Vis a vis Church Mouse, whilst my doctoral study isn’t focusing on the history of marriage, the locus of my study takes place in the realm of marriage. And I think a part of the issue the CofE has – just in general – is that it doesn’t know what it thinks that marriage is. LLF chapter 3 gives us a fun little potted interpretation of what marriage might be, but it doesn’t pick a conclusion. The Prayer Book gives us a version of Augustine’s three goods, which also exist in a fudged form in CW, but I don’t know… Read more »
I think you’re being fanciful in imagining that couples care about the nature and theology of marriage. I think the reason for the decline in the proportion of church weddings compared to non-church weddings is that clergy have no incentive to encourage weddings, and every incentive to discourage them.
I have heard of clergy being difficult when non-churchgoers want a service. But it is no longer just a choice between registry office and church as it used to be. Hotels and other wedding venues are now available and will offer pretty much anything the couple want.
Err, I don’t know where you get that from. I can think of parishes which rely on fee income from weddings to survive – the relevant clergy have every incentive to encourage them.
But fees are covering less of the costs. Couples are now rarely choosing the added extras of choirs and bells which can add to the income. Also, it is quite difficult to offer marriages when you don’t have an incumbent. More and more churches are in long-term vacancy.
Averages conceal a great deal of variety – the parishes I’m thinking of do a great many more than that. It’s true that many parishes aren’t in the ‘wedding business’ in the way that some pretty churches near a popular reception venue might be, but that doesn’t mean that clergy are discouraging weddings. The truth is that, for whatever reason, fewer couples are enquiring about weddings in church.
The 2022 Stats for Mission report shows something of the range when it comes to numbers of Church of England weddings (and other things). In 2022 the average was 2.1 weddings per church (or about 2.5 per parish). Boosted a bit, it seems, by weddings that were postponed because of pandemic-related disruption.
It is only one example, but one church in Norwich is notorious for not doing e.g. funerals for anyone but regular worshippers. The next door deanery picks up a lot of funerals from that parish. You don’t need me to say that the parish in question has a pretty poor grasp of what Anglican pastoral ministry means!
And I imagine they don’t have many baptisms either? I wonder when all this began. I was a chorister at a middle stump church ..next door was a prominent evangelical church and next door the other way an Anglo Catholic church but in each pastoralia was the same. Fragmentation a factor in decline?
Maybe they don’t, but they’ll want an answer to the question ‘why get married in church’, and a worked out theology is at least a part of the answer to that.
Oliver how could a CofE cleric ‘discourage’ a church wedding? The only discouragement I offered was that the date and time were already booked. The bishop was chary about third and fourth time around marriages so I had to politely decline those. I was once asked to officiate at a blatant immigration scam and I asked them to get permission from the Superintendent Registrar which elicited a torrent of words ‘never heard in the Bible’ to quote Simon and Garfunkel. I think you have a fantasy of lazy clergy and you compress every scenario into that mould.
A cleric can discourage a church weddings by being uncooperative, slow to respond to phone calls and emails, overstating difficulties, or making the process appear more complex than it is. And just look at the tone of many church websites – they certainly aren’t warm invitations to get married in church.
I’m saying it’s human nature to be a bit lazy, and clergy are no different to everyone else.
I know it is your undying belief that clergy are all feckless and incompetent, but I can think of a number who have been extraordinarily energetic and creative in helping couples obtain the necessary qualifying connection to allow them to be married in a particular parish.
‘Being slow to respond to phone calls and emails’ is more often due to the pressure of work than to laziness. Most clergy are doing the work of two or three people, and are spread far too thin.
Couples would sometimes ask to get married on ‘Easter Saturday’, meaning Holy Saturday. I would then have to point out that it was Holy Week (with a lot going on in a parish in the Catholic tradition). Couples were invariably gracious about this, it only became a problem when pressure on popular reception venues caused some to book the bunfight well before booking the church. A note on the parish website, saying why we didn’t have weddings in Holy Week and why, helped end this misunderstanding.
For what its worth, can I throw my tuppence in? For me and Jill, personally, marriage is primarily about friendship, companionship and mutual support. Find the right person and it is both enriching and strengthening – a positive experience. Historically I believe it had a lot to do with inheritance – toffs and Norman ‘nobles’ with issues of property and politics. Not the same thing as most people now see it. Sex? God help the fool who marries for sex alone. When those genes fade – and as sure as eggs is eggs it will, what are you left with?… Read more »
Just for context with the sex stuff, I mention it partly because of the long-standing (albeit now often abandoned) tradition of sex only being acceptable within marriage, and because of the related Roman position, which holds that only heterosexual vaginal sex without contraception is acceptable. On the Roman position, nothing oral or manual is acceptable, even between happily married straight couples (for reference, this position falls out of the Thomist claim that sex is for reproduction, and that to use something for other than what it is for is to violate the natural law and therefore sin). I’m absolutely sure… Read more »
Thanks – you’re a lot wiser and better informed on this than I am. I can only go on personal experience, social observation and a ‘nuts and bolts’ practical attitude to life. . By ‘Roman’ I take it you mean ‘Roman Catholic’? I know a fair number of Protestants, then who aren’t as Protestant as they like to think in that case. And I must admit that I’m one of them, largely out of practical neccessity – everything in my experience forces me to that conclusion; like it or not, with a theology of divine sovereignty and a very powerful… Read more »
And I mean, this is kind of the broader point I’m making: we don’t seem to know what we want ‘marriage’ to mean (or, for that matter, what exactly we mean by ‘sex’, and what sort of activities that might include, although discussing that would have to become explicit so I’d advise us to park it here). There’s a whole bunch of history and culture and theology sort of smushed together in chapter 3 of the LLF book, and that’s all very interesting if you’ve never looked into this before, but it doesn’t reach any sort of conclusion. And maybe… Read more »
Thanks, my friend. I hoped you’d clarify the point. Enough said for now – wil hope to share with you on an easier subject before too long. (To me, ‘catholic’ still means universal. I’m happy with that.) God bless.
The C of E still sees procreation as one of the goods of marriage, even if Common Worship reverses the BCP order (see ARCIC 11). So if a couple choose not to be open to the gift of children, this would appear to be a denial of one of those goods. However, this position is more nuanced than it might appear. CW’s ‘default’ Preface allows the reference to children being born to be omitted, as in: “in which children are [born and] nurtured”. As LLF points out, there are ways other than the bearing of children in which a married… Read more »
Actually, my concern about the fudging wasn’t around proles; CW still talks about marriage as the foundation of family life in which children are at least ‘nurtured’. As an interpretation of proles, it’s a bit brief but we’re there. My issue is with fides and sacramentum, which the Bishop of Hippo understood (per De Bono Congugali) as meaning sexual/romantic exclusivity and indissolubility respectively (sacramentum doesn’t come to mean anything about imposing grace until post-Latern IV/post-Lombard’s Sentences). These three give a very clear idea of what marriage is in the eyes of St. Augustine: an exclusive relationship, that can only end… Read more »
Thank you for the clarification. The CW rite – for all its shortcomings – has at least moved us on from the legalism of the BCP, in which marriage is seen as covenant, to seeing marriage as gift and blessing.
When the CW Marriage Service was being debated in General Synod in c. 1999/2000, the then Bishop of Rochester said in a speech that a marriage in which the couple did not plan to have children was ‘defective in intent’. This did not go down well and the ensuing debate was lively. I recall in particular one member saying that she and her husband had made the very painful decision not to have children, because one of them carried a gene for a severe genetic abnormality. They felt it was irresponsible to pass that gene on. The Bishop lost the… Read more »
I mean, my point isn’t that St. Augustine is correct and that we should just do that; given how he’s been interpreted through the Sentences tradition, we’d probably end up at something like the Roman position, which I think is untenable (although, that’s a different discussion to not be had on a message board). My point is that between 1662 and 1999, social definitions of ‘marriage’ have drifted, and as such so has the Church’s understanding, but without the Church finding a single thread to hang on to. Like, maybe the essence isn’t children (and indeed, Augustine wouldn’t think that… Read more »
I think your wider point is sound, but certainly there has been a ‘goods of the estate of marriage’ in the history of anglican worship and practice, including children (if it be God’s will)–let’s not use extreme examples to cloudy the matter, viz., there are obviously reasons why married couples who believe procreation is what marriage is about in part, who for other reasons do not choose to have children; or, the Sentences will go in this or that direction. Your point about incoherence at present pertains less to that reasonably steady history (companionship and support until death; procreation; aid… Read more »
To be honest, even Augustine wasn’t entirely committed to the connection of marriage and children, and prior to Lateran IV, it was common for non-nobles (i.e., the vast majority of us poor) to not marry, because marriage then wasn’t so much about children as it was inheritance, and those aren’t quite the same thing (hence why adoption was such a major part of Roman Imperial law; you could chose who inherited your valuable estate if all your sons were wasters). And I don’t think that removing procreation from part of the marriage estate is the essence of the confusion. Rather,… Read more »
I’d meet you halfway on your part 2. “And I don’t think that removing procreation from part of the marriage estate is the essence of the confusion. Rather, I think it’s that marriage – inevitably as a social practice – is bound up with all sorts of baggage that hasn’t been sorted through neatly.” You are speaking of the rite in the context of cultural confusion. The latter does believe, in sectors, that procreation has fallen out as one of the goods of marriage. Marriage is about finding someone you like enough to marry, at least for a season. That… Read more »
I should have made it clear that my comment was addressed to Allan’s question, as to how ‘may be nurtured’ got past the House of Bishops and General Synod. I was attempting to explain what happened in the debate. My apologies.
A written word-for-word record of each meeting of General Synod is made and published as Reports of Proceedings. These are online here but only go back to November 2012. I know that earlier reports do exist but if you go far enough back they only exist in hard copy. The Common Worship marriage services received final approval in February 2000, but they would have been debated at a few earlier meetings. Although I was there I cannot remember exactly when the then Bishop of Rochester made his remarks. Hard copies of the Proceedings should be kept at Church House Westminster,… Read more »
I was there too, and I was only on General Synod 1999-2000. I think it was a London session when Bp Nazir-Ali made that speech; if so, it wouldn’t have been the July meeting.
Michael Nazir-Ali doesn’t hide his absolutism: “there is a real lack if the intention is never to have children, regardless of circumstances.” That said, childless couples are still called to take part in the Church’s mission; living in such a way “that those to whom love is a stranger may find in you generous friends” – to borrow a luminous blessing from Methodism. Couples who can’t have children, or for whom it would be irresponsible, should still be capable of providing nurture of some kind (like the housebound couple who campaign for better youth provision in their town). Hence my… Read more »
And like, we’re all living in the post-Wollstonecraft world in which marriage is often seen as a kind of friendship; you’ll have been to weddings in which the groom referred to his bride as his ‘best friend’. And maybe this is better than the ancient concern about babies and inheritance, or the medieval moral panic about sex. But the Church isn’t doing that sort of work, at least not publicly.
For historical context for you and John, Pope Alexander III ruled in about 1170 (when the idea of matrimony as a sacrament which any old person could receive was being worked out; a truly formative time in what we call ‘Christian marriage’), that any marriage that didn’t produce children in three years was ‘voidable’ (meaning, ‘can be annulled’), and this is picked up by Aquinas and Scotus in their Sentences commentaries. More than anything, it was really this that tied together the idea of marriage and children, but in the 13thC the logic went the other way: parents have an… Read more »
At6 least two of my friends shouldn’t have got married in that case! For reasons to do with severe nervous problems (stemming from childhood sexual abuse) the girl felt she couldn’t cope with the stress, and they elected not to have children. Similarly Jill and I, for reasons of age and practicality, made a similar decision – she already had two children from an abusive first marriage. Both couples have had quite useful lives providing support for others in a social context – very much so in our friends’ case. Surely, this shows how much nonsense is engendered by clerics… Read more »
The 1930 Lambeth Conference marked the reversal of the C of E’s position on birth control within marriage, effectively allowing a pious couple to be sexually active without conceiving children. Some Anglo-Catholic bishops were unhappy with this, although it seems their clergy could be more pragmatic and pastoral: a priest at a well-known AC church, on hearing a penitent confess to the use of birth control, was known to suggest “an extra 30 minutes in bed tomorrow” as a penance.
Haven’t heard that one before! I’ve known several fundamentalists who’re opposed to contraception – and a friend once asked her pastor how to cope with sexual desires. Bless him, his reply was to take daily cold showers…..
Joseph
2 months ago
The question David Runcorn ask is when cherished and definitive biblical doctrines fall apart because of scientific discoveries or changing public taste, do we need faith in a mythical being. It may well be in 200 years, nothing in the bible is tenable anymore. You may as well ask what are we believing in. The answer surely will be, “I don’t know”.
Richenda
2 months ago
I found David Runcorn’s article really clear and helpful – thank you.
Snap! Will write more when and if my brain gets better after a fall. (Not the Genesis kind.)
Lorenzo
2 months ago
Mr Runcorn is so spot on. The churches have not even begun to engage with Darwin. We’re still arguing about marriage being instituted in Eden, for heaven’s sake. There never was a tine or place where humankind was better than it is now. We never fell.
Its implications for soteriology: a new Adam rescuing us from the consequences of the old Adam’s fall. I have yet to read a re-interpretation of St Paul that makes sense on this point.
No re-interpretation is needed. The fall happened about 10,000 years ago, when homosapiens moved from being hunter gatherers in a land of plenty (Eden), for which they were uniquely designed, to farmers for which they were not and whose land needed to be protected. War, famine and pestilence followed and today we see the destruction of habitats and biodiversity on a scale never seen before, The climate changing as forests are cleared to make way for new farms. Creation is dying before our eyes and as Paul says in Romans 8 is waiting to be liberated by the first born… Read more »
I’m sure the farming community will be overjoyed to know they are responsible for wars, famine and pestilence. I thought they existed to provide life’s essentials. Many people enjoy the Archers and Emmerdale. I wasn’t aware they depict Original Sin.
Emmerdale most certainly does – it seems to be built around it! Can’t speak for the Archers – haven’t listened to it since Walter Gabriel had a traction engine.
I am wondering where you get this from. You do not agree with the Gen 2 wisdom parable that has God creating the first human to “till the ground” and manage a garden, or that The Fall (the word itself is not used) was not a disastrous career move by Adam into farming, but an act of catastrophic disobedience of God’s command, that the bible calls ‘sin’ – but which you make no mention of at all?
Contemporary readings of Gen 3 often note that it tracks very closely to tellings of the Exile in Kings and Daniel. As such, Gen 3 was probably not written as history or science in our sense, but rather an explanation of the idea of Exile, which looms over the entire Old Testament.
St. Paul’s point, then, might be more about attaining to the promised land under Christ, our new King and High Priest, more than it is about going back to a historically literal Eden.
As I understand it, attaining the ‘Promised Land’, in all its fulness will only come at Christ’s return – and I wouldn’t like to argue about how or when that might be! Certainly, in a spiritual sense, we’re not there yet, despite being ‘seated with Christ in heavenly places’; we’re living in what Jean Darnell called the ‘overlap’ between worlds. On a personal level, I interpret the early chapters of Genesis as a series of parables; indeed, don’t believe there ever was an actual, literal ‘fall’ from a perfect state. In other words, mankind was a series of ‘chipped cups’… Read more »
Mr Runcorn’s lucid explanation of biblical understanding and development is obviously of relevance to evangelicals who use the bible to reinforce their opinions and prejudices. Most of us have moved on, and haven’t taken Creation stories and Noah’s Ark as essential to life for some time. If evangelicals like Mr Runcorn can convince other evangelicals that their approach to religion is detached from reality he’ll have done the church a service. It is sad that evangelicals have to be told how Columbus helped discover the earth isn’t flat. Using the Bible as the main basis for belief really is for… Read more »
Columbus and pretty much everyone around him knew the earth wasn’t flat. The worry was that Columbus was using an inaccurate circumference and was leaving with inadequate supplies to get anywhere close to India.
Columbus didn’t discover that the earth wasn’t flat. That knowledge pre-dates Christianity. Columbus’s whole pitch was to go round the globe ‘the other way’ to get to the “indies”.
That said, I doubt that literal creationists will listen to anything anyone has to say that contradicts their view. Why change the habit of a lifetime.
I don’t even know what you mean by ‘use the Bible as the main basis for belief’. I would guess that about 98% of what we know about Jesus is found in the documents of the New Testament. If the church didn’t have the NT, it (we) would know next to nothing about Jesus. So yes, I’m entirely happy to consult tradition and reason, but they aren’t the main basis for my belief. And I don’t think there’s a single statement in the Book of Common Prayer that would contradict this.
I imagine millions of Trump’s evangelical devotees ignore Tradition and Reason. They can find sufficient nonsense to spout lies based upon the bible as the basis for their beliefs.
Because using the bible as a basis of belief is meaningless.. Mr Runcorn and Trump’s followers do it. It’s just that their preconceived conclusions are different.
I did not deny this. I didn’t say there is no other information. I just said that the vast majority of what we know about Jesus comes from the Bible. And I think that is true, and is also ordinary Anglicanism.
The NT does not mention him speaking from the crib or making clay birds come to life as the Quran does.
Simon Eyre
2 months ago
Thank you David for your thoughtful article but one or two things to say Our views of God may change and fluctuate but the Bible does suggest to us that He is in Himself unchanging. Our perspective of Him changes but He himself is constant. From the tone of the thread it sounds as if we need to close Canterbury Cathedral and decamp to Downe House! Science will take us so far but I doubt it will ever explain the resurrection of Jesus, what are our souls, why is there suffering in the world and that is where faith and… Read more »
Thanks Simon,
I am surprised if you hear my blog conclusion suggesting anything near ‘close Canterbury Cathedral and decamp to Downe House’. I also note the Catholic Church that persecuted Galileo would have agreed with you that the God of the Bible is unchanging. But it did not inform their response to the emerging evidence of the created world very intelligently. A relevant resource for this discussion is Richard Hays’ latest book – ‘The wideness of God’s mercy’. It contains an extended discussion about the issue of God and ‘change’.
Not that it will change what appear to be fixed positions. It was Aristotle’s worldview in odd conjunction with Sacred Scripture — which doesn’t major in telling us about a flat world, or about 7 literal days of creation, or many of the things we hear at TA. The so called fundamentalist position has its ironic counterpart on the opposite end of the spectrum. Richard Hays would need to have a God who changes to come alongside his own 180 degree change in thought. The “Catholic Church” wouldn’t be the only entity to find in scripture what it is looking… Read more »
Hi David Many thanks. I have to confess Richard Hays’ book isnt likely to creep to the top of my to read list .In fact the author of the current book Im reading, Pleasing God, R T Kendall would probably have a lively discussion with him! In the meantime I think I will continue to look to the writer of the Hebrews and the prophet Malachi to inform me. It is perfectly possible to believe in the unchanging nature of God and yet embrace all that science can teach us. After all he created all that Darwin observed. Perhaps that… Read more »
Malcolm Gray
2 months ago
Think its getting out of the funeral business too, i have been to two funerals recently taken by a Humanist. (awful)
I know I am not the only person posting here to have worked as a civil celebrant (humanists are of course a rather small subset of civil celebrants). But I offer this perspective: a funeral director is likely to prefer a civil celebrant to a priest because they get better “customer service”. When I get a call from a funeral director, I answer it, or move heaven and earth to call back within an hour or so; when they call clergy, they often leave a message with an administrator and it can be days (and maybe follow-up calls) before they… Read more »
I know that there are some clergy who will be bad at returning calls, or who are hidden behind an impenetrable parish administrator. But not all of us are like that. I, too, will always respond quickly to a call, and always accommodate a requested date and time if I possibly can, so I get irritated by the trope of ‘clergy don’t reply and aren’t co-operative’. Clergy can also be creative about putting together orders of service that suit a particular set of circumstances – of course, we are only ever going to do a Christian service, and wouldn’t expect… Read more »
Here in the US, at least in my experience, the rectors and other staff have good relations with the local funeral directors and will generally accommodate reasonable requests. In my own parish, the arrangements (dates, etc) are usually made with the family first with the parish and then with the funeral director.
Interesting how hung-up CofE people are about church marriage when in so many parts of europe the only valid marriage is the state one (registry office), with the church service being an optional extra. By contrast Confirmation in Northern Europe remains very much a right of passage for young people. By the way, even in antiquity any seafarer would have learned very quickly about how one’s horizon varied as to your height of eye & the height of the object, and fully understanding this was essential for safe navigation. Landlubbers may have thought that the world was flat, but not… Read more »
I believe the ancient Greeks had an idea that the world was round, based on observation of the rising and setting of the sun – they also knew how to navigate by the stars etc, and weren’t alone in that knowledge.
As for church marriage, it isn’t just the CofE who have hang ups. Jill and I, for various reasons, had a civil registry marriage, and a Baptist told me we weren’t married in the sight of God! Thankfully the Almighty doesn’t have quite such a limited range of vision as some of his people seem to think.
Further to last, it seems round does not appear in the Hebrew – just world https://biblehub.com/hebrew/8398.htm nor in the Septuagint, which has τὴν οἰκουμένην – the world, the inhabited world. Presumably Coverdale was translating from the Latin of the Sarum Breviary and/or Vulgate and its use of orbis : Domini est terra et plenitudo ejus : orbis terrarum et universi qui habitant in eo. The Orb brings us back to the subject of when was it realised that the earth was round, as it has been used as a symbol of the earth since Roman times, and, surmounted by a… Read more »
Not too sure about the composer of Genesis 1, though. The vision which includes the ‘waters above the earth and the waters below the earth etc can be read as a ‘flat earth’, like Discworld. But then nobody (I hope) takes that literally – or seriously either.
There is a belief among some fundamentalists that the waters above the earth were a body of water around the earth, separated by a sort of fragile eggshell, and when the people were disobedient God broke the shell and it was all that water that caused the flood.
Having to have a literal explanation for every single thing in the Bible is extremely limiting and leads to some very strange conclusions.
There are several places in the Coverdale psalter where there is reference to ‘the round world’ which don’t appear in other translations. If nothing else, this tells us that Coverdale knew the world was round even if others didn’t!
Gilo
2 months ago
I commend Graham’s article in Via Media, Should we Expect Archbishops to Tell the Truth? A devastating outline of Archbishop Welby’s consistently poor grasp of truth-telling in his response to the victims of the Smyth scandal. Interesting to note that in the various public communications on the Redress Scheme from the Church of England, there has been no mention of accountability or apology from bishops for the multiple and widespread dishonesties that survivors have met from the hierarchy since reporting. There seems to have been no work at all done on any possible Truth & Reconciliation process. Presumably the arch/bishops… Read more »
Sadly Gilo a deafening silence followed your post yesterday. I’m so sorry you and Graham go on being stonewalled – as will no doubt happen to Pilavachi’s victims as well
What , as a non clerical person, I have found almost unbelievable is the total lack of shame shown by the vast majority of Our Glorious Leaders about any abuse they cannot ignore . It has greatly diminished my view of the CofE – these are not people I’d want to buy a used car from.
Thanks Susanna, The ‘Glorious Leaders’ are able to absorb embarrassment in near industrial quantities. Their employees, particularly in the woe-begone NST, must eat cognitive dissonance for breakfast to get them through the day. The whole structure operates as a purple protection racket in my view. The Archbishops are protected by the Nyeocracy, and in return protect Nye in a culture of dishonest and delinquent enablement. They are quite brazen about it. All we can hope is for sufficient tenacity to bring sufficient continuing daylight to this chronic institution. And hope that the next generation in power will have much greater… Read more »
Graham Cotter
2 months ago
Dear David, I am replying to your post quite late, and am hesitant about writing on blogs. The writing can so easily be misconstrued. I know you are living not too far away from us, and am very happy to meet up for a coffee to talk further. Not covering all your points, but addressing three. Darwin: Darwin’s macro-evolutionary theories are looking increasingly threadbare. His view that other races are a lower form of life on the evolutionary tree is a truly shocking understanding of our common humanity. Also his hypothesis is one tributary that led directly to the first… Read more »
Graham Cotter
2 months ago
David, This is to continue a dialogue with you. Third, gender neutral blessing, and gender neutral marriage. Jesus speaks about the thirteen heart behaviours that pollute our lives in Mark 7 vv.20-23. This passage is devastating, and implicates us all. The necessity of being born again from above, and to know the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, becomes an urgent necessity. Of great concern is greed, both dietary and economic in the church of today; also pride and elitism, rather than servant-heartedness in Christian leadership. (Recent abuses in evangelical and charismatic leadership bear this out.… Read more »
Vis a vis Church Mouse, whilst my doctoral study isn’t focusing on the history of marriage, the locus of my study takes place in the realm of marriage. And I think a part of the issue the CofE has – just in general – is that it doesn’t know what it thinks that marriage is. LLF chapter 3 gives us a fun little potted interpretation of what marriage might be, but it doesn’t pick a conclusion. The Prayer Book gives us a version of Augustine’s three goods, which also exist in a fudged form in CW, but I don’t know… Read more »
I think you’re being fanciful in imagining that couples care about the nature and theology of marriage. I think the reason for the decline in the proportion of church weddings compared to non-church weddings is that clergy have no incentive to encourage weddings, and every incentive to discourage them.
I have heard of clergy being difficult when non-churchgoers want a service. But it is no longer just a choice between registry office and church as it used to be. Hotels and other wedding venues are now available and will offer pretty much anything the couple want.
Err, I don’t know where you get that from. I can think of parishes which rely on fee income from weddings to survive – the relevant clergy have every incentive to encourage them.
But fees are covering less of the costs. Couples are now rarely choosing the added extras of choirs and bells which can add to the income. Also, it is quite difficult to offer marriages when you don’t have an incumbent. More and more churches are in long-term vacancy.
payment for bell ringing & choirs goes direct to those involved in providing the service, so neither is a source of income for the church.
Not in my church! There is a cut for the church as well.
On average parishes do about one wedding per year.
Averages conceal a great deal of variety – the parishes I’m thinking of do a great many more than that. It’s true that many parishes aren’t in the ‘wedding business’ in the way that some pretty churches near a popular reception venue might be, but that doesn’t mean that clergy are discouraging weddings. The truth is that, for whatever reason, fewer couples are enquiring about weddings in church.
The 2022 Stats for Mission report shows something of the range when it comes to numbers of Church of England weddings (and other things). In 2022 the average was 2.1 weddings per church (or about 2.5 per parish). Boosted a bit, it seems, by weddings that were postponed because of pandemic-related disruption.
Which churches are you thinking of, out of interest?
It is only one example, but one church in Norwich is notorious for not doing e.g. funerals for anyone but regular worshippers. The next door deanery picks up a lot of funerals from that parish. You don’t need me to say that the parish in question has a pretty poor grasp of what Anglican pastoral ministry means!
And I imagine they don’t have many baptisms either? I wonder when all this began. I was a chorister at a middle stump church ..next door was a prominent evangelical church and next door the other way an Anglo Catholic church but in each pastoralia was the same. Fragmentation a factor in decline?
Maybe they don’t, but they’ll want an answer to the question ‘why get married in church’, and a worked out theology is at least a part of the answer to that.
Oliver how could a CofE cleric ‘discourage’ a church wedding? The only discouragement I offered was that the date and time were already booked. The bishop was chary about third and fourth time around marriages so I had to politely decline those. I was once asked to officiate at a blatant immigration scam and I asked them to get permission from the Superintendent Registrar which elicited a torrent of words ‘never heard in the Bible’ to quote Simon and Garfunkel. I think you have a fantasy of lazy clergy and you compress every scenario into that mould.
A cleric can discourage a church weddings by being uncooperative, slow to respond to phone calls and emails, overstating difficulties, or making the process appear more complex than it is. And just look at the tone of many church websites – they certainly aren’t warm invitations to get married in church.
I’m saying it’s human nature to be a bit lazy, and clergy are no different to everyone else.
I know it is your undying belief that clergy are all feckless and incompetent, but I can think of a number who have been extraordinarily energetic and creative in helping couples obtain the necessary qualifying connection to allow them to be married in a particular parish.
‘Being slow to respond to phone calls and emails’ is more often due to the pressure of work than to laziness. Most clergy are doing the work of two or three people, and are spread far too thin.
Couples would sometimes ask to get married on ‘Easter Saturday’, meaning Holy Saturday. I would then have to point out that it was Holy Week (with a lot going on in a parish in the Catholic tradition). Couples were invariably gracious about this, it only became a problem when pressure on popular reception venues caused some to book the bunfight well before booking the church. A note on the parish website, saying why we didn’t have weddings in Holy Week and why, helped end this misunderstanding.
For what its worth, can I throw my tuppence in? For me and Jill, personally, marriage is primarily about friendship, companionship and mutual support. Find the right person and it is both enriching and strengthening – a positive experience. Historically I believe it had a lot to do with inheritance – toffs and Norman ‘nobles’ with issues of property and politics. Not the same thing as most people now see it. Sex? God help the fool who marries for sex alone. When those genes fade – and as sure as eggs is eggs it will, what are you left with?… Read more »
Just for context with the sex stuff, I mention it partly because of the long-standing (albeit now often abandoned) tradition of sex only being acceptable within marriage, and because of the related Roman position, which holds that only heterosexual vaginal sex without contraception is acceptable. On the Roman position, nothing oral or manual is acceptable, even between happily married straight couples (for reference, this position falls out of the Thomist claim that sex is for reproduction, and that to use something for other than what it is for is to violate the natural law and therefore sin). I’m absolutely sure… Read more »
Thanks – you’re a lot wiser and better informed on this than I am. I can only go on personal experience, social observation and a ‘nuts and bolts’ practical attitude to life. . By ‘Roman’ I take it you mean ‘Roman Catholic’? I know a fair number of Protestants, then who aren’t as Protestant as they like to think in that case. And I must admit that I’m one of them, largely out of practical neccessity – everything in my experience forces me to that conclusion; like it or not, with a theology of divine sovereignty and a very powerful… Read more »
And I mean, this is kind of the broader point I’m making: we don’t seem to know what we want ‘marriage’ to mean (or, for that matter, what exactly we mean by ‘sex’, and what sort of activities that might include, although discussing that would have to become explicit so I’d advise us to park it here). There’s a whole bunch of history and culture and theology sort of smushed together in chapter 3 of the LLF book, and that’s all very interesting if you’ve never looked into this before, but it doesn’t reach any sort of conclusion. And maybe… Read more »
Thanks, my friend. I hoped you’d clarify the point. Enough said for now – wil hope to share with you on an easier subject before too long. (To me, ‘catholic’ still means universal. I’m happy with that.) God bless.
The C of E still sees procreation as one of the goods of marriage, even if Common Worship reverses the BCP order (see ARCIC 11). So if a couple choose not to be open to the gift of children, this would appear to be a denial of one of those goods. However, this position is more nuanced than it might appear. CW’s ‘default’ Preface allows the reference to children being born to be omitted, as in: “in which children are [born and] nurtured”. As LLF points out, there are ways other than the bearing of children in which a married… Read more »
Actually, my concern about the fudging wasn’t around proles; CW still talks about marriage as the foundation of family life in which children are at least ‘nurtured’. As an interpretation of proles, it’s a bit brief but we’re there. My issue is with fides and sacramentum, which the Bishop of Hippo understood (per De Bono Congugali) as meaning sexual/romantic exclusivity and indissolubility respectively (sacramentum doesn’t come to mean anything about imposing grace until post-Latern IV/post-Lombard’s Sentences). These three give a very clear idea of what marriage is in the eyes of St. Augustine: an exclusive relationship, that can only end… Read more »
Thank you for the clarification. The CW rite – for all its shortcomings – has at least moved us on from the legalism of the BCP, in which marriage is seen as covenant, to seeing marriage as gift and blessing.
When the CW Marriage Service was being debated in General Synod in c. 1999/2000, the then Bishop of Rochester said in a speech that a marriage in which the couple did not plan to have children was ‘defective in intent’. This did not go down well and the ensuing debate was lively. I recall in particular one member saying that she and her husband had made the very painful decision not to have children, because one of them carried a gene for a severe genetic abnormality. They felt it was irresponsible to pass that gene on. The Bishop lost the… Read more »
I mean, my point isn’t that St. Augustine is correct and that we should just do that; given how he’s been interpreted through the Sentences tradition, we’d probably end up at something like the Roman position, which I think is untenable (although, that’s a different discussion to not be had on a message board). My point is that between 1662 and 1999, social definitions of ‘marriage’ have drifted, and as such so has the Church’s understanding, but without the Church finding a single thread to hang on to. Like, maybe the essence isn’t children (and indeed, Augustine wouldn’t think that… Read more »
I think your wider point is sound, but certainly there has been a ‘goods of the estate of marriage’ in the history of anglican worship and practice, including children (if it be God’s will)–let’s not use extreme examples to cloudy the matter, viz., there are obviously reasons why married couples who believe procreation is what marriage is about in part, who for other reasons do not choose to have children; or, the Sentences will go in this or that direction. Your point about incoherence at present pertains less to that reasonably steady history (companionship and support until death; procreation; aid… Read more »
To be honest, even Augustine wasn’t entirely committed to the connection of marriage and children, and prior to Lateran IV, it was common for non-nobles (i.e., the vast majority of us poor) to not marry, because marriage then wasn’t so much about children as it was inheritance, and those aren’t quite the same thing (hence why adoption was such a major part of Roman Imperial law; you could chose who inherited your valuable estate if all your sons were wasters). And I don’t think that removing procreation from part of the marriage estate is the essence of the confusion. Rather,… Read more »
I’d meet you halfway on your part 2. “And I don’t think that removing procreation from part of the marriage estate is the essence of the confusion. Rather, I think it’s that marriage – inevitably as a social practice – is bound up with all sorts of baggage that hasn’t been sorted through neatly.” You are speaking of the rite in the context of cultural confusion. The latter does believe, in sectors, that procreation has fallen out as one of the goods of marriage. Marriage is about finding someone you like enough to marry, at least for a season. That… Read more »
I should have made it clear that my comment was addressed to Allan’s question, as to how ‘may be nurtured’ got past the House of Bishops and General Synod. I was attempting to explain what happened in the debate. My apologies.
Janet, for my research, do you know if the debate is stored anywhere? Were minutes kept? I’d love to read them if I could
I’m afraid I don’t know, but I hope records are kept. I’m sure some TA reader will know, and can advise on how to access archives.
A written word-for-word record of each meeting of General Synod is made and published as Reports of Proceedings. These are online here but only go back to November 2012. I know that earlier reports do exist but if you go far enough back they only exist in hard copy. The Common Worship marriage services received final approval in February 2000, but they would have been debated at a few earlier meetings. Although I was there I cannot remember exactly when the then Bishop of Rochester made his remarks. Hard copies of the Proceedings should be kept at Church House Westminster,… Read more »
I was there too, and I was only on General Synod 1999-2000. I think it was a London session when Bp Nazir-Ali made that speech; if so, it wouldn’t have been the July meeting.
Michael Nazir-Ali doesn’t hide his absolutism: “there is a real lack if the intention is never to have children, regardless of circumstances.” That said, childless couples are still called to take part in the Church’s mission; living in such a way “that those to whom love is a stranger may find in you generous friends” – to borrow a luminous blessing from Methodism. Couples who can’t have children, or for whom it would be irresponsible, should still be capable of providing nurture of some kind (like the housebound couple who campaign for better youth provision in their town). Hence my… Read more »
Agreed. I have often benefitted from the nurture of couples, whether with or without children.
I’m guessing that what is intended to be optional is children, rather than nurture. At least I hope so.
That’s certainly how I’ve read it.
And like, we’re all living in the post-Wollstonecraft world in which marriage is often seen as a kind of friendship; you’ll have been to weddings in which the groom referred to his bride as his ‘best friend’. And maybe this is better than the ancient concern about babies and inheritance, or the medieval moral panic about sex. But the Church isn’t doing that sort of work, at least not publicly.
“I do wonder whether absolutists think that older and/or infertile couples shouldn’t marry?”
Any couple challenged on this should respond by quoting Luke 1:18 et al.
“Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.””
If the Lord wills it the couple will conceive. (I know it’s not fashionable to believe that but it is the Biblical response to any such challenges.)
For historical context for you and John, Pope Alexander III ruled in about 1170 (when the idea of matrimony as a sacrament which any old person could receive was being worked out; a truly formative time in what we call ‘Christian marriage’), that any marriage that didn’t produce children in three years was ‘voidable’ (meaning, ‘can be annulled’), and this is picked up by Aquinas and Scotus in their Sentences commentaries. More than anything, it was really this that tied together the idea of marriage and children, but in the 13thC the logic went the other way: parents have an… Read more »
Thank you, friend. I have only very limited knowledge of pre Reformation history, so your info is much appreciated.
At6 least two of my friends shouldn’t have got married in that case! For reasons to do with severe nervous problems (stemming from childhood sexual abuse) the girl felt she couldn’t cope with the stress, and they elected not to have children. Similarly Jill and I, for reasons of age and practicality, made a similar decision – she already had two children from an abusive first marriage. Both couples have had quite useful lives providing support for others in a social context – very much so in our friends’ case. Surely, this shows how much nonsense is engendered by clerics… Read more »
The 1930 Lambeth Conference marked the reversal of the C of E’s position on birth control within marriage, effectively allowing a pious couple to be sexually active without conceiving children. Some Anglo-Catholic bishops were unhappy with this, although it seems their clergy could be more pragmatic and pastoral: a priest at a well-known AC church, on hearing a penitent confess to the use of birth control, was known to suggest “an extra 30 minutes in bed tomorrow” as a penance.
Haven’t heard that one before! I’ve known several fundamentalists who’re opposed to contraception – and a friend once asked her pastor how to cope with sexual desires. Bless him, his reply was to take daily cold showers…..
The question David Runcorn ask is when cherished and definitive biblical doctrines fall apart because of scientific discoveries or changing public taste, do we need faith in a mythical being. It may well be in 200 years, nothing in the bible is tenable anymore. You may as well ask what are we believing in. The answer surely will be, “I don’t know”.
I found David Runcorn’s article really clear and helpful – thank you.
Snap! Will write more when and if my brain gets better after a fall. (Not the Genesis kind.)
Mr Runcorn is so spot on. The churches have not even begun to engage with Darwin. We’re still arguing about marriage being instituted in Eden, for heaven’s sake. There never was a tine or place where humankind was better than it is now. We never fell.
Darwinism – Something about the selfish gene? Churches talk about it all the time.
Its implications for soteriology: a new Adam rescuing us from the consequences of the old Adam’s fall. I have yet to read a re-interpretation of St Paul that makes sense on this point.
No re-interpretation is needed. The fall happened about 10,000 years ago, when homosapiens moved from being hunter gatherers in a land of plenty (Eden), for which they were uniquely designed, to farmers for which they were not and whose land needed to be protected. War, famine and pestilence followed and today we see the destruction of habitats and biodiversity on a scale never seen before, The climate changing as forests are cleared to make way for new farms. Creation is dying before our eyes and as Paul says in Romans 8 is waiting to be liberated by the first born… Read more »
I’m sure the farming community will be overjoyed to know they are responsible for wars, famine and pestilence. I thought they existed to provide life’s essentials. Many people enjoy the Archers and Emmerdale. I wasn’t aware they depict Original Sin.
Emmerdale most certainly does – it seems to be built around it! Can’t speak for the Archers – haven’t listened to it since Walter Gabriel had a traction engine.
That’s why so many people tune in! The alternative is a trip to M&S.
The Word was made flesh to bring us back to hunting and gathering? Are you serious?
I am wondering where you get this from. You do not agree with the Gen 2 wisdom parable that has God creating the first human to “till the ground” and manage a garden, or that The Fall (the word itself is not used) was not a disastrous career move by Adam into farming, but an act of catastrophic disobedience of God’s command, that the bible calls ‘sin’ – but which you make no mention of at all?
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I was responding to a specific point made by Lorenzo.
I think the ultimate purpose of the Word made flesh is to bring us back to a new Eden, with creation in perfect balance, yes absolutely.
Well you clearly find it convincing.
Not all, but certainly thought provoking.
Contemporary readings of Gen 3 often note that it tracks very closely to tellings of the Exile in Kings and Daniel. As such, Gen 3 was probably not written as history or science in our sense, but rather an explanation of the idea of Exile, which looms over the entire Old Testament.
St. Paul’s point, then, might be more about attaining to the promised land under Christ, our new King and High Priest, more than it is about going back to a historically literal Eden.
As I understand it, attaining the ‘Promised Land’, in all its fulness will only come at Christ’s return – and I wouldn’t like to argue about how or when that might be! Certainly, in a spiritual sense, we’re not there yet, despite being ‘seated with Christ in heavenly places’; we’re living in what Jean Darnell called the ‘overlap’ between worlds. On a personal level, I interpret the early chapters of Genesis as a series of parables; indeed, don’t believe there ever was an actual, literal ‘fall’ from a perfect state. In other words, mankind was a series of ‘chipped cups’… Read more »
I thought the trajectory was towards the City of God (as per Revelation) rather than back to the Garden (as per Woodstock)
The City of God has trees in it.
Mr Runcorn’s lucid explanation of biblical understanding and development is obviously of relevance to evangelicals who use the bible to reinforce their opinions and prejudices. Most of us have moved on, and haven’t taken Creation stories and Noah’s Ark as essential to life for some time. If evangelicals like Mr Runcorn can convince other evangelicals that their approach to religion is detached from reality he’ll have done the church a service. It is sad that evangelicals have to be told how Columbus helped discover the earth isn’t flat. Using the Bible as the main basis for belief really is for… Read more »
Columbus and pretty much everyone around him knew the earth wasn’t flat. The worry was that Columbus was using an inaccurate circumference and was leaving with inadequate supplies to get anywhere close to India.
Yes. But did he believe in Creationism?
They all did then – though they would not have known the word. And they were all Catholics of course, Father.
Columbus didn’t discover that the earth wasn’t flat. That knowledge pre-dates Christianity. Columbus’s whole pitch was to go round the globe ‘the other way’ to get to the “indies”.
That said, I doubt that literal creationists will listen to anything anyone has to say that contradicts their view. Why change the habit of a lifetime.
‘Using the Bible as the main basis for belief really is for dinosaurs.’
Sounds like bog-standard Anglicanism to me.
Bog-standard may be. But some add Tradition and Reason to make the faith more acceptable.
I don’t even know what you mean by ‘use the Bible as the main basis for belief’. I would guess that about 98% of what we know about Jesus is found in the documents of the New Testament. If the church didn’t have the NT, it (we) would know next to nothing about Jesus. So yes, I’m entirely happy to consult tradition and reason, but they aren’t the main basis for my belief. And I don’t think there’s a single statement in the Book of Common Prayer that would contradict this.
I imagine millions of Trump’s evangelical devotees ignore Tradition and Reason. They can find sufficient nonsense to spout lies based upon the bible as the basis for their beliefs.
What’s Trump got to do with David Runcorn and those who believe as he does, I’d like to know?
Because using the bible as a basis of belief is meaningless.. Mr Runcorn and Trump’s followers do it. It’s just that their preconceived conclusions are different.
Father David, what is your basis for what you believe about Jesus? If you don’t find it in the Bible, where do you find it?
A large part of the world’s population gets its information about Jesus from the Quran.
In the Christian context there are also post biblical revelations of Jesus. What about the promises made to St Margaret Mary Alacoque, for instance?
I did not deny this. I didn’t say there is no other information. I just said that the vast majority of what we know about Jesus comes from the Bible. And I think that is true, and is also ordinary Anglicanism.
Nothing.
Then they aren’t alone in “sufficient nonsense” ..
“It is sad that evangelicals have to be told how Columbus helped discover the earth isn’t flat.”
Please tell me that you know what you have said is nonsense. Why do you push this stuff?
The NT does not mention him speaking from the crib or making clay birds come to life as the Quran does.
Thank you David for your thoughtful article but one or two things to say Our views of God may change and fluctuate but the Bible does suggest to us that He is in Himself unchanging. Our perspective of Him changes but He himself is constant. From the tone of the thread it sounds as if we need to close Canterbury Cathedral and decamp to Downe House! Science will take us so far but I doubt it will ever explain the resurrection of Jesus, what are our souls, why is there suffering in the world and that is where faith and… Read more »
Thanks Simon,
I am surprised if you hear my blog conclusion suggesting anything near ‘close Canterbury Cathedral and decamp to Downe House’. I also note the Catholic Church that persecuted Galileo would have agreed with you that the God of the Bible is unchanging. But it did not inform their response to the emerging evidence of the created world very intelligently. A relevant resource for this discussion is Richard Hays’ latest book – ‘The wideness of God’s mercy’. It contains an extended discussion about the issue of God and ‘change’.
Not that it will change what appear to be fixed positions. It was Aristotle’s worldview in odd conjunction with Sacred Scripture — which doesn’t major in telling us about a flat world, or about 7 literal days of creation, or many of the things we hear at TA. The so called fundamentalist position has its ironic counterpart on the opposite end of the spectrum. Richard Hays would need to have a God who changes to come alongside his own 180 degree change in thought. The “Catholic Church” wouldn’t be the only entity to find in scripture what it is looking… Read more »
Hi David Many thanks. I have to confess Richard Hays’ book isnt likely to creep to the top of my to read list .In fact the author of the current book Im reading, Pleasing God, R T Kendall would probably have a lively discussion with him! In the meantime I think I will continue to look to the writer of the Hebrews and the prophet Malachi to inform me. It is perfectly possible to believe in the unchanging nature of God and yet embrace all that science can teach us. After all he created all that Darwin observed. Perhaps that… Read more »
Think its getting out of the funeral business too, i have been to two funerals recently taken by a Humanist. (awful)
Thank the funeral directors for that – they seem to have decided that civil celebrants should be the default option.
I know I am not the only person posting here to have worked as a civil celebrant (humanists are of course a rather small subset of civil celebrants). But I offer this perspective: a funeral director is likely to prefer a civil celebrant to a priest because they get better “customer service”. When I get a call from a funeral director, I answer it, or move heaven and earth to call back within an hour or so; when they call clergy, they often leave a message with an administrator and it can be days (and maybe follow-up calls) before they… Read more »
I know that there are some clergy who will be bad at returning calls, or who are hidden behind an impenetrable parish administrator. But not all of us are like that. I, too, will always respond quickly to a call, and always accommodate a requested date and time if I possibly can, so I get irritated by the trope of ‘clergy don’t reply and aren’t co-operative’. Clergy can also be creative about putting together orders of service that suit a particular set of circumstances – of course, we are only ever going to do a Christian service, and wouldn’t expect… Read more »
Here in the US, at least in my experience, the rectors and other staff have good relations with the local funeral directors and will generally accommodate reasonable requests. In my own parish, the arrangements (dates, etc) are usually made with the family first with the parish and then with the funeral director.
I quite liked the Humanist funerals I went to.
Interesting how hung-up CofE people are about church marriage when in so many parts of europe the only valid marriage is the state one (registry office), with the church service being an optional extra. By contrast Confirmation in Northern Europe remains very much a right of passage for young people. By the way, even in antiquity any seafarer would have learned very quickly about how one’s horizon varied as to your height of eye & the height of the object, and fully understanding this was essential for safe navigation. Landlubbers may have thought that the world was flat, but not… Read more »
I believe the ancient Greeks had an idea that the world was round, based on observation of the rising and setting of the sun – they also knew how to navigate by the stars etc, and weren’t alone in that knowledge.
As for church marriage, it isn’t just the CofE who have hang ups. Jill and I, for various reasons, had a civil registry marriage, and a Baptist told me we weren’t married in the sight of God! Thankfully the Almighty doesn’t have quite such a limited range of vision as some of his people seem to think.
Well one person anyway.
Sadly, they aren’t alone! It depends in which circles you’ve moved the most – and all of us have our own versions of myopia
And Bede knew very well that the world is round even though he never left the North East
As did the author of Psalm 93 – he hath made the round world so sure that it cannot be moved
Round as in spherical or round as a saucer?
Further to last, it seems round does not appear in the Hebrew – just world https://biblehub.com/hebrew/8398.htm nor in the Septuagint, which has τὴν οἰκουμένην – the world, the inhabited world. Presumably Coverdale was translating from the Latin of the Sarum Breviary and/or Vulgate and its use of orbis : Domini est terra et plenitudo ejus : orbis terrarum et universi qui habitant in eo. The Orb brings us back to the subject of when was it realised that the earth was round, as it has been used as a symbol of the earth since Roman times, and, surmounted by a… Read more »
Not too sure about the composer of Genesis 1, though. The vision which includes the ‘waters above the earth and the waters below the earth etc can be read as a ‘flat earth’, like Discworld. But then nobody (I hope) takes that literally – or seriously either.
There is a belief among some fundamentalists that the waters above the earth were a body of water around the earth, separated by a sort of fragile eggshell, and when the people were disobedient God broke the shell and it was all that water that caused the flood.
Having to have a literal explanation for every single thing in the Bible is extremely limiting and leads to some very strange conclusions.
Must admit that I’ve not come across that version before! I take it they’ve never heard of, or don’t believe in the great Ice Age?
Where did you get that translation from? I’ve just searched Biblegateway and I can find no translation that uses the word ’round’.
BCP Psalter
There are several places in the Coverdale psalter where there is reference to ‘the round world’ which don’t appear in other translations. If nothing else, this tells us that Coverdale knew the world was round even if others didn’t!
I commend Graham’s article in Via Media, Should we Expect Archbishops to Tell the Truth? A devastating outline of Archbishop Welby’s consistently poor grasp of truth-telling in his response to the victims of the Smyth scandal. Interesting to note that in the various public communications on the Redress Scheme from the Church of England, there has been no mention of accountability or apology from bishops for the multiple and widespread dishonesties that survivors have met from the hierarchy since reporting. There seems to have been no work at all done on any possible Truth & Reconciliation process. Presumably the arch/bishops… Read more »
Sadly Gilo a deafening silence followed your post yesterday. I’m so sorry you and Graham go on being stonewalled – as will no doubt happen to Pilavachi’s victims as well
What , as a non clerical person, I have found almost unbelievable is the total lack of shame shown by the vast majority of Our Glorious Leaders about any abuse they cannot ignore . It has greatly diminished my view of the CofE – these are not people I’d want to buy a used car from.
Thanks Susanna, The ‘Glorious Leaders’ are able to absorb embarrassment in near industrial quantities. Their employees, particularly in the woe-begone NST, must eat cognitive dissonance for breakfast to get them through the day. The whole structure operates as a purple protection racket in my view. The Archbishops are protected by the Nyeocracy, and in return protect Nye in a culture of dishonest and delinquent enablement. They are quite brazen about it. All we can hope is for sufficient tenacity to bring sufficient continuing daylight to this chronic institution. And hope that the next generation in power will have much greater… Read more »
Dear David, I am replying to your post quite late, and am hesitant about writing on blogs. The writing can so easily be misconstrued. I know you are living not too far away from us, and am very happy to meet up for a coffee to talk further. Not covering all your points, but addressing three. Darwin: Darwin’s macro-evolutionary theories are looking increasingly threadbare. His view that other races are a lower form of life on the evolutionary tree is a truly shocking understanding of our common humanity. Also his hypothesis is one tributary that led directly to the first… Read more »
David, This is to continue a dialogue with you. Third, gender neutral blessing, and gender neutral marriage. Jesus speaks about the thirteen heart behaviours that pollute our lives in Mark 7 vv.20-23. This passage is devastating, and implicates us all. The necessity of being born again from above, and to know the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, becomes an urgent necessity. Of great concern is greed, both dietary and economic in the church of today; also pride and elitism, rather than servant-heartedness in Christian leadership. (Recent abuses in evangelical and charismatic leadership bear this out.… Read more »