Some men just look better with a few years on them.
Posted on 08/24/2003 7:47:01 PM PDT by Mr. Mulliner
Evangelicals poised to take over the Church
By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
(Filed: 25/08/2003)
Evangelicals, dismissed as a vociferous minority by senior liberals during the Jeffrey John affair, are now poised to take over the Church of England.
A new study suggests that, if current trends continue, evangelicals will make up more than half of all Sunday church worshippers in 10 years' time, up from about a third now.
As they grow quickly, Liberals and Anglo-Catholics continue to decline, says Dr Peter Brierley, a former government statistician who heads Christian Research.
Moreover, all but a tiny proportion of the new breed of evangelicals will be theologically conservative, viewing sex outside marriage, including homosexuality, as outlawed by Scripture.
According to the new analysis, they are consolidating their grip on the Church's income, contributing a significant amount of money to church funds.
Also, half of all ordinands training to be the next generation of clergy are attending evangelical colleges.
The combined effect could be to provide the evangelical wing of the Church with an unprecedented power base as long as their numbers are reflected in the membership of the General Synod and the Church's leadership in future years.
Dr Brierley's projections are expected to alarm liberals, who have portrayed them as fringe fundamentalists whose influence is out of proportion to their numbers. His analysis indicates that, based on several national surveys by Christian Research, about 35 per cent of churchgoers in 1998 were evangelicals and that proportion could rise to half by 2010.
Of this, he estimates, just eight per cent will be "broad" or "liberal" evangelicals, who are relaxed over issues such as homosexuality. The remainder will be mainstream or charismatic hard-liners.
Another survey, detailed in this year's Religious Trends handbook, indicates that the total giving of evangelical churches is already about 40 per cent of the Church's national income.
The latest Church statistics show that for 2001 the total income of parishes was £650 million. Evangelical worshippers put an estimated £250 million of that into the collection plate.
Their financial muscle was demonstrated during the crisis over Canon Jeffrey John, the openly homosexual cleric who was forced by evangelical pressure in June to withdraw as the Bishop of Reading.
Many evangelical parishes, which include most of the largest and wealthiest in the country, were planning to withhold a significant proportion of the quotas they pay to central funds if Canon John had been consecrated.
"These figures show that mainstream evangelicals are a larger group than most others already, and they are still growing," said Dr Brierley. "If these trends continue, they could become the largest group in the Church within a decade."
His findings belie comments by liberals like the Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev Colin Slee, who said in July that Canon John had been forced to stand down by a minority who made "a noise out of all proportion to their size".
The Rev Giles Fraser, the vicar of Putney, admitted that liberals could have underestimated the influence of "fundamentalist" evangelicals, and it was worrying for the future of the Church.
"The truth is that they have learned the techniques of marketing, how to sell something," he said. "It's a very simple message. But it's like selling soap powder. I think that way of simplifying and marketing is verging on idolatory - putting God into a box."
Gordon Lynch, a theologian from Birmingham University, said that Dr Brierley's analysis was too simplistic and did not allow for shades of opinion and people's changing views. He conceded, however, that socially conservative evangelicals were becoming a "considerable influence".
"They represent one of the few groups in society where people who are drawn to that kind of social conservatism can actually find a home," said Dr Lynch.
"Perhaps the Conservative Party used to provide a kind of structure for those people, but it seems to do that less and less now. So there is a danger that the Church does drift towards an increasingly conservative position."
There are still some Calvinist Anglicans around, though I wouldn't be sure for how much longer. :)
Some men just look better with a few years on them.
I really liked him in Sense and Sensibility - he got to play a good guy for once.
My daughter walked through the room as I was watching S&S, stopped, stared for a moment, then asked, "Is that Professor Snape?"
Yup.
I caught one of those on television last weekend. St. Gregory's in San Francisco. They had tie-dyed and batik vestments. Ceramic chalices. A menorah. Strange little fringed umbrellas in the procession. The entire congregation danced a kind of serpentine dance around the communion table.
I wondered, at what point in the ceremony do they burn the giant wicker man?...
There really is no Biblical warrant for faithful believers living together in the same community but refusing to worship together or to have anything to do with each other.
For me, the Church is about disciples of Jesus Christ. It isn't about making people feel good or preaching the right message or being tolerant or centrist or radical or anything like that. If Jesus Christ would be a radical in our culture, then the Church will be radical. If He would be a moderate, then the Church will be moderate.
The culture changes. The Church should not change. If it's going to change, it should stop calling itself the Church and start calling itself a club. And people who don't care about being a disciple of Jesus Christ should ignore her (except when they need her help, of course).
Why is that so hard for people to understand?
Shalom.
Within the Episcopal church, High church is more formal in all of its ceremonies. Low church is less formal, but not less liturgical. All use one of the rites from the Book of Common Prayer to ensure all the elements of the service are included. But they may use more or fewer servers at the altar, more or fewer lay people, incense or no, organs or guitars, etc.
Shalom.
Well, our decision for now is to wait until October, when two important things are going to happen: (1) the orthodox bishops will be meeting in Plano TX to decide on a course of action IIRC Oct. 8-9. (2) the Archbishop of Canterbury has called an emergency meeting Oct. 16 to discuss the subject.
What is decided at those two meetings will determine our direction. If the orthodox bishops ask for and obtain from Canterbury recognition as "the" Episcopal Church in communion with Canterbury, or recognition as a parallel province in communion with Canterbury, we will find a church in that group to join. If not, we will be looking at breakaway Anglican congregations and two local Catholic parishes.
My husband's advice is to wait until October and see how it shakes out, and I have always found his counsel on matters of this sort to be correct (myself, I am ready to march with a pitchfork and blazing torch . . . but I know he's right.)
My mother, who is disgustingly liberal (she can't help it, she's a professional dancer), said to him the other day, "Oh, you're not going to leave the church over this, are you?" He smiled his cheerful smile (the one he smiles as he throws people head over heels in aikido class) and said, "Watch me."
Another definition of "evangelical," Luther's original meaning, is a believer whose faith is based upon the Gospels. In other words, a Bible based faith.
But it's mostly surface stuff. All Episcopalians use the same prayer book (although you'll find that "high" churches tend to use Rite I and "low" churches Rite II). The only serious doctrinal point that I can find any disagreement on is the Real Presence. High says yes, Low says no.
The XXXIX Articles at this point are more of a historical curiosity than anything else. They are highly colored by the politics of the reign of Elizabeth I . . . and they were removed from the latest revision of the prayer book as a statement of belief - they are now styled a "historical document".
This was necessary because of some of the frankly anti-Catholic language contained therein . . . the first time we went to church as a married couple (a LONG time ago!), we wound up at an ultramontane church in Atlanta - perhaps "the" ultramontane church in the metro area - and my husband kept asking me during the service "do you believe in [incense, the Rosary, etc.]" I would respond, "Some of us do, some of us don't. It's o.k." Then Fr. Roy Pettway (now retired and may no longer be with us - this was over 25 years ago) climbed into the pulpit and preached on Purgatory (on Easter, yet!) Hubby asked, "Do you believe in that?" I replied that I didn't think so and flipped to the XXXIX articles - which denounce it as a "vain and Popish doctrine, fondly invented" - and said, "Nope . . . apparently not, but apparently HE thinks so . . . " I told my dad about this episode, and he just rolled his eyes and said, "Well, that's Roy!"
For Episcop's High Church ='s Bells and smells
Evangelicals really torqued the more conventional Anglicans not only because they tended to be drawn from the lower and middle classes rather than being "gentlemen," but also because of their emphasis on a personal, public conversion, charismatic preaching, and aggressive enforcement of Sabbath-keeping (Trollope has a field day with Mr. Slope and Mrs. Proudie forcing their views on the poor of Barchester). Sabbath-keeping was thought to be the province of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland, and enforcing it aggressively was considered a species of busy-bodying and bad form, particularly since the Anglican church was supported by the government and everybody was taxed for it. Anglicans were suspicious of charismatic preaching and too much emotion in the services, because many suspected the sort of "pastor-worship" that sometimes grows out of it. When the Wesley brothers and George Whitefield attracted hysterical crowds and women fainted below the pulpit, the old-line Anglicans went, "Tsk, tsk! You see?"
This sort of general feeling has carried on into the Episcopal church in America, even though the church is not state supported and (as Kipling said) "they's no gentry over there - they's only rich and poor allowed."
There is ample authority. FWIW, scripture proves your assumption that local churchs without central authority won't be in conflict is wrong.
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