What the Anglican church needs is more bishops

Bishops galore:

The Church of England needs more bishops not fewer, its governing body heard.

Despite dwindling congregations, worsening finances and a fall in the number of vicars, speakers told the gathering of the General Synod in York that radical plans to cut senior clergy posts were misguided.

They argued that bishops have far more work to do than in years gone by, and that greater expectations are placed upon them.

Prof Glynn Harrison, from Bristol diocese, said: “There may indeed be a case for increasing rather than decreasing senior oversight appointments.”

He said he did not know how diocesan bishops tolerate the growing weight of expectations placed upon them.

This all makes sense: as people “flee from the midst of Babylon” or the CofE, more bishops are needed – to control the traffic congestion created by of the departing hordes, presumably.

In the Western Anglican Church, as the number of members approaches zero, the number of bishops will approach infinity.

God and science

Contrary to contemporary atheist superstition, a scientist can be a Christian:

Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project, has been named by President Obama to head the National Institutes of Health. What makes this news is the breathtaking idea that someone could be both a scientist and a believer in God.

Like Isaac Newton. Or Johannes Kepler. Or Galileo Galilei. Or most of the other leaders of the Scientific Revolution. And a large number of scientists today.

This isn’t news. What is news instead is the continuing ignorance of people who think that science and belief in God are incompatible. They are not.

Why I am not a Calvinist

In the early 1980s I encountered a Christian who left the Dutch Reformed Church because it was insufficiently Calvinist. He and a few others formed a new church where they would be free to adhere more exactly to the Calvinist principles of which they were so fond. This sticks in my mind mainly because he was the first person I had encountered that believed some babies are predestined to hell and if they die as babies, that’s where they’ll end up – for God’s greater glory. He took his Calvinism seriously. I was taken by surprise at the enormity of the consequences this belief and I don’t think I gave a very coherent response to what seemed to me to be an abominable idea. I knew Calvin and I would have problems.

Subsequently I read some of Clark Pinnock’s books including essays of his where made the case for Arminianism and others for Calvinism; I found Clark’s to be the more convincing case although I was not swayed entirely to his point of view. I later became acquainted with Clark because he occasionally attended my church and I remember questioning him on a point he made that seemed extreme; he gave me a worried look and said “do you think I’ve gone too far?” I wanted to say “how the hell should I know, you’re the theologian” – but didn’t. I think it was something to do with the final destruction – rather than torment – of the lost.

Leaving aside damned babies, David Bentley Hart succinctly sums up the problem:

I quite explicitly admit in my writing that I think the traditional Calvinist understanding of divine sovereignty to be deeply defective, and destructively so. One cannot, as with Luther, trace out a direct genealogy from late medieval voluntarism to the Calvinist understanding of divine freedom; nevertheless, the way in which Calvin himself describes divine sovereignty is profoundly modern: it frequently seems to require an element of pure arbitrariness, of pure spontaneity, and this alone separates it from more traditional (and I would say more coherent) understandings of freedom, whether divine or human.

This idea of a God who can be called omnipotent only if his will is the direct efficient cause of every aspect of created reality immediately makes all the inept cavils of the village atheist seem profound: one still should not ask if God could create a stone he could not lift, perhaps, but one might legitimately ask if a God of infinite voluntaristic sovereignty and power could create a creature free to resist the divine will. The question is no cruder than the conception of God it is meant to mock, and the paradox thus produced merely reflects the deficiencies of that conception.

Frankly, any understanding of divine sovereignty so unsubtle that it requires the theologian to assert (as Calvin did) that God foreordained the fall of humanity so that his glory might be revealed in the predestined damnation of the derelict is obviously problematic, and probably far more blasphemous than anything represented by the heresies that the ancient ecumenical councils confronted.

Atheist irrationality

The discussion of soul-shrivelling tedium here –  which is representative of just about any exchange with an atheist – started me thinking about the seeming incapacity of many atheists to go back to first principles and inspect their unstated assumptions.

Atheists proudly exhibit a benighted resistance to logic that would be a source of extravagant rejoicing to an enemy of religion were he to discover it in a Christian.

The following are among the numerous ideas that are beyond the mental capacity of most atheists:

If God does not exist anything is permitted. Atheists generally respond: but atheists can be good people – avoiding the main point that with no absolute standard “good” becomes relative and ends up having no meaning.

A rationally intelligible universe is an a priori of science and points to a rationally intelligent Designer. An atheist will respond: scientific methodology itself is rational – avoiding the point that scientists don’t try to make irrational hypotheses fit reality.

If the numinous does not exist, the human mind is mechanical and to rely on it to examine a superset of its own mechanism requires a leap of faith much larger than a belief in a Designer. This appears to be completely beyond the comprehension of any atheist I’ve encountered.

The existence of something as complex as human self awareness points to a self aware Creator, not an accidental combining of molecules. Atheists often try to point out that the “creator God solution” is really no solution since we then have to ask “who made God”. This is a category error since, by definition, we are created and God isn’t.

The universe had a beginning which implies a Creator. The atheist tends to respond with the previous objection – it has the same flaw.

I will probably regret posting this since it will undoubtedly provoke the usual deluge of inane nonsense: if you do want to respond, try to think first.

What will computers look like in 10 years?

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft predicts what computers will be like in 10 years.

In the next 10 years, computers as flexible as a sheet of paper will replace notepads and newspapers, while others will be able to intuit what you’re trying to find online, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Friday to a group of Charlotte technology workers.

He said a big part of the future of computing is in determining users’ intent. For example, he said it’s simple to ask his assistant to get him ready to visit Charlotte. But on a computer, it involves opening up his calendar, visiting several Web sites, printing out tickets, and so on. The two will become more similar, Ballmer said.

When you type the word “Chicago” into a search engine, it will be able to determine whether you meant the city, the band or the musical based on your Internet history.

Another part of the future is the development of a more natural interface. Users will be able to speak to, touch and gesture at their computers even more.

It seems to me that users already make enough gestures at their computers; perhaps computers will actually behave more like this in 10 years:

TEC General Convention: a Ubuntu party

Katherine Jefferts-Schori, is in the throws of concocting a new – well, old, really – religion:

Ubuntu. That word doesn’t have any “I”s in it. The I only emerges as we connect – and that is really what the word means: I am because we are, and I can only become a whole person in relationship with others. There is no “I” without “you,” and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the one who created us. Some of you will hear a resonance with Martin Buber’s I and Thou and recognize a harmony. You will not be wrong.

Living in Ubuntu implies that selfishness and self-centeredness cannot long survive. We are our siblings’ keepers and their knowers, and we cannot be known without them – we have no meaning, no true existence in isolation. We shall indeed die as we forget or ignore that reality.

Katherine Jefferts-Schori – on the trailing edge of trendiness – has come to a similar conclusion to George Harrison, 40 years late and without the benefit of an LSD induced euphoria:

Within You Without You
We were talking-about the space between us all
And the people-who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth-then it’s far too late-when they pass away.
We were talking-about the love we all could share-when we find it
To try our best to hold it there-with our love
With our love-we could save the world-if they only knew.
Try to realise it’s all within yourself
No-one else can make you change
And to see you’re really only very small,
And life flows within you and without you.
We were talking-about the love that’s gone so cold and the people,
Who gain the world and lose their soul-
They don’t know-they can’t see-are you one of them?
When you’ve seen beyond yourself-then you may find, peace of mind,
Is waiting there-
And the time will come when you see
we’re all one, and life flows on within you and without you.

Rowan Williams, eager to outdo Katherine’s aging psychedelic miasma, seeks to introduce a Catholic flavour by Venerating the Ubuntu:

“We have lied to ourselves consistently about the possibility of limitless material growth in a limited world. We have denied precisely that ubuntu that this convention seeks to venerate and reinforce,” Williams added, referring to the convention theme that emphasizes the interconnectedness of people in community.

Where will it all end? – in Strawberry Fields, I expect, where Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.

Language and thought

From Theodore Dalrymple

The relation of language to thought has long been a philosophical puzzle, one to which no universally accepted answer has yet been given. Is language a precondition or determinant of thought, or thought a precondition and determinant of language? For myself, I incline to the latter view, on the no doubt simplistic grounds that, when writing, I often have the following experience.

I know that there is something I want to say, but at first the right words do not come to express it. They are, I realise, only an approximation to my idea; then suddenly, dredged from I know not where (though it feels like somewhere located near the base of my skull), the right words arrive and I know at once that they are the best possible words in my possession for what I want to say.

I suppose it might be argued that somewhere in my preconscious there is a linguistic representation of what I am at first unable to verbalise, and that my little eureka experience (so delightful that it makes the struggle seem worthwhile) is only a recognition that the words in my consciousness now accord perfectly with those in my preconscious. Be that as it may, it seems to me that my experience suggests that conscious thought, at least, can be pre-verbal, even when it is propositional in nature.

Not every one agrees, of course, and in Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell put forward the rather dismal idea that reform of language – that is to say, the imposition of certain locutions and the prohibition of others – can actually mould the content of thought, making some ideas unthinkable and others unchallengeable.

This, of course, is what politically-correct language is all about. It is certainly what its proponents hope.

I find myself somewhat inclined to Orwell’s view. I have noticed that when a person’s expression of what he thinks is unclear, then the thought itself is also unclear.  And the thought will never be clarified if the right words cannot be found: without clear language there is no clear thought –part of the effort needed to find the right words seems to be subconsciously diverted into clarifying the idea itself.

The very best writers – C. S. Lewis, for example – write with such lucidity that the ideas behind what is written become immediately familiar – to the extent that we are convinced that we should have thought of them for ourselves. In contrast, the meandering prose of, for example Rowan Williams, appears contrived to conceal ideas, not reveal them: the words and thoughts are a tangle together.

So I do think that politically correct language is both intended and effective as a thought straight-jacket.

More atheist proselytising

The Richard Dawkins propaganda machine is at full throttle:

Every secondary school in England and Wales will receive a free DVD by renowned atheist Richard Dawkins to celebrate the anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of the Species.

The speech was originally delivered as part of the professor’s 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for children, and is being distributed by the British Humanist Association with funding from the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

“Increasing young people’s understanding of science has never been more important,” Professor Dawkins said.

Why, I wonder, does the author of “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference” think that endeavours to spread his anti-God message have any more purpose than the purposeless universe of which he is a part?

I doubt that there will be any outcry at this attempt to infiltrate atheist dogma into the schools; there would be if it were Christian dogma, though.

George Pitcher doesn’t much like the FCA

Or Chris Sugden:

I hear that Canon Chris Sugden may have somewhat spoilt his chances of a knighthood. The secretary to the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which is this week busy fanning the embers of Anglican schism, went on Roger Boulton’s BBC Sunday programme and was asked whether it was true that The Queen had written to Canon Sugden and his traditionalist pals to say that “she understood their concerns”. Canon Sugden replied that this was “correct”.

“Sources close to the Palace”, as they say, have coughed lightly and raised an eyebrow to one another. That’s a courtier’s equivalent of being incandescent with rage.

And, I gather, Canon Sugden and his friends will be waiting a very long time indeed for another letter with a royal seal. They should better give up any ideas of bishoprics in the Church of England too – as Foca enthusiast Dr Michael Nazir-Ali wisely already has done in Rochester.

What is interesting about this is not so much whether Chris Sugden has made a faux pas or not, but the maniacal glee that Pitcher displays at discovering it. The extravagant gloating over the disclosure of a fellow priest’s peccadillo is, no doubt, a manifestation of the tolerance that Pitcher has for those with whom he disagrees.

The Diocese of Niagara does same-sex blessings

From Here:

The Niagara Rite is intended for the voluntary use of priests who wish to offer a sacrament of blessing regardless of the gender of the civilly married persons who wish to receive the blessing of the church and wish to affirm their life commitment to each other before God in the community of the church

Effective September 1, 2009, permission will be granted by Bishop Michael Bird for the use of the Niagara Rite as outlined in the protocols that are included.

In spite of protestations that this is a blessing not a marriage, the rite itself looks a lot like a “marriage” to me:

N, I take you to be my spouse (or partner, or some equivalent term).
All that I have I offer you;
what you have to give I gladly receive;
wherever you go I will go.
You are my love.
God keep me true to you always
and you to me.

And:

N., this ring I give to you,
with my body I honor you.
God make me your true spouse (or partner, or some equivalent term)
in the spirit of Jesus Christ.

As for being truly inclusive:

Will you each love one another with integrity and gentleness?
I will

Clearly, the S&M brethren have been forgotten. The question is, will they enjoy the hurt of being excluded?

http://www.niagara.anglican.ca/Niagara_Rite/docs/Niagara_Rite_of_Blessing.pdf

Tolerating the intolerable

George Pitcher has this to say about Dr. Nazir-Ali’s call for repentance:

But his comments in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, which he is expected to repeat today, that homosexuals should “repent and be changed” cannot pass unchallenged. Or rather, they should not go challenged only by homosexual rights campaigners, such as Peter Tatchell, who you would expect to be somewhat antipathetic to the expressed view.

Because Dr Nazir-Ali is wrong in the eyes of a broad swath of kind and tolerant people of differing sexualities, social mores and of the Christian faith, other faiths and no faith at all. Badly, badly wrong.

I say that I didn’t want to have another fight with him because such fights polarise Anglicans, and we’re at our best when we’re talking. I went to a private lunch recently, to which Dr Nazir-Ali was also invited. He didn’t show. The seat next to me went empty. I do hope he didn’t bottle it; it’s important that religious leaders don’t just inhabit comfort zones with friends who share their views.

Dr Nazir-Ali’s friends are the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Foca), who this week will try to get the Anglican schism over homosexuality going again, while denying that they are doing any such thing. Had he turned up to our lunch, I would have asked him why he and Foca are so convinced that they know the mind of God better than those who disagree with them and that their interpretation of scripture is with absolute certainty the one and only true one.

When I write about the Church and homosexuality, inevitably I receive messages that read simply “Romans 1:26-27″ or “1 Corinthians 6:9″, as if that settles something. We can argue scripture until we’re at the pearly gates. But the essential difference between Dr Nazir-Ali and me is this: I accept, disappointing as I would find it in my fiery furnace, that he might be right. By contrast, he and his friends cannot accept that I might be right, claim that I can’t be a proper Christian, and some of them go so far as to suggest that I’ll burn in hell for all eternity.

And there’s the real problem: it’s an issue of intolerance. Anglicanism has long been characterised by a broad tolerance. But my tolerance of Dr Nazir-Ali and his friends, that they are Anglicans with whom I happen vehemently to disagree, doesn’t seem to be reciprocated.

There are a number of problems with what George Pitcher has to say:

The first is that Pitcher’s understanding of tolerance is the characteristically mushy I’m OK, you’re OK, we can all get along wet version. To be tolerant of another’s views used to mean disagreement did not result in violence, being thrown into prison or war. Now it is the wimpy you might be right and an expectation of reciprocation. Just imagine Peter’s first sermon at Pentecost: “Look I know this is really hard to believe, but Jesus rose from the dead. I’m sure most people disagree and I respect your opinion because I could be wrong”. That would have worked well.

Second, Pitcher has set the value of soggy tolerance above that of truth. Ultimately he cares less for whether, from a Christian perspective, blessing homosexual activity is right or wrong than he does for whether those who disagree can still belong to the same institution.

Third, Pitcher is cheerfully discarding 2000 of Christian understanding of human sexuality for the sake of conforming to the culture of effete liberals in which he finds himself. Changing the biblical understanding of human sexuality also changes our understanding of human nature itself; changing that calls into question the God in whose image we are made.

Interestingly, Theo Hobson in the Guardian also takes Pitcher to task from a liberal perspective:

The fact is that conservative evangelicals profess a different version of Christianity from other Anglicans. There are admittedly other divisions within Anglicanism, but this is the really big one. If opposition to homosexuality is a basic component of your idea of Christian truth, then you ought to be clear about this, and not cohabit with those who fudge the issue, or openly express disdain for your position.

Over the past 20 years or so we have seen huge amounts of dishonesty and evasion on this. The church’s leadership has been trying to build a home on the fence. The liberals and the conservatives must both be accommodated, it has said: as long as both sides are still part of the same communion, then there is hope of reconciliation. A pious sentiment, surely? Well, the piety is laced with self-serving evasion and hypocrisy.

The fault lies with the liberals. Their complacency and cowardice have been breathtaking. In the 1990s, liberal Anglicanism ought to have asserted itself, and called for reform on sexual teaching. For the traditional teaching, that sex was for straight marrieds only, was out of sync with liberal opinion. Instead of achieving reform, the liberals allowed the conservatives to tighten the rules. Despite employing disproportionate numbers of homosexuals, the church was now more explicitly discriminatory against homosexuals than ever. But still the liberals shrugged, and assumed that enlightenment would soon prevail. The evangelicals would soon get over their homophobia and reform would come.

Liberal Anglicanism therefore became tainted by an acute hypocrisy. It became defined by open contempt for one of its own rules. The rule that priests should not be actively homosexual is a rule that liberals see as sub-Christian, heretical. Instead of demanding its repeal as a matter of urgency, and daring to pledge to leave the church if it was not repealed, they retreated, smugly superior, full of camp little Oxford jokes about how ghastly the evangelicals are.

My background is liberal Anglican, but I gradually realised that I couldn’t have much respect for these people, whose liberalism was so timid, so political, so self-serving. I do not share the opinions of the evangelicals, but I can see that they are more honest: all they are saying is that this church has decided to proscribe priestly homosexuality, so let it stick by that.

The basic dishonesty of liberal Anglicanism is evident in the Telegraph today, in the form of Rev George Pitcher. Why can’t we all get on, he asks, why can’t the Evangelicals agree to disagree, but stay within the big tent? Why do they have to be so horrid about homosexuals, saying that they must repent? Why are they so sure they know the mind of God on this issue?

If Pitcher were serious about opposing discrimination he would leave a church whose official policy was discriminatory. Liberal priests of course reply that they are seeking reform from within. What a convenient position.

It is the liberals who are arrogant. They are so sure they know the mind of God on this issue that they think it legitimate to ignore the rules of their church, which must surely be on the verge of being reformed, because everyone they ever talk to agrees with them.

Although I disagree with Hobson, at least he has the guts and integrity to clearly say what he thinks: in the face of the barrage of waffling drivel that one has come to expect from liberals from Rowan on down, this is a refreshing change.

The Diocese of Toronto in the Gay Pride Parade

Before I escaped from the Diocese of Niagara, someone told me that the Diocese of Toronto – where his parish was – was much more conservative than Niagara.

He must have been right, the diocesan cathedral’s Gay Pride contingent was fully clothed:

Codex Sinaiticus

A 1600 year old Bible, including the oldest known version of the New Testament is now online:

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. Its heavily corrected text is of outstanding importance for the history of the Bible and the manuscript – the oldest substantial book to survive Antiquity – is of supreme importance for the history of the book.

The site is slow; let’s hope it is because of unanticipated popularity.

The British art of the stiff upper lip

From here:

A 54-year-old carpenter in Wantage, England, accidentally cut off his own penis while working with a saw, his mother says.

“This was an unfortunate accident but these things happen all the time to people in his profession.”

“I have spoken to him and he is quite embarrassed about the whole incident”

And to think I get upset when I accidentally delete a computer file.

I hate sport

It would be more accurate to say I hate team sports; this is probably because, in modern vernacular, I am not a team player. I don’t want to be a team player – I even dislike the term. Of course, to get on in modern business, you have to at least give the appearance of being a team player. However, although still employed by a large company, I am too old, tired and crotchety to maintain any illusions of being one, having long given up any pretensions of getting on.

But I do like tennis. It is the antithesis of a team sport: individuals battle physically and mentally  – alone. When I was younger, fitter, thinner and taller I used to play tennis; I stopped when my son started beating me. But I still watch and enjoy Wimbledon; of course, the men’s finals is always on Sunday, so I always miss it.

I suspected Roger Federer would win and beat Pete Sampras’s Grand Slam record; watching Federer ply his trade is like watching grace in motion. He deserved to win and is probably the greatest tennis player ever – until the next one.