Personal Background
I have been a member of the Church of England all my life, although for the first sixteen years I didn't acknowledge it.
I have been a member of the Church of England all my life, although for the first sixteen years I didn't acknowledge it.
My parents were married in a C of E Church. I was baptised in a C of E Church. I attended a C of E Church as a child with my family occasionally but it was dull and frightening (an ingenious combination). I was converted by the ministry of a C of E youth group leader and a C of E leaflet deliverer and the houseparties run by a C of E parachurch mission agency for whom I eventually worked for ten years.
After marriage in a C of E church Liz and I spent six weeks at a Baptist Church. Truth be told it wasn't, at that time, the theology that turned us back but the emotional reaction that it simply felt wrong. Like wearing your watch on the other wrist or sleeping on the other side of a double bed.
So we stuck with our local parish church where we served and from where I heard the first tentative voice of a call to the ministry which has taken us since then to a C of E training college and then four different C of E churches. I think I am an addict now.
I am therefore emotionally an Anglican.
The emotion of gratitude for what the denomination has done for me.
The emotion of contentment that, looking back, I can see what I was doing in each place and why.
History
In Isaiah 49 the prophet hears that it is too small a thing for the words of the prophet to only be local. Despite the prophet feeling disappointed and exhausted his words are for ends of the earth. My home town now was the ends of the earth to them then, six centuries BCE. Low-lying as it is, it may not even have been earth.
In Isaiah 49 the prophet hears that it is too small a thing for the words of the prophet to only be local. Despite the prophet feeling disappointed and exhausted his words are for ends of the earth. My home town now was the ends of the earth to them then, six centuries BCE. Low-lying as it is, it may not even have been earth.
Jesus was a Jew; the first Christians were Jews; the first churches in synagogues. Then they moved out.
The first division was between east and west, Roman and orthodox, around the fifth century over doctrine, as the creeds we still say were being formed.
The gospel came to this country seriously around this time. The first preachers had been Roman traders, including the stories of Jesus with other pagan stories. Augustine was sent by Rome and preached the whole gospel in the late sixth century CE.
Viking invaders wanted nothing to do with it and ransacked Christian communities but the Normans embraced it and energised a massive breadth of church-building.
A Jesus-centred Reformation across Europe in the fifteenth century may not have reached the British Isles but coincided with an awkward matrimonial tiff Henry VIII had. Since the Pope would not allow him to divorce a wife he chose to divorce the Pope instead.
The Church of England became established and Bishops eventually took seats in the House of Lords. The introduction of the 1662 Prayer Book meant that wherever you went in the country if you entered a C of E church on a Sunday or for a wedding, baptism or funeral you would recognise the liturgy, and it would be in your language of English, not Latin. And residence was eventually assumed to confer membership. Live in the parish and vote for the Church Wardens. Live in the parish and be baptised, married or buried in your local church - the only small print in the Prayer Book is that baptism can be delayed a short while for a period of instruction. Also in the Prayer Book is the idea that anyone can take communion. It simply makes the assumption that you will be confirmed or 'desirous of confirmation'. There is no time scale stated for that. You should not be a notorious or evil liver.
Reformation and establishment led to a huge persecution of those Catholics who did not want to be reformed, dissolution of the monasteries, whitewashing ornate church wall paintings and appalling violence to those who continued to pay allegiance to Rome.
The Catholic movement went two ways. There was a gradual toleration of Roman Catholic and indeed other faiths after the Civil War and the re-development in the nineteenth century of an Anglo-catholic element within Anglicanism.
Which is roughly where we are now with the exception of the development of new denominations around the preaching of the Wesleys (Methodism), an insistence on individual conversion and profession of faith at an adult age (Baptist) and various others.
One person once remarked to me that when two Christian organisations merge a third is formed.
In the middle of the twentieth century Archbishop William Temple re-imagined the desire to be a church that served the whole country. The parish system had been developed and refined by then but the nature of the broad-church C of E was that very different theologies could reside next to each other. Temple said he had a vision of 'The Gospel to every man's door with a single eye to the glory of God.'
Canterbury is now the head of the C of E and the headquarters of the word-wide Anglican Communion although holding this together is problematic without an agreed understanding of the ministry of women and sexual ethics.
But I am therefore historically an Anglican.
Apologetic
I am reformed. I look to Canterbury not Rome for leadership but do not see the Pope as the enemy.
I am reformed. I look to Canterbury not Rome for leadership but do not see the Pope as the enemy.
I love the idea that every blade of grass in this country is some parish's pastoral responsibility and every person's door is some church's responsibility to provide spiritual resources, even if it only starts with a simple cake (my church gives cakes to newcomers in the locality).
But I am catholic (as in 'worldwide') which means, since the C of E broadened, that all C of E churches share a responsibility even though the service you experience may not be the same in every building any more. But the flip-side to that, with the ease of modern transportation, is that if you don't like what's on offer in your C of E church you can travel to another one. All we ask is that you share our mission to the geographical boundary for which we have responsibility here - Trendlewood. And as you know, it is my passion to make it possible for there to be an expression of church nearer your home and with Andy's (meeting today) we are well on the way to achieving that for our Backwell members.
And I love the formal structure (not the pageantry though) that we are episcopally led and the legal structure that we are synodically governed. Our church council can introduce a motion to Deanery Synod which can discuss it, pass it and take it to Diocesan Synod which can do likewise to General Synod and we can, theoretically, change the rules of the whole church from Trendlewood if we can make the case strongly enough.
And the structure that, within a diocese, we try to organise the finances such that those best able to finance ministry serve those in more deprived areas. Even before I was Area Dean and Trendlewood was independent I said, regularly, that we should pay our Parish Share with gratitude for the ministry it makes possible. It is more money that goes where we can't go and reaches those we can't reach. 100 years ago clergy in wealthy parishes were paid more than clergy in poor areas. This has changed.
But also theologically, I know of no way to treat someone as a Christian other than to baptise them. It is how the Acts of the Apostles describes conversion. Whole households are baptised.
That means we need another sign of profession of faith at maturity and that is where confirmation comes in. A statement of personal faith for those baptised as infants, and all baptised in other denominations. And a prayer to receive all the gifts necessary, from the laid-on hands of a bishop, to be a member of this broad church.
John Stott said once that if asked to describe his faith he would say he was first; a Christian. Secondly an evangelical Christian (one who believes that God has done everything necessary for salvation in Christ and that the Bible contains all we need to know of these things necessary for salvation and to live as a Christian). Thirdly he was an Anglican evangelical Christian. He would place the adjectives in that order.
I am an Anglican not just because it is the most convenient ship to fish from but because my service has its place here and, if all the other denominations disappeared tomorrow, not a single house or field in Nailsea, Somerset or England would become unprayed for.
So I am therefore missionally an Anglican as well as historically and emotionally.
Conclusion
I don't just think that the Church of England is a nice part of a Church of God which could manage without us. I think it is the rock which enables the other churches to exist. It is the voice of the church in this country. It has the legal responsibility to spread and share the faith. It is a body of many parts.
Whereas once my membership was tentative and awkward, today it is as close to passionate as I get. We (yes we) should not need to ever form or join another church. For we have all the gifts and power we need to change this one.
Although you may know the expression, that if you ever find a perfect church don't join it. You'll only spoil it. Is the church full of hypocrites? Yes. One more won't make any difference.
Missionally I agree with it
Historically I understand it
Emotionally I love it
But I am catholic (as in 'worldwide') which means, since the C of E broadened, that all C of E churches share a responsibility even though the service you experience may not be the same in every building any more. But the flip-side to that, with the ease of modern transportation, is that if you don't like what's on offer in your C of E church you can travel to another one. All we ask is that you share our mission to the geographical boundary for which we have responsibility here - Trendlewood. And as you know, it is my passion to make it possible for there to be an expression of church nearer your home and with Andy's (meeting today) we are well on the way to achieving that for our Backwell members.
And I love the formal structure (not the pageantry though) that we are episcopally led and the legal structure that we are synodically governed. Our church council can introduce a motion to Deanery Synod which can discuss it, pass it and take it to Diocesan Synod which can do likewise to General Synod and we can, theoretically, change the rules of the whole church from Trendlewood if we can make the case strongly enough.
And the structure that, within a diocese, we try to organise the finances such that those best able to finance ministry serve those in more deprived areas. Even before I was Area Dean and Trendlewood was independent I said, regularly, that we should pay our Parish Share with gratitude for the ministry it makes possible. It is more money that goes where we can't go and reaches those we can't reach. 100 years ago clergy in wealthy parishes were paid more than clergy in poor areas. This has changed.
But also theologically, I know of no way to treat someone as a Christian other than to baptise them. It is how the Acts of the Apostles describes conversion. Whole households are baptised.
That means we need another sign of profession of faith at maturity and that is where confirmation comes in. A statement of personal faith for those baptised as infants, and all baptised in other denominations. And a prayer to receive all the gifts necessary, from the laid-on hands of a bishop, to be a member of this broad church.
John Stott said once that if asked to describe his faith he would say he was first; a Christian. Secondly an evangelical Christian (one who believes that God has done everything necessary for salvation in Christ and that the Bible contains all we need to know of these things necessary for salvation and to live as a Christian). Thirdly he was an Anglican evangelical Christian. He would place the adjectives in that order.
I am an Anglican not just because it is the most convenient ship to fish from but because my service has its place here and, if all the other denominations disappeared tomorrow, not a single house or field in Nailsea, Somerset or England would become unprayed for.
So I am therefore missionally an Anglican as well as historically and emotionally.
Conclusion
I don't just think that the Church of England is a nice part of a Church of God which could manage without us. I think it is the rock which enables the other churches to exist. It is the voice of the church in this country. It has the legal responsibility to spread and share the faith. It is a body of many parts.
Whereas once my membership was tentative and awkward, today it is as close to passionate as I get. We (yes we) should not need to ever form or join another church. For we have all the gifts and power we need to change this one.
Although you may know the expression, that if you ever find a perfect church don't join it. You'll only spoil it. Is the church full of hypocrites? Yes. One more won't make any difference.
Missionally I agree with it
Historically I understand it
Emotionally I love it
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