Take it or leave it!

Churches coming together (CNS)                                                                                                         Church moving apart (Church in Wales)

     

As the Catholic and Orthodox Churches continue to come closer together the Anglican Church in the UK drifts further away from the unity of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church with every ill-advised congregationalist move it makes.

During his visit to the Coptic Church in Egypt, Pope Francis joined with the Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual head of the Eastern Orthodox churches, in placing flowers, lighting a candle and praying at the site where dozens of Coptic Orthodox Christians were killed by an Islamic State militant last year. Video here.

Christian Today reported: "As Christians face an increase in violence around the world and especially in the Middle East, there are significant signs that the major Churches are coming together, with the blood of martyrs acting as the 'seed of unity'." - But not the inward looking Anglican Church.

The contrast could not be greater. Coptic Christians are regularly attacked and killed in Egypt. Christians throughout the Middle and far East are constantly targeted by Muslims but in Great Britain Islam is affirmed as a religion on a par with Christianity while the Anglican Church pursues its fixation with secular matters.

As Scottish Anglicans move towards same sex marriage their leader has warned that GAFCON should "stay out of our territory" while the Church of Ireland is split over whether it should liberalise its stance on same sex marriage. Meanwhile the Church of England continues its shared discussions before its expected capitulation to the LGBT lobby in opting for secularism.

The bishops of the Church in Wales will still be smarting over their failure to lead the charge towards same sex marriage but they lost the plot years ago. Many congregations are elderly with little sign of younger people joining them. Indeed, for many youngsters in Wales religion has become a no go area. Some are even petitioning for an end to compulsory prayers in Wales' schools. They gained more than 870 signatures of support in less than two weeks. Without new blood collapse is inevitable.

Perhaps the experience of readers is different to mine but from what I hear, any faith visits to children in their formative primary schools are often carried out by female Methodist ministers, sometimes by an evangelical nonconformist but never by a traditional male Anglican priest.

I had hoped to be more positive in my outlook after Barry Morgan's retirement but I fear I was too hasty in my April entry, A promising start, when I reported that the bishop of Swansea and Brecon, the senior bishop on the bench of bishops, told the Governing Body to "put evangelism at heart of ministry".

My positive outlook crashed with the appointment of the bishop designate of Llandaff who has made it clear that her priority is to appoint more women to senior roles until parity is achieved. That is feminism, not evangelism. An appointment which, incidentally, has been met with a stunned silence in Llandaff after the clamour created by claims of homophobia, subsequently disproved, because the Dean of St Albans failed to secure the votes he needed.

So no new broom to address the disillusionment created by Barry Morgan as he bent the church to accord with his own views. Just more of the same. Take it or leave it. Many have decided to leave it, doubtless with more to follow. As Church of England rejects have been appointed in Wales the best of Welsh talent has left for England while the laity have opted simply to leave altogether.

One wonders how all those clergy who abandoned their former colleagues and faithful parishioners for a career in the Church now feel as they look at the state of the Church in Wales and see that they have no prospects in Wales.

Many more clergy and laity will be examining their consciences after the appointment of two female bishops. Doubtless many red lines will become distinctly pink but for others it will be the end of the road. A sorry, unnecessary predicament. In that, Morgan and his bench sitters have been cruelly successful. Opposition has been virtually wiped out in some areas, but at great cost, ignoring the expressed wish of the majority in consultations for alternative provision, leaving the fate of the Church to the Jackson/Wigley/MAE Cymru cohort.

Does anything matter anymore in the do-as-you-please Church in Wales? What of those who broke their Llandaff Electoral College oath of silence and the shameless campaigners including the unnamed bishop who put LGBT issues before the Church? No doubt that will be swept under the carpet by the bench along with everything else.

While some will find reasons to stay put, others will continue to leave. Evangelism is fine but for what? A church in which faith managers have shattered the parish system, interpreted the Bible to justify their own secular desires and ignored the wishes of its members when asked for their views while still claiming to be members of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

How many more must leave before the bishops get the message? Without acceptable alternative provision, leaving is the only option for anyone who wants to keep the faith.

The new Church Militant

The Triumph of Bazzer                                                                     with apologies to Cornelis de Vos

A tweet after the Synod vote to allow women bishops which ended centuries of tradition in the Church of England read, #ItisFinished. - But not quite what it seemed, apparently.

From this morning's Telegraph - "Women bishops: The hate mail was always from other Christians"! Having achieved their goal without the desired complete wipe-out of traditionalists, the chip remains firmly embedded on the shoulder of one said to have been "in the vanguard of campaigning for equal rights at the altar for 30 years". She complained: "It’s a huge journey that’s still unfolding, and there’s a very long way still to go,” she says of the protracted and bruising war that has raged within Anglicanism for decades. “There is always going to be some resistance, but then there always has been. There’s been resistance to me taking on every role I have ever taken on." Could it be that it is not her sex which is the problem? She is not alone in complaining.

Members of Synod hardly had time to lower their hands last week before a supposed contender for first woman bishop in the CofE, the Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin weighed in with "The truth":  There’s a "palpable feeling of fear about the struggles the first women bishops will face". Asked if, after all these years of bitter battle over the ordination of women, the Church is institutionally sexist she answered frankly. "It’s there, you can’t escape it. It’s not something I dwell on. You don’t give oxygen to that sort of behaviour."

Somewhat curiously the Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons added: "But it’s clear that whoever ends up blazing a trail will have a fight on their hands with the forces of conservatism within the Church if not with Anglican churchgoers themselves – three quarters of whom want female bishops. The public and Hudson-Wilkin’s parishioners in Dalston and Haggerston have shared with her a “real sense of joy and excitement” about the new development." [Note: The CofE is a tiny proportion of the Anglican Communion where the overwhelming majority of churchgoers definitely do not want female bishops - Ed.]

So they have the vote, liberals have all the power, 'three quarters of Anglican churchgoers' want female bishops but they still have a fight in their hands! I suspect that the fight she refers to is the fight hinted at by the Rev Canon Dr Alison Joyce in the Telegraph article:

Moreover, the gains that women priests have made, believes this 56-year-old mother of two grown-up daughters, have come with a high price tag – notably the “protections” built into the new legislation for the minority who continue to resist their advance. "What concerns me most is when the Church sets up structures so that people never have to be ‘contaminated’ by any glimpse of women’s ministry at all. I find that deeply disturbing. We have to encounter each other." So were the concessions made to traditionalists a step too far? "It’s tiresome,” she replies, “but one hopes eventually they will learn to grow in love and grace." Love and grace? Perhaps she could lead by example!

Back in the Church in Wales there is no pretence of showing love and grace following the triumph of Bazzer, the arch disciple of the Presiding Bishop of TEC, after succeeding in allowing women bishops with no meaningful concessions to anyone who remains faithful to the Holy Catholic Church. Over the weekend he and his Bench sitters moved on from playing snakes and ladders, joining delegates at a conference in Llandudno to play with cardboard boxes made for the occasion. The organizer, another "in the vanguard of campaigning for equal rights at the altar", spent some time in TEC country where she witnessed a woman bishop celebrating at the altar. That was enough to convinced her of the soundness of feminist theology despite the pleas to TEC by the then Archbishop of Canterbury not to split the Anglican Communion.

With no sign of love and grace from Dr Morgan or from his chief architect the Archdeacon of Llandaff who no longer has to pretend that she desires unity, their militancy has spread back across the border to the Church of England.

The three main sessions at the Llandudno Conference were: "Where are we?",  "Who are we?" and "Why are we?" They have their answer here:

No deceit was found in his mouth

Ivan Glazunov "Crucify Him!" - 1994

"Crucify Him!"  There is no more powerful a statement of man's inhumanity to man than in this cry captured in the work by Ivan Glazunov in 1994, the same year that the Act of Synod was 'promulged' then claimed subsequently by the Ass Bishop of Llandaff to be the blueprint for an act of treachery in the Church in Wales.

He cites the Act of Synod 'promulged in 1994' in his contribution to the refusal by the Bench of Bishops to re-appoint a Provincial Assistant Bishop (PAB), an appointment that cleared the way for women to be ordained to the priesthood in Wales. - See the documentation on the Forward in Faith Wales (Credo Cymru) site here (tab down to Appendix 2, e-mail from Assistant Bishop.) 

The Ass Bishop's intervention asserted that provision for the Provincial Episcopal Visitors (flying bishops) in the Church of England's Act of Synod was intended to be of a "temporary nature". Claiming insider knowledge, he testified as to what was meant. What he actually succeeded in doing was proving that if his interpretation was correct, it was not understood by those for whom it was intended leaving them with just an inferred promise. If the intention had been as he claims then it should have been spelled out; otherwise it was a deception.

There is a vague reference in his submission to "several key people in the Church in Wales" who thought the PAB's appointment was "consonant with the spirit of the Church of England's Act of Synod" but who were those 'key' people and what were the motives of their flawed understanding? If the appointment had not been intended to be permanent surely it would have been more honest to have said so directly. Looking at the revised interpretation of the initial appointment it now has the appearance of a devious plot to gain votes for the admission of women to the priesthood, a process repeated at the meeting of the Governing Body when the Bench of Bishops voted unanimously for women bishops after their own Bill had been amended to remove the statutory provision they thought necessary to see the measure accepted.

Not only have the Welsh bishops shown a distinct lack of charity in their interpretation of alternative Episcopal oversight but their assertions have been strongly contested by Credo Cymru - see the documentation here (Submission to the Bench of Bishops 11 July 2009 and the supplementary submission (para. 14) 29 September 2009).
This is not a re-evaluation in hindsight reporting the claimed intentions of others but based on fact:
 We turn now to the question of how provisional the arrangements of 1996 were meant to be.  It should be noted that the first holder of this post in response to comments by Lord Ellis Thomas wrote in a letter to the ‘Western Mail’ that he would not have accepted the post if he had  understood it to be a merely temporary stop-gap with him as the only holder.

Despite what the Ass Bishop had to say on the matter Archbishop Morgan confirms that there was no suggestion that the position was temporary in his statement on behalf of the Bench of Bishops in response to Credo Cymru's request for a new PAB:

 I confess that this matter was not even thought about one way or another in 1996, but we now feel that whilst the Bench was persuaded that such an appointment may have been necessary then, we do not share that opinion some 13 years later. (Para. 2 of Response from the Bench)

If it was the case that provision of PEVs in the Church of England's Act of Synod Measure was intended to be temporary, it is very odd that in the May 2013, in a Report from the House of Bishops GS1886, the Church of England includes a clear statement that no time limit is set:

"Pastoral and sacramental provision for the minority within the Church of England will be made without specifying a limit of time and in a way that maintains the highest possible degree of communion and contributes to mutual flourishing across the whole Church of England." [My emphasis ED.]

Is that just another callous deceit designed to ease the passage of women to the Episcopate in the Church of England or a genuine desire to honour original intentions? PEVs continue to be replaced in England suggesting that what is happening in Wales is a deliberate act of sabotage. A few weeks ago the new Bishop of Ebbsfleet was consecrated:
"Bishop Goodall has been commissioned by Archbishop Welby to serve, in line with the 1993 Act of Synod, as one of two Provincial Episcopal Visitors for the Province of Canterbury, who work with diocesan bishops to provide extended sacramental ministry and pastoral provision on the Archbishop’s behalf, to ensure that “the integrity of differing beliefs and positions concerning the ordination of women to the priesthood should be mutually recognised and respected”.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, preached. He said:
Failed churches, fragmented churches: all in a day’s work in a sense. But the continuity and health, the spiritual vitality and integrity of the Church lies quite simply in the promise and act of Jesus Christ.

The present Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, wrote in his "Response from the Bench":
As you know, we have virtually a new Bench.  I am the only member who agreed to the previous arrangements.

Also on the Bench at that time was the former Archbishop of Wales, Rowan Williams. Readers will draw their own conclusions.

Wolves in shepherd's clothing?

  Church in Wales Sacred Synod, Lampeter, 11 Sept 2013                                     Photo: Church in Wales

This morning there were reports of great rejoicing in the Church in Wales (CinW) and in the women's lobby, examples here and here, after the decision to admit women to the episcopate in Wales. For others, the rejected minority, there will be a feeling of utter desolation akin to excommunication. The fact that the CinW has too many bishops and will have to cut the number of dioceses, probably from six to three, to have any chance of surviving will have been lost in the euphoria.

Despite my reservations over their intent (based on their past record), the bishop's Bill did included a measure which would have made some sort of statuary provision for dissenters, a measure hailed by some as the way forward in the Church of England. Whether or not it would have been acceptable to those for whom it was intended we will never know but it gave the senior CinW pastors a semblance of credibility.

In the event the Bench revealed all by voting unanimously in favour of the Jackson - Wigley amended Bill which replaced the statuary guarantee with a meaningless Code of Practice. As the Ven. Peggy Jackson rightly said, "the Church in Wales has changed for ever".

The Bench would have had more credibility if they had withdrawn their Bill after the Jackson - Wigley amendment was carried. They didn't, suggesting that they had no intention of offering anything meaningful thereby confirming what Dr Morgan is reported to have said that 'there would be alternative pastoral provision over his dead body'.

Effectively the Governing Body did an about turn giving the Bench what they asked for five years ago. So what changed? From the very many comments I have heard and read, before and after the vote, it is clear that many had no theological concept of what they were voting on. Politics ruled.  Statutory provision was not a lot to ask for fellow Christians who feel threatened in their own church but this was denied them with vigourous applause!

The Bench of Bishops had their chance but failed woefully leaving significant numbers under their care in limbo. It will be difficult for them to dig themselves out of the pit they have created but there is a chance to redeem themselves by allowing acceptable provision combined with the Church of England. If we are to learn anything from this sad episode it must be that working together to find a solution acceptable to all is the only just way forward.

This morning I entered church in gloom. I left in sunshine reflecting on our prayers. We had prayed for the people of Syria and those suffering elsewhere, especially for persecuted Christians. What would they give to be in our position? We owe it to them to do better.

Oh! Wolves in shepherd's clothing? The answer is here.