Christopher Howse at the Daily Telegraph reviews the film, Into Great Silence in Masterpiece of silence.
In The Times Kathy Galloway writes that An inclusive church reaps ever greater rewards for all.
Ian Bradley writes in the Guardian about politicians from Scottish Presbyterian manses in Face to Faith.
Giles Fraser in the Church Times writes that Christians are called to welcome strangers.
Kathy Galloway: Credo – Can’t be said better, can it? Gay fols and justice towards them is completely normal for ordinary younger folks and the Church is potentially turning these people away by its ongoing sectarian silliness.
Into Great Silence – gosh, almost attractive.
Son of a Presbyterian manse and into politics is surely statistically insignificant. Does the manse produce public speaks: would we not see more? Given the Presbyterian Church’s middle class assitances to the poorer areas, it is suprising that there are so few.
Lord Carey’s remarks, highlighted by Giles Fraser, get ever more pathetic.
Nonsense, unjust, corrupt, trivial, immoral, criminal.
The Church’s policy on gays according to twenty-somethings. The ‘Welcome but not Affirm’ approach is untenable.
Loved Kathy Galloway’s testimony of what is possible in a truly loving church. I recently saw an article where religious leaders (I think from Wales and Scotland) were recommending that any being created with human DNA be considered human. That was one of the recommendations I made to Australia’s Flockhart Review so that some idiot didn’t go off an make a sentient life form that had no legal rights. http://www.wombatwonderings.org/files/cloning_and_flockhart_review_input.pdf My next contemplation is that there are some religious people who hate the idea that humans evolved from animals (listening to an anti-evolutionary song at church tonight saddened me). When… Read more »
I found Galloway’s piece to be so unconvincing as to be bizarre. Am I supposed to overturn thousands of years of tradition and theology because of her children? Am I supposed to ignore the Word of God in preference for pop-culture? Forget Paul’s Letter to the Romans: I’m going to get my theology from Queer Eye. Apply her logic to another scriptural premise, and we’ll see how false it is. Let’s forget about not covetting: our culture tells us to want as much as we can. Forget about honoring the Sabbath: our culture says that the more we work, the… Read more »
No, Selah, you are to overturn thousands of years of tradition because we now know better. Its why we don’t send kids up chimneys, have public dogfights, and practice slavery any more. Tradition in itself, and longevity in itself, are both utterly irrelevant. If you can’t recognise that in some areas Christian tradition and even the Bible itself is wanting, you sum up very well why Christianity is on its way to dying out in the west, and thriving in premodern environments- because it fits that sort of worldview. I’m not terribly interested in the so-called ‘inclusion’ of conservative traditionalism,… Read more »
“My next contemplation is that there are some religious people who hate the idea that humans evolved from animals (listening to an anti-evolutionary song at church tonight saddened me).”
An anti-evolutionary song at church? You’re kidding, right? Do I want to know the lyrics? Are there also pro-flat earth songs?
“An anti-evolutionary song at church?”
All Things Bright and Beautiful?
Cynthia I wish I was. It was a background song. There were also some prosperity lines too – about actualising yourself. It’s a new church that I am still checking out. My daughter likes the youth group. Mind you, I am in Sydney, which explains a lot. I console myself sometimes with Psalm 110:2 “The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion; you will rule in the midst of your enemies.” If it were not for the internet, I would have given up on humanity. I read postings such as Merseymike’s here and send them up to God as… Read more »
MM wrote, “I’m not terribly interested in the so-called ‘inclusion’ of conservative traditionalism, nor its selective premodern god.” So inclusion of everyone based upon God’s grace does not interest you? Or is it the problem that Christians have to define themselves as sinners? MM writes, “Tradition in itself, and longevity in itself, are both utterly irrelevant.” True, which is why Anglicanism expressly teaches that truth is understood where scripture, tradition, and reason meet. Some reappraisers, however, want to throw out all of these. MM writes, “Christianity is on its way to dying out in the west, and thriving in premodern… Read more »
Pluralist – about 500 people between 20 and 30 at my church in London last night…..you say we put young British people off / are not in tune with them so I guess you must have many more at yours?
And whats the proportion of young people who attend church as opposed to those who don’t.Moreover, which group have the most open and liberal view of gay and lesbian issues – see Kathy Galloway’s article. I mean, if you want to turn the church into a marginalised bolthole for the bigoted and fanatical, to be rightly ignored by the rest of us, then feel free. People in impoverished areas rely on their construct of God because it is something to cling on to and because it reflects cultural preference and has not been challenged by enlightenment thinking. Thankfully, we have… Read more »
“thriving in premodern environments- because it fits that sort of worldview”
The C of E has “premodern” tendencies too. Bishops now blame gays and our moral decadence for the recent floods. It beggars belief how Acts of God are attributed to God’s wrath in 21st century.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/01/nflood201.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
Thanks for the link Hugh. I found it staggering, but the poor old bish finally said something true about 2/3 of the way down:
“The West is also being punished for the way that it has exploited poorer nations in its pursuit of economic gain. “It has set up dominant economic structures that are built on greed and that keep other nations in a situation of dependence. The principle of God’s judgment on nations that have exploited other nations is all there in the Bible,”
Dear God, why couldn’t he have said THAT first…
Oh, dear, NP’s on his bums on pews (raw score) tack again. Please note that there is quite a lot of evidence amassing (from properly controlled surveys, not from tick-box questionnaires in ‘Straight Christian Magazine’) which supports Pluralist’s observation about attitudes to homosexuality in the UK population. 500 20-30’s, congratulations. Out of a total population of??? And from a catchment area of??? And similar unpleasantly statistical questions. We had about 70 folk in for full choral evensong at the end of Barton Arts Week at St. Mary’s. For those folk who believe God dwells enthroned in Keyboardspeak, probably sounds like… Read more »
Keiran Thanks for emphasising that paragraph, I have said that earlier – that’s why some souls hate me so much. Another contemplation has been we are fighting terrorism by trying to fight the theological sophistry that justifies using violence and intimidation. One piece of humour is that if you have a vested interest and desire for keeping a war machine going and expanding (that consumes nearly half one on nation’s annual budget and contributes about half the world’s expenditure of military related activities), then you don’t want your nations’ church leaders turning into “doves” that might deprive you of your… Read more »
That, I fear, may also be a fallacy, Kieran. Poorer nations with low carbon emissions are suffering more than we are from climate change.
El Nino is reckoned to be a major factor in the string of depressions we are currently experiencing in the UK – nothing to do with anthropogenic climate change – but with seasonal tidal currents in the Southern Pacific.
Quite what this has got to do with Civil Partnerships any more than the price of cheese is beyond me.
Hugh What both civil partnerships and the price of cheese have in common is that they have to do with the realities of this world. There is someething in common between the oil age, birth control, providing sufficient food or medicine to the African continent (and others), the price of cheese, or dignity to those whose sexuality does not fit narrow paradigms. Namely, be part of the in-crowd or be condemned to the judgement that they “deserve”. There are those who have refused to do anything to help with this current reality e.g. slow oil consumption, manage birth control, worry… Read more »
Selah, In general, I agree with you that what we ought not allow the World to dictate our values, but we have been doing exactly that for 1700 years, give or take, so I don’t see why it’s such an issue now. “Let’s forget about not covetting: our culture tells us to want as much as we can. Forget about honoring the Sabbath: our culture says that the more we work, the better.” This is true, but the “reasserter” camp does little that opposes these things. I would suggest covetting is a fairly prevalent sin among the comfortable middle classes… Read more »
Hello Hugh and Cheryl, Not being a climatologist, I wouldn’t hazard a guess about the rain patterns of the UK – although I’ve experienced quite a lot of it over the last three weeks! I’m almost looking forward to returning to drought-ridden Australia in a couple of weeks… One of the things about El Nino in the Pacific that is becoming apparent is the likely inundation of some of the smaller island groups in the South Pacific through the projected rise in ocean levels. This isn’t simply the loss of a few palm trees: in many cases this is the… Read more »
The bishops’ peculiar outbursts may be a response to their loss of moral authority in society. We look to scientists to tell us whether we are responsible for any of this climate chaos and what, if anything, we can do about it; not to clerics.
The remarks linking floods to permissiveness and lack of care for the planet coincided with terrorists’ failed attempts to invoke God’s wrath on night clubs and air-travel.
Most unfortunate.
Five of us had a fantastic quality of discussion on Monday night. That’ll do me. I don’t give a toss about numbers and never did.
Pluralist says “Five of us had a fantastic quality of discussion on Monday night. That’ll do me. I don’t give a toss about numbers and never did.”
Course you don’t – your numbers do not support your case that you have something relevant and powerful to say in modern England………
Likewise, the numbers suggested that +Athanasius had “nothing relevant and powerful to say”.
Nor did +Cramner, +Latimer, +Ridley.
I guess it’s back to Rome then. Eh, NP?
NP,
“Course you don’t – your numbers do not support your case that you have something relevant and powerful to say in modern England………”
Do you not think you went a bit far this time?
The other funny thing about your number game is that Jesus started out as 1 with a total of 12 disciples.
If you had lived then, would you have listened to him in your temple, NP? Or would you have said that he hadn’t had anything relevant and powerful to say to modern Israel?
‘When two or three are gathered together in my name… I don’t think it’s worth turning out to be there among them’ as the Lord said. Now to be fair, NP may have a point: discussion groups of any sort can easily become omphalosceptic (lovely word), and alternative to ‘doing the Gospel’. But that isn’t a size/numbers issue, which is where his fundamental mistake is made. If his tradition embraces spiritual direction/ companionship, he will know that the small group is one of the most powerful ways in which God works in the world and in the human heart –… Read more »
Mynster, I rather suspect it’s an outgrowth if the extreme Calvinist: “I am of the elect. This is shown by God’s blessing to me. If you were of the elect, God would bless you just as abundantly. You are not so blessed. Thus you are not of the elect. Thus (though I doubt even Calvin would go this far) it is perfectly acceptable for me to scorn and disrespect you.” More succunctly, “I’m rich because god loves me. If God loved you, you’d be rich too.” It’s not all that far removed from Prosperity Gospel, just that one is about… Read more »