The Times Many roads lead to the One in southern India by Guy Liardet
Guardian Stephen Tomkins writes about the abolition of slavery campaign.
Telegraph Christopher Howse The lost language of worship
Church Times Giles Fraser Capitalism can have a warm heart
Tablet Dangers, toils and snares by Michael Fitzgerald
Church of England Newspaper via Fulcrum The Church of England: More than Evangelical but not Less by Graham Kings
Just to say that I kicked off the discussion on this topic: I go there as a self-confessed outsider to this particular party grouping. So far I have resisted doing the same at Anglican Mainstream, on the principle of not going down dark alleys at night. http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/forum/thread.cfm?thread=3191 Also Rowan Williams has an edited extract at the Church Times. http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=36396 I want to challenge his conclusion. He says the time frame on the prayer reflection on Jesus is between now and war, even less at thirty years, and ideas took longer to catch up. He argues against ideas being foreign, ie… Read more »
“Second, to be ‘less than evangelical’ would be to put Scripture, Reason and Tradition, to follow Hooker’s usual order, on a level with each other, which he never did. This would lead to the unhelpful analogy of the three-legged stool. Some would even add ‘experience’, with a capital ‘E’, to these three, to form a four-legged chair. However, this would reduce the supremacy of God’s authority through his holy Word. Reason includes, amongst other things, biblical scholarship, philosophical hermeneutics and God’s revelation through the natural order, which we attempt to discern through scientific enquiry. Tradition has been called ‘the democracy… Read more »
Alas I find the sayings of Rowan Williams’ are ‘not remotely plausible.’
He has gone back on his Michael Harding Memorial Address and on the letter he and others signed after the last Lambeth Conference.
And he hasn’t even deigned to explain — let alone apologise — for this behaviour.
Rowan I just can’t trust you again.
re the lost language of worship
I don’t think the mass in Latin will bring a revival — not even the old Tridentine one. Not while sermons remain in the vernacular — that really is the language many would like to get lost !
Pluralist I agree with you. At the end of 2005, someone commented that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come (I would modify that to an idea whose time God has decreed has come). Powerful paradigms punch through into humanity’s history at crucial junction points. We are in one such time now. The greenhouse gases, AIDS pandemic, out of control tribal and power wars, the extreme poverty of whole continents can not wait thirty years so that some well padded ivory tower scholars can become comfortable. Scribes, like accountants, record and describe what has happened.… Read more »
Cheryl, if I understand you, you are saying that God is capable of working with more than one covenant. God is capable of pretty much everything, so this naturally follows. It does not follow, however, to imply that because God can do it, He therefore will do it. I think coming at this from a more evangelical perspective I would say that we cannot simply assume all these covenants just because God ‘could’ do it. Rather, I would seek to see what God has actually done. You are right, Jesus arbitrates any and all covenants, but not as a general… Read more »
On the lost language of worship. Most people prefer a U2 concert to a Mozart Symphony. If the Church is serious about evangelism, it wouldn’t be bothering about an ancient language that very few people speak or understand. It would be seeking new ways to communicate worship to the U2 generation. Jesus never left us with precise instructions on how to conduct mass (these are man made). The important thing is for us to “worship in Spirit and in truth”. For us to worship in Spirit and in truth we must be able to express ourselves in worship. We should… Read more »
Maduka
Cardinal Arinze would appear to take a different view from you on the subject of U2 vs Mozart. Roman Catholicism seems quite strong in Nigeria, nevertheless.
Simon, I’ve been to Mass in Nigeria, I can assure you that the music and the flavour is very Nigerian. I am simply saying that there is no use playing Mozart for a generation more in tune with U2. The Church does not exist for the nostalgia of the “fuddy duddies”, it exists for the wider world. (Just to add, the Pentecostals outnumber the Catholics and the Anglicans COMBINED in Nigeria. So even though the Catholic Church is strong it is losing membership rapidly. You can do a simple survey – how many Nigerians in London attend Catholic/Anglican Churches, compare… Read more »
James Thank you for acknowledging that God can juggle more than humans can. Thank you for also noting the possibility that Jesus could arbitrate across all the covenants. There is an interesting dialogue to be had on whether Jesus would. I think he would, Jesus did not seek to overthrow world orders e.g. give unto Caeser what is Caeser’s and until God what is God’s. Nor did Jesus talk about ending the Law and prophets, rather he talked about fulfilling all the law and prophets. e.g. Luke 11:46-54, 13:28, 16:16-17, 18:31-33, 24:25-27, which includes Jesus’ words after his resurrection”“How foolish… Read more »
If you go back and reread the bible, you will realise that one of the great scandals of history is God again and again intervening to protect the inadequate and fallible. If we want God to help humanity survive, then we must help each other survive. That means both the pure and the inadequate, male and female, young and old, friend and enemy. If cultural genocide is acceptable, then the extinction of humanity is inevitable. If God can not honor the existing covenants, then no new covenant can be everlasting either. God again and again offers everlasting covenants. When we… Read more »
Maduka: Yes, many would want to attend a U2 concert, that is if it all that they know. But many of us were raised with with a good classical and musical background that appreciates moreso. I partied, smoked (and inhaled) and listened to the Eagles/Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young/Rolling Stones, etc., but it was a trip to Cambridge/St. John’s and an evensong with G. Guest’s best that had me in the full fetal position silently crying my heart out. The girl soloist at tonight’s evensong (Stanford in G) is a REAL big fan of Brittany Spears (and does great imitations… Read more »
Maduka, I’ve not been to church in Nigeria, but I’ve heard from other Nigerians who say the same kinds of things you do about the need for a contemporary worship service, not a “fuddy-duddy” one. I’ve also been to a number of evangelical worship services in the Episcopal Church which omitted some of the appointed Scripture readings and large parts of the liturgy, and reduced other parts to what could fit on PowerPoint slides, in favor of spontaneous prayer, “healing” services, and the like. The general outline of these evangelical services was roughly that used in the Book of Common… Read more »
Numbers games agains 🙁
Choirboy, you raised the idea of “…how could we ignore the peoples isolated from His message…” That is where an intelligent lifeform on another planet on another galaxy fits in. We all agree that we do not yet have the capacity to communicate with this lifeform. But that does not mean that life form does not exist nor that God could communicate with it. This if God could and would communicate with this lifeform that we do not yet know exists, there is no reason that God could not communicate with branches of history that were not yet effectively communicating… Read more »
I’m with choirboy, who put into words something important, IMO. I was converted by Gregorian Chant, the Asperges, and the Easter Vigil; there is plenty of other great music around, of course, but these are some time-tested methods of getting into the human heart. Why would we throw out what we already know works? Chant is sung to evoke and give praise to the mystery and ineffable beauty of God; the rise in chant’s popularity recently would go to confirm this, I thnk. People are looking for something that can’t be found elsewhere. I’m not against U2, either; if that… Read more »
Cheryl: “Mohammad sits with Jesus in the heavenly throne room. They might not agree on everything, but Mohammad did what was required for his times and within the capacity of understanding that was possible at those times….” Is that why the TEC has focused on Millenium development goals then? Muslims are following their prophet and the Mormons are following theirs and everyone has their own covenants so the church doesn’t need to evangelize or convert others to Christ and therefore needs something else to do? That explains the priest from India who’s Anglican in Britain and Hindu in India. Different… Read more »
nonanglican I can empathise with your sentiments. But they repeat the error of Sodom and Gomorrah. “Everything is in God’s plan, we are comfortable, so others’ suffering is acceptable”. Mohammad sits with Jesus, not with a vision of only attending to the Muslims, nor of Jesus only attending to the Christians. They are working to find a way to attend to the reasonable needs of all the peoples of all the nations. A God who sets everlasting covenants does not turn their back on one group because they are not “fashionable”. Cheva is an phonetically consistant with Shiva, the manifestation… Read more »