What next? The Pope is a Catholic??
travesty of the Christian faith descended into final absurdity and ultimate self-parody in the new Baptism service, which dare not mention sin or repentance. But if we have no sin, if we are not vile, if after all we turn out to have power of ourselves to help ourselves, what room is there for the Redeemer?
Thus by deliberately misperceiving human nature, the hierarchy was bound to misperceive God. All that remains for such churchpeople to do is to try as hard as they can to follow the progressive trends in secular society. The modern Church thus obediently follows secular mores – only, like some prince consort, one dutiful pace behind. I am not exaggerating: in his last address as Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams told us that we have a lot of catching up to do with secular morality.
The doctrinal and social teaching of the Church and the gospels on which these things are based have been replaced by secular softhumanism and our Ten Commandments are now the canons of political-correctness: liberty, equality and diversity. Male and female created he them. But not in a Church approving of same-sex partnerships and about to appoint unisex bishops.
As a Christian institution, the Church has effectively resigned. Not all of it. There are the derided evangelicals who still proclaim the old message of fallen man in need of a Saviour. But these are despised as “fundamentalists” and “naïve literalists” by the ruling elite.
But this ruling elite is only an assemblage of latter day Marcionites, creatures not of the Bible but of Rousseau and Voltaire. In their smug demeanour they resemble the cosy snobs of Howard’s End, descendants of the Bloomsbury group secure behind the high walls of Garsington while others were fighting in the trenches.
Meanwhile, Anglo-Catholics are simply beyond the pale for their sexist opposition to women’s ordination. There is now allowed to be in existence a species called a “liberal catholic” – and that in spite of Newman’s declaration (while he was still an Anglican) that there exists a fight to the death between liberalism and Catholicism. We now know the result of this battle in England and it is liberalism that has triumphed.
In all its controlling influences, its presiding bishops, its secularised Synod and, as Pinker points out, in its theological education, the C of E is an apostate church. What is there left for the traditional believer? Only under this secularising, liberalising tyranny to remember that we were commanded to rejoice in persecution. God does not leave himself without witnesses. This does not mean that he will save the Church of England. In anything like its present condition it is beyond salvation.
Corrupt institutions never reform themselves: they have far too much vested interest in their fleshpots. Reform will come, but it will come from new movements of the Spirit enlivening faith and witness in unexpected places: in the Pentecostal revival in South and Central America; in the joyful appearance of African Christians returning to preach the gospel within our shores where it has largely been rejected.
For myself, I am thankful for a bit of real Christianity wherever it might come from.
Peter Mullen Website/Blog: revpetermullen.com