The answer will remain no for as long as the CofE subsists in it’s present form though. I’m more and more settled that I’m where God wants me to be.
How about you?
Category Archives: church
Two reasons why I am not a Protestant
TheoGeek gives a nice succinct statement of the theological reason.
Whilst bls points to some singing from Mirfield which gives a more cultural reason.
Not that I entirely hate modern music – here’s a video of a song I rather like, put up purely to annoy some of my friends, both on and off-line 😉
Another great cartoonist
To go with Dave W. Had a meeting this afternoon with Tim‘n’Tom, and they put me on to the ASBO Jesus site. Some stunning laugh out loud material there. Particularly enjoyed this one, which struck a note of truth in me…
She should come along to the White Hart on a Monday night…
The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! And wisdom is justified by her works.
(HT BBA)
Bling da Bish
(HT BBA)
The Singing Thing (John Bell)
This was a book I bought and actually read at Greenbelt, and (combined with the Richard Giles books – reviews forthcoming) it has really shifted my thinking about the liturgy. But I’ll write about that elsewhere. Bell splits the book into two parts (and the book itself is the first of two books). In the first part he outlines all the reasons why human beings sing, and why it is so important. As you might imagine, he found a receptive reader in me. He lists ten reasons:
– because we can
– to create identity (especially community identity)
– to express emotion
– to express words (beliefs)
– to revisit the past (remember ourselves)
– to tell stories
– to shape the future
– to enable work
– to exercise our creativity, and
– to give of ourselves.
All of which were very persuasively argued for. He then goes on to ask ‘why do most people – in England in particular – not sing?’ He argues that:
– almost everyone can sing, but most have been told they can’t at a formative age;
– the ‘performance culture’ inhibits joining in (and he is equally critical of robed choirs and worship bands);
– the layout within a church often undermines congregational confidence; and
– there is often appalling leadership, from clergy and choirmasters, organists and musicians and choristers, all of whom seem theologically bankrupt when considering singing in church. (My summary – not his language!)
This was a really good book, which I think needs a much wider circulation. I’ll be reading part two shortly….
One last thing – it really reinforced the truth in the song ‘Roots’ by Show of Hands:
“Now it’s been 25 years or more,
I’ve roamed this land from shore to shore.
From Tyne to Tamar, Severn to Thames,
From Moor to Vale, from Peak to Fen.
I’ve played in cafes, and pubs and bars,
I’ve stood in the street with my own guitar.
But I’d be richer than all the rest
If I had a pound for each request
For “Duelling Banjos”, “American Pie” — it’s enough to make you cry.
“Rule Britannia”, or “Swing Low”,
Are they the only songs we English know?
Seed, bud, flower, fruit,
They’re never gonna grow without their roots.
Branch, stem, shoots.
They need roots!
After the speeches when the cake’s been cut,
the disco’s over and the bar is shut.
At Christening, Birthday, Wedding or Wake,
What can we sing until the morning breaks?
When the Indian-Asians, Afro-Celts — it’s in their blood below the belt.
They’re playing and dancing all night long,
So what’ve they got right that we’ve got wrong?
Seed, bud, flower, fruit,
Never gonna grow without their roots.
Branch, stem, shoots.
We need roots!
And all away boys, let them go,
All in the wind and the rain and snow.
We’ve lost more than we’ll ever know,
On the rocky shores of England.
All away boys, let them go,
All in the wind and the rain and snow.
We’ve lost more than we’ll ever know,
On the rocky shores of England.
We need roots!
And the minister said his vision of hell is 3 folk singers in a pub near Wells.
Well I’ve got a vision of urban sprawl.
It’s pubs where no one ever sings at all.
And everyone stares at a great big screen,
Overpaid soccer stars, prancing teens,
Australian soap, American rap, Estuary English, baseball caps.
And we learn to be ashamed before we walk,
Of the way we look and the way we talk.
Without our stories, or our songs,
How will we know where we come from?
I’ve lost St George in the Union Jack,
It’s my flag too and I want it back!
Seed, bud, flower, fruit,
Never gonna grow without their roots.
Branch, stem, shoots.
We need roots!
And all away boys, let them go,
All in the wind and the rain and snow.
We’ve lost more than we’ll ever know,
On the rocky shores of England.
The Road to Growth (Bob Jackson)
Very good companion to, and update of, his previous ‘Hope for the Church’. This one is much more about the wider church, and what, eg, dioceses can do to support church growth, rather than what individual churches can do. Excellent, and encouraging, and affirming. If you meet George Herbert on the road, kill him.
A real church
After all my reflections on lay presidency, the Holy Father reiterates the Roman perspective that the CofE isn’t a real church in any case, because it doesn’t recognise him as head of the church in the sense that he wants to be recognised. Ah well.
As I think I’ve said before, I serve a community that worships in a place that has seen continuous worship in the name of Jesus for well over a thousand years. I’m enough of a bottom-up congregationalist to think that this is important, and that the corruptions of Popes and Kings don’t overcome that essential fact.
Until we are ALL united, none of us can claim to be THE church. I do see the Pope as the successor of Peter, and I do think that says something significant – I just think that Peter would have less concern for central control and precedent.
“It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us….”
Rowan’s passion
Lovely, generous article by Richard Harries about Rowan here.
Da Vinci Code: the real challenge to the church
Final Learning Church session of the ‘academic year’ last Saturday, and it was on ‘Debunking the Da Vinci Code’. Not that difficult… Then on Sunday beloved and I went off to watch the film, which was fine – less anti-Christian than the book, if anything; competently directed and acted. I suspect most of the criticism of it (as a film) is driven by the media’s desire to have something different to say about the phenomenon, not from any unprejudiced assessments of the film’s merits themselves.
Anyhow, what I wanted to say was something which I emphasised in my LC talk, which is that the Da Vinci Code phenomenon is holding up a mirror to the church, and I believe we should pray and ponder seriously how we should respond. In particular, I think that the implications are much more radical than what the church, in its various parts, has undertaken so far.
My point is this: all of the dramatic charge in the Da Vinci Code comes from echoing the Reformation-era controversies against the Roman Catholic church; in particular, however, it is seen as radical and controversial to argue that Jesus was human. (Same thing that drove the reaction to The Last Temptation of Christ).
Why is this at all interesting? The orthodox teaching is that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine – therefore, anything which is simply spelling out an implication of his humanity, ie that he could have been married to Mary Magdalene, is perfectly in tune with Christian doctrine. There is nothing shocking about it.
So why do people believe that there is?
The implication is that church teaching is functionally docetic. Whatever we might officially say, the wider world hears the church presenting Jesus as someone who was wholly divine, and who only seemed to be (Greek: dokei) human.
In other words, the world hears the church teaching that Jesus was a Superman figure. Jesus put on his humanity in the way that Kal-El puts on a pair of glasses, in order to pass amongst us. Yet his true and authentic nature is other than human.
It is a catastrophe that the church has allowed this to happen. It is a rebuke to the church: it is a prominent signal of the church’s failure to communicate the truth of the gospel and to allow itself to be caught up in ephemera and adiaphora – all the things which are ultimately of no importance, which have obscured that which is of paramount and eternal importance.
Underlying this is an understanding of God which sees the Greek philosophical attributes (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence etc) as determinative, and as standing over against the human, where the human lacks all these attributes. Christianity is about the overthrow of that conception of both the divine and the human – that is precisely what the Incarnation is about – demonstrated symbolically by the tearing of the curtain in the temple. In other words, being a Christian is about allowing Jesus to teach us what divinity and humanity are – it is not about importing our understandings of divinity and humanity, and trying to use them to understand Jesus.
Given that the world hears the church teaching a heresy, and yet – as the response to DVC demonstrates – there is a tremendous search for the truth about Jesus, and a fascination with Him – what is the church to do?
It must stop using language that is interpreted docetically. When we claim that Jesus is the Son of God, however orthodox we may understand that language to be (and it is!) we must never forget that it is heard docetically. I suggest that in all of our conversations with non-Christians we should abandon that language. Completely. All that it does is reinforce error. Our language instead should emphasise that Jesus is truly one of us, that we should begin to approach Him on that basis, and that we should then allow Him to teach us about our humanity, and about our own divinity – our inheritance as children of God, fellow-heirs with Christ.
We must begin from the wholly orthodox truth that Jesus was fully human, and build from there, allowing his humanity, as we enter more deeply into it, to teach us about his divinity, and therefore what divinity truly is.
We do not need to abandon orthodoxy – that is the liberal error – but nor is the aggressive reassertion of orthodoxy sufficient, for the consequence of that is simply to apply fertiliser to the weeds of DVC and its ilk.
We must allow our language to be broken up and recreated. It is not our words which will lead us to God. It is the Word. To be true to him requires a letting go of words, however wonderful and meaningful, and an embrace of the Word. He will lead us into the truth, if we let Him.