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| Archbishop Stephen Cottrell. By Bashereyre (CC 3.0) Source: Nation Cymru |
Nation Cymru reports that the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has called for Wales to sing God Save the Queen before international sports games.
He also complained about Scotland singing Flower of Scotland, the Scottish national anthem, before its Euro 2020 match with England.
Singing national anthems at international events has become standard practice but with no specifically English national anthem, England often chant the African-American spiritual song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot at international rugby matches.
The archbishop made his suggestion in a column in the Telegraph. He said many people in England feel left behind by "metropolitan elites in London and the South East".
Rather like the Church of England and its bishops.
The Archbishop Cranmer blog puts it this way after the Archbishop of York called for the Church of England to be a church for England, rather than just ‘of’:
"The Church of England tolerates you, but it isn’t for you. It is there for you to come and go in common worship and to feed on Christ by faith, but thousands upon thousands of its clergy (including 99% of Bishops) truly despise everything you believe and represent, and quite a few of them can’t wait for you to leave so the liberal new order might arise and their theology be consummated.
Having already alienated many with their current LLF obsession, Living in Love and Faith, the Church of England has created fury with "an ambitious target of planting 10,000 new, predominantly lay-led churches by 2030".
The recommendations come in a briefing paper GS 2223 [Simpler, Humbler, Bolder. A Church for the whole nation which is Christ centred and shaped by the Five Marks of Mission] issued by the Church of England’s Vision and Strategy group.
The church-planting initiative’s leader, the Rev. Canon John McGinley of New Wine, touched off a firestorm of criticism when he labelled stipendiary clergy, church buildings, and theological college training as “limiting factors” for growth at a church planting conference.
The strategy was outlined thus: "Lay-led churches release the Church from key limiting factors. When you don’t need a building and a stipend and long, costly college-based training for every leader of a church . . . then actually we can release new people to lead and new churches to form. It also releases the discipleship of people. In church-planting, there are no passengers."
As reported in the Guardian, Traditionalists in the Church of England have launched a campaign to defend the centuries-old parish system against plans to promote innovative church gatherings in unconventional settings:
"At the campaign’s launch this week, Father Marcus Walker, the rector of St Bartholomew the Great in central London, said parishioners were facing the 'last chance to save the system that has defined Christianity for 1,000 years'.
"He said: 'In the last 10 to 15 years, particularly under [the archbishop of Canterbury] Justin Welby, there has been heavy skew away from traditional parishes with a relationship to a church building and local community, to a style of church set up in a cinema or barn or converted Chinese takeaway'."
Lay led 'house groups' within the parish system are one thing, groups set up outside traditional parishes are something else.
With no properly ordained priests to administer the sacraments the Church of England will drift further towards nonconformity before she expires.
As in Wales, so in England: the strategies to avoid extinction become ever more desperate, and yet, I suspect, no more likely to prove successful than the plethora of previous ones, should they be implemented.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd just add that it really isn't - or at least shouldn't be - part of the role of an English metropolitan archbishop to be a cheerleader for the Union!
Even more so when they can't and won't stand up for the sacred union between a man and a woman.
DeleteIt's a ridiculous theory that lay led churches are the answer. The whole idea of ordination is both a recognition of Christ's ministry gifts to the church and those appointed presbyters. It's completely unbiblical and a slap in the face to clergy. Why Rob the church of it's anointed leadership? Maybe so many bishops and dioceses is the place where CoE needs to cutback. Especially those bishops who go off message with unnecessary commentary on politics.
ReplyDeleteWHAMAB
Why?
DeleteBecause lay people don't get paid a stipend, need a church owned property or a church funded pension.
God on the cheap.
Because it worked so well for non conformism.
DeleteWHAMAB
Hardly, I hear the Methodists are in the same hole as the Church in Wales.
DeleteI can't comment on the specific situation re the Methodists in Wales, though I have no reason to doubt what you say.
DeleteThe fundamental difference between them and the Anglicans is that there have always been lay leaders and preachers in the Methodist Church - indeed the early "Methodist Societies" were always lay-led and there have always been far fewer ordained Ministers than churches. The same is true for the URC - of course a much younger organisation. The difficulty for both is that, on the one hand, Ministers are getting salami-sliced more and more thinly at the same as churches close and the physical distance between them increases; and, on the other, that the lay leaders are ageing and diminishing with their ranks not being sufficiently replenished.
The biggest and most successful churches in the UK are either R.C. or evangelical, with little regard for the (actually non-biblical) non-Aaronic priesthood invented by humans. The CofE and the CiW have been pretending to be either R.C. or protestant, as the mood takes them - hence ending in a confused liberal muddle.
DeleteThe bible is clear - only descendants of Aaron can be priests.
I see from the website that Joanna Penberthy is away until the end of September now.
ReplyDeleteRob
Since she stopped Tweeting about everything there's nothing for her to do anyway.
DeleteShe's not missed nor will she be.