Anglicanism is in pretty good nick, especially in urban places. Hybrid strength, I guess - that and the Thatch-sounding stuff abt standing on our own multiple feet: we pay for the upkeep of buildings and frequently get no paid ministry. Welby etc drone on; we take no notice: institutional loyalty doesn't necessarily demand that we should. And why put people on the spot by asking them what THEY would do abt the numbers aspect of immigration? The Book of Common Prayer and the KJ are still legal tender. Andrew Brown will still write for the Church Times, I pray. Some of us fight a rearguard action against globalizing tendencies, eg. Roman collars; the sex of the clergy person wearing them is almost always adiaphoric nowadays. And on the ground the clergy are remarkably circumspect abt expressing potty views; the Rev Sonnenschein (Amis's The Green Man) isn't that common. The Elizabethan unwillingness to demand Continental-style formulations of belief of the punters is largely institutionalised; the intenser types tend to hang out with their own sort, thank God. There's trouble down the road after all the volunteer later-life vocation people have retired and there's still no money to pay those that need to be paid for discharging ministerial duties. But that's just the way some other professions have gone. And few parishes entirely fail to pay their parish share to support ministerial training; people of modest means are frequently quite generous.
Somehow the Church of England needs to be restored to the use of Christianity. Getting rid of government funding of the clergy is the first step. The irreligious pastors will then all decide to resign and become interior decorators.
It would be good to (a) require that the church buildings be used for Christian religious purposes, run by nonprofits whose boards must be composed of people living nearby, and (b) give the ownership to the highest bidder, for each individual church.
Same can be said for the American Episcopalian church. In days gone by it was referred to as the Republican Party at prayer, but it was also a time when the Republican party meant quiet stockbrokers and lawyers playing golf after church. Both faith and politics have changed so perhaps it was inevitable one would change if the other did?
I've long observed that as the clergy, and particularly the institutional hierarchy, moved to the left, the rank and file worshippers only became more and more antagonized. If you're the cliched old school Episcopalian who enjoyed the rituals and tradition of the apolitical congenial church with some golf afterwards, you don't want to be lectured to by a woke minister keen on filling the sanctuary with BLM and rainbow flags. Eventually you stop coming. It's that simple. For generations the traditional protestant (Mainline, not evangelical) churches of America knew to keep politics at the church doors, but starting around 30 years ago this began to change and as the clergy and leadership became increasingly progressive left, the rank and file memberships started dropping off, rather dramatically. Coincidence? I don't think so.
There are still congenial congregations that manage to keep politics outside the church doors, but others have fully embraced them and fly the banners of their new idols on the church walls. And others have been marred by tensions reflecting the culture wars, with some congregants embracing the rainbow and BLM banners as the onward march of progress and righteous social justice while others are aghast and see them as political tools. The future is not bright for the churches because while the clergy and leadership hew in one directly, their new "natural" congregants are not exactly flocking to the doors for the same same institution is still irredeemable racist and sexist and oppressive according to the new woke dogma. They're effectively trapped by their own newfound beliefs. Meanwhile, the people who used to enjoy the rituals and congeniality of moderate Mainline Protestantism get used to playing golf on Sunday mornings and start muttering what's the point of donating money to wacko progressive ministers who only lecture how awful and racist I am and keep their pocketbooks firmly shut. Soon, before long, young children will start asking what that funny looking building with the spiky tower is.
Welby is a strange character who claims to have begun speaking in tongues in early adulthood. He claims also, in his everyday prog tongue, that The Church of England is "deeply institutionally racist", a problem to be presumably solved by abandoning all "deeply immoral" attempts to control immigration from all poor countries.
I spent more time thinking about your article (read it yesterday in the midst of a very busy work day). In the early Victorian era there was a major divide in the CoE between traditionalist high and evangelical low church. One can see some parallels with today, with the woke clergy being "low" church and the traditional clergy the "high" church (although not exactly neat parallels). Anthony Trollope wrote a number of books involving the church in Barchester that tapped into this theme. Mrs. Proudie was proudly low church and would doubtlessly be a proudly woke bishop today with all the terror she promised.
I'm not familiar enough with CoE history to know how this low/high church divide was eventually reconciled but a great theme in British, or Anglosphere, history is hewing to the mean (Golden Mean?) in the great spirit of compromise. The ability of opposing forces to always eventually reconcile in a mean may be due to the inherent empirical attitudes of Britain and its heirs in the New World, including America, compared to the more intolerant and ideological attitudes of rationalism from the continent. Modern woke ideology is an offshoot of the critical theory school, which is distinctly continental and based on rationalism rather than empiricism. The rational philosophers are less inclined to compromise and are distinctly more dogmatic, whether secular or temporal. What we are seeing in the CoE and Episcopalian and other American mainline denominations is clearly a loss of empirical thinking.
This is very good, Ed. In a similar vein, there was an interesting Twitter thread that described wokeness as a type of "deeply American hyper-Protestantism" and I think there's definitely something to that. Here's the thread: https://twitter.com/daily_barbarian/status/1484986997370359808
This is all surely unarguable especially: “Few British Tory politicians can explain what they actually believe in, or what they are conserving.”
Anglicanism is in pretty good nick, especially in urban places. Hybrid strength, I guess - that and the Thatch-sounding stuff abt standing on our own multiple feet: we pay for the upkeep of buildings and frequently get no paid ministry. Welby etc drone on; we take no notice: institutional loyalty doesn't necessarily demand that we should. And why put people on the spot by asking them what THEY would do abt the numbers aspect of immigration? The Book of Common Prayer and the KJ are still legal tender. Andrew Brown will still write for the Church Times, I pray. Some of us fight a rearguard action against globalizing tendencies, eg. Roman collars; the sex of the clergy person wearing them is almost always adiaphoric nowadays. And on the ground the clergy are remarkably circumspect abt expressing potty views; the Rev Sonnenschein (Amis's The Green Man) isn't that common. The Elizabethan unwillingness to demand Continental-style formulations of belief of the punters is largely institutionalised; the intenser types tend to hang out with their own sort, thank God. There's trouble down the road after all the volunteer later-life vocation people have retired and there's still no money to pay those that need to be paid for discharging ministerial duties. But that's just the way some other professions have gone. And few parishes entirely fail to pay their parish share to support ministerial training; people of modest means are frequently quite generous.
Somehow the Church of England needs to be restored to the use of Christianity. Getting rid of government funding of the clergy is the first step. The irreligious pastors will then all decide to resign and become interior decorators.
It would be good to (a) require that the church buildings be used for Christian religious purposes, run by nonprofits whose boards must be composed of people living nearby, and (b) give the ownership to the highest bidder, for each individual church.
Same can be said for the American Episcopalian church. In days gone by it was referred to as the Republican Party at prayer, but it was also a time when the Republican party meant quiet stockbrokers and lawyers playing golf after church. Both faith and politics have changed so perhaps it was inevitable one would change if the other did?
I've long observed that as the clergy, and particularly the institutional hierarchy, moved to the left, the rank and file worshippers only became more and more antagonized. If you're the cliched old school Episcopalian who enjoyed the rituals and tradition of the apolitical congenial church with some golf afterwards, you don't want to be lectured to by a woke minister keen on filling the sanctuary with BLM and rainbow flags. Eventually you stop coming. It's that simple. For generations the traditional protestant (Mainline, not evangelical) churches of America knew to keep politics at the church doors, but starting around 30 years ago this began to change and as the clergy and leadership became increasingly progressive left, the rank and file memberships started dropping off, rather dramatically. Coincidence? I don't think so.
There are still congenial congregations that manage to keep politics outside the church doors, but others have fully embraced them and fly the banners of their new idols on the church walls. And others have been marred by tensions reflecting the culture wars, with some congregants embracing the rainbow and BLM banners as the onward march of progress and righteous social justice while others are aghast and see them as political tools. The future is not bright for the churches because while the clergy and leadership hew in one directly, their new "natural" congregants are not exactly flocking to the doors for the same same institution is still irredeemable racist and sexist and oppressive according to the new woke dogma. They're effectively trapped by their own newfound beliefs. Meanwhile, the people who used to enjoy the rituals and congeniality of moderate Mainline Protestantism get used to playing golf on Sunday mornings and start muttering what's the point of donating money to wacko progressive ministers who only lecture how awful and racist I am and keep their pocketbooks firmly shut. Soon, before long, young children will start asking what that funny looking building with the spiky tower is.
Welby is a strange character who claims to have begun speaking in tongues in early adulthood. He claims also, in his everyday prog tongue, that The Church of England is "deeply institutionally racist", a problem to be presumably solved by abandoning all "deeply immoral" attempts to control immigration from all poor countries.
I spent more time thinking about your article (read it yesterday in the midst of a very busy work day). In the early Victorian era there was a major divide in the CoE between traditionalist high and evangelical low church. One can see some parallels with today, with the woke clergy being "low" church and the traditional clergy the "high" church (although not exactly neat parallels). Anthony Trollope wrote a number of books involving the church in Barchester that tapped into this theme. Mrs. Proudie was proudly low church and would doubtlessly be a proudly woke bishop today with all the terror she promised.
I'm not familiar enough with CoE history to know how this low/high church divide was eventually reconciled but a great theme in British, or Anglosphere, history is hewing to the mean (Golden Mean?) in the great spirit of compromise. The ability of opposing forces to always eventually reconcile in a mean may be due to the inherent empirical attitudes of Britain and its heirs in the New World, including America, compared to the more intolerant and ideological attitudes of rationalism from the continent. Modern woke ideology is an offshoot of the critical theory school, which is distinctly continental and based on rationalism rather than empiricism. The rational philosophers are less inclined to compromise and are distinctly more dogmatic, whether secular or temporal. What we are seeing in the CoE and Episcopalian and other American mainline denominations is clearly a loss of empirical thinking.
Extremely interesting, Mr. West. Content such as this, which is not about American issues, is why I subscribe.
This is very good, Ed. In a similar vein, there was an interesting Twitter thread that described wokeness as a type of "deeply American hyper-Protestantism" and I think there's definitely something to that. Here's the thread: https://twitter.com/daily_barbarian/status/1484986997370359808