Author Archives: Elizaphanian

About Elizaphanian

Rector of West Mersea

The atheists didn’t expect the Inquisition

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Seems like the idol of reason isn’t so reasonable after all. Very interesting kerfuffle going on about RichardDawkins.net.

Start with Ruth here, then have a read of these two posts (for a very different perspective).

So: the forum was an active community with thousands of heavily invested participants (ten times bigger than the front page) which has now not just been shut down but largely deleted. If someone came along and deleted my blog – or if some technical problem deleted the blog – I would feel bereft. It was bad enough when I lost about nine months worth of e-mails last year when my PC died. So I can understand the mental anguish that this has caused.

Also, bluntly, if Prof Dawkins doesn’t make a very strong effort to fix this – and counteract the impression that he doesn’t care for all the people who have rallied to his cause over the last several years – then i) his leadership of same is over and ii) the cause he has been promoting for so long has been grievously hindered.

Church plant daydream

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I sometimes daydream about planting a new church here on Mersea.

It would need at least a dozen people to get it going – people who were seriously committed to a path of discipleship and spiritual growth.

It would meet once a week to do the Acts 2.42 stuff, but not necessarily on a Sunday morning.

It would also meet at other times for broader fellowship, worship and teaching – understood as supplementary.

It would be a group of sojourners, tent dwellers, maybe meeting in a home or hall, maybe even meeting in an historic church sometimes.

It would pay a fair proportion (pro rata) of the parish share, but not be committed to the financial upkeep of the historic site.

It would have a cell group structure and mentality. Nurture would be done through small groups (up to half a dozen persons). It would also multiply as a whole when it grew to, say, forty people.

It would have autonomy over its manner of life; its form of worship; its expectations for social service and behaviour.

It would not have autonomy over doctrine and sacramental discipline – in other words, it would remain Anglican. It would operate under the oversight of the Rector of the parish (well I would say that wouldn’t I?) who would join in with the Acts 2.42 part, but not the rest – unless asked. It would accept the Lambeth quadrilateral as a framework for faith. However, it could sit very lightly to the Anglican acquis communautaire. It could be mostly independent of a) the inherited plant, and b) the structure of committees and processes. Although no group can operate without the formalities for long – the static latching is what enables survival over time rather than being dependent upon the passing emotions of the group.

Occasionally it would gather with the other Anglicans – and indeed the other Christians on the island – for broader worship and fellowship.

Worth exploring further?

Blackmail

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My eldest asked me at lunch the other day, ‘Dad, what is blackmail?’

I gave one answer, my mother-in-law gave a slightly different answer, which led to some investigation and an interesting discovery. From wikipedia:

“Blackmail is the crime of threatening to reveal substantially true information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand made upon the victim is met. This information is usually of an embarrassing, socially damaging, and/or criminally incriminating nature. As the information is substantially true, the act of revealing the information may not be criminal in its own right nor amount to a civil law defamation; the crime is making demands in exchange for withholding it. English Law creates a much broader definition of blackmail, covering any unwarranted demands with menaces, whether involving revealing information or not.“

Essentially the difference between my mother-in-law and I was that I was using the English Law version, whereas as she was using the stricter (earlier?) definition.

So: in common English terms, blackmail is when someone says ‘do this, or you’ll be sorry’, ie it is the use of force to compel someone to do something that they otherwise would not have done (NB force doesn’t have to be physical; I’m using it essentially as a contrast to reason, as in ‘reasoning with someone’). It is treating a human being as a thing, an instrument for the will, rather than as a person. In short, it is bullying (in the news at the moment).

I was reminded of this conversation by reading Doug’s post. The concept as a whole has been on my mind rather a lot over the last nine months or so.

Good management and pastoral care

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Bishop Nick: “Because the dichotomy between ‘pastoral’ and ‘managerial’ is a false one – and a dangerous one. What some people mean by ‘pastoral’ (when asking for it in a bishop) is someone who won’t challenge, who is malleable and won’t interfere too much. But pastoral care begins with getting the administration, communication and ‘business’ right: how do you respect someone who says they care for you pastorally when they then double-book you, fail to reply to letters or emails and don’t do what they promise to do?

A bishop is called to be an accountable steward of the resources of people and stuff/things. He is not called primarily to be ‘nice’ or popular. If niceness and popularity follow, then that is fine; but episcopal leadership and ministry are not good for people who want to be everybody’s friend. The alternative to good management of the resources God gives us is, presumably, bad management. Can anybody show me how bad management equates to good pastoral care?”

Something I’ve been pondering a lot.

Coincidence and Godincidence

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A coincidence is something that happens to occasion remark, but which is, by definition, meaningless. That is, part of the metaphysical presupposition behind using the word ‘coincidence’ is that there is no meaning present. There is simply a factual occurrence which happens to provoke comment and interest in those perceiving it.

A Godincidence, by contrast, is something that happens to occasion remark but which is considered meaningful by the people involved. In other words, it is taken up into a larger story, that of their own life or the life of their community. One might also talk about providence.

This is not about proving one thing or another. This is about the assumptions embedded within the vocabulary.

Asserting that something is a coincidence – often accompanied with amplifiers like ‘mere’ or ‘just a’ – is the assertion of a specific metaphysical commitment, one which, in truth, rules out every possible sense of meaning (an unacknowledged consequence).

Part of the problem that Christianity faces is that this specific metaphysical commitment has not simply passed unnoticed, but that it has passed into the bloodstream of the church.

It needs to be extirpated. We might begin, as Christians, by disavowing the routine use of the word ‘coincidence’ and only using it when we are consciously asserting that there is no meaning to be found in an event.

I suspect that we would need to exercise a great deal of caution in such a case.