Gavin Drake Church Abuse In memory of Clive Billenness
Marcus Walker The Critic More than just a figurehead
“A new plan aims to strip the Archbishop of Canterbury of any real power or authority”
Helen King sharedconversations Living in parched places: February 2025 General Synod
Andrew Atherstone Law & Religion UK Wheat bread and fermented wine at Holy Communion? The origins of Canon B17
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love Jesus and human flourishing or Trump, enemy of Christian humanism
Neil Patterson ViaMedia.News When Will the Bishops Think Properly About Same-Sex Marriage?3>
Helen King describes an incident where the issue of safeguarding being from a Christian body or not was questioned. She states: “At one of the zoom briefings I attended, a question was asked about whether the group chosen to run safeguarding if this Option was adopted would be ‘Christian’, and the answer given was that this would not be one of the criteria used. While knowledge of the church is obviously needed, Christian faith is not.” I find it disturbing, but maybe not surprising. It maybe brings to light the true cause of fear of independent safeguarding. I note Jay… Read more »
Atherstone’s piece is fascinating and important.
Grape juice is not wine. That is obvious to everyone.
Jews, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists and Methodists don’t find it obvious.
You are accusing all these groups of being thick? It is very difficult to prevent grape juice from turning into wine without boiling it and adding a lot of chemicals.
Not at all. I think they have interesting arguments about what constitutes sacramentally valid wine. As did Pope Benedict when serving at the CDF.
I think that Tom Kitten is being rude when he declares that the answer is “obvious to everyone”. His “everyone” may be intended to just exclude Alice Kemp and Andrew Atherstone, but it also excludes a lot of other people.
It smacks of Thomas Hardy’s “Good God – all creation groaning and the eastward position.”
Fascinating indeed.
For me the problem with most of the arguments in there is that they overlook one important aspect of the Eucharist, one which is actually mentioned in liturgy. Christ gave his body and blood. A gift. So one of the chief attributes of the bread and wine are that they have the attributes of a gift.
If an alcoholic visits would I “give” them alcoholic wine? Of course not.
If a celiac is coming to dinner, would I buy gluten-free bread to “give” them? Of course I would.
All the other concerns are secondary.
There was a noticeable crunching of gears when the Bishop of Leicester said that Canon B2 was back on the table. Maybe there is such a thing as Doctrine of Marriage after all and changing it by the back door might not quite be the right thing to do. A sign perhaps that he might be taking his own advice and doing some listening. It’s been a long time coming!
I agree. If the C of E actually changes the canon B2 it will demonstrate that the compass has been lost and we can all go our separate ways. The church will rupture and become as diminished as the Scottish church. Welcoming all people without apostasy is possible but the split is starting to tell.
The Walker article is intriguing. It’s like everyone in the CofE wants the ABC to function in a global role — as if historic sees in Christendom retain some eternal efficacy and imprimatur, and this especially true in Canterbury. The sell-by date on this idea has come and gone, and those recognizing it aren’t forcing the matter, but acknowledging a reality: Welby chief among them. There is a good series, reflecting various points of view and locations in the Communion, discussing the recent report and recommendations at The Living Church. One of the rare points of convergence in the AC… Read more »
You’ve expressed very well what I was thinking about Marcus Walker’s piece. It seems a wistful and rather romanticised viewpoint. Those who have lived, worked, travelled to and worshipped in parts of the Anglican world beyond England know very well that these are self-governing provinces who get on with their church life without concern for ‘Cantuar’ and the C of E. At the most, there is an acknowledgment of historic bonds of affection with the ABC. And nothing more.
Thanks. My view as well. It also forgets those segments of the AC that have nothing to do with Empire (or Commonwealth) legacy — something oddly forgotten when seen from England-ism.
C. Wells notes, “The 1920 Lambeth Conference marks a critical inflection point (corroborated at the conference of 1930), in its celebration of the appearance of “indigenous Churches in China, in Japan, in East and West Africa, in each of which the English members are but a handful of strangers and sojourners.” As the bishops continued: “The blessing which has rested upon” the work of the Communion “has brought it to a new point of view,” the more as “its centre of gravity is shifting.” Accordingly, the Anglican Communion “presents an example on a small scale of the problems which attach… Read more »
The whole problem with the question of Canterbury’s relationship to the AC is too bound up with the question of human sexuality. The Windsor Report and the resulting (doomed) Covenant has made that so. The Living Church is aligned with the more conservative element. So it is not unbiased journalism – as if there was any such thing anyway. But the question of the relationship between Canterbury and the AC needs decoupling from the question of human sexuality before it can be properly explored.
“But the question of the relationship between Canterbury and the AC needs decoupling from the question of human sexuality before it can be properly explored.”
That ship has sailed.
Neil Patterson (When Will the Bishops Think Properly About Same-Sex Marriage?) spots a flaw in the ERG’s claim that the 2013 Act changed nothing with regard to opposite-sex married couples, “The reality is that the meaning of all marriages was changed. Every opposite-sex couple now marrying is entering the same legally married state as all the same-sex couples married.” Thus a man in a same-sex marriage wishing to marry a woman in a church ceremony would find that the Church is not about to be a party to bigamy – despite her definition of marriage as the union of one… Read more »
As usual theology is missing from this discussion, and as theology concerns matters of salvation it is rather important don’t you think? All doctrine is based on theology and doesn’t change as a result of an Act of Parliament. Even Parliament acknowledged that!
Some believe the doctrine of marriage is capacious enough to accommodate same-sex marriage. I don’t, at least not yet. But neither do I see same-sex unions as inherently sinful. Pope Francis in Fiducia supplicans, while reaffirming traditional teaching on marriage, insists that same-sex couples are “blessable”, rather than “contemptible”. Doctrine may not change as a result of an Act of Parliament, but it does change. Led by the Holy Spirit and informed by the witness over time of life-long, faithful and fruitful same-sex married couples, it is not inconceivable that the doctrine of marriage could change one day. So far, as… Read more »
If I remember from many weddings I attended as an organist, and of course almost all of you here know this much better than I, the purpose of marriage is:
seems to me that same sex marriages have at least 2/3 of the same purposes, and in many cases all 3.
Historically, our rites named offspring first among the three goods of marriage. But in 1977 we caught up liturgically with cultural mores (and with St Augustine!) in ordering lifelong union and faithfulness before being open to the gift of children. Living in Love and Faith interprets this third good more broadly: “There are other ways than bearing children in which marriages share in the creative purpose of God: adopting a child, caring for those in need, offering hospitality to the lonely.” But it is hard to see how this is compatible with the catholic doctrine of marriage. Which is not… Read more »
What DOES change theology, and therefore doctrine? What is the process?
Evangelical priest and scholar, Alister McGrath, writes in today’s Church Times: “Where some would see diversity of beliefs as intrinsically incoherent and self-contradictory, a wise person recognises that we have to learn to see our world and frame our experiences from multiple perspectives rather than from within a single limiting perspective or controlling paradigm.”
This doesn’t answer Pam Wilkinson’s question, but it does show how we might proceed.
For some reason I can vividly remember the Vicar of my church in Cornwall publishing banns between a ‘bachelor’ of his parish and a ‘spinster’ of some parish in Wales with many more consonants than vowels that he found impossible to pronounce. Given the new legislation in the Church in Wales, the churchmanship of that parish and the narrowness of that incumbent that would cause a major earthquake if it were repeated today involving a same-sex relationship. As it is a legal requirement for banns to be called if the marriage is legal there would presumably be no ‘escape’..