Sunday 31 January 2010

The slow but certain death of Anglicanism [Moartea lentă, dar sigură a anglicanismului]

At the current rate of declining Sunday service attendance, the Church of England (CoE) is very unlikely to survive more than 30 years from now. Congregations will shrink and become extinct one by one, while church closures would accelerate to some 200 every year.

Donations can’t keep up with church closures, as the 16,200 buildings the CoE has to preserve are an incredible burden. There are not enough Anglicans left to keep Anglicanism alive. And there’s no sign that such people would ever be born.

As I wrote here, the decline in baptisms is even more worrying, since this ‘indicator’ refers to people, not to the fate of some beautiful but empty buildings. While the CoE had baptised 609 children of every 1,000 born in 1900, it baptised only 128 in 2006/2007.

This is how the disastrous state of the CoE can be described mathematically. Some 60-70% of the Anglicans in Britain have lost (or fought against!) even the formal liasons to their ‘church’, that is using its services for baptisms, weddings and funerals.

Nominal Catholics and Orthodox believers may still hold on to this appearance. And while it may not make of them better human beings, nor automatically assure their place in Heaven, maybe this appearance is somehow useful for the cohesiveness of the respective societies.

Undoubtedly, the spiritual explanation is that this so-called church has first lost touch with Christ before beginning to lose believers. Irrespective of how many good people were/are/will be among the Anglicans, this CoE is just an institution, not part of the One Church of Christ.

Like sharks circling around a sinking ship, the Catholics are invinting disaffected Anglicans to join what they claim is the ‘true’ church of Christ. Sadly, some will accept the offer, without ever knowing which is the Lord’s One Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church.

Maybe that some will eventually come to the Orthodox Church, and let this slow death of Anglicanism be a lesson for all of us! Hardly anyone could consider today’s Anglicans guilty for a centuries old heresy which is beginning to show its most gruesome results today.

I say that assuming 30 years more to live for the CoE is hyperoptimistic, given the advance of atheism in the UK! But can anyone offer any guarantees that a similar process is not affecting also the true Church of Christ?

Obviously, the Church Itself won’t perish, but more and more souls will be lost, in a world where people don’t have at least this formal – thrice in a lifetime: birth, wedding, death – connection with Christ.

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

5 comments:

Gregor said...

Dear Bogdan
I wish I had more time to write on this, but I think one point to be made is that there is a strong spiritual heresy in the Anglican Church: the belief that wealth and power should separate the congregation and that 'the people' is a derogatory term.

Now there is some legislation that I don't fully understand but which seems to be telling the churches in Britain that they have to marry gay people.

If this is the case (the wording is very convoluted) then I find it a sign we are no longer a liberal democracy.

Ironically enough, the gays should realise that they have a shared interest with Christians in having a state that doesn't snoop on people.

There was a gifted homosexual pianist called Yuri Yegorov who fled the anti-Christian USSR for the free Christian West (as it was then).

Whilst, as a Christian, I see these people's lifestyles as incompatible with the Gospels, and the laws concerning marriage found therein, I don't feel superior to them and as a citizen I think that the state should generally mind its own business.

Yet in the two atheist dictatorships, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, homosexuals were sent to death camps.

However, we come back to the Anglican church's social heresy: it is the church of the respectable and wealthy. If these laws were introduced to Greece or Romania then there would be demonstrations against the state tampering with the Church.

Who have the Anglican Bishops to blame but themselves, if they have no 'crowds' to support them?

MunteanUK said...

Dear Gregor,

First of all, I must say I'm curious about what you have been doing lately, because it's the third time (if I remember well) when you say "I wish I had more time to write on this" :-)

I hope you are 'busy' in the most positive meaning; that is you are doing interesting & useful things.

Then, here are some of my comments to your comment:

***

1) I didn't exactly understood what you meant by describing the Anglican belief that "wealth and power should separate the congregation" - do you want to say that the Church of England (CoE) has always been some kind of 'exclusivist' club?

Was this 'church' - founded by not quite a virtuous king, let us never forget this! - more a political instrument of the English upper class than anything which had to do with Christ?

Did this CoE became irrelevant in the past decades as the English aristocracy became irrelevant?

Wasn't it doomed to reach the final stages of moral putrefaction (reached these days) from the very beginning?

***

2) I'm at least partially aware of this controversed 'Equality Bill', as it became known outside Britain because of Pope Benedict's stance against it.

The way I see it, this law is not about 'protecting' homosexuals; it really makes a 'privileged class' of them, it puts the abnormal about the normal, it seriously undermines the freedom of normal people...

Therefore, I can only agree with the Pope that this law is against the antural law, and also agree with you that is yet another sign of the British democracy's utter failure.

***

3) As long as Big Brother's state - or any state for that matter! - has no right to interfere with gay people's lives, it shouldn't interfere with normal people's beliefs.

Any harrasment, humiliation, assault against homosexuals should be forbidden and punished, not because they are gay, but because they are human beings!

But why are we being forcibly fed with their abnormality? Why are we suppossed to accept their sin as an 'alternative' and perfectly legitimate way of life?

Of course, we shouldn't throw stones at sinners, but we should be allowed to call sins by their names, and homosexuality is a grave sin!

***

4) These so-called 'bishops' & 'archbishops' of the CoE don't lack 'crowds' to stand by them - they lack Christ & the Holy Spirit to guide them.

They are in charge of a sinking ship, some genuinely trying to save what they imagine it could still be saved, others making one compromise after another, sinking deeper & deeper into a filthy swamp.

The CoE has no future because it's just a corrupted earthly institution, pretending to speak on Christ's behalf, but actually not knowing Him.

I imagine how 'politically incorect' my statement sounds, yet I don't doubt that this is the truth.

MunteanUK said...

In relation to what I was writing above at 2), it seems that Big Brother is backing down...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7012842.ece

...at least for the time being.

MunteanUK said...

Other 'SIGNS OF DEATH' shown by the Church of England (CoE)

For anyone interesed in the CoE's ongoing demise, and happening to land on this blog page, here I am giving links to stories which prove how desperate is the situation within this so-called 'church':

[1] Lay workers accuse the CoE of having frozen their pay:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7213448/Church-of-England-staff-could-picket-Archbishop-of-Canterburys-residence.html

***

[2] CoE backs equal pension rights for gay clergy partners:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7216466/General-Synod-Church-of-England-backs-equal-pension-rights-for-gay-clergy-partners.html

***

[3] It declared that although sex is best kept for marriage, couples who live together and have children without a wedding will no longer be regarded as living in sin
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1201551/Now-children-baptised-marry-says-Church-England.html

***

[4] Women overtook men as new CoE clergy in 2007:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-493367/Women-overtake-men-new-Church-England-clergy.html

***

[5] A first woman should become CoE 'bishop' in a couple of years:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1102907/Compromise-Church-England-proposes-bring-women-bishops-years.html

***

[6] Something about the cost of maintaining the lavish lifestyles of the bishops, who need chaffeurs, gardeners & all kinds of personnel:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-449214/The-lavish-lifestyles-Church-England-bishops-spending-increases-4-million.html

***

[7] Ridiculous attempts to bring younger people to church:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213514/Listen-rappin-crew-come-pew--church-tries-appeal-young.html

***

[8] CoE officials issued apologies to Charles Darwin for having 'misunderstood' his theory:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1055597/Church-makes--8216-ludicrous-8217-apology-Charles-Darwin--126-years-death.html

***

[9] A CoE 'bishop' says that the high financial cost of keeping desperately ill babies alive should be a factor in life or death decisions:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-416003/Outrage-Church-backs-calls-severely-disabled-babies-killed-birth.html

***

[10] The irrational (and certainly not Christian!) fear swine flu led to the CoE leaders ban on passing round the chalice at communion to avoid spreading of the virus:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1201736/Dont-use-chalice-communion-avoid-spread-swine-flu-says-Church-England.html

***

Anyone's welcome to post more of these 'signs of death', as I seriosuly doubt that any of my readers could forward examples of some signs of 'revival'.

MunteanUK said...

Some links to add...

[11] A former Anglican 'bishop' who accepted the Pope's offer to leave the CoE, accuses Anglican hierarchs of being 'fascist' and 'vindictive':
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8068694/Church-of-England-is-fascist-and-vindictive-says-bishop-defecting-to-Rome.html

***

[12] Other Anglican 'bishops' who have turned papists in the past months:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100026435/church-of-england-bishop-converts-to-rome/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100059134/earthquake-in-anglo-catholicism-bishop-of-fulham-to-convert-to-rome-forward-in-faith-no-longer-anglican/

***

[13] A 'civil war' inside the worldwide Anglican Communuion?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jonathanwynne-jones/100005924/americans-planning-to-start-civil-war-in-church-of-england/

***

[14] This pathetic CoE is trying to broaden its appeal with songs by U2 and prayers for Google and Wal-Mart:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/5523904/Church-of-England-attempts-to-broaden-appeal-with-songs-by-U2-and-prayers-for-Google.html

***

[15] Only 23% of those born after 1982 could be see as 'traditional believers':
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/8045388/God-isnt-dead-he-has-just-turned-green.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/17/christianity-religion

...and I'm still inviting my readers to post other relevant links here!