Not Only Little England

From Giles Fraser in the Church Times on the Archbishop of Canterbury's reflections on GC09. Giles speaks of the two-tier system as it now exists in the Church of England:

Actually, we have been something like a two-tier Church for a while, but the nature of this division is different from the one Dr Williams des­cribes. One tier is called the Church of England; the other is called Ang­lican­ism. Ordinary people in the pews are members of the former; those with “representative func­tions” — bishops and the like — are often of the latter.

The Church of England has always had a slight little-Englander mentality. Mrs Jones, who has always worshipped at St Agatha’s, knows that there is a wider international side to the Church — she reads about it in the diocesan newsletter. But it means about as much to her as the fact that her town is twinned with somewhere in France which she has never been to.

She is happy to give to needy causes abroad, but, for her, church means St Agatha’s: Sunday eucharist, the choir, the people. Her views may be more conservative or more liberal than the person praying next to her, but that doesn’t matter much. She still cycles to communion through the morning mist.

This may be a dated caricature, but the genius of the Church of England has been to allow different theological temperaments to wor­ship alongside one other, united by common prayer and community spirit. This was how we recognised each other as members of the same Church. This was our particular charism, and we were widely valued for it.

I don't think that Giles' description is dated, nor is the mentality confined to little England. All church is local. I've spoken before about my several years in the Episcopal Church when I hardly even paid attention to the activities of my diocese, much less the national church, or the Anglican Communion, except as they affected my parish church. I've also acknowledged a feeling of nostalgia for my period of innocence and ignorance.

The majority of my congregation probably functions principally within the local church mentality. Only when it becomes obvious that decisions made higher up will affect our parish, do they begin to pay attention.

In Anglicanism, however, the joys of common prayer and community spirit are replaced by ideology. This Anglican Church is a new invention, a global piece of post-colonial hubris, driven by those who feel that a Church that is genuinely Catholic must have outposts throughout the world.

Bishops get on planes and fly to other parts of the world to sit in com­mittees with other bishops, hammer­ing out policy — although no one in the secular world cares two hoots about what they decide. Over time, these meetings have created a new Church with a single-issue magis­terium based on an unhealthy fascina­tion with what gay people do in their bedrooms. This, apparently, is how we are to recognise each other as Anglicans.

That is not how Mrs Jones recog­nises members of her church. She says hello to them in the street. They sit near her in the pews. To replace all this by ideology is the single greatest mistake my Church has ever made.

Wow! Giles couldn't have stated it more plainly. Would that his Church of England brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, would speak in such plain language and with such wisdom.

I am sooo tired of the "single-issue magisterium" of sex, sex, sex. I may work those words into a sidebar quote.

Anglicanism is and should be about much more than that. When I travel, I enjoy visiting Episcopal churches in other areas of the US and Anglican churches abroad and being able to worship in similar, but not quite the same, services as at home, in knowing that we shared the basics of beliefs, whatever different meanings we attributed to the basics, and without being too much troubled about the differences. Our conversations on the faith after the services began from common ground. The common ground is now crumbling beneath our feet because of the undue emphasis on ideology and sex, sex, sex. More's the pity.

H/T to JB Chilton at The Lead for the link.