From Ruth Gledhill in the Times Online (Again!):
The liberal fightback against Anglican conservatives and the Archbishop of Canterbury has begun. Open warfare is now declared.
Pro-gays in the Church of England are planning a survey of all LGBT clergy, in and out of the closet, in London, Southwark and throughout the Church. In the capital, they reckon, it is as many as 20 per cent. They are also intending to survey precisely how many gay blessings have been and are being done. Again, estimates put the number in the hundreds.
After that, bearing in mind the General Synod elections next year, they will make a push for the Church of England to approve gay blessings and gay ordinations to the priesthood and episcopate, as The Episcopal Church has done.
Early talks are already underway about forging permanent links between liberal parishes in England and The Episcopal Church, rather as the conservatives have linked up through the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and related bodies. A new TEC outpost in London is one possibility being considered.
Oh my! Get me my smelling salts!
Even after reading this excellent news, I ponder why England slept for so long. It's way past time for the members of the Church of England who believe in justice and equality to take action. A good many of us here in the US and a few in England foresaw the next step of the power-grabbing chickens going home to roost in an attempt to take over the CofE. We've spoken out against the English flying bishops (and non-flying bishops) who aid and abet the breakaways and the discontented within the Episcopal Church.
We tried to warn the Archbishop of Canterbury to let us be and tend to his own garden, which was so full of weeds, with the chickens pecking away wherever they liked, but he would not listen. The CofE is the Jewel in the Crown of the Anglican Communion. Why wouldn't the power-grabbers want the Jewel?
It is my great hope that the surveyors make it as far north as the Diocese of Durham.
H/T to MadPriest at Of course, I Could Be wrong for the link.
Good. Did the calling-around that Jonathan did a few days ago play any part in this?
ReplyDeleteLapin, I have no idea what woke them up. Again, why did they ever think that the insurrectionists would confine themselves to TEC? That was foolish.
ReplyDeleteHey, we Americans not only visit the palaces and gardens but we go to church, too. It would be great to have a really comprehensive listing of parishes and cathedrals based on their progressive, inclusive quality so we'd know where to go and where not to go. Or at least where not to bother contributing to the collection basket if we did go because it might be funding the wrong people. Our English brothers and sisters could do that for us.
ReplyDeleteI think Fr. Jonathon probably helped but I suspect a good many progressive CoE clerics are fed up with Rowan's efforts to ride both horses. So, yes credit definitely!
ReplyDeleteFWIW
jimB
John, that would be a good thing. Do we do it in TEC? Where is the list?
ReplyDeleteJim, we were a little slow to catch on to the long-planned conspiracies to take over TEC, too. We had to learn from our own experiences. The English could have learned from us, but they learned the hard way.
The self-named conservatives won´t like being put on a display of their own sleeze making...afterall, control is their insidious game and stark daylight isn´t a place to hide from the reality of bigotry, promoting fear and hate at Church (a bonus is that Sunshine kills mold instantly).
ReplyDeleteAmen and amen, Grandmere! PLEASE keep in mind DallasBob's voice crying in the wilderness (sorry for the crosspost):
ReplyDeleteDallas Bob said...
'Forgotten (and I do mean forgotten) in all of this are the mainstream, normal Episcopal parishes stuck in Network dioceses. We want to be part of the National Church's life but are cut off by the extremists who run our diocese. ... snip ...
I feel as if I live in a city that is loyal to the Union plopped in the middle of the old confederacy. What a mess. I never thought I would say it but I am so envious of the Episcopal parishes in Fort Worth who now live in a diocese loyal to our National Church.'
A directory (including TEC-friendly parishes in Network dioceses) is a time that has come.
Remember, DallasBob's situation is repeated in over and over in many other Network dioceses/fiefdoms, including my own. Help end the isolation!
Let the networking (no pun intended) begin!!!
Should be pretty simple, just need friendly folk in each diocese who know the parishes to assemble the list.
ReplyDeleteA template might be:
Diocese: Lesser Dishpan
Bishop: Bp Hubert Crozier
Views (tick one): Progressive/friendly/unfriendly/ACNA-bound
Friendly congregations that welcome everyone:
All Saints
....
St All's
etc
Then we post it as a blog post, it gets its own .html link, and there you are.
That's the grassroots way to do it, others may want to do it more formally.
Leo, shining light on the dirty deeds is a small thing bloggers can do.
ReplyDeleteJay, I do, I do. I'm doing what I can.
IT, I nominate you.
Seriously, it's a good idea, I hope someone runs with it.
You know, the hymn is "We shall overcome." Not: "I overcame."
ReplyDeleteRosa Parks never claimed the title, "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement." When asked, she simply said, "I sat down in the front of the bus because my feet were tired."
'Nuff said.
"Their Ruth's" almost celebratory article only underscores my experience that there has been a growing groundswell of support all over UK for this progressive stance for some time now. It's part of the history of every single evangelical movement - people get tired of being taught to hate in the name of Jesus. Eventually, there is a movement against it.
That time in UK is now. If you read in between the lines, even "Their Ruth" seems to be saying, "Finally!" and "Hooray!"
To which I say, "Amen."
Do I hear the sound of the other shoe finally dropping? Or is it being firmly tossed out of the English church's closet?
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, I'm sure you're right. It's just that the church people in England have been so quiet. A few have spoken out, like Giles Fraser, and Ruth has been making her way slowly to the right side in a similar way to me. She became disgusted with the words and attitudes of the folks on her side.
ReplyDeleteJeffri, what riles me is the scoldings that Rowan gave TEC over the years, and all the while we knew that the situation is the same, except more so, in his own church, except that it's hidden away. What nerve!
I think some ignored the bit about letting sleeping lions lie.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget also individual liberal Episcopalians/Anglicans in conservative churches or dioceses.
I would perhaps use a 5 point scale both for dioceses and congregations
1 - Progressive
2 - leaning Progressive
3 - neutral
4 - leaning Conservative
5 - Conservative
In England and possibly the US one might also want to add
A - Anglo-Catholic
B - Broad
C - Evangelical/Calvinist
(I think that is the three big traditions)
Erp, where is the part about letting sleeping dogs lie?
ReplyDeleteI'd have a difficult time categorizing my own church in either survey. We have partnered lesbians serving as lay Eucharistic ministers and lay readers, so I suppose we would be in the leaning Progressive category.
Erp, you're as bad as I am, an atheist who knows way too much about TEC!
ReplyDeleteNo where in the post but a general comment on the conservatives finally stirring up a sleepy lion (aka the English liberals).
ReplyDeleteThe church I go to counts as fully progressive (Unitarian Universalist minister leading and a Reform rabbi and partnered lesbian Episcopalian priest assisting, first same-sex blessing back in 1993) and has no problems with atheists like me attending (and arguing).
I'm not sure of the other local churches
* indicates they are listed on http://www.gaychurch.org/ as friendly
Episcopalians/Anglicans
St. Ann - conservative (never part of the TEC, belongs to one of the earlier breakaway groups)
*St. Marks - ??, leaning progressive
*All Saints - progressive, they openly admit to having gay and lesbian couples in the congregation.
*University Church (Episcopal and Lutheran) - progressive
All Saints is in El Camino diocese
I'm pretty certain University Church is in Diocese of California
don't know for St. Marks
(apparent the diocese boundary goes through the town and it is sort of random which Episcopal church ended where)
Other town churches
Unitarian Universalist - definitely
*First United Methodist - definitely (flying a rainbow banner on the exterior is a good hint)
*St. Andrews UMC -
*Covenant Presbyterian -
*First Presbyterian - definitely (their web page on weddings/holy unions includes a picture of two men). This is in sharp contrast to the neighboring town's Presbyterian church which is a conservative mega-church.
*First Evangelical Lutheran Church
First Baptist - leaning progressive, I believe the minister is gay but somewhat quiet; he spoke against prop 8
*Friends Meeting - definitely
AME Zion - ??? their retired minister is at least willing to work with gay/lesbian ministers
First Congregational (UCC) - definitely (rainbow icon on their web page among other things)
Then plenty I suspect are conservative which I'm not going to list.
Followup to IT.
ReplyDeleteI agree, probably a sign of the end of time:-). I at least was born in England and my parents were married in a CoE church (though they never baptized us children). I recently read a paragraph by Simon Blackburn, a Cambridge philosopher, that might epitomize the attitude of a lot of English non-theists.
It is hard to confess, but I can enjoy religious music, and even religious poetry. I
think the Book of Common Prayer, or the King James Bible, are great glories of the
English language, and I am grateful for an education that did something to immerse me in
their vocabulary and rhythms. I suppose I regard the Church of England as an old family
pet: a bit moth-eaten, prone to scratch at its own fleas (gay marriages, women bishops)
but familiar and somehow comforting, best when it is not making too much noise.