It is easy to imagine the primates of the Anglican Communion meeting in the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral.
Gathered like Monks in the habits of a lifetime, chanting: cup hands here comes Cadbury's.
Like a Gothic tragedy, maybe one of the primates will be found face down on the Chapel floor, and like an ecclesiastical version of Cleudo people will be required to guess, was he throttled with his own rosary by an unseemly looking evangelical Archbishop of a certain distant province.
All churches are in difficulty, including those claiming to be successful celebrating their biblically based self righteousness as they exclude those with whom they disagree from their meetings, their worship and their churches.
The Anglican Church, like Methodism a few years ago, is now facing an existential crisis of its own.
As the Archbishop noted in his address to the Primates of the Anglican Communion meeting in Canterbury the statistics published today show that the year on year decline in attendance and membership continues and the age profile of those attending worship in Anglican Churches is growing older, raising serious questions about the churches ability to continue to survive, not just in its present form, but to survive at all.
Argument flourishes about the reason for this decline? Is Sunday Trading to blame? Did Evensong ever recover from The Forsyte Saga on BBC? Is it the churches confusions about gender and sexuality? Is it because we didn't ordain women? Or possibly because we did?
Too few vocations, too few clergy, bizarre attempts to rethink what ministry is or might be, clergy no longer visit, people would rather be married whilst hang gliding naked, woodland burials and secular officiants who provide what you ask for instead of telling you what you can have. The loss of the BCP and a a range of special liturgies from Series 1, through Iona, a whole raft of Celtic Liturgies and flush theologies?
In 1985 I spent a semester at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It proved to be a great experience and I learned a great deal about how a contemporary church needs to radically re-evaluate its mission in a post faith world, whether auditing a class entitled The Common Genealogy of Racism, Sexism and Classicism with Professor Katy Cannon, rehearsing the great arguments surrounding the development of a Post Christian Ethical Conversation with Secular Society or examine in the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer what the Costs of Discipleship are and were to be in the coming post faith world.
I thought that the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered a moving address to his fellow primates in Canterbury at the start of their gathering but I did not see any serious attempt to engage with or understand what the challenges of the post faith world will mean.
The fact that the Church of England has schools which are popular with parents or runs food banks which are essential for people who are going hungry is making little difference to what is happening to the one hour on a Sunday Morning upon which the whole inverted pyramid is precariously balanced.
Contrary to the Archbishops reference in his address I certainly see little evidence that the church is seriously concerned by 'climate change' despite the flooding locally which breached not only flood defences, but flooded at least two local churches.
At a recent meeting of local clergy the complaint was made that Cumbria was a hard place for ministry and that there was little hope of a 'harvest'.
How do we shape the Churches response to a post faith world?
Well here in Cumbria the answer is simply retrenchment, as numbers decline fewer clergy can be afforded, and their role is re-designated as 'leaders', leaving the pastoral care of aging congregations to lay people.
Meanwhile the senior team continues to defend the traditions and values of the church as though it remains relevant, when in fact it has become more and more to represent a strange, forlorn and out dated 18th Century sect.
I have coined the phrase 'secular ecumenism' to try to imagine the kind of relationships that needs to be promoted if the church, in whatever form is to flourish in a post faith world.
What do I mean by 'secular ecumenism'?
I suppose that what I mean is that agencies in society, of which the church could be thought of as one or several, engage with the many issues across health, social care, the environment, gender, human sexuality, poverty, injustice and that, as and when these issues are addressed locally' there will be christians involved as part of these agencies, charitable and statutory, who can and should be supported by the church qua church so that the churches voice can be heard as one voice among many.
Secular ecumenism implies that the church adopts the stance of servanthood, of one among many, unacknowledged and unassuming as it seeks to show in practice the love of God it has often proclaimed in words whilst denying by its actions.
Gathered like Monks in the habits of a lifetime, chanting: cup hands here comes Cadbury's.
Like a Gothic tragedy, maybe one of the primates will be found face down on the Chapel floor, and like an ecclesiastical version of Cleudo people will be required to guess, was he throttled with his own rosary by an unseemly looking evangelical Archbishop of a certain distant province.
All churches are in difficulty, including those claiming to be successful celebrating their biblically based self righteousness as they exclude those with whom they disagree from their meetings, their worship and their churches.
The Anglican Church, like Methodism a few years ago, is now facing an existential crisis of its own.
As the Archbishop noted in his address to the Primates of the Anglican Communion meeting in Canterbury the statistics published today show that the year on year decline in attendance and membership continues and the age profile of those attending worship in Anglican Churches is growing older, raising serious questions about the churches ability to continue to survive, not just in its present form, but to survive at all.
Argument flourishes about the reason for this decline? Is Sunday Trading to blame? Did Evensong ever recover from The Forsyte Saga on BBC? Is it the churches confusions about gender and sexuality? Is it because we didn't ordain women? Or possibly because we did?
Too few vocations, too few clergy, bizarre attempts to rethink what ministry is or might be, clergy no longer visit, people would rather be married whilst hang gliding naked, woodland burials and secular officiants who provide what you ask for instead of telling you what you can have. The loss of the BCP and a a range of special liturgies from Series 1, through Iona, a whole raft of Celtic Liturgies and flush theologies?
In 1985 I spent a semester at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It proved to be a great experience and I learned a great deal about how a contemporary church needs to radically re-evaluate its mission in a post faith world, whether auditing a class entitled The Common Genealogy of Racism, Sexism and Classicism with Professor Katy Cannon, rehearsing the great arguments surrounding the development of a Post Christian Ethical Conversation with Secular Society or examine in the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer what the Costs of Discipleship are and were to be in the coming post faith world.
I thought that the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered a moving address to his fellow primates in Canterbury at the start of their gathering but I did not see any serious attempt to engage with or understand what the challenges of the post faith world will mean.
The fact that the Church of England has schools which are popular with parents or runs food banks which are essential for people who are going hungry is making little difference to what is happening to the one hour on a Sunday Morning upon which the whole inverted pyramid is precariously balanced.
Contrary to the Archbishops reference in his address I certainly see little evidence that the church is seriously concerned by 'climate change' despite the flooding locally which breached not only flood defences, but flooded at least two local churches.
At a recent meeting of local clergy the complaint was made that Cumbria was a hard place for ministry and that there was little hope of a 'harvest'.
How do we shape the Churches response to a post faith world?
Well here in Cumbria the answer is simply retrenchment, as numbers decline fewer clergy can be afforded, and their role is re-designated as 'leaders', leaving the pastoral care of aging congregations to lay people.
Meanwhile the senior team continues to defend the traditions and values of the church as though it remains relevant, when in fact it has become more and more to represent a strange, forlorn and out dated 18th Century sect.
I have coined the phrase 'secular ecumenism' to try to imagine the kind of relationships that needs to be promoted if the church, in whatever form is to flourish in a post faith world.
What do I mean by 'secular ecumenism'?
I suppose that what I mean is that agencies in society, of which the church could be thought of as one or several, engage with the many issues across health, social care, the environment, gender, human sexuality, poverty, injustice and that, as and when these issues are addressed locally' there will be christians involved as part of these agencies, charitable and statutory, who can and should be supported by the church qua church so that the churches voice can be heard as one voice among many.
Secular ecumenism implies that the church adopts the stance of servanthood, of one among many, unacknowledged and unassuming as it seeks to show in practice the love of God it has often proclaimed in words whilst denying by its actions.
