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What makes a church Anglican?

Sounds like a seriously boring topic...? Yesterday at Wycliffe I was in a focus day on Fresh Expressions of church led by a nice man called Steve Croft who is in charge of Fresh Expressions. If you haven't heard of this, the idea is basically about trying to start churches which meet people where they are rather than simply doing stuff in order to get people to come along to an existing church on a Sunday morning. So, to use some examples from yesterday, a parent and toddler church instead of a parent and toddler group to get people to come along on Sunday morning. Or a skater church for young people. Or a coffee shop church - and so on. Lots more info on the website.

I guess I tend to assume that this is a Good Thing because I became a Christian in a church/congregation like this. It's called Eternity (website being reformatted at the moment) and is a plant of an Anglican church in Warfield, near Bracknell. The pragmatic side of me says: this is a way to get more people to become Christians so we should do it.

But there was quite a bit of discussion in the focus day on this question. A number seemed quite concerned that this would undermine Anglican identity since these new kinds of church bore little relation to the way 'we' tend to do things: don't necessarily worship on Sundays, don't use standard liturgy, don't operate within a parish and so on. Others were concerned about the 'homogenous' principle, i.e. the churches grow best when they are trying to reach a particular group of people rather than build a community for all and sundry.

I have some sympathy for these concerns. The church is supposed to be a place where people come together from every age, nation, class, language and so on. It is meant to reconcile enemies and unite people who would otherwise have nothing in common. And to be Anglican it needs to have some kind of continuity with and relationship to other Anglican churches.

But at the same time I guess I want to defend the idea of Fresh Expressions for a number of reasons. The first thing that occurs to me is that actually most 'normal' churches actually operate on a homogenous principle anyway - they just don't realise it! So a parish church which is trying to reach the parish around it is in fact already trying to reach a group of people who already have something in common - namely, that they live in the same place. And almost invariably, these churches do not in fact bring people together from all manner of background - they tend to represent people of similar ages, class, nationality and so on (obviously there are exceptions).

The day reminded me of something else: being Anglican is not about sharing the same liturgy. You often hear it said, "The great thing about the Anglican church used to be that you could go anywhere in the country (or even anywhere in the world) and everyone would be using the same readings and the same liturgy" and so on. Anglicanism was meant to be somehow uniform.

I think that's terrible! It rejects the whole insight of the missionary movement that Christian faith needs to be contextualised and expressed in a relevant way to people - otherwise you are absolutising and exporting a strand of English culture (from several centuries ago!), not the gospel. And in fact, all mission is cross-cultural to at least some extent (especially in today's post-Christian/Christendom situation).

But most importantly, this insight is right at the heart of what it is to be Anglican. That is, the idea of contextualising the gospel is not some faddish contemporary novelty. It is written into the heart of the theological heritage of Anglicanism, it is what being Anglican is all about. The Book of Common Prayer was an attempt to express the gospel in a relevant way for sixteenth and seventeenth century England. Public worship was no longer to be conducted in Latin but in the language everyone spoke. It was never expected that this liturgy itself would become the eternal touchstone of authentic Anglican expression: the key was that Christian worship should be comprehensible to those who attended it.

My conclusion is therefore obvious: Fresh Expressions are trying to do the same thing today. It is important that they operate with the accountability and support of the wider Anglican church - and ultimately, they should play their part within the church more widely as we would expect any church to do: contributing financially to the diocese where appropriate, meeting with other churches for worship and fellowship, raising up and sending out missionary leaders. But these expressions of being part of the wider church are not dependent on Sunday morning, operating within a geographical parish, and using the same liturgy as everyone else!

Primates Subgroup does have teeth

Amidst the hullabaloo about the supposed inadequacy of the subgroup report on the US Episcopal Church (TEC)'s response to the Windsor Report, it should be noted that the report has got far sharper teeth than many have assumed. In fact, in its discussion of blessings for same sex partnerships it takes very real cognisance of the failure of TEC to respond in this area at least and to the very real possibility of intransigent bishops not being a full part of the Anglican Communion:

It is therefore not at all clear whether, in fact, the Episcopal Church is living with the recommendations of the Windsor Report on this matter. ... We do not see how bishops who continue to act in a way which diverges from the common life of the Communion can be fully incorporated into its ongoing life.  This is therefore a question which needs to be addressed urgently by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church.

Further, the discussion of the "expression of regret" is hardly a ringing endorsement of TEC:

The group was unsure how these words should be understood.  On the one hand, there does not seem to be any admission of the fact that the action of consenting to the particular election at the centre of this dispute was in itself blameworthy. ... The Group feels that the reality of the change of direction that some see in the resolutions of the General Convention can only be tested however by the way in which the Episcopal Church lives out these resolutions.

In other words, "Don't try and pull a fast one: we are watching you."

Is the report adequate, fully accurate and encouraging? Overall - NO. But neither is it as unilateral as many comments have suggested.

How should we be 'doing' church?

It surprises me that people still hassle me sometimes about when I am going to start blogging again. So - flattery and persistence really do work folks - well done!

I was reading this post on the Christianity Today leadership blog about the whole question of whether church should be 'seeker-sensitive' or not. For those of you not familiar with the jargon, the question is really whether church services (and usually it only refers to services) should be run in a way that is as non-weird and normal to people who never normally come to church. For example, you probably wouldn't have prayers in Latin with loads of incense, nor would you conga around the church speaking in tongues whilst the preacher removes snakes from a basket and is miraculously unhurt (I have only seen some of those things live).

'Seeker-sensitive' services tend to be short (max. an hour), have only a very little singing (possibly disguised as 'songs for the children') and may well involve sketches. There may be a bible reading and a short talk, which will probably be directed to a very relevant aspect of life, e.g. "the importance of friendship" or "happy families" or something.

I guess my gut reaction has always been that that just isn't the best way to attract people to church. If it's not a service that I would really enjoy and meet God in in a powerful and moving way, why on earth would I expect my friends who aren't Christians to do so?! I suppose also I don't really believe that tinkering with Sunday services is the way you get people into church, but rather that happens when Christians are out there living real life in a Christian way and talking naturally and spontaneously about their faith. So I suppose I believe getting Christians out of church is more important than getting people who aren't yet Christians into church! So on a Sunday morning it doesn't worry me too much if there's snake handling in Latin.

In any case, it's a really interesting article so do take a look if you have time. And please post a comment and tell me what you think! I guess I am particularly interested to hear from readers who don't consider themselves Christians, but would love to hear from you all.

Civil Partnerships in the Church of England

Background:

To many of you it will be no news that the Bishops of the Church of England yesterday published a statement outlining their guidelines regarding clergy who want to enter into civil partnerships (i.e. legally formalising same-sex relationships).

The statement can be found here and an excellent survey of media reaction can be found on the typically excellent and comprehensive Thinking Anglicans blog. Another useful document (and not too long either) is this briefing paper by Andrew Goddard for Fulcrum (which is a sort of centreist evangelical spokesgroup). If you don't have time to read the whole document then read the section called "CPA - An Assessment" and then "Option III" and "Towards Option III".

My comments:

There is noticeable in a great many of the responses to the bishops' document and in the wider debate about the question of same sex couples within the church the assumption that somehow the sexual lives of clergy should be regarded as existing in some kind of isolated, sacred realm into which public intrusion is unacceptable. Snide comments about whether the bishops intend to install CCTV cameras in vicarage bedrooms to check there is no funny business going on abound. The fact is that sexual activity has public consequences and thus a public dimension. It is not a private, autonomous realm which belongs to me alone, but my decisions affect others. The claim is then made that what consenting adults do together is up to them along. This rather assumes that one has the right to be able to see the negative consequences of an act before one will accept it is immoral, as if ultimately we are the arbiters of right and wrong, based on our near-perfect knowledge of the consequences of our actions. Jesus and his first followers made it clear otherwise: being in ministry is not just about what you do, it is also about who you are. It is not a job nor a profession nor a career, although it may bear some aspects of all of these. It is a calling - and calling involves the whole person, not just the hours of the working day, not just particular skills or training, not just particular activities (although again all of these things matter to some extent). And it because it involves the whole person, there can be no autonomous area, no private sphere in which your actions have consequences only for oneself. Ones 'private' life must be an attempt to be an exemplary expression of the good news that in Jesus God has set us free from the power of our rebellion against God into a new way of life. It will fail in that attempt, and when it does there is of course patience and forgiveness - but it cannot persistently refuse to make such an attempt without requiring public censure from the church. The old-fashioned word for this concept is integrity.

This situation is essentially one of the bishops' own making. Over many years now they have uncritically accepted contemporary norms by refusing to acknowledge the public significance of the sexual sphere, and most of them have consistently turned a blind eye to couples in long-term same-sex relationships, not treating an open and honest discussion of every aspect of a person's life as important and relevant to his or her suitability for ministry (be it sexual, financial, prayerful or whatever - all things that might be perceived as belonging to the private sphere but which in fact have crucial public implications for clergy whose calling and lives must be integrally related). This has created the present situation in which it is now de facto perfectly acceptable in most dioceses for clergy to be in a practising same-sex relationship, even whilst the church de iure teaches that such relationships are wrong. These clergy can hardly be criticised for being upset when the church suddenly turns on them to demand that they either lie, lose their jobs or not avail themselves of the opportunity to secure legal protection for their partnership. The bishops have permitted them to remain in ministry instead of confronting them with that troublesome but evangelical choice: your lifestyle must either be consistent with Christian teaching or you cannot be in a publicly recognised ministry as a representative of the church. Jesus calls us to repent and believe - but it has become fashionably sufficient simply to believe. The solution is a long-term and painful one for the bishops: start consistently upholding the teaching you have signed up to and be prepared to confront people about their lifestyle choice as Jesus was. If people refuse to bring their lives into conformity with Christian teaching then simply do not appoint them to roles in public ministry, unless you want to be left without a legal, moral or pastoral leg to stand on.

The debate continues...

Very illuminating discussion on today's Today programme on BBC Radio 4 between Revd Susan Russell of Integrity in the USA (campaign group for inclusion of LGB folk in church regardless of sexual practice and behaviour) and Canon David Anderson (head of the conservative American Anglican Council). Illuminating because it highlights that the real differences here are perhaps as much political as theological; also slightly entertaining as Susan Russell tries to make out that it is the conservatives who are splitting the church by not being willing to 'live and let live'. Nice try. Again and again it is clear that the revisionist position is based not on an attempt to faithfully exegete Scripture but (using Russell's comments) is based an a view about the inclusiveness of God's love (fine as far as it goes but misses the point that in God's love he calls us away from a life of sin), the 'tradition' that we can read Scripture differently to how we used to and human reason as an autonomous sphere which tells us more about human sexuality than Scripture.

Meanwhile David Anderson provides his side of the entertainment by describing marriage as between "a husband and wife of opposite genders". Ummm... you think?

You'll need RealPlayer to listen if you haven't already got it.

Absofreakinglutelyhilarious

Following the success of Dave Walker's edition of the Windsor Report he brings us the following update on the Anglican Consultative Council currently meeting in Nottingham. Excellent light relief. Do have a look round Dave's sites, there's tons of great stuff there.

Breaking news from Nottingham

As they say, this just in from Kendall Bigbeard's blog from the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham (which is meeting this week, partly to give the Anglican churches in the USA and Canada a chance to explain their actions in consecrating as bishop a man in a sexually active same-sex relationship and refusing to back down over blessing same-sex unions respectively). At the most recent meeting of the Anglican Primates in Dromantine, Ireland, the ECUSA and Anglican Church in Canada (confusingly, another "ACC") were asked to withdraw their delegates from the Anglican Consultative Council at this meeting. However, they are still there, supposedly as observers, but quite blatantly taking part in every respect except voting, which has infuriated many of the other delegates since the Primates demanded non-attendance not simply non-voting. (More background can be found by scrolling down Kendall's blog.) Clearly there is to be some kind of showdown. There is also this, from the living church website:

"After housekeeping announcements and roll call, the ACC chairman, the Rt. Rev. John C. Paterson of New Zealand, announced that the standing committee had received a resolution which contained the required signatures of 10 delegates. The resolution sought an immediate vote, Bishop Paterson said, but as time was short, he would postpone discussion of it until the topic was scheduled to be addressed in the agenda."

Putting these things together my guess is that there may now even be a motion to exclude the American and Canadian delegates, or perhaps even a motion of no-confidence or similar in the Chair, John Paterson, or possibly in the Gen Sec Kenneth Kearon, both of whom have signally failed to enforce the exclusion. It will be fascinating to see what happens next, but it looks like Africa is taking charge.

Richard Hooker and authority in Anglicanism

If the title of the post doesn't exactly grab you, stick with me people ;-D

I've been involved in a discussion over at the excellent Thinking Anglicans on the above topic. The question at the heart of the matter is really to do with what is the authentic heart of Anglicanism. One commentator seems to regard it as biblical scholarship (by which he seems to mean the historical-critical method), others as the via media of Hooker, whose doctrine of the licence of the church to legislate over indifferent matters is taken to be the true Anglican attitude to the authority of Scripture. Several seem to agree that to actually believe that the Bible is authoritative for Christians is literalistic neo-Puritan fundamentalism. I fail to see how substituting the authority of Richard Hooker for Scripture helps, personally. It just creates a fundamentalism of a different kind.

More to the point, Hooker (or rather, their misreading of him) is not the definitive Anglican view of Biblical authority. This is set forth in the Prayer Book and Articles, which draw a pellucid distinction between the authority of Scripture as divine revelation in all things pertaining to salvation (and why on earth should we suppose that matters of morality are not included in this?) and the relative authority of human tradition and reason which must be wholly subordinate to God's self-disclosure in and through the Bible. The old canard that Anglicanism is founded on the three-legged stool of Scripture, tradition and reason is alive and kicking - but wholly erroneous. Historically Anglicanism is founded on the authority of Scripture alone. This is not to say that tradition and reason are unimportant, but we're just kidding ourselves if we think they're equal.

Which brings us back to Richard Hooker, who cannot be read as a twenty-first century liberal without some serious mental gymnastics. Hooker accorded Scripture final authority in all matters of moral conduct. His subtle and nuanced doctrine of the things indifferent is not a blanket approbation of the authority of the church to make its mind up as it likes on moral issues but rather for the freedom of the church on those limited matters where Scripture is descriptive rather than prescriptive and does not therefore make a definitive pronouncement to which the church must adhere. So episcopacy is not necessary and perpetual but merely one legitimate form of church government. On the other hand, certain moral standards of behaviour are non-negotiable. It is only when Scripture is silent that the church has licence to make up its own mind.

It's somewhat ironic that Hooker has become an icon for the idea of the church moving with the times given that he was in fact the arch-proponent of the ecclesiastical status quo. Could this be because those claiming his authority haven't bothered to read what he actually wrote?