49 forum messages posted by
Stuart

David,

A good point - especially regarding politics, where we have to vote always for the least-bad option. To confirm: if a similar exercise took place with positions opposite to yours in some of the contentious areas, would that then be something which you'd be happy to sign?

I think in part my concern or suspicion is that this declaration will not be taken by all involved in the spirit you suggest - a broad sense of the importance of the Christian voice in the public sphere, accepting that Christians differ on specifics - but instead be used (by some) as an argument for numbers committed to some of its specific tenets.

David,

My point was that I don't want to play the numbers game. Regarding St Ebbe's, I understand that they continue to enjoy the same size congregation now as they did when I was a student.That's great, a really strong achievement - but it's not in itself growth. They do a really important job of Christian formation, however, along with St Aldate's, Mary Mags, St Mary the Virgin, college chapels, the Catholic Chaplaincy et al, all of whom probably feed growth elsewhere.

To your second point, yes what matters is how many people are finding Jesus in any church - at St Ebbe's, cathedrals, village churches, network churches, wherever. Your post seemed - although I hope I'm misinterpreting - to be implying that people at "those" churches may not be proper Christians, whilst people at "our" churches are. As I say, I do hope I'm mistaken, because if we get into a Pharisee style game of looking down on other people suggesting they're not true believers, we're heading for real trouble.

Nersen. Everything I've heard from TEC argues that they follow the path they do because they wish to live out the Gospel, regardless of whether the context is helpful or makes that more challenging. Certainly within the UK I hear consistently the argument being put for the "liberal" position based on exegesis of scripture.

Can I show strong growth in "liberal" churches in the UK? I've already cited cathedrals as one example, and made the point that if conservative evangelical churches were the only ones growing then they'd be the only ones left by now - which palpably is not the case.

More broadly, I earlier made reference to 'what you would term "liberal"' - to be more precise, those with whom you'd disagree on human sexuality. It's perhaps an oddity of the current debate that large numbers of Christians get branded as liberal despite being solidly conservative in doctrine and belief - just because they're exegesis on this one question moves on from the traditional and conservative evangelical line. If, however, we're using that definition of liberal, then the recent Social Attitudes survey indicated that over half of actively participating Christians take the "liberal" view.

I think one challenge with the Westminster 2010 declaration is that it is presented as speaking for 4 million churchgoers (http://www.westminster2010.org.uk/news/christian-leaders-launch-conscience-manifesto-ahead-of-general-electio/) but then goes on to list views - most notably, as is being discussed here, antipathy to gay relationships - that a great many of those churchgoers do not hold.

The 2010 British Social Attitudes report (http://www.natcen.ac.uk/bsa-report-chapters) showed roughly half of those who are religiously active disapproving, and half accepting, sexual relations between gay people. Unless Muslims (the largest other religious group) are more liberal than Christians, then half or more Christians do not hold the Westminster 2010 declaration's position on this issue.

So, the choice for its authors would logically have been to present a broader set of principles to which 4 million Christians could genuinely subscribe, or to present themselves as speaking for a subset within Christianity - but instead they interpolated their own views onto the whole lot.

Actually, Nersen, the growth in cathedral attendance applies to the young as well as the old - 16% growth in under 16s in the last 8 years, during which period there's been a stonking 24% growth in adult attendance. Various individual cathedrals have great stuff going for children and young people, Exeter for example has Nightchurch which meets on a Friday evening - at one special anniversary event they got 1,000 teenagers there.

This is, of course, separate from the whole visit, education and outreach side of what cathedrals do, which is a very powerful way to give some exposure to the Christian faith to those who may not regularly encounter it - over 300,000 under 16s a year attend educational events at cathedrals.

But back to some mathematical fundamentals. Given that each of the traditions in the CofE has been around for a long time now, I don't see how one can argue for the supremacy of any position from numbers. To your point below, given conservative evangelicalism has been around for 200 years, if that alone is where the growth comes from, how come, after two centuries, conservative evangelicals are not the only people left in the church?

Nersen,

If you're back to your argument from numbers, you may wish to reflect that CofE statistics show the largest and fastest growing churches right now are the cathedrals - where the preaching is typically what you would call "liberal".

Is it wrong of me to enjoy the ironic lack of posts on this thread? 

Nersen,

I did indeed read your post, but fear you may be chasing a red herring. What is right or wrong is driven by Scripture, the church must labour constantly in our discernment of Scripture and we know that our interpretation of Scripture has evolved through the history of the church.

There's no argument in altering our reading of Scripture to please society and this is not an argument that can be won or lost based on numbers.

Hmm. I find the maths here rather challenging. To use your chosen statistic of church attendance, TEC has 1 in 400 Americans in its pews whilst ACNA has 1 in 4,000.

Personally I'd like to see us in communion with both bodies, but I'm confused as to why the numbers here are relevant concerning those you're looking to criticise, but irrelevant when it comes to those with whom you sympathise.

Interesting point, Nersen. You argue we should ignore TEC because it only has 2.1m members. Presumably, then, ACNA with its 100k members should be ignored even more thoroughly....

Weren't they claiming 100,000 adherents from the start?

Interesting to reflect that's a similar number as the Diocese of London has by itself... not sure if that makes +Richard Chartres a 500lb gorilla too ;)

Clare,

This layperson also agrees with your well-made points. I would add that some dioceses are better than others at bringing in lay experience - our bishop here draws on a number of people with HR backgrounds in different contexts. As ever with the CofE, the high degree of independence between its different units produces a varied and inconsistent picture.

Stuart

Nersen,

The most direct set of rules the CofE has for its employees is the Canons - yet virtually every employee is in breach of them. Historically, employees of the church who have gone against the settled mind of the communion would include those who have opposed slavery,

You are right to suggest that truth is more important than numerical growth - but the history of the church makes clear that what the church at one moment considers to be truth, it can soon after define as heresy.

Stuart