Colin Coward’s musings are, well… Colin Coward’s musings. If you like what he says you’ll agree. If you’re not sure you do you’ll ask – where/what are the sources, methods and norms providing a foundation for these claims? And how do they compare/relate to the sources methods and norms of classical Christianity? The words of Giles Fraser don’t come ex cathedra, do they?
Susannah
1 month ago
I’ll pick up on just one of Steve Reeves important points: “5. Radical Governance Reform The hierarchical structure of the Church, which has allowed abuses of power to go unchecked, must be revisited. Power must be decentralised, and lay members, independent safeguarding experts, and survivors must have a voice in governance and decision-making.” Why did the Archbishops’ Council think it should act autocratically, without referring to General Synod (gathering a matter of days later) or the survivors involved, when it just shut down the ISB ‘because it could’, and caused grave harm and distress to survivors/victims left in limbo, exposing them… Read more »
But is it hierarchical? Not in the same sense my company is. In a business hierarchy it’s obvious who is responsible for what decisions, and when it isn’t obvious that’s usually a short term before/during a restructure. Consider, Who is responsible for the ISB? Who is responsible for safeguarding not being independent if we take the archbishops at their word and they wanted it to be independent? Is it really purely William Nye? What about Ian Paul and other council members, or what about the people who voted for the council (and hence who Ian and others hope will vote… Read more »
One of the issues is that survivors can be – and often are – angry, and there is nowhere for that anger to go: anger plays poorly in synod debates and ecclesiastical committees and tends to be marginalised and resisted with our existing structures. That is a component of our culture which has garnered little reflection, and is one of the reasons survivors have such bad experiences of the churches response to them. It is not the whole picture, but to me it is a significant component which will not be addressed by structural reform, but rather by profound self-examination,… Read more »
FearandTremolo
1 month ago
Okay, so, I’m writing here as a member of Gen Z. Colin notes that attendance is declining amongst youngsters like me, and that “Institutional misogyny, patriarchy and sexism, products of headship theology, homophobia and transphobia, racism, the abuse of victims and survivors, the failures of safeguarding, terminal decline of numbers, clinical depression among clergy and top-down bureaucracy are dominant characteristics of today’s Church”, and suggests that the cure is emphasising the love of God. And frankly, in the period of late, neo-liberal capitalism where Marx is slowly being proved right about alienation, that Church could do with leading with the… Read more »
Yes! The toxicity doesn’t help, and the Church could be everything the majority of TA commentators want it to be, and it would still keep going down and down and down. This probably now applies to almost all churches, whether ‘mainline’ or ‘fringe’ and whether ‘orthodox’ or ‘heterodox’. The Gospels are simply insufficiently compelling and/or interesting to an ever-growing proportion of the population, most especially the younger cohorts, even in the final redoubt of ‘Western’ Christianity, where the transformation is proving to be almost as rapid and complete as it was in Ireland in the 1990s or Poland in the… Read more »
“The Gospels are simply insufficiently compelling” — here I believe we disagree. They are endlessly compelling but have not been presented in a way that makes that come alive in peoples’ heart and minds. The generation of great Anglican preachers like John Donne and the poets of a figural frame of mind, have disappeared from the CofE for many generations. Into that void stepped people like CS Lewis and I will not presume to point out limitations, but he had no real grasp of the power of scripture IMHO, and so concocted a mythological framework that made its themes come… Read more »
Many thanks! Oh, I very much agree that they are compelling, and I am very much compelled by them. However, it seems plain to me that – when when and where the Good News is imparted in a highly effective manner – it simply sweeps over a large majority of the public, who remain impassive and indifferent to its value. More fool them, perhaps, but I simply feel that much of the population has either ceased to have much sense of the numinous, or gets its dose of the numinous from computer games, social media, the cinema or sports. Modern… Read more »
I mean, where I’ve had success introducing people to the faith, it’s always been one-on-one. Debates in undergrad seminar rooms about the existence of God can be fun, but they’re not ultimately converting anyone to anything. But, being able to say that I do things because I believe that God loves people, and I want to show that to people does have an impact, because I mean, we’re all desperately alone down here.
Well put. I have tried to describe the effect of ‘distance from the created order’ due to the cyber wave culture, in my recent book, The Heights of the Hills are His Also. I share your outlook.
“The generation of great Anglican preachers like John Donne and the poets of a figural frame of mind, have disappeared from the CofE for many generations” And of course, though not CoE, John Bunyan: The love of Christ, poor I! may touch upon; But ’tis unsearchable. O! there is none Its large dimensions can comprehend Should they dilate thereon world without end. When we had sinned, in his zeal he sware, That he upon his back our sins would bear. And since unto sin is entailed death, He vowed for our sins he’d lose his breath. He did not only… Read more »
Although, I think this is a problem across disciplines in the humanities more widely. When you think of a contemporary public intellectual, you’re more likely to think of a scientist like Brian Cox or David Attenborough than you are a humanities scholar, with really only Mary Beard holding the line for the humanities. You’re getting a few grifters like Dawkins and Peterson pop up, but neither of them are respected in their academic fields, and Zizek’s star has long since faded. I’ll be a good Marxist here and attribute this too to the movements of capital: the sciences make good… Read more »
Thank- you! It’s an amazing book- (even if a bit late for a lot of my reading preferences!) My father used to read it to us on Sunday nights sometimes
If anyone can get to Bedford (where Bunyan was imprisoned) there is Bunyan museum, and it has many of Edward Bawden’s designs for Pilgrims Progress on display.
Agreed… Although in think I’m more of a fan of CSLewis. I think the problem is enjavent had anyone like him… Maybe he was less good than previous before…
To me it’s simple,
Jesus is relevant to people’s lives. As a consequence the gospel message is compelling.
But we shy away from communicating that message.
Thankfully people like FearandTremolo have invited some friends to church so they may hear about it (at least a bit).
Maybe that’s because too many of us have got into the ‘multicultural’ ideology that things must be so watered down they don’t offend anyone? I recall a Baptist minister saying to me that a new ‘Gospel’ novel put out by Scripture Union, intended to point to faith, was so wishy-washy that a Muslim, a Hindu or an atheist could find something affirmative of their creeds within it. (Don’t ask me what the title was.) As Woodbine Willy wrote, in his poem ‘Indifference’ – men had grown more gentle then, and so they left him be. The truth needs to be… Read more »
Wasn’t it Bernard Russell the atheist, who when asked what he would say to God when he met him, about why he didn’t believe, “You had a lousy publicity team?” or words to that effect?
“The generation of great Anglican preachers like John Donne and the poets of a figural frame of mind”
I doubt the style of John Donne would make any impact on the young people of today, who have difficulty understanding Shakespeare or even Dickens. I can tell you the young people I know were quite taken with the preaching of Desmond Tutu and Michael Curry, both of whom speak in contemporary terms and rhythms.
And you think that’s a loss? Isn’t it better for the Church, for the whole of Christianity, to have preachers who speak and write in a manner that the people born in the final years of the 20th Century and since can understand and appreciate?
As I often say, the Holy Spirit has not stopped inspiring people just because those people use modern images and idioms to convey the message.
I took Anglican Priest to mean those people in their time, not that people should be like them now, but that we don’t have communicators of that stature.
So Tutu and Curry might have been/be good, but not as good (relatively) as Donne, Lewis, Rossetti er al.
Ie it’s not a language/style/rhythms point, it’s a quality/impact point.
Ergo the best people can do now/recently is not to the same level as the best people could do in earlier times.
And my point is that they are, indeed, at the same level, but speaking in a more modern idiom and style.
Making an analogy to my interest in theater, it is not that Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller are lesser writers than Shakespeare (or better ones, either); it is just that they spoke to the audience of their own times in a language they could hear and apply to their own lives.
I think you’ve still missed the point though (much as I don’t want to speak for Anglican Priest) – I think they were saying that it’s not about language, the people that speak to the audience in our times are not as good at doing it as the people in those times. It’s not language, it’s competence/ability. I get you disagree but I still think it reads like you are arguing past them
Does it not bother you even slightly how racist the above sounds?
I will assume there’s no envy in Heaven . . . nevertheless, I have little doubt that “Herbert, Rossetti, Donne, and even Lewis” are looking UP at Holy Desmond!
I’m not sure we can say how compelling the Gospels are or are not to Gen Z, because frankly I’d be surprised if a plurality of us even knew there were four of them. And as cliche as it is, I’m sure that the miserable lonely office workers would love to hear John 3.
Maybe the Spectator will find a more compelling headline than ‘Son of God born in a stable’. They could perhaps run with ‘Joseph was not a complementarian shock’, which could spark a liberal revival especially among young men, in awe of how Joseph managed to avoid responsibility.
You are right. Ignorance of us is clearly a bigger issue, but when people do find out about us we should want what they find to be welcoming and safe.
My view is that we should really get real and realise that in many communities that we would be better focussing on families (+ children) and those coming to church later in life. I don’t think we can fight against the utter destruction of community amongst GenZ that liberal capitalism has wrought.
Some things on Colin’s list may be there because Colin (justifiably) doesn’t like them, rather than because they are presently causing people not to attend church. Some evangelicals also have lists of things of things they don’t like about the church (too much liberalism, too much socialism, etc) and claim the decline of the church is due to them. Zeroth century inn-keeping didn’t have a place for the church, and that’s part of the story. The founder of Christianity has observed that some places at some times will not be receptive to the gospel, and that the best thing then… Read more »
FearandTremolo, thank you for your commentary on my blog. I’m glad that you understand why I have put my list together – actually it’s a weaving together of other people’s thoughts and comments that help me interpret my ideas and experience. You have opened a new window of thought for me. I have friends with children and grandchildren and I know full well that none of them think of the Church in this way. Their parents and grandparents (of my generation) were once enthusiastic members of the Church but have now given up. They moved on, without finding religious or… Read more »
Hi Colin, With my comments about neo-liberalism, I make them because that is the economic system in which we live, and it’s basically inescapable. Cranmer Hall’s Talking Theology podcast had a good episode on this, which I encourage you to dig out. I think there’s some difference between our experiences here too, which is interesting to pick out. Yours seems to be a group of grandparents who have fallen out with church, and that is no doubt an important area of sociology to explore. But, my friends don’t even have that. They’re third generation ‘never been to church-ers’, and whilst… Read more »
Follow up – the other reason I think it’s important to name neo-liberal capitalism and blame it for some of the decline is that, if we look at the world, it is the neo-liberal countries of the imperial core in which Christianity is declining, whilst the Gospel is alive in the countries of the imperial periphery. Perhaps not surprising with Christmas coming up: Our Lord was born as the imperial subject of an occupied people and ultimately killed by that empire. The theology of liberation is here rich.
Colin Coward’s musings are, well… Colin Coward’s musings. If you like what he says you’ll agree. If you’re not sure you do you’ll ask – where/what are the sources, methods and norms providing a foundation for these claims? And how do they compare/relate to the sources methods and norms of classical Christianity? The words of Giles Fraser don’t come ex cathedra, do they?
I’ll pick up on just one of Steve Reeves important points: “5. Radical Governance Reform The hierarchical structure of the Church, which has allowed abuses of power to go unchecked, must be revisited. Power must be decentralised, and lay members, independent safeguarding experts, and survivors must have a voice in governance and decision-making.” Why did the Archbishops’ Council think it should act autocratically, without referring to General Synod (gathering a matter of days later) or the survivors involved, when it just shut down the ISB ‘because it could’, and caused grave harm and distress to survivors/victims left in limbo, exposing them… Read more »
But is it hierarchical? Not in the same sense my company is. In a business hierarchy it’s obvious who is responsible for what decisions, and when it isn’t obvious that’s usually a short term before/during a restructure. Consider, Who is responsible for the ISB? Who is responsible for safeguarding not being independent if we take the archbishops at their word and they wanted it to be independent? Is it really purely William Nye? What about Ian Paul and other council members, or what about the people who voted for the council (and hence who Ian and others hope will vote… Read more »
One of the issues is that survivors can be – and often are – angry, and there is nowhere for that anger to go: anger plays poorly in synod debates and ecclesiastical committees and tends to be marginalised and resisted with our existing structures. That is a component of our culture which has garnered little reflection, and is one of the reasons survivors have such bad experiences of the churches response to them. It is not the whole picture, but to me it is a significant component which will not be addressed by structural reform, but rather by profound self-examination,… Read more »
Okay, so, I’m writing here as a member of Gen Z. Colin notes that attendance is declining amongst youngsters like me, and that “Institutional misogyny, patriarchy and sexism, products of headship theology, homophobia and transphobia, racism, the abuse of victims and survivors, the failures of safeguarding, terminal decline of numbers, clinical depression among clergy and top-down bureaucracy are dominant characteristics of today’s Church”, and suggests that the cure is emphasising the love of God. And frankly, in the period of late, neo-liberal capitalism where Marx is slowly being proved right about alienation, that Church could do with leading with the… Read more »
Yes! The toxicity doesn’t help, and the Church could be everything the majority of TA commentators want it to be, and it would still keep going down and down and down. This probably now applies to almost all churches, whether ‘mainline’ or ‘fringe’ and whether ‘orthodox’ or ‘heterodox’. The Gospels are simply insufficiently compelling and/or interesting to an ever-growing proportion of the population, most especially the younger cohorts, even in the final redoubt of ‘Western’ Christianity, where the transformation is proving to be almost as rapid and complete as it was in Ireland in the 1990s or Poland in the… Read more »
“The Gospels are simply insufficiently compelling” — here I believe we disagree. They are endlessly compelling but have not been presented in a way that makes that come alive in peoples’ heart and minds. The generation of great Anglican preachers like John Donne and the poets of a figural frame of mind, have disappeared from the CofE for many generations. Into that void stepped people like CS Lewis and I will not presume to point out limitations, but he had no real grasp of the power of scripture IMHO, and so concocted a mythological framework that made its themes come… Read more »
Many thanks! Oh, I very much agree that they are compelling, and I am very much compelled by them. However, it seems plain to me that – when when and where the Good News is imparted in a highly effective manner – it simply sweeps over a large majority of the public, who remain impassive and indifferent to its value. More fool them, perhaps, but I simply feel that much of the population has either ceased to have much sense of the numinous, or gets its dose of the numinous from computer games, social media, the cinema or sports. Modern… Read more »
I mean, where I’ve had success introducing people to the faith, it’s always been one-on-one. Debates in undergrad seminar rooms about the existence of God can be fun, but they’re not ultimately converting anyone to anything. But, being able to say that I do things because I believe that God loves people, and I want to show that to people does have an impact, because I mean, we’re all desperately alone down here.
Well put. I have tried to describe the effect of ‘distance from the created order’ due to the cyber wave culture, in my recent book, The Heights of the Hills are His Also. I share your outlook.
“The generation of great Anglican preachers like John Donne and the poets of a figural frame of mind, have disappeared from the CofE for many generations” And of course, though not CoE, John Bunyan: The love of Christ, poor I! may touch upon; But ’tis unsearchable. O! there is none Its large dimensions can comprehend Should they dilate thereon world without end. When we had sinned, in his zeal he sware, That he upon his back our sins would bear. And since unto sin is entailed death, He vowed for our sins he’d lose his breath. He did not only… Read more »
Although, I think this is a problem across disciplines in the humanities more widely. When you think of a contemporary public intellectual, you’re more likely to think of a scientist like Brian Cox or David Attenborough than you are a humanities scholar, with really only Mary Beard holding the line for the humanities. You’re getting a few grifters like Dawkins and Peterson pop up, but neither of them are respected in their academic fields, and Zizek’s star has long since faded. I’ll be a good Marxist here and attribute this too to the movements of capital: the sciences make good… Read more »
Thank- you! It’s an amazing book- (even if a bit late for a lot of my reading preferences!) My father used to read it to us on Sunday nights sometimes
If anyone can get to Bedford (where Bunyan was imprisoned) there is Bunyan museum, and it has many of Edward Bawden’s designs for Pilgrims Progress on display.
Agreed… Although in think I’m more of a fan of CSLewis. I think the problem is enjavent had anyone like him… Maybe he was less good than previous before…
To me it’s simple,
Jesus is relevant to people’s lives. As a consequence the gospel message is compelling.
But we shy away from communicating that message.
Thankfully people like FearandTremolo have invited some friends to church so they may hear about it (at least a bit).
“we haven’t had anyone like him for a while” not “enjavent had”…
not sure how I missed that… hopefully still made sense.
Maybe that’s because too many of us have got into the ‘multicultural’ ideology that things must be so watered down they don’t offend anyone? I recall a Baptist minister saying to me that a new ‘Gospel’ novel put out by Scripture Union, intended to point to faith, was so wishy-washy that a Muslim, a Hindu or an atheist could find something affirmative of their creeds within it. (Don’t ask me what the title was.) As Woodbine Willy wrote, in his poem ‘Indifference’ – men had grown more gentle then, and so they left him be. The truth needs to be… Read more »
Wasn’t it Bernard Russell the atheist, who when asked what he would say to God when he met him, about why he didn’t believe, “You had a lousy publicity team?” or words to that effect?
“The generation of great Anglican preachers like John Donne and the poets of a figural frame of mind”
I doubt the style of John Donne would make any impact on the young people of today, who have difficulty understanding Shakespeare or even Dickens. I can tell you the young people I know were quite taken with the preaching of Desmond Tutu and Michael Curry, both of whom speak in contemporary terms and rhythms.
That is exactly what has gone lost. Herbert, Rossetti, Donne, even Lewis, exchanged for Tutu and Curry.
And you think that’s a loss? Isn’t it better for the Church, for the whole of Christianity, to have preachers who speak and write in a manner that the people born in the final years of the 20th Century and since can understand and appreciate?
As I often say, the Holy Spirit has not stopped inspiring people just because those people use modern images and idioms to convey the message.
I took Anglican Priest to mean those people in their time, not that people should be like them now, but that we don’t have communicators of that stature.
So Tutu and Curry might have been/be good, but not as good (relatively) as Donne, Lewis, Rossetti er al.
Ie it’s not a language/style/rhythms point, it’s a quality/impact point.
Ergo the best people can do now/recently is not to the same level as the best people could do in earlier times.
And my point is that they are, indeed, at the same level, but speaking in a more modern idiom and style.
Making an analogy to my interest in theater, it is not that Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller are lesser writers than Shakespeare (or better ones, either); it is just that they spoke to the audience of their own times in a language they could hear and apply to their own lives.
I think you’ve still missed the point though (much as I don’t want to speak for Anglican Priest) – I think they were saying that it’s not about language, the people that speak to the audience in our times are not as good at doing it as the people in those times. It’s not language, it’s competence/ability. I get you disagree but I still think it reads like you are arguing past them
Does it not bother you even slightly how racist the above sounds?
I will assume there’s no envy in Heaven . . . nevertheless, I have little doubt that “Herbert, Rossetti, Donne, and even Lewis” are looking UP at Holy Desmond!
I’m not sure we can say how compelling the Gospels are or are not to Gen Z, because frankly I’d be surprised if a plurality of us even knew there were four of them. And as cliche as it is, I’m sure that the miserable lonely office workers would love to hear John 3.
Maybe the Spectator will find a more compelling headline than ‘Son of God born in a stable’. They could perhaps run with ‘Joseph was not a complementarian shock’, which could spark a liberal revival especially among young men, in awe of how Joseph managed to avoid responsibility.
Bravo. In my feeble way I have tried to make something of the same point. The projections of Boomers on other generations are often just that.
I mean this is an echo-chamber like any other.
But it’s also why I’ve put myself forward for ordination.
Either way, God wouldn’t abandon His Church or the people He loves, even if sometimes we do.
You are right. Ignorance of us is clearly a bigger issue, but when people do find out about us we should want what they find to be welcoming and safe.
My view is that we should really get real and realise that in many communities that we would be better focussing on families (+ children) and those coming to church later in life. I don’t think we can fight against the utter destruction of community amongst GenZ that liberal capitalism has wrought.
Just want to say I largely agree. Thank you for sharing.
Some things on Colin’s list may be there because Colin (justifiably) doesn’t like them, rather than because they are presently causing people not to attend church. Some evangelicals also have lists of things of things they don’t like about the church (too much liberalism, too much socialism, etc) and claim the decline of the church is due to them. Zeroth century inn-keeping didn’t have a place for the church, and that’s part of the story. The founder of Christianity has observed that some places at some times will not be receptive to the gospel, and that the best thing then… Read more »
FearandTremolo, thank you for your commentary on my blog. I’m glad that you understand why I have put my list together – actually it’s a weaving together of other people’s thoughts and comments that help me interpret my ideas and experience. You have opened a new window of thought for me. I have friends with children and grandchildren and I know full well that none of them think of the Church in this way. Their parents and grandparents (of my generation) were once enthusiastic members of the Church but have now given up. They moved on, without finding religious or… Read more »
Hi Colin, With my comments about neo-liberalism, I make them because that is the economic system in which we live, and it’s basically inescapable. Cranmer Hall’s Talking Theology podcast had a good episode on this, which I encourage you to dig out. I think there’s some difference between our experiences here too, which is interesting to pick out. Yours seems to be a group of grandparents who have fallen out with church, and that is no doubt an important area of sociology to explore. But, my friends don’t even have that. They’re third generation ‘never been to church-ers’, and whilst… Read more »
This. A million times. This. Can we clone you and roll you out to parishes in need?
I’m early 40s so maybe a generation ahead of you, but this is it on the nail.
Follow up – the other reason I think it’s important to name neo-liberal capitalism and blame it for some of the decline is that, if we look at the world, it is the neo-liberal countries of the imperial core in which Christianity is declining, whilst the Gospel is alive in the countries of the imperial periphery. Perhaps not surprising with Christmas coming up: Our Lord was born as the imperial subject of an occupied people and ultimately killed by that empire. The theology of liberation is here rich.