Bosco Peters Liturgy Christian Decline?
Penelope Doe ViaMedia.News The ‘Trans’ Body of Jesus and Transgressive Theologies
Kelvin Holdsworth What’s in Kelvin’s Head Reparations, the Churches and LGBT communities
Paul W Thomas Church Times All parishes need focal ministers — urgently
“Stipendiary priests overseeing multiple parishes require a secondary support system, argues Paul W Thomas”
Viz. Paul Thomas, what matters most is that something happens, and that it happens regularly and predictably, because churchgoing is a habitual activity. The ‘something’ could be a very simple act of worship; it could be a churchwarden or pastoral assistant or informed attendee reading a basic liturgy and homily issued by someone in authority or taken off the internet (goodness knows that plenty of sermons are anyway in the style of 18th century clergy reading from books of sermons). Something is always better than nothing. Nothing, alas, is too often what is on offer. Nothing yields neither community, fellowship… Read more »
“However, I do feel that there should be more volunteer clergy and, more especially, a far greater emphasis on lay leadership in worship.” I am all for lay leadership and presidency but there is a huge resistance. Far better would be to cut training for ordination to a bare minimum (some distance learning and a couple of weeks’ residential) and then deploy freshly ordained ministers in volunteer parish roles for a few years. If people want to take it further – and they appear suitable – then put people through a full training course for more senior stipendary roles. Essentially… Read more »
It is my understanding that “Ordained Local Minister” was a practise that actually happened in a few dioceses about twenty years ago, including Salisbury and Southwark, but it seems to have died a death. Perhaps it is time to revisit the idea. In the absence of an ordained minister who had been trained through the normal pathway, then a local, respected, and suitably experienced lay person would be ordained to serve only within his or her home church, thus allowing a Eucharistic service, rather than a service of the word or BCP Matins, in the weeks between visits from a… Read more »
That sounds very good.
Red Roberts at Bethnal Green in the 70s pioneered locally ordained ministers… Worker Priests. I’m not sure it was a long-term success. (I spent a year attached to it/him in 1976ish)
From what I’ve seen, it frequently fails because (1) there’s unrealistic expectations of what working people can offer and balance alongside their paid work and any family or caring responsibilities. This often means that non-stipendiary clergy are those who can afford to not work, due to early retirement, savings or spousal income – but, even if the church thinks such people are an unlimited resource, they are a particular, limited (and shrinking, as cost of living pressures rise) demographic. (2) There is often a mismatch of motivation. The institution (diocese, parish) wants people to simply plug gaps and ‘keep the… Read more »
I think you are right. I’m digging into ancient memory… The Bethnal Green model was (if I can use the word but with value added not subtracted ) an ordinary man out of the local community, ministering to it. They were not “Sunday extras”. In later years one of my colleagues was a minister in secular employment. He certainly had a ministry (first) in his workplace but was also a valuable addition to parish ministry. It was the closest working relationship I ever had and a true critical friend. It’s certainly true (in my experience) that the non – stipendiary… Read more »
Thanks to Penelope Doe for the characteristically thought-provoking article. As a trans woman myself, in the end I don’t really care whether Jesus was cisgender, queer, trans, gay, bi, heterosexual, or any other specific label. In fact the very urge for specificity applied to Jesus seems to me to owe a good deal to the Reformation anxieties to bolt everything down, all watertight and certain. It’s an expression of that ‘need for certainty’ which verges on proof, the control of biblical text, and policing of those non-compliant with a locked in, closed definition of the unfathomable and mysterious God. My… Read more »
“Maybe we are not meant to ‘know’ the full nature and characteristics of Jesus, of God.” As God, no. But as a man, yes. Christ took on the whole of human nature, certainly, and the “whole” of human nature includes sexuality. Genesis 1:27 affirms: “male and female he created them.” For this reason, we can affirm the necessity of Christ assuming a particular sex. In order to be fully human, Christ had to be a man or a woman. Historically, we know of course that he was a man: “Behold [Mary], you shall conceive in your womb and bear a… Read more »
“Evidence for this is provided by the fact that the genetic karyotypes of XX for females and XY for males account for our having a sexed nature in the first place.” Erm, no. It is perfectly possible to be 46-XX and have male external genitalia. In fact, since Jesus as a parthenogenic birth could only inherit DNA from Mary, it is most likely that Jesus was Himself 46-XX. I accept your point about the circumcision of Jesus in Luke but your treatment of the term “son” is unsafe. In many cultures, even today, an alpha-female is likely to be addressed… Read more »
“Jesus as a parthenogenic birth could only inherit DNA from Mary, it is most likely that Jesus was Himself 46-XX.” Is it? Unless i.e., we accept the Gospel accounts of a miracle birth. Jesus Christ is the “God-man” – fully God yet fully man. Parthenogenesis so far as I know is non-existent in humans: Sometimes an embryo may begin to divide without fertilisation, but it cannot fully develop on its own; so while it may create some skin and nerve cells, it cannot create others (such as skeletal muscle) and becomes a type of benign tumor called an ovarian teratoma.[107] Spontaneous ovarian… Read more »
Thanks Peter. Well as I wrote: “ I don’t really care whether Jesus was cisgender, queer, trans, gay, bi, heterosexual, or any other specific label.” But you are clearly representing a view that rather goes against the point Penelope is making, when you assert as absolute and applicable to all people the cisgender, gender binary, and presumably heterosexual ‘norm’? My position is simply that people’s sexual identity, and sexual orientation, and gender identity can be much more varied than that. I’m fine with your standard claim that Jesus was a guy. That sits comfortably with me… but not as some kind… Read more »
Much of your comment is remarkably similar to Paul Gondreau’s article at ‘Catholic Answers”. (see link below). “In order to be fully human, Christ had to be a man or a woman.” Actually, In order to be fully human he also had to be the result of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman–which of course the historical Jesus was. The Genesis creation stories are etiological myths. The binary perspective of the culture from which they emerged makes them handy for a continued binary bias in religious insight. Simili modo, the authors of the gospel nativity myths would have… Read more »
Upon reflection, my last line there is a bit clumsy. Aquinas was trying to synthesize Aristotle’s biology (in this case) with a Christian view of things from the perspective of a medieval monastic intellectual . I would not want to be understood as disparaging monasticism itself. Both Religious communities and individuals with a vocation to celibacy have made and continue to make tremendous contributions to the Christian faith as well as to the wider community. It is important to be grateful for their gifts.
Whilst we should acknowledge the gifts of monasticism, perhaps we should also question whether the almost total focus on celibacy and virginity has inadvertently created a suspicion of sex and sexuality. And that such suspicion has, consciously or unconsciously, polluted Christian doctrine and teaching, to the great cost of many women and queer people. Also Aristotle’s biology did not just influence Christian discourse. It is only in the past 20-30 years that biologists and zoologists have abandoned Aristotle, and the idea that sexuality and gender in the animal world could be understood as a gender binary with occasional instances of… Read more »
Thank you Simon, another interesting comment. I decided to post an ‘elucidation’ of my comment re: monasticism out of deference to some of my former teachers, many of them Roman Catholic women and men religious. I owe them a lot. They included a fair share of progressive thinkers. On the larger question, regarding literalism and biblical mythology, I know I go on a bit like a broken record on that score. However, I think it is incumbent upon those of us who have studied in this area to keep alternatives to literalist/fundamentalist/dogmatic interpretations of our biblical heritage in view. All… Read more »
Rod, just one quick point about the Bible. I agree with a great deal of what you say in the second part of this post. But what I am learning is that actually the Bible, in the original Hebrew or Greek, does not display a great deal of binary heteronormativity. Sadly it is the traditional commentaries, and translations into English by Christian scholars, that hides a lot of the variety of gender and sexual behaviours in the original texts, and imposes that gender binary norm. It’s like my Dawkins example from the other post. Modern gay and woman scholars are… Read more »
Notwithstanding your comment above, the question of heteronormativity in biblical texts is an issue. In the simplest of terms, etiological myths have as their starting point the world as the authors saw it, experienced it, understood it. Their mythology is an attempt to answer, how did all this come about, what does it mean? The myth also tends to reinforce a normative view of how the world ‘ought’ to be understood. The creation stories are not scientific, they are mythological. They reflect a binary and patriarchal view of things, male and female God created them etc. It is just a… Read more »
It is difficult to know how to respond to this post Rod. I agree totally with your first paragraph, and as for the second, whilst as a gay man I might have one response to the Adam and Eve story, I delight in the fact that the trans woman Tina Beardsley will see different things in the “poetry”. I am learning that is a very Jewish response. There is no right answer, the benefit comes in the discussion and sharing of different perspectives. The problem is what to do with that approach to scripture and myth in today’s church. I… Read more »
You are in the ball park here for sure. I think preachers often underestimate their ‘audience’. Let me make a couple of observations on what is a very large subject matter. One can underestimate both the diversity of a gathered congregation and the ability, indeed even the need, of some in that gathered community to hear critical reflection on the text. There are some hearers of the word who will be troubled by a more critical approach. There are also those are troubled by a traditional conventional biblical piety. They become the silent casualties of a risk not taken by… Read more »
You are right, it is all about risk. And it can be hard to take that risk of sharing new thoughts, when you are not sure how they will be received.
Last night, after I had composed that message about householders, it took me over thirty minutes to actually press “send”.
Glad you did!
Simon, I’d missed that particular Guardian article. Most interesting, as Spock might say; but the first couple of paragraphs remind me a wee bit of an Alice Cooper Tune. Yikes! I like the critique by feminists of Darwin. It is a bit of a digression, but I was also thinking of Lonergan who contextualizes Darwinism within the context of statistical probability within the whole universe–admittedly a digression though.
Thanks Rod, ref Lucy Cooke, the guardian review bigged up on Darwin, but in the original book Cooke traces the problem back to Aristotle, and claims that even Richard Dawkins selfish gene thesis owes more to inherited Patriarchal classical understandings than to any contemporary scientific research on gender behaviours in the animal kingdom. It is only when women gained a voice in academia that such binary ideas were challenged. We need to pay attention to post modern critiques around who has the power to speak and who does not, in Christianity or in Zoology. Philip Sheldrake writes about how in… Read more »
“We need to pay attention to who … has the power to speak and who does not…” Agreed. It is important as well to pay attention to what people see in a text before they speak. Feminists, indigenous and post-colonial thinkers see aspects of a text that that dominant privileged voices do not/will not. The rejection of liberation theology by western academics is a case in point. I like your distinction between religious and householder. For years conferences I attended focusing on spirituality used members of religious communities as their primary resource person. It never seemed to occur to anyone… Read more »
I think householder is an under-explored theme in Bible study, and I think it is worth looking at the gospel stories applying a lens of “mendicant” or “householder” (and I would argue Jesus’ disciples can be found in both categories). Householder examples might be Joseph of Arimathea; Mary, Martha and Lazarus; Mary Magdalen; and even (I would argue) the Rich Young Man (who I think we have got totally wrong). The common culture of the times (clearly reflected in gospel texts and the Didache), is that the mendicants wandered from place to place offering healing and teaching to householders in… Read more »
Simon, I really appreciated this comment. In all the years I have spent wrestling with some of these texts for preaching and bible study, there are some real gems here I had not considered from the perspective you offer. Thanks so much for posting this.
“In order to be fully human he also had to be the result of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman–which of course the historical Jesus was.”
Well, there goes the whole the Gospel and salvation in 29 words!
The Church accepts the Virgin Birth by faith and the Incarnation of God as a man, Jesus Christ. It follows Jesus’ paternal DNA was created miraculously.
“Biological sex does not address the issue of orientation and the spectrum of human sexual response.”
No, it doesn’t. But human brokenness in a fallen world does.
In order to be fully human he also had to be the result of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman–which of course the historical Jesus was. Rather sad news for those parents who have chosen to have children via IVF and other “artificial” techniques, to hear that those children cannot be “fully human”. But this whole discussion about what people in the first century AD knew or did not know about embryology is quite beside the point. They knew perfectly well that in the settled order of nature, women did not have babies other than as a result… Read more »
Interesting handle, unreliable narrator. You must be inspired by the Gospel writers—unreliable narrators all. “Rather sad news for those parents who have chosen to have children via IVF and other ‘artificial’ techniques, to hear that those children cannot be ‘fully human’ ”. Classic misdirection. The subject under discussion is the historical Jesus and the historical period in which he was born. “But the next generation will know more and understand better, so our position has to be provisional.” Largely a non sequitur. The next generation will likely indeed know more than we know; some of their knowledge may overturn our… Read more »
I’m only too happy to read a well-reasoned or well-evidenced comment of any kind, from anyone, in response to a comment of mine. It was reasonably clear that the comment “In order to be fully human he also had to be the result of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman” was most likely to be an overly compressed form of something like “I cannot accept Jesus as fully human unless His entire physical existence was consistent with the laws of nature and that means in particular that His conception can only have been, given the state of medical… Read more »
Thank you for clarifying your remark. We know know where each other stand on the issues.
“the folk ideas about procreation in the air at the time for granted.” Spot on. As least according to the authors of the KJV, the authors of the Jewish Scriptures at a minimum referred to the male sexual discharge as “seed” (I don’t know if the Christian Scriptures ever bring up the matter). I believe the Latin term we use today means “seed”. Ancient people knew that males inserted part A into females’ part B and nine months later, if all went well, part C was born. But their frame of reference was plant agriculture. Just as a seed is… Read more »
I would recommend the Québec film by Denys Arcand, Jésus de Montréal/Jesus of Montreal. Check it out with your search engine. I accept the liberal protestant position on the infancy narratives. The Canadian liturgical calendar marks December 8th as the commemoration of The Conception of the Virgin Mary–apparently one may conclude from the title of the feast that the conception was not ‘immaculate’. Anglicanism is terrific. Once we get past literalism, and the impossible task of reconciling the infancy narratives to modern biology, we have these wonderful stories that challenge is to think about God’s love and providence with regard… Read more »
To be clear, Anglicanism has always allowed (at least) the possibility that Mary’s conception was not immaculate. But then no Christian body I am aware of has ever held that her conception was virginal.
Geoff, I was simply pointing out the latitude that is Anglicanism on these matters. Setting up a feast day on the ‘conception’ of the BVM in juxtaposition to the problematic R.C. feast of the ‘immaculate conception’ is classic fudge, no? I do not read the story of the virginal conception of Jesus as literally true. This too is a legitimate Anglican read. See John Macquarrie Nativity in, Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, SCM Press pp. 392 ff.
Personally I believe in the virgin birth. If we are sceptical that supernatural intervention can occur like that, does the same scepticism extend to the possibility of a supernatural God? If we are going to de-mythologise the supernatural birth, should we de-mythologise a supernatural God as well, and attribute the concept of God to the creation of the human mind (individually and collectively)? Was Jesus simply a human being? Again, if God didn’t act supernaturally in the conception and birth of Jesus, why would we believe God acted supernaturally in the Resurrection either? I’m not afraid to look these possibilities… Read more »
Susannah, that is a question that is often put to me in one form or another. If you don’t ‘believe’ in in A as supernatural then you must not ‘believe’ in B as supernatural either. I suppose the smarty pants retort is, not all phenomena that are alleged to have the same cause actually have the same cause. Right out of the gate, I tend to avoid using the term ‘supernatural’. I prefer the notion of transcendence. In more detail, the myth of the virgin birth is essentially the ‘super-naturalization’ of a natural event, a birth. The Resurrection is is… Read more »
I agree fully with your commentary. If we get past the sweet, Virginal, pure Mary, and look at what she is really saying (or what the author(s) of Luke is/are saying) in the Magnificat, it is quite revolutionary. I like to say that Jesus of Nazareth’s parable in Matthew 25:35-44 is a concise summation of the second-most-important message (after the existence of God and God is the only god) of the Jewish Scriptures: The entire Bible, IMO, is a call for social justice. It feels like a third of the Psalms are angry about, or bewail the fact, that the… Read more »
Alleluia to that! הַֽלְלוּ־יָֽהּ׃ -Rod (Hebrew from the W.L. Codex)
What teenage (?pre-menarche) Mary is alleged to have said when Gabriel gave her the glad tidings is pretty much what the (well post-menopause) Hannah said when she heard similar news. It might make one wonder if it’s all invented for the purpose of presenting Jesus as the new Samuel, just as other stories present him as the new Moses or Elijah or whomever … There’s nothing original in Magnificat – and the themes are all picked up in the sermon on the mount. I think it’s called hammering home the message. Yes, it’s truly revolutionary. Just what we could do… Read more »
Good morning Peter!
“The entire Bible, IMO, is a call for social justice.”
Try telling that to the Canaanites.
True enough. “The entire Bible” I agree is overstating things. But it is certainly the theme in the later (chronologically) books. The later books in the Jewish Scriptures have a broader view of God’s justice and they see God as a more universal force than a tribal deity sitting on a mountaintop defeating the Israelites’ enemies. In my opinion, some Christians’ notions of a loving Christian God vs a petty vengeful Jewish God is a product of lack of knowledge of Judaism and Jewish history, early Christians feeling the need to show themselves superior to the Jewish religion Christianity was… Read more »
Very interesting. I recommend A History of Embryology by Joseph Needham. 1934. Cambridge University Press. Though spermatozoa were not discovered until 1677, Needham tells us that the role of semen as seed was appreciated well enough in about 1400 BC, as it was later in the story of Onan, and later still in Wisdom 7:2. Hindu scriptures of the sixth century BC record a relatively high level of understanding, with both semen and menstrual blood accepted as necessary for embryo (or amnion, depending on translation) formation.* In about 400 BC Aristotle held that semen contains an homunculus which found a… Read more »
Although it may not be the most savoury of discussions, Jesus makes use of it in Matthew 15:17-18 to point a valuable lesson.
Following on from Kelvin’s article, my family and ancestors were beneficiaries of the wealth that flooded back to Scotland through slavery and also through activities in India and the East. I grew up at a time when the British Empire was only taught to kids like me through a British lens, as something glorious and mainly benevolent. 60 years on, we have far fewer excuses to hold on to that indoctrination. I now know I have an ancestor who made a fortune through the East India Company; and another who ran slave ships and owned a slave plantation on St… Read more »
As always, Bosco’s article is excellent. Thanks for linking to it.
I have asked several times, in various forums, including our own Bishops Council, if there are any examples of Dioceses where ‘focal ministry’ has been tried, tested, and found to work. So far nobody has been able to provide any examples. ‘Focal ministry’ replaces Paul Thomas’s 0.2/0.5 role with a 0.0, and unless its accompanied by a radical change in what it means to lead a local church, it will fail just like every other structural change trialled in the CofE in the last 100 years. The Church of England is trying to sustain the parish system, with worship offered… Read more »
You are exactly right. The Church needs to get rid of its buildings, but that means it will have to pony up some money and the only part of the Church which has any is the Church Commissioners, the growth of whose fund has effectively been underwritten by parish share since 1995/98. What the Church cannot do is have its cake and eat it. It cannot palm off the buildings, and liberate itself from the millstone which they have become and also expect to retain all of its capital.
I agree. Might have worked if started 25 years ago. Now sadly cloud cuckoo land, I regret to say.
I don’t think that you’re missing anything David. Many church people are in denial because they cannot comprehend why something that is so precious to them is met with indifference by 98% of their neighbours. There are a multiplicity of factors at play and if there were easy answers then they would have been discovered by now. In one of my parishes a small group of parishioners kept telling me that I wasn’t attracting young people to the church; I gently asked them why their own children and grandchildren didn’t attend when they had such devout role models in their… Read more »
Well said.
A year ago I would have disagreed but I think we have passed the point of no return.
I don’t think it is just buildings though. I think we need to stop worrying about how many people attend services other than Christmas and Easter and double down on those two great festivals.
Over a period of nearly ten years a benefice that I was associated with could provide evidence of a successful result from having local ministers. Within the benefice of six churches the three that exhibited growth and one that maintained a steady rate of attendance during that period were the four that had a nominal minister within the Team Ministry as the focus of their pastoral care (and prominently involved in their worshipping life). These individuals were a lay reader, an OLM, and one of the stipendiary clergy – with the fourth church being served by a sequence of assistant… Read more »
Many thanks. Yesterday afternoon, having spent the morning attending services in the north of Northamptonshire, I attended services near Spilsby, Louth, Binbrook, Grimsby and Horncastle. One of the reasons why I attended services at these particular churches is that I have been trying to attend services everywhere in Lincoln diocese and these were vulnerable churches (likely Type 4 or 5) with only very occasional worship. Who knows how long they may have left? Indeed at one of them I had not seen anything advertised since well before the pandemic. At another, I had never seen anything advertised. All small communities.… Read more »
“This imagery may be shocking, but it is hardly innovative. The trope of Christ’s wound as both vagina and lactating breast, in theology and art, goes back to the Middle Ages.” — Penelope Doe That’s a new one for me. But I have been to conservative Protestant churches where the church members sang hymns about being washed in the blood of Jesus of Nazareth, presumably from that same wound. I think one hymn refers to it as ever-flowing. I believe those hymns reference back to the Book of Revelation, but nonetheless, when I heard them for the first time, I… Read more »
Penny Doe’s excellent article at Via Media is well worth reading, not least for the helpful perspective it casts on the recent sermon at Trinity College Cambridge. I have added a comment there. I think key to our thinking about sexuality and the Church are some assumptions about masculinity that are subtle but invasive. The ‘Jesus is my boyfriend’ type of worship song makes that assumption, but somehow it has become ‘orthodox’ to sing lines like these: “I’m madly in love with you” “You are more beautiful than anyone ever” “There has never ever been anyone like you” “I want… Read more »
It’s not orthodox, it is evidenced in every study that looks at church attendance and why is an activity for men such a bad thing?
And for all the years of mens breakfasts and mens prayer walks those attendance figures have not changed.
if men wish to do things as a distinct gender group they will do so. We don’t need forced techniques to make it happen.
But what does that have to do with sung worship? It’s a very reductionist view of church that clergy seem obsessed with, “communicants on Sunday” rather than genuine community. Should I say to the men’s mental health group run at my church, “stop as we are perpetrating a focus on a fake masculinity” or “isn’t it wonderful that these men have found a safe space to share their mental struggles”? If they don’t become confirmed anglicans is that no longer a real ministry? Ps let’s shut the Mothers Union they’ve been at it for too long!
Would you agree that we should cease our women’s breakfast, our women’s bible studies, and our women’s walking and running groups too? We wouldn’t want to be accused of being “orthodox”.
Oh well why don’t we abolish all co-educational schools so that male and female never learn to interact and work together. Better still let’s emulate the Shakers in our Church life and have elders to make sure women and men don’t talk with each other. The point I have made is that if groups wish to gather together in single gender entities they will organise themselves socially in such a way. Let’s not make mens groups some evangelistic tool. It doesn’t work. As to the Jesus is my boyfriend song lyrics, read Penny Does’s excellent article and the comment I… Read more »
It’s funny that the Archdeacon of Salop and the Bishop of Oswestry to be both have the same name.