OUR MAN DIARMAID ON WOMEN BISHOPS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Well, Diarmaid MacCullough is our man in a way, as he's a member of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition.  In his latest article in the Guardian, MacCullough notes that despite claims to the contrary, in the early church the label "apostles" is not limited to the 12 named in the Gospels.  Paul, writer of the epistles to early churches, emphatically claimed the title of apostle, and, in his letters, he speaks of women in leadership roles and named Junia as an apostle in the letter to the Romans. 

The great distorting factor in Christian history which transcends denominational and many other ecclesiastical divisions is that most history has been written by men. And the truth is that men are for the most part not very interested in women, except in certain very specific ways – most of which have been officially out of bounds, because of the general tendency of past Christian historians to be not just men, but celibate clergymen.

(Pause)  All right, I had to stop for a chuckle.

There is another wild card to take into account in history: the way that something which once seemed so important to everyone can suddenly seem of no significance at all – and then all the worries are rapidly forgotten, as if they had never been. Let me point you to one of the most long-lasting examples: the Christian ban on menstruating women from participation in the sacraments or even from approaching the altar..

Oh ick!...and another chuckle.  Men!

MacCullough doesn't mention Mary Magdalene.  Earlier in the article the writer reminds us that apostle means messenger, and the Magdalene was the messenger at the tomb whom either Jesus (John's Gospel), or the young man in the white robe (Mark's Gospel), or the angel (Matthew's Gospel), or two men in dazzling apparel (Luke's Gospel) sent to the disciples with the good news that Jesus was alive.

Do read the entire article, as it is excellent.   In the end, MacCullough advises the male bishops to just get on with the business of ordaining women bishops.

WHAT IS THIS CHURCH OF ENGLAND...?

Canterbury Cathedral

In The Times in London, which you cannot read without a subscription, Diarmaid MacCullough writes about the latest statement from the Church of England on the proposal to allow same-sex civil marriage in England.  Of course, I cannot copy the entire article for a number of reasons, but I'll take the risk of giving you a few snippets:

So “the Church of England cannot support the proposal to enable all couples, regardless of their gender, to have a civil marriage ceremony”. That’s odd, I thought that I was part of the Church of England and I can and do support the proposal. And I know quite a few other people who thought that they were part of the Church of England and they support it too.

So what is this Church of England that doesn’t? It doesn’t actually sign its name to the 13-page public submission it has just made to the Government’s consultation on marriage equality, but it is not difficult to ferret out what it is.

It is a curious theme park called Bishop World. This is a collection of middle-aged to elderly males, some gay (though they don’t like to say so in public), some heterosexual (and they remind us of that all the time in public). They have a penchant for wearing mitres, sitting on committees and talking to each other. They are ably assisted by a small group of lawyers and civil servants, again for the most part remarkably male. A high fence protects the environs of Bishop World, so none of the inmates are troubled by opinions from the distressing wilderness beyond its bounds. Within their defences, nevertheless, they are anxious, insecure creatures, who worry incessantly about the breakdown of society.

I hesitate to post the link where I found the entire article, but if you Google the first words of the piece and the author's given name, you should find it.  I would not want to vacation at Bishop World Theme Park.

Geaux, Diarmaid - er - Sir Diarmaid!

DIARMAID MACCULLOCH ON THE ANGLICAN COVENANT

Tomorrow, March 24, 2012, six diocesan synods in the Church of England will vote on whether to adopt the proposed Anglican Covenant.

• Blackburn
• Exeter
• Guildford
• Lincoln
• Oxford
• Peterborough

There are 12 dioceses yet to vote.

Dioceses for the Covenant to date: 12

Dioceses against the Covenant to date: 20

For the Covenant to succeed 11 more dioceses must vote in favor

For the Covenant to fail 2 more dioceses must vote against

Almighty and everliving God, source of all wisdom and understanding, be present with those who take counsel and vote on Anglican Covenant. Teach them in all things to seek first your honor and glory. Guide them to perceive what is right, and grant them both the courage to pursue it and the grace to accomplish it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

From the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church (edited).

Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. He was knighted for his service to scholarship in January 2012.

BBC RADIO 4 - DISCUSSION OF ANGLICAN COVENANT

Transcript of the program from the Diocese of Salisbury, with Edward Stourton discussing the Anglican Covenant with Bishop Graham Kings and Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch.

Stourton - The Anglican Covenant was Rowan Williams’s big idea for securing unity of the worldwide Anglican Communion after the row over the American church’s decision to appoint a gay Bishop. It lays out a set of basic principles to which all churches in the communion would be required to subscribe. In the Church of England the Covenant needs to be endorsed by a majority of the church’s 44 Dioceses. 10 [sic 6] of them have been voting this weekend and the running total stands at 17 against and only 10 for the Covenant. Dr Graham Kings is the Bishop of Sherborne and Diarmaid MacCulloch is the Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford.

Stourton - Good morning to you both. Bishop you are going to have to make up a good deal of ground if you are going to get this through. How do you persuade people to vote for the Covenant?

Kings - Yes, the momentum is against the Covenant at the moment but there are still 17 Dioceses to vote. I think we can look at the image of a bunch of grapes or a bag of marbles. A bunch of grapes is what the communion is at the moment and we want to keep it like that. It is to do with personal interdependence. A bag of marbles is about isolated autonomy that don’t actually meet together. The interesting thing about today is that I am in Bournemouth in a studio, Diarmaid is in Oxford and you’re in Manchester and we are connected. And I think that is interdependence. The danger is if we get cut off from each other we have isolated autonomy.

Stourton - Diarmaid you’re more of a marbles man.

MacCulloch - I don’t understand those images very much, I just don’t think they are very useful images at all. What is very interesting, is the way the figures have consistently built up as people have understood the arguments for the Covenant and they realise just how incoherent they are.

Stourton - Right, what is the argument that you think swings it?

MacCulloch - Well, what swings the argument against is that people realise that this is a sort of centralisation, proposed for the Anglican Communion, which has never been Anglican, which is against Anglicanism. The Anglican Communion is not an Anglican church it’s a family of churches and you don’t need some punitive, centralising, disciplining sort of process to make the churches work together. That’s not the Anglican way, and I’m delighted at the way that the Dioceses have recognised that. This is a great thing for the Church of England.

Stourton - Let me put that to Graham Kings, because it is a very serious charge that the idea that this runs against the fundamental spirit of what Anglicanism is?

Kings - I thinks it’s worth watching the Archbishop of Canterbury’s video which was put on Youtube on Monday this week. He specifically says, quote “Some people say there’s a misunderstanding that it is some sort of centralising proposal creating an absolute authority which has the right to punish people for stepping out of line!”, that’s what Dairmaid has just said, and the Archbishop says, “I have to say, that I think this is completely misleading and false”. In the introduction you said they would be required to sign the Covenant. No, this is an ‘opt in’ Covenant; nobody is required to sign it at all.

MacCulloch - Yes, but what happens Bishop, if you ‘opt in’, what if you ‘opt out’? You are not opting out you are forced out. If you will not sign up to a set of arguments, a set of propositions, which have been drawn up by one body and they have decided what Anglicanism is. Then you have to say, am I going to agree to something, which someone else has decided on Anglicanism

Stourton - Let’s just be clear Dr Kings is that right in formal terms? If you don’t sign up to this you are not a member of the Anglican Communion?

Kings - No. That’s not right. You are still a member of the Anglican Communion. It may be some particular committees that you cannot take part. Yes, you are still fully a member of the Anglican Communion but not in the central committees. Nobody is forced to do anything. These are recommended courses of actions. It is not one central committee that has drawn up this, it has been discussed all over the Communion and the Church of England had a huge input into it.

Stourton - Professor MacCulloch?

MacCulloch - Well, it has been discussed by those who want to discuss it. There is a curious sense in which this lunatic proposal has gone down a path. Once you start you don’t see the alternatives. Watching it happen has been like a rather slow motion version of the Gadarene Swine.

Stourton - A quick final word Dr Kings. On a practical point doesn’t this or won’t this, if it goes against the Covenant, as it appears to be doing, very much damage Archbishop Rowan Williams’ authority in the church because he set enormous store by this idea?

Kings - I think we need to look at the Provinces. Provinces have voted worldwide. So far, six in favour and only one against. A liberal province, Mexico, has voted for it, Southern .......

Stourton - But, the Church of England is the Mother church in a way ...........

Kings - In some ways yes, we will see. The business committee have to report in July and we will see what their report is.

Stourton - Graham Kings, Bishop of Sherborne and Diarmaid MacCulloch Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford, thank you both very much indeed.

Listen here. The segment begins at approximately 13:27 minutes into the broadcast.

FURTHER ON THE ANGLICAN COVENANT...PROF. DIARMAID MACCULLOUGH

There are other ways forward, and I urge you if you have anything to do with this process, make sure that this Covenant is voted down.

Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. He was knighted for his service to scholarship in January 2012.

"I was ordained Deacon [in the Church of England]. But, being a gay man, it was just impossible to proceed further, within the conditions of the Anglican set-up, because I was determined that I would make no bones about who I was; I was brought up to be truthful, and truth has always mattered to me. The Church couldn't cope and so we parted company. It was a miserable experience."

From Wikipedia.

MacCulloch's two latest books are Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years and The Reformation, both of which I've read. They are excellent, and I recommend the two publications highly.

THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF OUR 'CHRISTIAN' NATION

Nevertheless, because the revolutionary leadership sprang from the social establishment in several colonies, it included many who were Anglicans by denominational loyalty, no less than two-thirds of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. Elite egalitarians tended to lead these Founding Fathers not to the Awakening but to the Enlightenment and Deism: cool versions of Christianity, or virtually no Christianity at all. The polymath Benjamin Franklin seldom went to church, and when he did, it was to enjoy the Anglican Book of Common Prayer decorously performed in Christ Church, Philadelphia; he made it a point of principle not to spend energy affirming the divinity of Christ. Thomas Jefferson was rather more concerned than Franklin to be seen at church on key political occasions, but he deplored religious controversy, deeply distrusted organized religion and spoke of the Trinity as 'abracadabra...hocus-pocus...a deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign to Christianity as that of Mohamet'. In the face of such low-temperature religion, many on the present-day American religious right, anxious to appropriate the Revolution for their own version of modern American patriotism, have sought comfort in the ultimate Founding Father, George Washington, but here too there is much to doubt. Washington never received Holy Communion, and was inclined in discourse to refer to providence or destiny rather than God.
....

What this revolutionary elite achieved amid a sea of competing Christianities, many of which were highly uncongenial to them, was to make religion a private affair in the eyes of the new American federal government. The constitution which they created made no mention of God or Christianity (apart from the date by 'the Year of our Lord'). That was without precedent in Christian polities of that time, and with equal disregard for tradition (after some debate), the Great Seal of the United States of America bore no Christian symbol but rather the Eye of Providence, which if it recalled anything recalled Freemasonry. The motto 'In God We Trust' only first appeared on the American coin amid civil war in 1864, and it was 1957 before it featured on any paper currency of the United States.

From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCullough, pp. 763-764.

So much for the United States as a 'Christian' nation established by 'Christian' Founding Fathers. Citizens who do not know the true history of the country make up from whole cloth a false history to suit their individual purposes.

You may find this hard to believe, but during all my years in elementary and high school, I said the Pledge of Allegiance minus the words 'under God' and, I came out of that period of my life unscathed. The words were added in 1954, during my university years.

Further reading on the subject of the 'Christian' Founding Fathers in a splendid article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the religious views of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Paine, none of whom would be electable today.