Tim Wyatt Church Times Key reports in 2018: everything you need to know
“Too many long documents to read in 2018? Tim Wyatt provides a digest”
Richard Mammana Mockingbird Popsicles and Prayer Books
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love Unconditional Love – a New Year Resolution for 2019
Kelvin Holdsworth What’s in Kelvin’s Head 10 Correct Opinions About Christmas Carols
Jayne Ozanne ViaMedia.News When “the Goodies” become “the Baddies”…
Jonathan Cooper Independent Our Anglican Christmas has been tarnished by the church’s role as an enabler of LGBT hate
Of the making of Church of England reports there is no end. (Apologies to Ecclesiastes 12.12).
I wonder whether the Independent changed the title of Cooper’s article after he submitted it, because the article and title don’t really seem to belong together.
Jonathan Cooper says everything one needs to know about the CofE. For him, it is an English gathering. It must be able to have nothing to do with Christianity, and indeed know that that is so. The Church of England is English people going to a Christmas service to sing hymns about something they do not believe, but it is fun to sing. The Vicar is to be scolded for not getting that. So now it is, wait for it, Our. Last. Christmas. Whew.
“to sing hymns about something they do not believe” Is it really that simple? A lot of people who say they don’t believe don’t want to have to explain what they believe because they are still working through it, which isn’t the same as disbelief. The traditional church gave people the space to work through things in their own time and many eventually found God, particularly in later life. The problem with modern evangelism is that people are pressed into make early declarations one way or the other rather than being given years or decades to slowly develop a deep… Read more »
I strongly agree with Kate. God works far more mysteriously than we can ever know. God is more numinous, less intelligible, but always with us even when we are on a long and lifetime journey. That operates at the level of whole nations. It is fantastic that we have a ‘national’ church which signals God’s presence in community after community, up and down the land (often accompanied by unseen loving service to those communities, the old, the sick, the lonely). And the people of England, conscious faith or no faith, have historically seen the Church of England as ‘their’ church,… Read more »
Thanks, Susannah. What a sensible statement – encouraging to this ancient, agnostic, culturally conservative Sydney parson. Happy New Year to all Thinking Anglicans.
This is a man who is proud nay boastful of rejecting Christian faith who in that spirit demands the national religious gathering correctly tailor itself to him, as part of its national duty. At some point this ceases to be church and becomes a national institution qua institution. What is stunning is his expectation that this be so and his umbrage at discovering, maybe even exceptionally, it isn’t.
And he has no intention of trying another church, or even making his views known to the vicar and giving this church another go.
Insightful. I agree.
He holds the conviction that the CofE MUST be an institution that is not fulfilling its remit unless, at Christmas, it avoids being itself so as to attend to subjects of English national life.
Then he publishes an essay in the Independent in which he declares the national religious institution has offended him and he is not going back now.
He puts it down to imperialism when his ink is still wet, but of course that empire idea was seamlessly at one with the Church of England national Christians idea.
Here is the odd moment where we agree…imperial anglicanism and church of england nationalism are deeply problematic. Sadly, he cannot see that the one feeds the other and that he wants the second anyway.
Don’t cry, Chris. Your world may have come to an end but ours continues – in worship of the God and Father of OLJC.
No crying here I can assure you Ron.
“Bah, humbug!” to Kevin Holdsworth’s nixing of Winchester Old as a tune for “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night”. I think it’s a great tune, but just as Great Britain and the USA are two countries separated by a common language (credit: George Bernard Shaw), so too, TEC and the CofE are two churches separated by different hymn tunes for the same hymn. Not to mention, my wife told me about shepherds washing their socks by night, so that may make me unfit to judge hymn tunes.
FWIW Fr Kelvin is neither of the CofE nor TEC, being as he is a Scottish Episcopalian.
It’s a pity that Jonathan Cooper’s good argument about the Anglican communion and homosexuality has got mixed up with his dislike of new music at his local church. He makes valid points about this very damaging legacy of imperialism. However there’s an element of oversimplification in the assertion that criminalisation of homosexuality and global Anglicanism go hand in hand. Recently a friend teaching literature in Russia was told, very firmly, that homosexuality does not exist in Russia. We are not responsible for that attitude.
Isn’t this a bit of a fallacy of composition or perhaps argumentum ad absurdum? I don’t think anyone has claimed that global Anglicanism is everywhere the cause of the criminalisation of homosexuality, but it has been in many of the places where it has occurred.
I found Jonathan Cooper’s letter (that’s what it was) odd when I first read it in the Independent. I still find it odd when I reread it here. Yes, his comments on the Church of England, and in particular on its LGBT attitude, have justification. But just why a self-confessed non-believer being miffed by some carols with a modern twist led to the outburst bemuses me. He gives no evidence about the vicar’s attitude to LGBT matters. I’m left wondering whether Jonathan went determined to be upset and just looking for an excuse, however weak, to write an anti-church diatribe.
Again, I think it is more than that. All too often carols / hymns / songs are arranged for the benefit and interest of the every dwindling congregation and the choir. Coping with them – nobody ever offers a vocal score for newcomers – reinforces the clique and keeps newcomers at arms length. If we want congregations to grow, then people like Cooper and his family are exactly the sort of people we need to feel comfortable dropping in occasionally. Occasionally can grow to semi-regularly and then weekly. But if churches aren’t welcoming to drop-ins because they choose music those… Read more »
I agree…at my own TEC church this Christmas eve, the regular service was preceded by our usual carol service. The choir as usual was wonderful, but when it came to the choices for the congregation to join in on, they were all relatively obscure pieces that most (including me–and I have a background in choral performance) had never heard before and certainly didn’t know well enough to sing.
I’m no musician, but we may be confusing wilful eclecticism and cultural fragmentation. As culture tends to become more and more ‘niche’ I wonder whether any unrehearsed ‘communal singing’ experience (beyond ‘Jerusalem’ at a rugby match) is feasible in any context. Is there a commonality of musical genre anywhere any longer (by which I mean that if we were to draw a Venn diagram of it all is there anything at all in A ∩ B ∩ C…)? I realise Hymns A&M (and Stanbrook Abbey, Wild Goose , The Source) are all pretty niche in themselves, but is there anything… Read more »
At the least, the many Church of England primary schools should have instilled a basic repertoire in many children which could / should form the basis of hymns sung in churches.
Nor would it beyond the wit of the national church to come up with say 30 hymns / songs (with the tune specified) plus say 10 carols and indicate that all main communion services should draw a majority of music from that list. It would be unpopular with some but if our priority is making services accessible it is the sort of initiative we need.
Unpopular with some?! How about with everyone who regularly attends church? The same hymns every 6 weeks in endless round; the only seasonal variation that allowed by the “generous” provision of 10 carols. No. Try buying melody copies of hymn books; allow folk to sign them out to take home and publish the hymns and carols online in advance of the service; use the same mass setting throughout the year so that folk who are unchurched can quickly latch on to some part of the singing, even better if you provide the music for the mass setting. There are ways… Read more »
I was once organist at a church where the rector chose a “hymn of the month”. It was the offertory hymn, and chosen because it was unfamiliar. On the Sunday when it first appeared the rector led it, and repeated the melody if he felt that was necessary. By week 3, the new melody had become familiar, and on week 4 it was solidly in the repertoire. Of course, that was at a time when most families were in church on most Sundays.
In the UK, a person’s desire for BREXIT is often not driven by logical thought but by deep emotional resonances. And if we want to counter those BREXIT forces we need to find arguments that work at the emotional, not logical, level. Similarly for Jonathan Cooper. We can find all sorts of arguments to pursuade ourselves he is misguided or making wrong judgements. But huge numbers of young people feel as he does (feel, not think) and unless we can find ways to deal with those feelings then the churches will remain empty.
I think the crux of Jonathan Cooper’s article is the line ‘At the church it became clear that it was theirs and not ours.’ Surely it is terribly wrong that someone should feel this when they visit a Church of England church? This is a searing indictment of a church that is supposed to be there for all the people and further evidence of the ‘gathered church’ evangelicalisation of the Church of England. Pure puritan nonsense and it’s what we’re now expected to push. ‘It was their church not ours’ also surely informs the pain felt because of Anglicanism’s appalling… Read more »
PS–He hates empire and at the same time wants an “LSE recommended commission” to tell provinces of the anglican communion what to do.
I am not a fan of the Jonathan Cooper article on several grounds but I think a key point is being overlooked. The Church of England is constantly bemoaning falling congregation numbers. The Cooper family is now included in those depressing statistics but needn’t have been. Several commentators don’t seem particularly upset by that. I am left thinking that the Church – or at least significant parts of it – does not want more backsides on pews, but wants “more people like us” on pews. I suspect that the cohorts we have lost are those who used to go to… Read more »
My comment had to do with the difficulty of a national church polity, which creates a burdensome welcoming conundrum. So you get an English subject who believes the church belongs to him and his way of thinking needs to be attended to on that ground. For me this confuses the welcoming embrace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with national entitlement. Happy New Year.
So much parsing and arguing over nonsense. It’s a pity we don’t have some *feeling* Anglicans, instead.
I am not certain, historically, that reformation has come through sustainable argument. At its best, it has been through the change of perceptions by direct experience and speaking to emotions already in place . . . at its worst, through force.
The problem is that very few conservative Christians base their objections to same-sex marriage as a Christian rite on Commonwealth sodomy laws. Is AB Holder in favour of same-sex marriage? Let’s not throw everything into one big pot so as to bemoan the conservative position on marriage. AB Drexel Gomez did not hold the catholic position he did based upon English sodomy laws. For him scripture and catholic tradition were the controlling factors, whether you agree with him or not. Happy New Year.
Ron, pounding the pulpit does not enhance faulty logic. You can assert whatever you like, but that is what it is. An opinion you hold dear. What you declare ‘bifurcation’ is a distinction having to do with Christian views on marriage, as against criminalising a conduct one used to call sodomy. Do enjoy your New Year’s Day.
“Pretty sure” is at least an improvement, indicating it is a strongly held opinion. You tend to speak as though, holding a tattered copy of BL, there is a neutral-truth higher vantage point. No.
“Sodomy laws” — read your own link, Rod, and the original terms of the discussion.
“Weak point, pound pulpit” is a common expression that has nothing to do with a literal pulpit. Metaphors are like this.
Bon année
Jonathan Cooper’s letter is an extreme ( and rather odd) example of a person for whom the Church of England should be more England than Church. But the C of E can’t easily cast off its history. I would hope our Church remains one with blurred edges which has room for the hesitant, the doubting and the curious. And part of its ministry is surely to fan the embers of what is left of english folk religion.
“Jonathan Cooper’s letter is an extreme ( and rather odd) example of a person for whom the Church of England should be more England than Church.” I agree and this is my point. Blurry edges are important if this is your base line. I get that. But I also hope that a Church with this difficult/dated remit understands how burdensome this polity is for a Communion that has moved on.
Thank goodness a great deal of the present Anglican Communion is not a post-colonial anything!