle Peter and tore off his right hand holding the key, the symbol of papal authority. The incident occurred on Pope Francis’ birthday and the day before the publication of ‘Fiducia Supplicans’.
Yes, I know …..
Do you mean the announcement of the voting result for papal infallibility in 1870?
I remember the reaction of a “down to earth” young Christian to a (liberal?) lay preacher who’d said “….. and of course we don’t believe this (fire in York Minster) was the judgement of God do we?”…… “Oh yes we do!!!!”
“Do you mean the announcement of the voting result for papal infallibility in 1870?”
No, Anton. The sun came out over the Vatican, the winds stilled, and there may even have been a rainbow!
According to the book The Vatican Council: The Story Told from Inside in Bishop Ullathorne’s Letters, edited and with commentary by Cuthbert Butler, both the opening session of the first Vatican Council and the announcement that papal infallibility had been declared by majority vote took place during thunderstorms. The latter brought such darkness that Pius IX had to read by a taper lit for him.
“and of course we don’t believe this (fire in York Minster) was the judgement of God do we?”…… “Oh yes we do!!!!” “
The idea that God caused the fire in York Minster in response to the ordination of David Jenkins as bishop is risible in many ways. You really take that kind of mechanistic view of God but at the same time deny that the elements of the Eucharistic feast become the body and blood of our Lord? Please have some consistency.
If God wanted to prevent David Jenkins teaching the things that people imagined he taught – and which were mostly in their imagination anyway – then a fire in York Minster was hardly very effective.
And why choose York Minster instead of Durham Cathedral?
Why not choose the place where his confirmation of election as bishop of Durham actually took place?
Why not strike down the man himself? Or John Habgood for ordaining him?
Please give the matter just a little bit more thought than this sensationalist stuff. This isn’t The Daily Mail. Though it can often be mistaken for that approach …
I do not know, Andrew, whether the York Minster fire in 1984 was a direct act of God in relation to David Jenkins’ consecration. I have only ever said that I am not prepared to rule it out. A bit more fear of the Lord would not come amiss.
Perhaps Andrew has respect for the Lord.
A god who would smite York Minster because a bishop allegedly held certain beliefs but didn’t smite Auschwitz, is either impotent or monstrous.
Penny, do you think God can ever intervene in the world? Or are we running on clockwork?
Indeed Penny, I have plenty of fear of the Lord. I didn’t have any fear of David Jenkins, having met him a few times. Not least because he didn’t say what the media reported him to be saying. And I didn’t fear John Habgood, knowing him to be a good man also. I did have lots of fear of those who believe in the kind of God who would cause a fire in a building but does nothing to prevent torture or slaughter of the kind you identify.
Andrew, most of us know that David Jenkins said the Resurrection was NOT just “a conjuring trick with bones”. But look what else he said about it and the Virgin Birth:
https://faithroot.com/2022/12/27/a-virgin-birth-and-a-conjuring-trick-with-bones/
Apostate.
Andrew you say that David Jenkins did not say what the media believed him to be saying.
He lived a long life of 90 years! To hear you talk, you would think he only ever said one thing.
And even the one thing he is usually quoted as saying amounts to the fact that the resurrection as understood by Christians and as portrayed in the Bible would have been a mere conjuring trick with bones.
‘the claim’ not ‘the fact’
Once again Christopher you fail to address the substantive point about the fire at York Minster and ramble on about something tangential. Please address the question, if you are able.
I am one of those who feels ‘despair’ at this shambles. More energy and time seems to be spent on whether bishops should wear peculiar hats, or offer gluten-free wafers and non-alcoholic wine than the devastating ****storm of abuse. Thank you, Ian, for publishing such a thorough and incisive analysis.
Thank you. (I do think the silly hats are a symptom though…!)
Why?
The Bishop’s mitre worn in the Eastern Orthodox and Western and Eastern Catholic churches, symbolises the bishop’s authority, dignity, and holiness. It, along with the crosier, pectoral cross, and ring, represents the bishop’s role as a successor to the Apostles and a Shepherd of the flock. Presumably, this is why they’re also used by Anglican bishops.
All clerical vestments symbolise theological and spiritual beliefs. They are designed to reflect the dignity of the office and sacred action in the sacraments, and to inspire the faithful to meditate on this symbolism.
Perhaps your distain is actually symptomatic of the deepening theological, liturgical, and spiritual chaos in the Church of England. Perhaps their “silliness” actually lies in the beliefs of the beholder.
In 428AD Pope Celestine I wrote a letter to the bishops of Vienne and Narbonne in Gaul (France), castigating them for wearing fancy vestments: “We [clergy] should be distinguished from the common folk by our learning, not our garb; by our behaviour, not our clothes; by the purity of our minds, not our attire…”
At the time of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), church vestments did not differ notably from those of the laity. With the gradual change of male attire to a more convenient style, about the seventh century, the development of liturgical vestments started. The more graceful, flowing garments of earlier times were no longer desired for ordinary use, but were still retained as more becoming in the celebration of the liturgy.
So Pope St Celestine wasn’t commenting on vestments. There is no support for the opinion that the liturgical garb of the Church originated from a desire to distinguish the clergy from a “lesser” laity.
What was he commenting on then?
Anton, thanks for that quotation! I have been searching for it. I had *thought* it was said by Irenaeus.
HJ, as so often, the difference in clergy attire arises because fashion changes outside the church but remains static within.
There is then a post-hoc rationalization of the difference!
Actually, ChatGPT tells me:
The full quotation from St. Jerome’s “Epistle 52 to Nepotian” reads as follows:
“Let your garb be neither conspicuous nor slovenly. We should be distinguished from the common folk by our learning, not our dress; by our conduct, not our clothes; by the purity of our minds, not by the cut of our attire. Let the inner man be different from the common people, not the outward man. If you wish to please Christ, be content with simple clothing, and do not seek to please others by a fashionable appearance.”
I think they both commented in a similar way…
Ian,
Here is Jerome’s letter 52 to Nepotian and the passage is not included in it by any stretch of translation:
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001052.htm
Always check ChatGPT; like Wikipedia it is a good first stop but not to be relied on without verification. In fact there are decently paid work-from-home jobs going at present as AI trainers in one’s subject of expertise!
Ian, no, the Church has always sought to use any tool at its disposal to communicate the Gospel and liturgical dress is one method used.
At the time of Pope Celestine I the style of clergy and laity was that distinct as both were Roman in style. A canon of the East, the Council of Gangra (340), approves of distinct clothing as a symbol of asceticism, not grandeur: “If any man uses the pallium [cloak] upon account of an ascetic life, and, as if there be some holiness in that, condemns those who with reverence use the birrus and other garments that are commonly worn, let him be anathema.”
After the fall of Rome, the civil dress of the clergy began to differ from the laity probably because they adhered to the old Roman type of dress with its long tunic and cloak, with the laity adopting shorter cloaks and breeches like the Northern “barbarians” who were the masters of Italy. This Roman influence for clergy made spread through Western Christendom.
It’s nothing to do with grand displays of finery or wealth
And to say Catholic priests adopted distinctive dress in the 5th century to put themselves above the laity is getting it backwards. It was the laity who changed their attire to keep up with fashions. Catholic priests retained their manner of liturgical dress. Priestly vestments are stylised, secular Roman garments which have been adapted to accrue symbolic, liturgical significance over the centuries.
Sure, vestments set priests and bishops apart from the laity – and? You object to a separate priesthood in the Church. You see vestments as a way of expressing a distinction between clergy and laity. You’re correct. They do. There’s nothing wrong with such distinctions. Don’t you have three orders of ordination in the Church of England? Are they not distinct from the laity? So why make fun of your brothers and sisters who wear vestments – or is it just the bishops?
Thanks. Yes, I agree ChatGPT is wrong here. Read through the letter too.
“symbolises the bishop’s authority, dignity, and holiness.”
“It’s not what you say it’s what they hear”. How do these things speak with meaning about holiness, especially in the 21st century. Smokecreen maybe. A greater symbol might be simplicity not pomp.
I fear you’re hanging on to a questionable past. The apparel of prince’s are hardly the robes of the kingdom.
Perhaps one might adapt slightly – at least for churches with female bishops – 1 Peter 3:
Your authority should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate headgear and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy saints of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves.
Why? Because Protestant Churches like the C of E have a different theology of episcopacy.
Then why ordain priests and bishops in the way you do? There’s considerable ritual and ceremony around the “enthronement” of Church of England bishops. Should you all wear denim and trainers? And why is the Coronation service to this day so very ‘Catholic’ in symbolism and style?
Absolutely not, the C of E is a church of apostolic succession with bishops who wear mitres
Can’t wait for that to be in the Apostles Creed…
As a lay member of the Church of England I am very grateful to you Ian for your thoroughness in explaining what has been kept secret and shedding light on hidden discussion.
Safeguarding practices have much improved at basic church level over the last ten years, and now need to be applied throughout the hierarchy of the church without exception.
Hard pruning of the vine is necessary for the health and flourishing of the CofE
Thank you. Yet it is. Not just harding pruning—but cutting out rotten branches too.
What do you consider to be the rotten branches?
there might be a clue at the top of the page…
Those who are dishonest; those who claim they do and believe one thing when they do and believe another…
Like the when the Alliance letter writers said they wanted to honour “the spirit of the vote at February’s General Synod” and were definitely “not about rowing back from what was voted on”?
What was ‘voted on’ was a welcome for gay people in churches, and no change to the doctrine of marriage. So perfectly honest.
Positively Cottrell-esque
Though we need to be careful if we apply these criteria rigorously. Some ordinands and clergy knowingly take their ordination vows with metaphorical fingers crossed and then knowingly and deliberately go on to ignore aspects of theme.g. promising only to use the duly authorised forms of service in public worship. I have been to many Church of England services where that was clearly not the case, both evangelical and catholic in style. I knew of very prominent priest who remarked that being ordained a priest didn’t matter to him – what mattered was being a public minister and being a deacon was enough for that. I heard of one bishop who pledged his allegiance to the sovereign and to the historic formularies and then publicly supported republicanism. And do we demand that all clergy affirm with the BCP that baptism effects regeneration? None of which exonerates anyone who errs but we should be cautious in demanding resignations lest many others are caught by the same process, including many we might not wish to judge so decisively.
‘Though we need to be careful if we apply these criteria rigorously. Some ordinands and clergy knowingly take their ordination vows with metaphorical fingers crossed’.
Why is this good? Why not be consistent?
People should use orders of service approved; it is not hard! The difference though is that most charismatics believe the doctrine of the Church; if you use the Missal then you don’t.
And the BCP is not instrumentalist about sacraments!
Who else was in the running for the Bishop of Liverpool role? Did they choose an unsafe male over a female, for example? I’d like to know who ‘lost’ and why. This question may seem like a sidequest. However, if they preferred an unsafe male over people with better track records, then this sums them up entirely that any process is jettisoned by people like Cottrell if/when they feel like it. Any process changes, even over safeguarding, are meaningless and reduced to marketing if people are going to yeet the processes when it suits them.
basically they bullied people into voting for Cotrell’s guy, presumably because he’s liberal and this is how power patronage works, and why the bishops are more liberal than the laity
Perhaps, though the confidentiality of the process means we need to be cautious in making such a judgement. And I would assume that the members of the CNC, which is the most senior appointments body in the Church, are all people of great maturity and of independent mind who can resist pressure knowing that their vote will never become public.
Ian, I think you miss my point above. I agree it’s not hard to use authorised forms of service (with either more evangelical or more catholic outward forms and theological emphases according to taste) but many do not. Why not? They are just as much public ministers of the church as an archbishop. And I’m not condoning anything only pointing out that considerable latitude is allowed (rightly or wrongly) regarding some aspects of the teaching of the church and ordination vows are regarded lightly by some even to the extent that they refuse to acknowledge their priestly ordination. As I say, ‘we should be cautious in demanding resignations lest many others are caught by the same process, including many we might not wish to judge so decisively.’ Being rigorous across all the teaching of the church may have unintended consequences if we are consistent. Please be clear, I’m not condoning clergy publicly departing from church teaching or their ordination vows, but that doesn’t mean we’re necessarily wise to seek resignations when they do.
And we’ll have to disagree about the BCP – I think it does imply that baptism effects regeneration.
Tim, it seems the BCP and associated Homilies can be read in different ways, as can the 39 Articles.
I should imagine any of the remaining members of the Church of England who have even a passing interest in the behaviour of the church’s hierarchy must share my dismay at what they have done to our church. In my own case (here in Truro Diocese with their insane ‘On the Way’ destruction of the parish system) the destruction has as much direct application locally as it does at the national level.
Stephen Cottrell is emblematic of everything which is bringing down the church. His history in my memory starts with the appalling way he took the side of the now disgraced ‘Mermaids’ group of woke nutjobs against the Rev John Parker’s stand for biological reality (God’s creation) and child protection in Chelmsford Diocese. Clearly Cottrell was never fit to become a bishop, let alone an archbishop.
Once again it needs saying that it was through appointments rather than open examination of the church’s doctrine that Welby and his sympathetic colleagues manipulated votes and spheres of influence to achieve the fundamental shift in doctrine which the LLF project and the resulting PLF represent. Cottrell’s advancement to become ABoY – to Welby’s great public joy – was a shocking signal of the depth to which this corruption of leadership morality had sunk.
It seems to me that the members of General Synod now have a simple choice. They must either support Cottrell (and thereby take ownership of everything he has done and stands for), or they must insist that he resign as ABoY and has no further role in the church’s leadership.
It could be that this darkest moment yet in the descent of the church represents the point at which a new dawn of repentance and repair finally happens. Let us pray that it is so.
Well done.
All Christians in the UK, even if not directly connected to the CofE by partnership or covenant, have a vested interest in the church that it is considered to be representative of all of us. Yes, the problems are especially acute for clergy of all persuasions within the Anglican communion, but for those of us on the outside the failure of accountability (particularly RE safeguarding) damages us all reputationally. The average person-in-the-street does not give the distinction between denominations any consideration at all, and an apathetic or increasingly hostile culture will use as wide a net as possible in their zealous inquisition of the church.
Only a fool would think of this as just a CofE problem.
Twice over the weekend I was questioned; once by a Christian from another church, and once by an agnostic friend, about my personal responsibility for “that dodgy guy in Liverpool”, despite the fact I have never met the Bishop, have only been to Liverpool once, and I had never heard of him before this story broke. My protestations didn’t matter, as far as they were concerned we were both “the church”, and that was enough.
Cotterill must go, not just for you, not for Synod or the CofE, but for all of us. I would hope, if this situation were reversed and these were questions being asked of my Baptist family, that you would feel the same.
Blessings Ian, have courage.
Mat
Yes – Ian’s letter is indeed a clear and precise analysis.
I have had many years’ experience in senior management roles in the secular public and private sectors and have never before witnessed such a catalogue of duplicitousness — and apparent incompetence. I suspect the latter has been caused, at least in part, by the perceived need for the former, as he attempts to reconcile his perspective on marriage with the teachings of Scripture and the doctrine of the Church of England.
Agree with your comment but would point out that Scots do not consider the Church of England to be representative of all of us (Christians in the UK)
Perhaps I was unclear.
I do not think the CofE should represent anyone besides those who are members of it, or ordained to ministry within it. However, what I believe it should be and what it is perceived to be are very different things, particularly by an increasingly indifferent ‘post-Christian’ society. So I do not think the Scots feel represented by the CofE either and quite agree with you, but I suspect that our northern brothers feel the same effect of being lumped in together in other ways, assumed to be part of a larger institution.
I imagine that the feeling I have as a Baptist minister being called ‘vicar’ and asked about CofE politics by an atheist is somewhat comparable to a Cornish Separatist being asked about how much he enjoys living in London by an American. 😉
Yes, and that shows that what is actually happening is:
(1) The media, which operates with only a sketchy grasp of detail and often a secular anti-Christian outlook, provides the public with their flawed and biased perception.
(2) The public assumes that that is the way things are. How would they have time to research otherwise?
(3) Incestuously, the media then reports on a shocking dip in public image of the church.
(4) The church itself laments the same, as though it were somehow a hard datum.
Aargh!
(1) Yes, I think this is true and has been for some time. I generally try and give the benefit of the doubt and assume it isn’t intentional, but all too frequently I feel it is; a cultivated ignorance by some in the media, if you will.
(2) Again I agree with you. While my two ‘prosecutors’ 😉 in the example were wrong and badly informed, I don’t blame them for it, I do understand where they were coming from.
(3) Sex sells, or more appropriately, ‘sexy stories’ sell. “Bishop is naughty” will always sell more papers and generate more engagement than “Regular person is actually rather nice”. Bad news is better than good news, and there is a certain masochism in a lot of the reporting around religion.
(4) Which circles us back nicely to Ian’s article. Truth needs to be stood by, and lies challenged.
Stephen Cottrell graduated in Media Studies from the Polytechnic of Central London in 1979, which should have been the first red flag. He gained a certain reputation as a Catholic missioner-evangelist, which is a rara avis in that world, and no doubt gained attention for this. The C of E always likes to play a Catholic-Evangelical balancing act.
In a similar way, George Carey was besotted with Peter Ball because Ball had a ‘youth following’, a largely unknown thing in Anglo-Catholicism, and those who were at Trinity Bristol when Carey was Principal remember Carey greatly championing Ball then. Carey’s same lack of judgment became evident when Ball’s crimes were revealed.
Welby championed Cottrell, perhaps imagining that Cottrell would be the ‘Catholic evangelist’ of the C of E. Welby was also intellectually and theologically weak, and together he and Cottrell led the C of E into mid-level managerialism, aka the old boy network.
Both Welby and Cottrell believed (and may still do) that woke is the wave of the future, and this is their real ersatz theology.
James, it was Carey who as Archbishop of Canterbury imposed Tudor on the Diocese
of Chelmsford in 1997 after he had served a 5 year suspension for demonstrable sexual abuse of children. Carey also removed his name from the central list of clergy who had been subject to disciplinary action. An bewildering set of decisions!
A missed opportunity in Chelmsford arose in 2005, before Cottrell’s time, when Tudor was suspended and then reinstated after a complaint was made about his conduct in the 1970s, before his ordination. This was because no criminal action was brought against him by the police.
Cottrell grievous error was his failure to act decisively in 2012 when he was learned Tudor had paid £10,000 compensation to a victim taking civil action who alleged she was sexually abused by him from the age of 11, sometimes violently, during the 1970s. Given what was already known about David Tudor, Cottrell’s excuse that Tudor’s payment admitted no liability and that he was guided by legal advice to take no further action, is untenable and lame.
In what years did Cottrell okay Tudor for Area Dean? That was also wrong. Then there was the Mermaids disgrace, detailed hre:
https://anglican.ink/2019/06/14/a-bishop-a-vicar-and-mermaids-who-is-misleading-whom/
Oh, I’m not in disagreeing that Cottrell “makes things up as he goes along,” so to speak.
When Cottrell became bishop in 2010, Tudor was into the second year of a five-year term as an Area Dean. This was renewed twice under Cottrell – in 2013 and 2018. He could have refused to renew the term on these two occasions if, as he claims, he was in a “horrible and intolerable” situation and that it was “awful to live with and to manage”. His excuse: “No-one advised him that David Tudor should not continue as an area dean,” is lame in the extreme! By this time he was aware of the £10,000 compensation pay-out.
Tudor was also made honorary Canon of Chelmsford Cathedral. Cottrell claims it was “policy” (his policy) that Area Deans were automatically made honorary Canons. He, as the bishop with full authority, could and should have made an exception, thus signalling his concerns publicly about the “horrible and intolerable” situation he inherited.
The man’s a member of the Society of Catholic Priests and a member of Affirming Catholicism (The title ‘Catholic’ really should have been patented). Why wouldn’t he support the ‘Mermaids’? Transgenderism is a “non-essential” matter, as is homosexuality, and it is acceptable to “agree to disagree” on such issues.
Im not sure looking down on someone with a certain degree from a certain institution is appropriate or meaningful.
A well done Ian. Keep strong. Many brothers and sisters are praying for you. Blessings!
Thank you! Needed and appreciated!
COTTRELL is a symptom of a diseased church. At the global level the Church of England is finished. Most of the leaders of the Global South want nothing more to do with the CofE. It is over and done. GAFCON leaders won’t even sit in the same room with a CofE archbishop. The slow breakdown of the church with liberalism, sodomy, compromise is all part of the great Church of England death wish. The church of England is following the American Episcopal church playbook to the T. Most won’t even acknowledge it, even the conservatives. TEC split and now we have the ACNA. THE CofE can’t really split because all the levers of power are with the church and state. The CEEC can blow a lot of smoke about a parallel province but it is all smoke and mirrors. They won’t leave their properties or pensions. Ironically Malcolm muggeridge saw all this 55 years ago. He told me so. He was right and look how it has played out. No wonder he went to Rome. Short of disestablishing the church…a good beginning, the church will simply fade away, a good beginning that not even the cultural Christians who would like a semblance of the faith can stop.
ACNA has had it’s own share of abuse scandals.
Most C of E Christians don’t care less about the ‘global Anglican church’ which died with the British Empire. Most likely the next head of the Anglican communion will be rotated amongst Anglican province heads rather than always be the AofC much as Prince William has said when he is King he will rotate head of the Commonwealth amongst Commonwealth heads of state. Most English Anglicans don’t hate gays and are fine with women priests. They just want a Parish church in their area they can attend and get married and buried in. The C of E has £8 billion in assets to keep it going, just spend it at Parish level!
“God’s Church itself needs to come again to the manger and strip off her finery and kneel in penitence and adoration. And be changed.”
It was this that “got my goat”. I couldn’t believe the monstrous sidestep that this was. “Nothing to see here “… my failure turns out to be your fault!
All said ( as commented earlier) in the finery of rich robes. Robes may not be the presenting issue but they are cover which too often do actually describe the book. A renewal Servant-King type leadership would be well testified by a bonfire of these vanities.
Thank you Ian Paul… and as Don reminds… prayer for new dawn.
No robes are very much part of Bishops wear in a church of apostolic succession
Needed and appreciated.
Probity and integrity are performative and imperative.
Thank you so much for expressing so clearly what discouraged and demoralised clergy like myself are feeling. I’ve belonged to the CofE and sought to serve the Lord through it for many years but now I’m ashamed of this apostate church…. Praying for you and others who are speaking out courageously.
Thank you. Prayers needed more than ever…
If you really believe you are working for an ‘apostate church’ why are you still in it?
Thanks for your courage Ian in expressing what so many are thinking. Will be praying for you and all people of integrity at the General Synod – but I’m not holding my breath!
Thank you!
This goes beyond the CoE as Mat Sheffield points out above.
It also goes beyond the substance of LLF, of SSM/B, of safeguarding, of structure/systems: they are merely presenting issues.
A Dean of Business Studies at a Russell Group University who I know, when asked if leadership could be trained, replied that the Americans thought it could, but he didn’t think so. It was fundamentally a matter of character.
As with business studies so with Christians, or rather, as with Christianity, so in business.
Maybe, as revealed with the ABoC, so with the ABoY.
The work of former business guru, Peter Druker, also comes to mind. Do any of us fear that we have been promoted beyond our competence, ability – the Peter Principle- and stuck, with nowhere to go.
Also, the essay/lecture by CSLewis is ever prescient, ‘The Inner Ring”.
All power to you for this letter, Ian. I don’t agree with all of it, nor do I share your ecclesiology, but your integrity cannot be denied.
The disease currently infecting many Christian churches, including my own, will ultimately self-destruct. It has no long-term future. Anthropocentrism – placing man above God – is a parasite. It does not give life; it only destroys or corrupts. Like all successful parasites, it kills itself when it kills the host culture on which it feeds. It is unsustainable. It cannot survive.
As for orthodox Christians, the only thing to fear is falling into the pride of despair. We must play our part, but also pray for the gift and grace of hope and trust in God.
Anyway, more to the point, here’s a message for those resisting heresy and heterodoxy in their church:
As someone who has lived through the pain of a church split, may I say that there is a point when it becomes clear that you are expending valuable time and energy on issues that are not going to be resolved, so the only thing to do is to move on and leave them to it. This was a long post that must have taken ages to put together, but will not cause Cottrell to change his mind because his mind is bifurcated for reasons of personal survival. You have no point of common authority. The question is therefore, where next?
But for clergy that would mean loss of income and home, at one stroke. I would suggest not many are prepared to do that, understandably, especially as they believe it is the ‘others’ (reminds me of Lost – still not sure what was going on there, smoke monster?) who should leave.
Paul, you will know well, as I know well, what it means to endure things like this.
After fighting 15 years–endless hours, travel, hard work, stress on my home life–it was clear that trying to reform TEC was getting in the way of the Judgment of God.
TEC is not the CofE. The latter’s collapse is unique to an established church and the kind of church that creates a ++York (why are we using these ++ things) and projects like ‘Affirming Catholicism’ — a nutty neologism without theological content, in fact.
God have mercy on those engaged in this struggle. York needs to be called out.
But the CofE is in final innings in its present form and the grace of God is needed to show fresh paths, unencumbered by all the present miasme.
“You have no point of common authority.”
Some admission!
Well it dpeneds what is meant by authority. SCripture is authoritative for those wo confess it, and what it implies about SSM is crystal clear, but deceivers and wolves like Cottrell get into positions of power and simply ignore it. There is no authority to *enforce* scripture against an Archbishop except perhaps the Crown.
But who, in the final analysis, determines what Scripture says on any particular issue? I certainly don’t believe all those in authority supporting SSM are “deceivers and wolves”. Do you? People can honestly disagree and be wrong on Scripture’s meaning about homoerotic relationships and marriage.
Your assumption is that Scripture is sufficiently clear that every point of theology can be settled by Scripture alone. Yet the Bible is far from perspicuous. If it were, the diverse interpretations and debates about its meaning would not exist. The claim that it is so clear every point of theology can be settled by Scripture alone is not credible.
Consequently, some hold a weakened version of the claim: Scripture is only perspicuous enough that its main doctrines are clear. There are certain, central doctrines that Scripture clearly teaches (e.g., God exists, God created the world, there is only one God, Jesus is the Messiah). However, this too wrongly conveys the idea that only the clear things in Scripture are important or essential, and this is just not true.
Weakening the claim actually makes it too weak to support. One needs an interpretative authority within the Church to retain communion – not an external person or body to enforce a majority position.
It would seem God wants us to wrestle with the meaning of Scripture and have an authoritative means as a Church community to resolve and settle disagreements as new situations and new understandings develop, and to retain both unity and orthodoxy through the proper use of that authority.
God certainly wants us to wrestle with scripture. I don’t know where you get the idea from that he intends an authoritative body of believers to pronounce on its meaning for all other believers. (Actually I do know, and disagree!)
We have discussed this general issue before. But I was talking only about scripture and SSM, and Leviticus is decisive. In Cottrell’s advocacy of churchly SSM he is either ignoring scripture or lying about it; I don’t know which. (I discount the possibility that he is simply a fool.) Either way he should resign. But that would mean showing some humility and giving up the perks.
Anton, you deny Scripture emphasises the importance of Church unity as a reflection of God’s unity? That the Bible describes the Church as a Body with many members, and the unity of the Church is a picture of the unity of Christ?
Try: 1 Corinthians 1:10; Corinthians 12:12-27; Ephesians 4:5; Phil 2:5; and 1 John 4.
Then reflect on Christ’s prayer to His Father in John 17:20-23 : “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one – I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
The long-standing differences between Catholics and Protestants over the authority of Scripture and Tradition, and the authority and role of the Church, we must surely agree is unscriptural.
The Protestant movement is highly differentiated. There are Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed, Anabaptist and Pentecostal traditions. There is diversity in ecclesiology pertaining to ministry, authority and ecclesial structures, sacraments, and the nature of the Church. These traditions differ amongst themselves, some major, some minor, in their views on doctrinal issues and the interpretation of Scripture – and within them there are differences too.
Catholics and Protestants stand in opposition to each other regarding the authority of Scripture, and its relation to Tradition. There are two radically distinct alternatives: Scripture alone (with allowance for some tradition) or Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Protestants are convinced that the Bible will always be the ultimate authority in matters of faith, doctrine and practice, that the Church can and has erred, and that authority is only to be sought in the Word of God. Catholics stress the need for and the authority of the Church’s teaching office in the interpretation of the Bible – and claim Scriptural support for this.
So, we Catholics can talk of a “point of common (and consistent) authority” – Anglicans cannot.
I am not an Anglican, Jack; I take a congregation-by-congregation view of church (which I am willing to defend if really necessary) and I happen to worship in an Anglican congregation as being the best within reasonable driving distance. Nobody has asked me to swear allegiance to the bishops and archbishops and I would refuse. The vicar knows my views and I remain welcome.
Church unity is not in total doctrinal agreement but in the Holy Spirit. The Ephesians verse you cite says that. I have found it to be true in my meetings with many Christians of other traditions.
Anton, you say: “Church unity is not in total doctrinal agreement but in the Holy Spirit.” And I agree. There’s always room for uncertainty, questioning, and the development of our understanding of the Gospel as a Church body and as individuals. We are not the ‘Borg.’
I can understand and engage with arguments that ” Rome” has not followed Scripture in their doctrines, administration of the Sacraments, or disciplines. So too with the contention, to quote one of the Church of England’s homilies, “Rome” has “so intermingled their own traditions and inventions, by chopping and changing, by adding and plucking away, that now they may seem to be converted into a new guise.”
I profoundly disagree, but can engage with these positions.
What I cannot agree with is the argument we can agree on “essentials”, but we disagree on “secondary matters”, and still remain united in the Holy Spirit.
Where in Scripture do we find some doctrines listed as essential, others as secondary? Nowhere – except perhaps concerning Mosaic dietary laws very early on in the early Church. To list some examples, Protestants disagree on central issues such as baptismal regeneration and the necessity of baptism, whether or not one can forfeit salvation. They also disagree on male only ordination, on divorce and remarriage, on same sex relationships, on abortion, on IVF, on surrogacy. These are far from being minor issues.
This is not “unity” in the Holy Spirit.
Catholics and Orthodox Christians base their belief that Jesus founded a Church to have His authority and power on Scriptural passages. He gave the Church authority to interpret His teachings – i.e., God’s word – to the Apostles and their successors. It is they who were given authority to determine the canon of Scripture and to interpret this. And it is through this authority to “bind and loose” that unity in the Holy Spirit is achieved.
The early Christians passed on Tradition in oral form long before it was written in Scripture. They believed a Divine teaching authority had been given to the Church, and her leaders recognised that they were Divinely guided in a way that allowed them to pronounce authoritatively on the questions of their day.
The early Church using Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium.
Jack,
Obviously scripture does not specify whether the world is 6000 or 6 billion years old. I go for the latter but I have friends in Christ who go for the former.
Rome’s is just one of many competing opinions in regard to the interpretation of scripture. I have no problem with Rome saying it is right, for everybody believes they are right or else they would change their mind. The problem is that Rome says it *cannot* be wrong, a claim which cannot be derived from scripture and which ends all dialogue in a genuine search for what the word of the Lord is saying.
Anton, “Rome” has definitively stated the following about creation and evolution: 1) God created the universe from “nothing” (Vatican 1); 2) the human race descended from a pair of humans who were “immediately” ensouled by God (Humani Generis); and 3) all humans are descendants of Adam and Eve and inherited the wound of “original Sin” through them (Humani Generis). Outside of this framework, one is free to hold a range of opinions.
And, yes, “Rome” holds these to be Divinely revealed Truth and, because of this, holds them to be infallible.
I hold those things to be infallible too Jack, but because they are explicit in scripture. That has nothing to do with Rome.
thanks Paul. But the doctrine of the Church of England has not changed, and in fact I doubt it can change. So we will go through a withering time of strife, and in 20 years might well emerge the stronger. I don’t think it will be a short process. But God is on his throne, and is at work in England in some parts of the C of E and in many parts of other denominations.
Ian, you seriously maintain: “the doctrine of the Church of England has not changed”?
The Church of England’s doctrine is found in the Thirty-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, the Books of Homilies, and the Ordinal – being ” grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures.”
In 2014, the Church of England’s General Synod voted to change its canons to allow both women and men to be ordained as bishops. This most certainly was a radical change of doctrine. This followed a century-long theological debate about the nature of women, the Church, and God. Ultimately, it led to a rejection of the “teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church” based on a reinterpretation of what was “agreeable to the said Scriptures”.
This debate and process of change and revision hasn’t concluded – but broadened.
If you examine the reasons – secular developments and theological reasoning – and the processes, pressures and arguments behind this substantial change of doctrine, and then compare this to the SSM debate starting in the 1970s, it’s quite clear that the doctrine on marriage and sexuality can and may very well change. No doubt a ‘sticking-plaster’ be applied initially, “to avoid occasions of strife (and) to seek in penitence and brotherly charity to heal such divisions.”
The Church of England opened the door to a progressive hermeneutic that has now predictably spread and infected other teachings, particularly those condemning homosexuality and marriage. The demonstrable history of all this is the advancement of the hermeneutic of “progressive inclusivity.”
The Church of England’s doctrine on contraception changed in 1930 – in limited circumstances. It also changed on marriage in 2002, permitting divorce and remarriage in exception circumstance. However, it still maintains the “ideal” is a lifelong union between a man and woman intended to be a relationship that leads to the procreation and care of children.
The door has been opened by these three changes in doctrine.
Why not consider the sociological changes in society concerning homosexuality, and a “new understanding of sexuality” from the perspective of science and human lived experience? Why not reconsider the mysterious metaphors in Scripture concerning marriage as symbolising Christ and His Church? Why not accept Matthew 19:4-6 as an internal Jewish debate on divorce (as has already done) and permit same-sex faithful, committed, monogamous relationships? After all, “it is not good that the man should be alone.” Should we focus exclusively on genitals and one tiny chromosome, given the Church of England already separates sex and procreation by permitting artificial contraception?
Thanks for pointing these changes out. Of course, if we designate them as ‘developments’ then we can change without changing, which is how other churches get around this conundrum. As Diarmaid MacCulloch has pointed out, one of the reasons for the amazing success and variety of Christianity is precisely its ability to flex according to time, place, culture and the vagaries of power. All churches do actually change, but some deny it. Probably the Orthodox get closest to avoiding change. The Roman Catholic Church will, I’m sure, one day move to the acceptance of women’s priestly ministry. A Roman Catholic friend told me 30 years ago that the theology has been worked out but the hierarchy won’t move on it yet. Far more difficult would be abandoning of clerical celibacy for all priests: although it’s not a doctrinal issue it will never change IMHO because of the pragmatic challenges it would bring.
Tim, what I’ve posted is self-evident, but you interpretation of my comments is fundamentally mistaken.
The changes in Church of England doctrine were not “developments.” They were radical disruptions that contradicted past teachings. Teachings most certainly can and do adapt in their presentation according to changing contexts. And understanding of Scripture also develops. They cannot be reinterpreted or altered as definitive theological and Sacred Tradition cannot change. It’s the same with the Orthodox Church. What you describe as the “amazing success and variety of Christianity,” is, fact, disunity and reflects a rupture of Christianity from its Biblical and Patristic roots.
And I dispute your friend’s predictions. The heterodox and heretical foundations lain in the 1970s have been and will continue to be, resisted and will not bear their poison fruit. Women’s ordination has been firmly, definitively, and infallibly rejected; as has divorce and remarriage, artificial contraception, abortion, and same sex homoerotic relationships. True, attempts are being made to make greater “pastoral allowance” for these. The battle-ground centres on natural law and replacing this with “lived experience” and “inductive theology.”
Incidentally, I have no great issue with permitting priests to marry. I wouldn’t support it, but neither do I see it a deal breaker. It’s not a doctrine, it’s a discipline, and there’s already provision for this discipline to be relaxed.
If you begin with a pre-ordained end in view, it is easy to work out a theology. The trouble is that it is dishonest to begin with a pre-ordained end in view, because the process of investigation concerns what the end should be. That is why it is called a ‘conclusion’. If it fails to come at the end of investigation, but comes earlier, you can bet your bottom dollar that it is no conclusion at all, just what the investigators would prefer to be the conclusion.
“Why not consider the sociological changes in society concerning homosexuality, and a “new understanding of sexuality” from the perspective of science and human lived experience?”
Much the same happened with regard to the foundational doctrine, in the words of God himself, that in six days God created the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. The Church chose to follow ‘the perspective of science’ rather than Scripture. A bad choice, seeing that the facts science deals with in no way run counter to what God said.
I Cor 3:18-19.
The turmoil that the Church of England has been going through on all matters to do with sexual difference, marriage and women’s ordination is simply an outworking of that willingness to reject the truth. With the foundation gone, the whole edifice crumbles.
Steven R, I’m aware of you views on this following your discussion with Anton. Suffice it to say, I disagree.
The Catechism, approved by St John Paul,by no means a ‘progressive’, states:
There should be no contradiction between science and Scripture. A good example is the development of modern knowledge about conception processes and the development of human life in the womb. This moved the Church on from scientifically fruitless theological debates about “the seed” and “ensoulment.” If anything, it has confirmed constant Catholic teaching. Another example is research into human agency, compulsions and addictions, and also societal influences and pressures. This has helped us be better understand objective and subjective culpability for sin and develop pastoral sensitive approaches and support. Again, Catholic doctrine developed, it didn’t changed.
Physical and social science research, if conducted properly, cannot contradict Divine revealed truths. The Church therefore has a responsibility to consider such research and sift through it. If anything, we’re privileged to live in an age when the truths of Scripture are being confirmed by unbiased science that’s pushing us to a greater appreciation of the majesty and beauty of God’s creation and the limits to human freedom unaided by the gifts of faith and grace.
Ultimately “good” scientific research and Divine revelation cannot contradict one another.
I don’t think you read my comment properly. I wrote: ‘The facts science deals with in no way run counter to what God said.’ Consequently quoting the Catechism is not to the point, even supposing it had some divine authority.
Of course there should be no contradiction between science and Scripture, but you seem not to recognise that ‘science’ is a slippery word. It is easy to be deceived by authoritative-sounding voices (there are, after all, many similarities between Science as a hierarchical, ideological institution pronouncing on what is creditworthy and certain brands of Religion) into thinking that whatever scientists say is fact really is fact. In fact, when it comes to questions of reality and the origin of the material world and the nature of life, Science is an ideology.
To imply that I was advocating some sort of disconnect between faith and reason is, frankly, inane. How could that be a line to take? That ultimately “good” scientific research and Divine revelation cannot contradict one another is, for a true believer, only the most basic truism.
The point is, to repeat, that the Church is in a state of apostasy, denying God the Creator. In the name of a false belief system (‘Science’) it has rejected God’s own testimony that he brought heaven and earth into existence by his word of power. For those tempted to impart some novel meaning to the word create, he explicitly says that he created both heaven and earth ‘in the beginning’, ‘in six days.’
I doubt whether you are familiar with the literature, but geologists and palaeontologists never argue, on the basis of their work or as the framework within which they operate, that the earth was created. They would lose their jobs. Science as ideology is opposed to creation. Conversely, Christians who try to turn the ‘days’ into ‘aeons’, don’t realise that they are choosing the worst of both worlds: not only calling God a liar and his Son a liar, but also supposing that the earth was in existence aeons before the sun, and plants in existence at least one aeon before the sun.
Clergymen and laymen alike are used to such dishonesty. They live with it and excuse it, even theologically excuse it. It’s part of modern Christian culture. A compact of tacit infidelity that everyone goes along with. When ordinands do not uphold the doctrine of the Church of England in certain key areas, they are being no more dishonest or, shall we say, inconsistent in those areas than everyone is in ignoring what Scripture says concerning the origin of the universe and life itself.
A lot of disapproval has been expressed about Cottrell’s dishonesty. And rightly. The dishonesty itself is far worse than any perceived failures of safeguarding. But the root of the turmoil is the dishonesty in dealing with Jesus’s question:
“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?”
Have you yourself not read that?
Steven Robinson, if I have misrepresented you, apologies.
From what you’ve written previously, I understood you read Genesis as scientific, factual history, not as sacred truth written in the genre of poetry. That you deny evolution, and a 14 billion year old universe with the first humans evolving some 2 million years ago.
What you’ve described is “scientism,” (the ideology that only the only reliable source of truth is the empiricism), not science as I attempted to present it.
In the area of evolution, for example, science seeks natural causes for natural effects, which, when successful, develop laws about the physical operation of nature. This exercise, in itself, is neutral with respect to God existence or non-existence. The enemy of truth is ‘evolutionism.’ and philosophical ‘naturalism,’ ‘materialism,’ and ‘reductionism.’
Spot on, Jack.
How can Genesis be ‘sacred truth’? Your view is that it is sacred falsehood. Every specific thing it says is ‘scientifically’ false, according to you, from the existence of the earth from day one to the creation of the sun after earth’s vegetation and the completion of the whole sequence within seven days, at the very beginning of time. I put the adverb in quotes because actually science in the domain of origins is about historical reconstruction on the basis of no God and no reality other than physical reality, i.e. atoms and molecules. ‘Science’ is a misleading term. You have merely aligned your view with atheistic naturalism, and, as I said, made out Jesus to be a liar.
To say that Genesis is written in the genre of poetry, I regret to say, is falsehood of the same order, and makes two category errors: (1) Gen 1-2 do not have the hallmarks of Hebrew poetry, as both translators and most Hebrew commentators recognise. (2) Hebrew poetry is not like European poetry, a medium for imaginative fiction. When God speaks in poetry to Isaiah and Jeremiah, speaks about Israel’s spiritual state and its impending judgement, he is not to be understood as speaking falsely, to be interpreted however one fancies. I also need to point out that Jesus, who affirmed and reiterated the historical veracity of what Genesis says in its first two chapters, also did not speak in poetry.
Yes, I certainly deny a 14 billion year old universe with the first humans evolving some 2 million years ago. What has that got to do with creation? What has that got to do with what Genesis says about our origins? As for evolution, what does ‘deny evolution’ mean? I have purposely said nothing about that, focusing on what God says. It is, in fact, obvious to any informed person that Earth history has witnessed a great deal of evolution.
Steven Robinson,
I actually meant that Jack was spot-on about scientism, the mistaken view that science is all there is. I agree with *you* that Genesis is factual account rather than poetry (although you don’t think I do). I disagree with you that science, rather than the humanities, are the root source of secularism. A study of the history of the Enlightenment movement would suffice to settle that.
Anton/Stephen, “poetry” was the wrong word.
Genesis is both real and symbolic. It is real in describing events that truly took place, but symbolic in that it does not recount an exact scientific and historical rendering of these events.
The author of Genesis uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event that took place at the beginning of the history of man. It’s not a text of physics or biology providing a scientific understanding of mankind and the world. It is a work of theology focusing on the “who”, “why”, and “what” of creation – not the “how” – written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
In the opening book of Genesis we discover an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving, eternal, and infinite God who creates freely according to His Divine wisdom, motivated by Love. We learn His creativity has order, design, uniqueness, and purpose.
I see no incompatibility between the truths of faith and the truths of science. How do I reconcile Scripture with the scientific theories of “Big Bang” and “evolution”? A theory is a statement, or “story,” which seeks to explain a set of phenomena. Just as Genesis is a story– albeit inspired by the Holy Spirit– which presents truths of God’s creativity. The Big Bang coupled with evolution form a story or theory posited to explain scientific evidence surrounding creation.
Where I diverge is that these scientific theories can be understood as creation being driven by chance, error, and dissonance, In this they go too far. This is what I meant by using the terms: “scientism,” “evolutionism,” “naturalism,” “materialism,” and “reductionism.” There is no science that can rule out a reasoned, ordered, designed progression of creation and evolution initiated and overseen by a Creator.
As I’ve posted before:
Jastrow was a man of science, an astronomer and planetary physicist. He moved from agnosticism towards theism as a result of his research. In an interview with Christianity Today, he said:
HJ, all that is beside the point. That Genesis is not a ‘scientific’ account, that it is not explaining radiometric dating methods or discussing the latest ideas about when plate tectonics began or how life assembled itself from amino acids in a shallow warm pond, is so blindingly obvious as to be the totally silly. It’s a straw man. Genesis 1 purports to be a historical account. Amongst all the huffing and puffing, you’re just saying Genesis 1 is a pious myth.
Consequently, your attempt to reconcile it with piety cannot but be itself pious falsehood. “In the opening book of Genesis we discover an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving, eternal, and infinite God who creates freely according to His Divine wisdom, motivated by Love. We learn His creativity has order, design, uniqueness, and purpose.” We discover nothing of the sort, precisely because, according to your own view, everything that Genesis says is historically false. You are just reading into the text the attributes of God that you read about in other parts of Scripture that you do accept as historically true.
There is no ‘figurative language’ in Genesis. Like your characterisation of the text as ‘poetry’, that is a baseless assertion – something you must have learned from and are just repeating from other apostates that seek to reconcile the irreconcilable.
To repeat – for this is the crux that you and Anton constantly fail to address. In Exodus 20:11, God says directly: “In six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” This too is not poetry, this too is not figurative language. It is God making a historical, factual statement, and in rejecting it you are treating God as a liar.
It’s the same with Mark 10:6, in the New Testament. Jesus expressly says: “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ” You are making Jesus Christ, the Word of God, through whom all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, to be a liar.
The dishonesty is not on God’s part, it’s on yours. One can disapprove of the dishonesty of the archbishop and of all the other clerics who make vows but do not honour them, but whoever says “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible” and actually thinks that Genesis 1, Exodus 20:11 and Mark 10:6 are false is guilty of the same dishonesty. You have all got used to playing fast and loose with the whole notion of what is true and not true. You no longer know the difference.
Steven Robinson, you write:
this is the crux that you and Anton constantly fail to address. In Exodus 20:11, God says directly: “In six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” This too is not poetry, this too is not figurative language. It is God making a historical, factual statement
I have not failed to address it. Indeed have addressed it explicitly. But you just ignored my response. Was that because you were unable to rebut it? I pointed out the ambiguity of the word YOM in Hebrew, as meaning ‘era’ (e.g. Job 15:23 & 18:20) as well as 24 hours, and asked which meaning was meant in Genesis 1. In reply you claimed that whenever YOM was preceded by a number it refers to 24 hours. I said that this was never a principle of Hebrew grammar and that the sentence “in Israel’s first era in the Promised Land it was governed by Judges, then in its second era by kings and in its next era by priests” could perfectly well be rendered into Hebrew, with ‘era’ being YOM. That would contradict your assertion. You never responded.
I even offered to discuss the evening/morning phrases in Genesis 1 as the next step, but you didn’t take me up on them.
It’s the same with Mark 10:6, in the New Testament. Jesus expressly says: “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ”.The dishonesty is not on God’s part, it’s on yours. One can disapprove of the dishonesty of the archbishop and of all the other clerics who make vows but do not honour them, but whoever says “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible” and actually thinks that Genesis 1, Exodus 20:11 and Mark 10:6 are false is guilty of the same dishonesty. You have all got used to playing fast and loose with the whole notion of what is true and not true. You no longer know the difference.
You need to decide whether you are playing to the gallery or having a conversation with me. If the former, judgemental rhetoric is appropriate. If the latter, it isn’t. You seem to be alternating, which will convince nobody of anything.
Anton, it’s clear, with your insistence that yom means ‘era’, your whitewashing of ‘create’ and deletion of ‘in the beginning’, that you don’t know how language works. Jehovah’s Witnesses retranslate the Bible in accordance with their Jesus-demoting theology. You have your own retranslation of the Bible to accord with the world’s determination to get rid of God the Creator. In the process you demote Jesus as well, since he affirmed all that I have put to you, and end up with a sequence of events that any Earth scientist or cosmologist would laugh at: planet Earth and its vegetation in existence aeons before the Sun. You also undermine the gospel, which begins with the fact that God created all things (Rom 1:20, Acts 17:24, Rev 14:6-7). Like Jehovah’s Witnesses, you cannot be reasoned with, so I leave you to it. In the context of the overall discussion, you espouse the very anti-creation world-view that has led to the chaos in the Church and world today.
Steve Robinson,
People resort to insult and assertion when they run out of argument.
I am sorry to add a voice of discontent to this echo-chamber. Sir, I want to say that this open letter is tantamount to on-line bullying and is utterly unacceptable and a stain on you and on the church . Shame on you for playing this dirty game. This is shabby gamesmanship . You are not without sin – and yet you seek to hang a church leader out to dry in this vile and contemptible way?
Here is the thing.. ++ Stephen is one of the finest priests I have ever had the honour of encountering and working with. He is a finer mind, a finer practical theologian and finer evangelist and pastor than I have ever encountered in parish life and the wider church. Yes – he has made mistakes – but you seek to set up an on line pseudo law court, with selected evidence, to try and bring him down with this letter? For what purpose? At the heart of it – you hate that his theology is different. You hate that he is probably – as you say without saying – pro LLF and pro same sex relationships. But the manner of your dissent is so divisive and so un-cooperative and un-collegiate – and fundamentally un-synodical – as to make me think that you either want to drive the Archbishop into the ground (you probably think he is going to hell) or out of office. Personally, I would rather a Cof E with him at the helm than to be in a church with you in it.
Worse than all of this. The church needs to galvanize and heal and sort out its safeguarding and protect victims of yesterday, today and tomorrow – and yet you choose to post this? With no reference to victims and survivors? I am gob-smacked by your sinful post.
PS this comes from a survivor – but you don’t really care about that.. as long as the church theology aligns with yours.
PPS A couple of months ago a former leader of the CofE was branded as being tone deaf. You have outclassed him in this regard bewilderingly.
Thanks for expressing your view. But where is my evidence selective?
Once one has exhausted the appropriate personal and confidential channels, this is the only way. Jesus appears to recommend it. I know many people don’t like the New Testament principles of church discipline, but there they are. I suspect that you see Cottrell as a beacon-bearer of values you treasure, and that is why you approve of him. I know nothing about you, but your letter suggests this. It would be interesting to know what you consider sinful and virtuous, It possibly differs from that of others. If this letter is sinful, then many New Testament writings are also sinful,
This sounds like applauding the arsonist and prosecuting the man who sounds the alarm!
Indeed. Thanks.
“I could not share Communion with you in 2023.”
It’s always interesting to see where people draw this particular line. Archbishop Welby took a very generous view: he thought those who advocated for same-sex marriage, and those who advocated for killing gay people, were both acceptable communicants. For my part I’ve never understood those who declare themselves out of communion with their CofE bishops because they consider them beyond the pale, but are quite happy to stay in communion with bishops like Archbishop Kaziimba.
In all the fury and rage around the Archbishops, I worry we are falling (again) into a trap of believing that trust is solely a thing provided by the leaders, in this case the bishops, and nothing to do with the rest of us (who are merely trusting or not). We miss that a good deal of trust breakdown has come from people who are not the bishops. To take the Smyth case that swept away Archbishop Welby, if we think the only people who eroded trust are found in the House of Bishops or Lambeth Palace, we are kidding ourselves.
“I could not share Communion with you in 2023.”
Thank you Adam for raising the questions that you do.
The decision to not share communion over a particular issue declares that there is a gradation of sin that doesn’t quite add up. And that decision is in itself a supreme form of self righteousness that the gospel says a thing or two about.
It is the host of the feast who knows the secrets of our hearts and will know who is ‘in communion’ with whom. To make that decision oneself is pretty arrogant.
No, Andrew, it is a decision that Jesus and others in the New Testament call us to.
When leaders in the church are causing scandal and harming the cause of Christ, it is arrogant to do nothing.
“When leaders in the church are causing scandal and harming the cause of Christ…”
Which is I’m afraid what you and others of your ilk are doing. And why I’m glad to be out of it.
If you had integrity you would suspend your membership of the Archbishops Council and, like others with some decency, call for it to be disbanded
What a strange non-sequitur.
Feel very free to lead an exodus of pro-SSM ministers out of the CoE.
A strange non sequitur if you have become blind to the abuse of the AC. Not strange at all to others I have spoken with.
Very odd if you really think Ian is causing scandal and harming the cause. I can just imagine what all the atheists and agnostics think when watching C4 News – oh clergy are abusing kids again, and the church authorities are turning a blind eye, again. No surprise. Hypocrites the lot of them.
That is what is causing the scandal and harm.
I draw the line at basic dishonesty, manipulation, and denial of the doctrine which someone publicly vowed to uphold.
Adam, do think these things should just carry on unremarked in national church leaders?
Dishonesty and manipulation is rife, but you only seem to see it when it’s convenient for attacking the bishops you happen to dislike. There’s a lot of planks in a lot of eyes.
We’ve been around the doctrinal point several times before. But to repeat again, I find it remarkable that we can change our views on contraception, on divorce and remarriage, on the ordination of women, and none of that counts as a change in doctrine that obliged its advocates to resign. Nor apparently do debates about infant baptism, lay presidency, real presence in the Eucharist etc.. And I find the implications of this disturbing. Firstly, it suggests that change cannot come from Synod (because the bishops and clergy are obliged by their vows to never reconsider this question) and that the question really ought to punted to Parliament. Secondly, it implies that the creeds are not the real creeds, but instead the true creed is a somewhat hidden articulation of sexual ethics that our congregations have never actually recited or being invited to affirm at baptisms or confirmations.
None of those things is about blessing something for which Mosaic Law commanded the death penalty.
Anton, is your parameter for orthodox Christian doctrine really as narrow as “something for which Mosaic Law commanded the death penalty.”? That anything outside of this is permitted – divorce and remarriage, male ordination, abortion, polygamy, lesbianism? Or does it just apply to male homoerotic relationships that involve sodomy?
Of course that’s not my only criterion, Jack. But it is certainly a strong one.
Sorry, are you suggesting that infant baptism, real presence in the Eucharist, ordination of women, divorce and remarriage, etc. really are minor matters compared to same-sex relationships and marriage which ought to be elevated in importance above them?
AJB: No.
Then what did you mean by “None of those things is about blessing something for which Mosaic Law commanded the death penalty”?
Anton, so what are the others?
The church’s definition of right and wrong in interpersonal relations ought to match that in scripture. That is very important.
You do realise that although you think your views match Scripture, I also think my views match Scripture, don’t you?
Yes! I won my bet with myself about what the points-scoring answer would be. Now we are all truly edified.
Always happy to discuss the scriptures, AJB. Where shall we start?
Romans 13?
Go ahead! I guarantee to respond.
It is either
a) the CoE is utterly incapable of having a serious and searching conversation about sex and sexuality.
b) this is simply a presenting issue to identify those who are ‘unsound’, ‘apostate’, ‘tainted’, or otherwise unsaved – in order to create a church of ‘true believers’. An awful lot of hedges have been planted in the last few years to keep the undesirables out.
The CoE has been having this discussion for 30 years now. The problem is with those who will not take scripture’s No for an answer.
Hi Penny,
… incapable because it’s trying to square a circle? That’s the fundamental presenting issue.
I would suggest that this outcome (mess) was hardly unpredictable. Some folks may have learned through the process but simply better establishing the position of someone we disagree with isn’t the same as changing minds.
Ian
But, as Adam asks, why this presenting issue?
Leaving aside ‘apostate’, ‘tainted’, ‘unsound’, who would count as actually being apostate, tainted, unsound?
“who would count as actually being apostate, tainted, unsound?”
Given some of the really odd things you say in this and other places Christopher, you could be a candidate yourself? Or do you rule yourself out because you went to Harrow/went to Iwerne camps/attended a good university/got a Ph.D/find various sexual practices disgusting/never stop going on about the latter ad nauseum…etc etc
Anton
I think it’s more that most of the church doesn’t have the biblical appendix “things Jesus meant to say”
Christopher
That’s quite clear:
Me, Andrew Godsall, A.J.Bell, Pete Jermey, Jonathan Tallon, David Runcorn, Stephen Cottrell, Robert Thompson, Charlie Bell, Chrissie Chevasutt, Richard Peers, Molly Boot, Sally Barnes, Helen King … all delightfully, unrepentantly unsound.
Anton. I’d say the central issue is the doctrine of Scripture alone and its associated belief in the perspicacity of Scripture.
Yes! I won my bet with myself about what the points-scoring incisive answers would be. Now we are all both edified and fulfilled.
Thankfully knowing 4 facts about someone is enough.
Why have vows that are not vows? The initiation is, at inception, open to lies and dishonesty to even gain entry to ordination let alone perpetuated into higher offices such as Bishop.
The creeds are distinct, as is well known, from sexual ethics.
And this whole opening- up is more than the presenting issues. The whole systemic processes have been well and foresically examined in Andrew Goddard’s many articles.
Trust, probity, integrity in the CoE leadership and in systematic applications, is chronicled, questioned, brought into the light, into accountability.
Why is it so difficult to denounce, renounce the, opposite? In a word, to repent, to turn away from such.
The problem is that such seems to be embedded in the CoE, outside the Vine of Christ, and the person who is Truth and our thrice Holy God.
Although as I find myself often pointing out, Goddard gives a partial and one-sided account.
AJB,
If you claim that there is or has been lack of probity, integrity in the advocacy of orthodoxy, in resisting, the burden of proof is yours not Andrew Goddard’s. Mere repetition does not invert the burden, nor substantiate your claim.
You have had much time to put down details.
So much so, that it appears this unsupported claim is little but vexatious in its reiteration.
Because sharing communion with those who advocate the death penalty for gays is clearly more acceptable than sharing communion with gays themselves (or even those who support gays having access to sacraments).
Spot the straw (wo)man let alone the disregard of the actual answer.
A methodology that evidences a mendacity, it seems. Any link there, to a certain branch of heterodox, liberal, an ilk?
Where conceding is seen as a weekening
Penelope
Anglicans in the wider communion advocating the death penalty for homosexuality is a hangover from the days when as an established church the Church of England supported such a death penalty in English law – the last such death in England was I believe in 1861. That is to say, it’s part of the unChristian chaos resulting originally from the time during the 4th century CE when the Roman Empire ‘hijacked’ Christianity as the imperial religion, leading to a considerable distortion of the faith. Anglican establishment is a major part of that distortion, and aspects of that distortion continue to affect the wider Anglican communion.
One way of looking at this – which should worry those of a liberal persuasion – is that such things happen when people think they know better than the Bible, which in this case teaches a very different way for Jesus’ people to relate to state authorities. To clear up these distortions one should follow the Bible’s teaching. Including in ths case following the biblical teaching about homosexuality rather than extra-biblical human opinions …..
You as I understand an Anglican perhaps ought to consider why you belong to a church in major disobedience to God ….
It’s certainly a hangover from colonialism.
For liberals, every conversation ends up at colonialism or feminism or relativism within a couple of moves.
Christopher
Have you, as a thinker, thought why that might be?
Best take your cispatriarchal, heteronormative blinkers off first!!
Or the Law of Moses.
Alas, yes. The Bible speaks very sternly against heteronormativity. And has many paragraphs on cis-. Or something. God forbid that anyone in any age or realm should have different thought-fashions or concepts than those of the present hour.
Yes scripture does interrogate both heternormativity and colonialism.
Not univocally of course. But in some texts. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed.
I found both in the concordance, just as you often point out how often ‘homosexuality’ appears there.
Stephen Langton,
1861 is when anal sex ceased to be a capital offence under English law, in a revision of the Offences against the Person act. The last executions were in 1835, of James Pratt and John Smith; google their names together and you will find much about the case. Other homosexual acts became legal in 1861 until the ‘Labouchere Amendment’ in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Many English homosexuals in the 19th century moved to France, where homosexual acts had been legal since the Revolution.
In 1957 the Wolfenden Report urged that private sex acts between two consenting adult men be lawful in England, as in France. In 1967 this change was made; in Scotland in 1980; in the Irish Republic, in 1993. John Wolfenden, whose son was homosexual, wrote after the Moral Welfare Council of the Church of England, albeit against homosexuality, asserted that sexual morality was a matter for the church, not the law.
And it wasn’t a capital offence until 1533.
That year is when Henry VIII moved trials for anal sex from ecclesiastical to secular courts and demanded the death penalty for it (in the Buggery Act 1533). But what had been the usual penalty in ecclesiastical courts before then?
Well, it couldn’t have been the death penalty.
And I think it was Cromwell.
Couldn’t it? Plenty of protestants were condemned in the ecclesiastical courts under Henry VIII and handed over to the secular arm for burning.
Far from that, it is highly likely instead that they do not accept that ‘gays’ is the accurate term for what they are talking about nor that it would be a coherent term even if it were.
You are simply forcing others to see the world your (no, your culture’s) way. On what authority?
On the reality of queer folk existing.
If you want to pretend they don’t, close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears. But don’t try to impose your fantasy ideologies on others.
Go back and read. I said that I disagreed on the description/designation (because of inaccuracy and incoherence), whereas you compelled your own chosen description on others.
No-one is remotely disagreeing on whether individuals exist.
Accord has broken out! We agree that gay people exist.
We know your game. Trying to get it to seem that I am agreeing wit you when you know I am not. Lying, in other words.
To say that you agree an individual exists is one thing, and it is something that you inevitably WILL agree on. Whereas to say that you agree on a designation for that individual is quite another, and inevitably far less likely.
Which is the point I have already made twice but your level is not to be able to understand things after three *plus?) tries that others understand after one.
You are better than for every conversation of yours to degenerate into triviality and one liners. Nuance, analysis and argumentation are the currency of those who do love truth, so what are one liners?
Christopher
I’ll stop being glib when you are
a) consistent
b) nuanced
c) truthful
People of integrity would never think of being glib in the first place.
As to consistency, nuance and truth, those are the three things I already vocally recommend, and attention to them is the reason why some of my comments are quite long.
Secondly, people of integrity would no have tit for tat (‘I’ll do this only if you do that’ – usually found among schoolchildren) as their priority. They would, quite the contrary, delight in the three things named above.
Sharing communion or not.
In a church I was part of one person refused communion (based on scripture) as he had an unresolved issue with another who was a de-facto lay leader in a local methodist chapel. It was personal, had nothing to do with a so called gradation of sin. I knew them both. It was an unresolved disagreement and ultimate unresolvable. One left, the other died.
A graphic illustration would be in some Anglican services a sign of peace of invited. There would have been no such thing between them.
This would be why I think sharing the peace is such an important part of the Eucharist service, and congregations that try to minimise it are missing out. Of course in your example, the person who couldn’t share the peace denied himself communion rather than insist on trying to throw the other person out…
How do you know that?
He had scriptural integrity. Would that more of us had at communion services. It is little wonder that the sharing of Peace is so disliked in some churches. It is shines a spotlight on all involved.
There was no gradation of sin nor arrogance involved, that you attribute to Ian Paul.
I’d attribute integrity to him.
You said he refused communion. I took that to mean he did not take communion himself. Did you mean something else?
Public confidence in the church is based on generalisations they hear from the media (who are no friends of the church and hold secularist presuppositions).
So it is a truism that if the media make a sally, the public will follow their lead. Neither group has researched sufficiently for their opinion to be worth much, and the former has other agendas too, which have a knock on effect to the latter.
Sometimes two things can be compatible or both true for reasons which have not yet occurred to us.
The doctrine thing is clearly a case of having one’s cake and eating it; therefore of both dishonesty and man-pleasing; therefore of disqualification for office.
And, yes – who are ‘we’? Clearly Jesus, the apostles and saints are excluded from ‘we’, together with natural law, and the church historic and international.
If John Bunyan’s dramatis personae of the cast of the town of Fair Speech is an allegory of the CofE there is historic precedent for anglican dignitaries who are economical with the truth. (See https://www.ccel.org/ccel/bunyan/pilgrim.iv.vii.html second paragraph onwards)
My Lords Turn-About, Time-Server, and Fairspeech, are clearly Bishops (the inclusion of Lady Feigning might suggest the gift of prophecy), while hotly-tipped candidates for preferment are Messrs Smoothman, Facing-both-ways, Anything, and Two-Tongues, not to mention Bye-Ends (Ulterior motives) himself. Bye Ends sets out a sure method of gaining social advancement, learned from his grandfather who had been a humble waterman: looking one way and rowing another. He attributes his own success in social climbing to always having “the luck to jump in my judgement with the present way of the times, whatever it was.” Later, his lifelong friend, Mr Money-Love, gives shrewd advice to ministers who scruple over compromise. In superficially eirenical but nauseating language, By-Ends and Money-Love, along with their friends Hold-the-World and Save-All, plead with Christian and Hopeful to remain in fellowship with them but separation is inevitable. More prophecy?
Thank-you for this, Ian.
Although I would like the Church to embrace gay couples (I am neither Conservative nor Evangelical – though I aim to be evangelical), this piece – as so much of your writing – rises above the doctrine that separates us to speak to the whole Church.
And you have the ability to unite us as you speak straight to the heart.
Laura Sykes (formerly Lay Anglicana)
Dear Laura, thank for you kind and encouraging comments.
I feel very concerned that Stephen seems to be appealing to those who want change in marriage in order to protect his own position. I find that very cynical…
Is he? I wasn’t aware of that. I know of no ‘liberal’ who thinks he should stay
Seriously? Then you are contradicting the next comment from Andrew Godsall…!
Because people didn’t walk out, they think he should stay?
Have you read what so-called liberals are writing?
Nonsense. Andrew thinks he and many/ most of them should go.
(That was a reply to Ian and not Penny)
I find it very cynical that a few people who don’t agree with ++stephen about the place of same sex related people in the Church want to pretend they aren’t really focussing on that. As i understand it very few left the chamber during his Presidential address, and those who did were all Conservative Evangelicals. And a Private Members Motion asking him to step back has got no signatures
One third did not reject the idea of cancelling the Address. I think that is completely unprecedented.
Telling people who want change that change has already happened doesn’t make them happy, it just makes them more concerned (scared?), especially when people’s health and wellbeing is involved.
Archbishops aren’t necessary to drive change on safeguarding (inc treatment of gay and trans people), but they certainly have been very successful in stopping it from happening.
‘Change’ is not defined as ‘precisely the change, out of several million possible changes, that I myself would prefer’. And it takes an entitled attitude to think or even assume that it does.
Over a long period both Archbishops have claimed
A) that abuse accusations were now being taken seriously. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that still hasn’t happened. Some or many local churches are taking abuse seriously. The bishops are not.
B) that LGBT people are various degrees of more welcome in church. Most specifically various claims that the church had changed it’s teaching on sex. This hasnt happened.
When you lie over things that are as serious as this, it has serious consequences for people’s lives. Abuse victims think themselves safe and then get abused again. Gay people think themselves welcome and then get hostility.
The Church of England’s death wish is not, after all, a timid proposal that some gay people might be blessed for persevering in fidelity and love despite the Church’s contumely, but the callous and self serving (and craven) disregard for victims and survivors of abuse.
The CoE will decline not because it ‘tolerated’ minorities but because it re-traumatised victims. And society sees that.
I am an admirer of Ian Paul’s fearless directness of speech and so welcome his commentary and analysis regarding the ABY.
However, the reputation of conservative evangelicals has been incinerated by the monstrous revelations of recent weeks and years.
A sense of lament and shame by those who post here from a traditional perspective would be in order and a general statement by Ian Paul would also be wholly appropriate.
I am ashamed beyond words at what conservative evangelicalism had turned out to mean.
And please, no weasel words boxing the issue in and saying it is somebody else to blame.
And you’re tarring every one of “them” with the same brush. That’s both ridiculous and shameful. I suggest you apologise for the slapped on slur.
And, “no” … Evangelical I may be but certainly won’t fit the Conservative you seem to define.
You demand an apology !
Can you hear yourself ? Do you have even the remotest sense of what has happened ?
The depth of the shame that traditionalists should and must feel ?
And your response is to be affronted and demand that your feelings should be placated.
You exemplify the exact point that I am making.
If one person somewhere acts a certain way, all those who share one random characteristic with that person must henceforward hang their heads in shame by proxy.
Which is a useful thing to do if you want ever to achieve anything.
Seriously, Christopher. “One person”.
You think traditionalists should just stand behind the “bad apple” theory and be are angry and affronted that anybody should find fault with them.
So, let me get this right. Conservative evangelicals are the victims here.
I am not entirely sure which planet you inhabit, but down here on planet earth there is a different group who are deemed to be victims.
Young children molested by Church of England clergy.
Peter, you have contrived to misunderstand two different things.
(1) First of all, if someone begins a sentence with ‘if’, they may well be giving a hypothetical example. My hypothetical example was designed to show that this situation would apply even IF only one person had done something wrong – everyone would be tarred with their brush by enthusiastic tittletattlers. In the real world, many more people (in fact everybody) do[es] things wrong.
(2) ‘The bad apple theory’ – you are thinking along cliched and stereotyped lines rather than seeing what people are actually saying. I neither believe in the bad apple theory nor (more importantly) mentioned it, as you know.
I was simply protesting at your lumping them all together.
“However, the reputation of conservative evangelicals has been incinerated by the monstrous revelations of recent weeks and years.”
My feelings don’t need placating. I’m not affronted…. I wouldn’t be described as Conservative Evangelical.
Insisting on a monochrome, undifferentiated group view isn’t true to life.
As for ‘monstrous revelations’, in the case of those presented as such in the past few weeks, it is far from clear whether the maximally sensational versions preferred (I wonder why) by Channel 4 are indeed accurate. Those who respond by swallowing them whole and uncritically are doing exactly what Channel 4 in Rita Skeeter mode are hoping people will do.
CoE: incurvatus in se embedded on the primacy of the anthropological level, knowing neither the scriptures, nor power of God, in the life transformative, conversion, redirecting Gospel of Jesus, in Triunity (with exceptions).
To be fair to the Archbishop of York he urged Synod to back Jay’s proposal for an independent safeguarding body for the C of E.
Yet that was blocked? Who by? By an amendment from the anti LLF, anti women priest, anti women bishop Bishop of Blackburn who blocked Jay’s amendment even being considered and hugely undermined the confidence of the nation in their established church. North of course did not vote for prayers for same sex couples and voted against standalone services for same sex couples too in Synod.
So as of tonight if there is to be blame it should shift from Cottrell to North
How awful that he voted that way. We recall, from the well-known Scriptures, that Jesus voted for things like that.
?
Where does Jesus fit in in your denomination (or your understanding)?
Show me where Jesus opposed women priests? Show me where Jesus was so lacking in empathy he wouldn’t even support prayers for same sex couples?
Show me where Jesus opposed XBoxes. Show me where Jesus opposed the Boxer Revolution. Or the Holocaust.
If traditionalists – of whom I am one – wish to be heard they must lament and repent of their association with monstrous wickedness.
If they think they can present themselves as mis understood victims of a few “bad apples” they will be despised for their callous contempt for the real victims.
There are traditionalists on this site who need to grow up.
It’s not about you and your delicate sensibilities. It really, really is not about that.
My advice to everyone depressed by today in General Synod and recent events in the Church of England is to watch ‘Mr Smith goes to Washington’. It was an important part of sustaining me when I was suspended for five and half months after whistleblowing about safeguarding failures in my diocese. Its a wonderful depiction of the power of truth and the way that ultimately it cannot be withstood. Here is my take on why it is so helpful.
https://safeguardingtheinstitution.com/2025/01/31/corruption-lies-and-the-power-of-truth-in-mr-smith-goes-to-washington/
If you don’t already know it, you might enjoy the Christian book “Hollywood Worldviews: watching films with wisdom and discernment” by Brian Godawa. It is far from a Jeremiad.
“In amongst all this, the comment I found most staggering was this one: What does accountability look like? “I don’t think any of us quite know.”” Here is the rub for many people outside the CoE, in other denominations, and beyond the Church altogether – what to believe. There is so much tittle-tattle, so much gossip, and so much trial by media, and all muddled with priests and bishops attempting to cover their tracks, often contradicting their own words and decisions. The Church wag its finger at politicians and world leaders whilst turning a blind eye to its own corruptions. Just what are we to believe?
Yes. The sad thing is that, constitutionally, the C of E is very clear what we should believe!
Christopher,
Reference your comment above at 11.50 am.
The notion that semantic claims regarding a conjunction are relevant to the matter is absurd.
If you are a conservative let me tell you something, speaking as a conservative.
You are universally despised and regarded with contempt because of your arrogance, self righteousness and callous disregard for the dignity of people.
Maybe, just for once, a conservative on this site could respond with humility and contrition.
Dear Peter
Anything that replaces inaccurate understanding with accurate is not only an improvement but a great one.
The semantic level is where that will typically happen.
I am certainly not a conservative, since that means someone who takes a party line and a pre packaged one at that. I prioritise thought and evidence so am a truth seeker. I speak strongly against those who are not only tribal (bad enough) but somehow think they know which tribe they belong to *before they have done investigation of issues.
In other words, I am a scholar, which is what we need more of, and which is the category of people who can properly populate debates.
Re the ‘universally’, it can only be therefore that a survey has been undertaken. But all that would matter would be whether that survey’s conclusions were warranted – and for that we would need accurate measurement. Vilification is the opposite of accurate measurement. Loving people and being precise about ideas is the thing. Debate is where we concentrate on the latter.
‘Let me tell you something’ are the words of someone who knows more than others. It is not the case that you do know more. Why would you know more? Why would I know less? But in any case, and obviously, knowledge of gossipy things is nothing to be proud of in the first place.
Christopher,
It is difficult to tell if you are being serious or just being provocative.
“knowledge of gossipy things” ? That is your characterisation of what I am saying ?
The dogs on the street know that something monstrous has being going on in the Church of England.
I wish you well, but you inhabit of world of your own, Christopher
I have nothing more to say to you.
By knowledge of ‘gossipy things’ I mean your claimed knowledge of some survey of contributors’ generalised thoughts about me, or about everything I am or stand for or something.
How on earth would it help if someone who is only trying to say the truth as they calculate it got some ever so dramatic thumbs down for having done no more than that?
All scholars have ideologies. To claim that you have no bias is risible. You are conservative and tribal; your support for Iwerne demonstrates that. You claim to prioritise evidence, but make unevidenced generalisations all the time.
We already know that you are an abuse apologist and you continue to give us evidence of this – both here and on Twitter.
We know you are someone who makes the lowest allegations and then is unable to give chapter and verse. Chapter and verse again is an imperative given the seriousness of the ever-desperate trumped up charge.
The ideology point has been dealt with many times, but answers have (and I find myself saying this several times a month) been ignored:
(1) It wouldn’t matter if everyone were ideological (and the claim that they are is a bald assertion so why would anyone believe it?) since people can still be much *more or much *less ideological.
(2) Nor is there any logical limit to precisely how much less they can be.
(3) You are generalising about 8bn people. How can what you say (even: say unevidenced) be true of all of them?
Why do you think people are going to believe your bald assertion?
(4) Those who are conscious of bias can ‘handicap’ against it like a golf handicap.
(5) Scholars would be the best placed to do that, not the least or the average.
(6) If you have never met an honest person, and cannot conceive that even one of those 8bn very diverse people can be honest, that speaks badly for your milieu.
Your numbered points are the usual ramblings.
For your first paragraph I refer your readers to the chapters and verses of your socials.
What socials are they? Not another evasion, surely.
I make 6 entirely different points, any one of which refutes the generalisation you made earlier.
You cannot even get to the level of engaging with them.
But you are at a lower level even than that. You give no evidence of even understanding.
You give evidence of one thing only – an ability to insult, and beyond that, a delight in insulting and in manufacturing opportunities to insult out of nothing.
Put downs in place of proper engagement are an admission of inability to debate, i.e. of defeat.
Debate takes place between debaters and I am sure people will engage with you every time you rise to that level.
You make one point 6 times. It doesn’t rebut the point I made about bias.
Socials are social media on which you are unrepentantly an abuse apologist.
Others have noticed and now refuse to engage with you.
‘Unrepentantly an abuse apologist’ – is the sort of thing PCD says repeatedly as others will have noticed.
My response has repeatedly been: give chapter and verse.
All it takes is to quote something.
I think she must be referring to my belief (a most unusual one) that allegations are not convictions. And secondly to her idea that she knows the truth of situations when she was not present.
It is an easy matter to scroll back and see how often she gives blanket condemnatory generalisations, conveniently vague, and then quotes nothing even when asked to. The reason for that is plain.
As for my 6 points above, which have been in most cases endlessly recycled, being the same point (a glib, airy way of putting things, entirely short on detail) anyone who reads them can see that they are not. But she has not answered a single one of them anyway. And then treats her own inability to answer as being my fault.
Christopher your points tend always to be recycled generalisations. Obfuscatory. Poorly and unclearly expressed. And not very logical. I refer you back to our previous discussion on the thread about Weaponised kindness if you would like chapter and verse. Your inability to follow a basic argument was staggering.
And so often, as you do in this thread with Penny, you belittle your correspondent by claiming how much more integrity you have, how much better qualified you are, etc etc ad nauseum. As Peter notes above, there is no point in engaging with you as the only point you are able to make and agree with is a point you have already concluded. Generally because you were taught it at Iwerne, for which you are a regular and sickening apologist. You are rude. Beyond belief. And really not worth bothering with.
Once again, you concede ground, because here you are a contributor that mentions no specifics. And expects people to agree with your pre-emptive conclusion *without it being based on any quoted specifics.
Convenient.
Without chapter and verse, it is impossible to tell whether your generalisations are accurate or sour grapes.
However, people are bound to suspect that your failure to mention specifics is because the specifics do not lead to the conclusion you are keen to spread.
You persist on footling comments. No one is conceding ground, because this is not a sixth-form debating society, but a matter of egregious abuse and neglect. I do indeed repeat my belief that you are an abuse apologist and point others to your Twitter account where you flagrantly disregard safeguarding and demonstrate your ignorance of trauma informed responses.
As I observed before, if you were in this diocese, you would have received a cease and desist letter from the Registrar.
Prediction: not a single quotation to back up your grandiose libel.
Actuality: Yes. Not a single quotation to back up your grandiose libel.
Not a 6th form debating society? So that means the standard of debate ought to get lower as people grow older? How does that work? Being in favour of lowering the standard of rigour means that you are in favour of less rigour, and are directly opposed to people who are in favour of more rigour.
Yes, you did say that before, but the old lines are the best – especially the old insults, which are what we value most. There can never be too much repetition. Things actually become truer the more one repeats them.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Two forces at odds with one another have come together within the Church of England to seek Cottrell’s resignation or, at the the very least, to fatally damaging any hope he may have of becoming Archbishop of Canterbury – or any “like him” (whatever this means).
We have ‘conservative’ evangelicals who hold to traditional, biblical Christian teaching on sexual morality. They are opposed to Cottrell’s support for SSM and his shenanigans behind the scenes to smuggle this in by stealth. They are also against too much authority being invested in bishops, with its ‘clericalism’ being symbolised in its distinctive symbols. It is this power and network that enables them to manipulate synod and get away with covering abuse.
Then we have the ‘liberal’ conservatives who, from their point of view, better appreciate the Gospel’s message of inclusivity, mercy and acceptance. They are able to ‘see’ behind the heteronormative-misogynistic historical traditions towards sex driven by patriarchy and the privilege it affords men. The problem with the Church of England is a male, heteronormative problem in a male-dominated institution. These problems of abuse of power would not arise in a Church if a feminine and ‘queer’ spirit flourished.
Both share a suspicion about a hierarchical structure and leadership. They differ over the emphasis they on obedience to existing doctrine and traditional understandings of Scripture and sanctity through self-sacrifice and grace.
Cottrell is in the cross-hairs of both factions and any prudential consideration of the evidence against him over David Tudor and John Perumbalath consequently goes out the window – not helped by his own ineptitude and lack of frankness. These men simply become collateral damage in the war. Channel 4 and the mass media become the medium of truth directing a modern day “witch trial” driven in part by grievance, vengeance and ambition.
One seriously wonders if Saint Augustine would be accepted as suitable for ministry today – and God help any bishop who approved him.
The phrase ‘cross hairs’ is very apt and is probably how he experiences things. It is also how it appears to those of us who don’t inhabit the world of party-based pressure groups. It does look (but it may be purely an appearance) as though a deliberate and coordinated attempt is being made to undermine him and force him to resign, as if that will do anything to resolve the anxieties and differences that beset us. I wish Rene Girard was still here to interpret what’s going on and the power dynamics involved.
Tim, Rene Girard’s insights on desire and envy, on competition, on tribal pride, and the process of blaming and eliminating scapegoats to achieve some form of temporary stability and peace, might well offer a useful prism through which to view on all this.
Thanks, Jack. And in the process it would slow us all down and stop the rush to judgement so that we could all reflect on our own part in helping to create this current sad situation. It won’t do to blame ‘them/the others’ whilst ‘we/our group’ are completely exonerated.
Please note there’s a typo on my post on “The enemy of my enemy … ”
Third paragraph down open with: “Then we have the ‘liberal’ progressives … “
Jack, thanks for your response above, but I wasn’t interpreting your comments but adding a different perspective to them. We happen to differ about whether any church is or could be totally unchanging in it’s theology and practice.
As far as permitting the marriage of clergy I can’t see the RC Church ever agreeing to it as standard, even though it’s not a matter of doctrine but of discipline and is allowed in a few instances. It would require a much bigger change to the practical life of the Church and its patterns of authority, the role of its bishops and its financial arrangements than agreeing to celibate women priests. It’s a good example of how a theological ‘development/change’ would be less significant and less difficult than a seemingly easier change in clergy discipline.
Tim, we agree that no Church can be “totally unchanging” in it’s theology and practice. It’s the nature of the “change” that matters. There’s change that’s a rupture, or definitive change, and there’s change that’s development. The hermeneutical/interpretive key is whether or not any proposal is in continuity with the teaching of Christ and the long Tradition (upper case) of the Church. Woman’s ordination would be a rupture, not a development. A married priesthood would be a disciplinary change to Western Church tradition (lower case).
Jack, again it’s a moot point what a change is and what a development is and what the difference is between them. The Orthodox Churches believe that the western church (whether RC or Protestant) has innovated without justification; the western churches don’t think so, but opinions differ. And, of course, not all Roman Catholics agree that the ordination of female priests would be a rupture, though John Paul II did try (unsuccessfully) to totally close down even the possibility of any future debate at all. But we won’t agree on this because different churches take different approaches; and there is no guarantee that one of them is the only correct one, but again we won’t agree on that either, but that’s OK.
Tim, “not all Roman Catholics agree that the ordination of female priests would be a rupture, though John Paul II did try (unsuccessfully) … ”
Pope St John Paul was simply reiterating the constant teaching of the Church and stating it definitively to remove all doubt. As Pope Francis has said more than once about ordaining women to the priesthood: “It is impossible.” It’s a Church doctrine (not yet a dogma) that all Catholic faithful are obligated to accept as definitively true and thus forever closed. This assent is based on our faith in the Holy Spirit’s assistance to the Magisterium and on the doctrine of the infallibility of the Magisterium – either extraordinary or ordinary.
Put simply, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches do not ordain women to the sacred priesthood because Christ did not include women among the group of the Twelve to whom he gave the sacramental powers, which included ordination.
If any ecclesiastical community doesn’t accept the priestly ministry as sacerodotal then it’s hard to see how they can object to having women in these roles. St Paul’s teachings about women in Church do seem to be culturally specific, unlike Jesus’ actions. Those that do see ministry as sacerodotal, including those Anglo-Catholics remaining in the Church of England who accept this, are in opposition to a C/catholic understanding.
I am about to make a point on my blog – stevesfreechurchblog – in relation to state churches/Christian countries etc. I’ll also make it here
Matt 20 vv25-6
“But Jesus summoned them and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. 26But it shall not be so among you. ”
Essentially anyone advocating a Christian state, established church or similar is basically saying they want Christians to lord it over everybody else. I often feel that they talk about it in terms that suggest they’re trying to hide that from themselves…. But seriously it shall not/MUST NOT be so among us. END OF…..
Hardly, if that was the case non Anglican worship would be illegal and you would be fined for non attendance of a C of E services as was the case centuries ago in England.
Instead in England being established church largely ensures the people of England can have weddings, funerals and burials by right in their local C of E Parish church
‘FINED’, T1 – people got judicially murdered by the English monarchs and their state supposedly in the name of God and of Jesus, but of course in practice taking God’s name in vain and then some….!!
Thank God that more faithful and obedient Christians finally managed to get that toned down.
And it’s bit of a struggle to find a good meaning in people being married and buried in a Church they apparently can’t be bothered to attend regularly in significant numbers.
A few centuries ago you may well have found yourself burnt at the stake for your relentless attacks on the established church and in effect by the definition of the time the King too. However fortunately for you that is no longer the case, however irritating you may be.
The C of E’s role in the local community though remains vital and extends far more to just those who attend every Sunday, to those who get married, baptised and buried in it. Attends it carol and remembrance services etc. Good thing too
Yes, being roasted on social media is infinitely preferable to being burnt at the stake!
T1/Simon
Whatever may have been the case in the ‘Old Covenant’ when an earthly nation was temporarily God’s special people in preparation for the coming of Jesus as divine king, things considerably changed in the ‘New Covenant’ where Jesus deliberately set up a ‘kingdom not of/from this world’ to function independently and separately from earthly nations and their kings, a body voluntary rather than coerced and so not needing or wanting the power of earthly kings to criminalise dissent. On the contrary the earthly rulers from the 4th century CE onwards who took such a role were effectively usurping Jesus’ place and causing confusion between that voluntary kingdom of Jesus and those who, not being ‘born again’ were in important ways not true subjects of the kingdom of God (though of course ultimately under His authority).
In an extension of the role the OT gives the Jewish ‘diaspora’ in their places of exile the Church does indeed have a place in the local community – but no legal ‘establishment’ is necessary to achieve everything that matters about that, and it should be done in a way that does not confuse Church and world.
It has been one of the problems of the various forms of establishment that it can replace the kind of church government God gave in the NT with forms that parallel worldly government. Whence the matters of this thread…..
In the ‘apostolic succession’ you keep going on about there is a simple proposition – true apostolic succession is found in those who follow the apostles’ teaching in the NT; an apostolic succession which ends in ‘successors’ who disregard the NT would be meaningless and invalid. And please note that the two main bodies in the world which claim ‘apostolic succession’, the RCs and the Eastern Orthodox, showed their lack of meaningful apostolic succession precisely by being involved in the considerable heresy of becoming the imperial ‘establishment’ in contradiction of the NT….!! Likewise of course the CofE…..
With great respect and humility to the learned commentators on here, may I ask why same-sex marriage is more of a communion-breaking development i our Church than, say, the open mariolatry and idolatry which is carried on in Anglo Catholic churches up and down the land?
The reservation of the sacrament, beneciction, veneration of images, the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin – these are all carried on regularly and directly contradict our Articles of Religion. And yet the communion has endured.
Why is this disagreement over the moral law more srious than the disagreement over idolatry?
Although I disagree profoundly with their conclusions, the antinomian position on sexual relations can be seen as an honest mistaking of the plain meaning of scripture. It has a long history. Milton, among others, held an antinomian therology.
Transubstantiation and Marian intercession seem the greater departure – and yet the communion has survived he Ritualist movement.
The simple answer is: no-one is proposing to change the doctrine of the church to include mariolotry.
Ah so what you are saying is that Church of England members who are in same sex partnerships, of whatever kind, can be in full communion and with no fear of Conservative Evangelicals being upset by it. They can be ordained. They can be bishops. And that Church of England parishes can hold services in their parish churches to celebrate those things. And all of that can happen openly. So long as no doctrine is changed
?
Because that is the implication of what you have written there Ian
‘Upset’ is an emotional word.
The opposition in question is rational.
The realisation that you seem to see the world through a merely emotional (and therefore trivial) lens speaks volumes.
You ignore the actual matter Christopher and focus on the trivial. As so often.
I see the world through many lenses, as is clear from the comment, and the emotional is an important one. Not to be ignored.
The emotional is the prevalent one the younger one is, and gets slowly replaced by the rational.
Secondly, it is very rational, and can be calculated to be such, to have the highest anger (an ’emotion’) towards the greatest injustice and to have the highest love (an ’emotion’) towards the most valuable and precious.
So what I am speaking of is not how emotional one is (one should be very passionate and caring and ‘alive’ indeed) but whether reason rules your emotion, as it will the older and maturer one gets. The emotions I spoke of are at correctly high levels for rational and explicable reasons.
Christopher you simply don’t address the question at hand here.
1. Maybe you cannot actually follow the argument – I have seen this with you before,
2. Maybe you can follow the argument but don’t like the obvious outcome so try to shift the discussion to some irrelevant aspect of it about which you think you know something. Again, this is something you do often.
3. You just want to waffle in a general way – this is a favourite pastime of yours!
Next you will produce a list of six points making the same point in different ways and think you have won the argument.
ALL very predictable
Your comments are at the upper end of generality, which means they lost the debate, since in debate the more specific the better.
Second, they are assertions which you somehow think people will (are obliged to?) agree with, even though you support them with no evidence.
My point was simple. Emotion is not just one lens among many, for two reasons: (a) there are different categories of emotion (those that are instinctive irrational animal behaviour; those that are controlled and are appropriately pitched for the actual importance of the situation, including highly pitched) in the first place. (b) Different emotions are separate cases and cannot be lumped together. (c) Even if there are several lenses, as there are, they are not all of equal value. Mature rationality is a better lens. Your point would only have value if the different lenses were all good ones or incapable of improvement.
Thanks for your predictable but meaningless and general reply Christopher. I see that you can’t actually follow the argument here and won’t bother any further with your responses until you can.
If it is indeed true that I cannot follow the argument (by which I assume you mean your part of the argument, which is not the same thing as ‘the argument’), then you can simply point out wherein I fail to do so, and how. Over to you.
I think Amos makes a good point, Ian. The question moves on to: why is there no enforcement of CoE doctrines that prohibit Mariolatry? I’d gladly see enforcement.
This would have been a red-hot issue in the 16th century.
Anton, you mean ‘red hot’ in the sense of the red of burning people at the stake?
I would love to see discipline enforced. But there is no change of doctrine on this question, hence no discussion.
Ian you don’t address my questions on this just above. Perhaps you might do so? They are key matters relating to W H Amos’ post
Yes, I wondered whether to call it a burning issue…
It was a very serious issue right up until the First World War and smouldered for long after. It was, along with the Prayer Book Crisis which it fed into, the last truly great divisive issue in the Anglican Church.
The Free Church of England split from Canterbury in the 1840s. Later in the century there were riots up and down the land. John Kensits followers regularly disrupted churchings of Ritualist clergy. Kensit was actually murdered in Liverpool at one such dusturbance.
And yet things endured, somehow.
The sight of a Monstrance in an Anglican church – of which there are many – is quite as provoctive as a ‘rainbow’ flag, surely? Is Idolatry a lesser sin than lust?
Thank you for taking the trouble to respond.
I thought I had understood from your forensic analysis of the revisionist position that the Antinomian Bishops were in fact going to great and extraordinary pains to practically avoid having to alter the ‘doctrine of the church’? I thought that was the exquisite absurdity of their position?
This may a be a working fiction on their part but it strikes me that it is no more a working fiction than the contention put about by Ritualists that the XXV Article of Religion allows for the Reservation of the Sacrament simply because it does not explicitly forbid it.
Indeed it strikes me that the entire spirit of the current Revisionist movement is drawn from Newmans 90th Tract. It is the spirit of Humpty Dumpty in ‘Through the Looking Glass’ – “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less”
So, if I have understood you correctly, my question respectfully remains – If the communion has endured the first absurdity, why not the second – if doctrine remains unchanged?
It seems to have been the working practice in the Diocese of London for most of my adult life.
Ian, well, properly, and bravely said. We are dealing here with a consummate politician, and he needs unmasking.
WH Amos – “THE problem of the CofE…” is that it is an ‘established church’ which creates all kinds of undesirable dynamics including all too often many members who are not really ‘born again’ but nominal Christians based on nationalism and social conformity. The issues you point out about ritualism etc are largely internal church affairs – whereas the sexuality issue is much more about ‘the world’ and a church tempted to conform to said world.
Has Cottrell replied about the John Tudor and Bishop of Liverpool scandals? Has Cottrell acknowledged your letter?
Could you summarise his answers, if any?
No. No. Nothing.