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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.
