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Originally posted by Edward::Green:
Westcott used to describe itself as Liberal Catholic (in the sense that it was pro TOOW) but I am not sure where it is now. Certainly Catholic in tradition and discipline, but it always struck me as having the distinct air of Sacramental Socialism and the Parish Communion Movement about the place.

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That doesn't sound incompatible with "Liberal Catholic" to me There is certainly something Ruskiny-Morrisish about architecture of the place. Even if their heating systems have been possessed by a spirit of mockery

Do you have such concise and cogent summaries of the plus-fours? Enquiring minds need to know.

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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Originally posted by ken:
Do you have such concise and cogent summaries of the plus-fours? Enquiring minds need to know.

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Originally posted by Hermeneut:
/tangent

A serious tangential question which might sound odd: would any evangelical colleges train celibate gay people?

'I have this friend' that loves open evangelical folks, who is currently celibate and firmly intending to remain so - but is definitely not of the straight persuasion. Would they be welcome at any evo colleges - or would it be a terrible road crash?

/end tangent

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Originally posted by ken:
In retrospect the taking teenage boys back to the Prebystery and showing them the pornographic magazines while plying them with sherry seems a little more extreme.

(And yes, I am sure they all grew up to be excellent parish priests. The Spirit moves in mysterious ways.)

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Originally posted by ken:
That doesn't sound incompatible with "Liberal Catholic" to me

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Originally posted by Custard.:
All of this stuff is to the best of my understanding. I'm only a student here. On the other hand, I have heard Richard speak about this...

True: Richard Turnbull spoke at a Reform conference.

False: Richard Turnbull is a member of Reform. It's likely they asked him along after an interview he did with Evangelicals Now (I'm sure someone here could dig it out) shortly after getting the job here, which suddenly put Wycliffe back on the Reform radar. I think he said his priorities were training people to preach and evangelise.

True: Richard Turnbull is aiming to make Wycliffe more like Oak Hill in terms of quality of preaching training, which is a) one of Oak Hill's huge strengths and b) probably the number one thing people at Reform are looking for in a theological college.

False: Richard Turnbull is aiming to make Wycliffe more like Oak Hill in terms of only drawing its students from a narrow sector of the church. In fact, the opposite is true. In particular, Wycliffe has a very strong charismatic streak, which is not shared by Oak Hill or Reform, and which Richard has actually encouraged during his time here.

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Originally posted by Doublethink:

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Originally posted by ken:
In retrospect the taking teenage boys back to the Prebystery and showing them the pornographic magazines while plying them with sherry seems a little more extreme.

(And yes, I am sure they all grew up to be excellent parish priests. The Spirit moves in mysterious ways.)

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In the UK, unless the teenagers were over 18, this consitutes a criminal offense - and conviction would get you put on the sex offenders register. Please tell us the lads were over 18.

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Originally posted by Spawn:
They believe that the evangelical bishops go native
Who's to say that they're wrong?

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Originally posted by Custard.:
I should say that most conservative evangelicals I know are generally happy with bishops who have faith in Jesus, some moral backbone and a commitment to mission (or at least not actively hindering it), and there's a fair few such bishops out there.

If they can avoid sniping at conservative evangelicals just for the sake of it, that's nice too.

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Originally posted by Custard.:
I should say that most conservative evangelicals I know are generally happy with bishops who have faith in Jesus, some moral backbone and a commitment to mission (or at least not actively hindering it), and there's a fair few such bishops out there.

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Furthermore, although I don't agree with Reform on a lot of things, a far greater number of evangelicals these days share their analysis of the crisis. When they were wittering on in the early 1990s, many of us thought they were backwoodsmen. Since 2003, and more recently the Bishops (so-called) pastoral advice on civil partnerships, they've become a little more difficult to ignore. Frankly, many evangelical clergy and laity feel that Reform or Anglican Mainstream are the closest thing they have to representation in this whole horrible mess. They believe that the evangelical bishops go native, and that Synod is a law unto itself. Who's to say that they're wrong?

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Originally posted by pete173:

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Originally posted by Spawn:
They believe that the evangelical bishops go native
Who's to say that they're wrong?

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Well, there are 30 odd of us at the Bishops Meeting at present who might want to argue with that! (Actually, fewer now, as the suffragans have all gone home). What they lack is the perspective that you have to be a bishop to the whole church, and not just their little clique.

And I don't think we do go native; we argue the case, even when we disagree with their theology and ecclesiology, as I shall be tomorrow on behalf of the so-called "covenant" group. Evangelical bishops can represent the con evos, but we're never going to be able fully to embrace their position, because it's basically not where authentic evangelicalism in the CofE ever was. In other words, they are an unhistorical aberration.

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Originally posted by Amos:

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Originally posted by Custard.:
I should say that most conservative evangelicals I know are generally happy with bishops who have faith in Jesus, some moral backbone and a commitment to mission (or at least not actively hindering it), and there's a fair few such bishops out there.

If they can avoid sniping at conservative evangelicals just for the sake of it, that's nice too.

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Most conservative evangelicals I know have a very particular, narrowly defined understanding of what 'faith in Jesus', 'moral backbone', and 'a commitment to mission' would entail.

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Originally posted by Amos:
ETA: I spent three hours at my local Christian Union last night. It was an eye-opener.

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Is it really necessary to turn a thread about Wycliffe hall into yet another Uccf bashing thread?

[ 24. May 2007, 08:25: Message edited by: Dinghy Sailor ]

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Preach Christ, because this old humanity has used up all hopes and expectations, but in Christ hope lives and remains.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Originally posted by BroJames:

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Originally posted by Hermeneut:
/tangent

A serious tangential question which might sound odd: would any evangelical colleges train celibate gay people?

'I have this friend' that loves open evangelical folks, who is currently celibate and firmly intending to remain so - but is definitely not of the straight persuasion. Would they be welcome at any evo colleges - or would it be a terrible road crash?

/end tangent

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In the past I would certainly have recommended your friend look at Cranmer - seriously suggesting they be entirely open with the warden about themselves. I say in the past because my experience is no longer current, though I have no reason to believe things have changed.

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Also his comment about the '95%' was a lot worse than Ken makes out. He said that 95% of the population of the UK is going to Hell. With our population being about 60 Million, this means that he thinks only 3 million are doing 'ok'. The last time I looked I believe 3 million was the estimated number of Evangelical Association church membership, so quite clearly he means to say that only 'EA evangelicals' are 'real Christians'.

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Originally posted by Spawn:

However, your idea that con evos are an unhistorical abberration is absolute nonsense. You know enough evangelical history to remember groups like the Recordites - and how long have Church Society been around? Con evos and their puritan predecessors have always been with us in Anglicanism. You can't just write them out of history. [/QB]

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I can't check my first impressions as the video link is now inaccessible "due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit" - but they were that Richard Turnbull was not speaking to a prepared script. He gave the appearance of thinking on his feet about what he was saying with perhaps a handful of heading jotted down.

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Originally posted by BroJames:
I can't check my first impressions as the video link is now inaccessible "due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit" - but they were that Richard Turnbull was not speaking to a prepared script. He gave the appearance of thinking on his feet about what he was saying with perhaps a handful of heading jotted down.

I guess if he had foreseen that he would be in the middle of this kind of media attention he might have given more careful thought to ensure that he said clearly exactly what he did intend to say. IOW he would have been careful about what figures he gave, and to shape his statements so that they were not open to accidental or deliberate misinterpretation by hearers other than those to whom he was actually speaking.

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Originally posted by pete173:
The point I'm making is that, with the CofE, evangelical Anglicanism has never been separatist. We are not heirs of the Puritans, but heirs of Hooker and Jewell.

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Originally posted by Johnny S:

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Originally posted by pete173:
The point I'm making is that, with the CofE, evangelical Anglicanism has never been separatist. We are not heirs of the Puritans, but heirs of Hooker and Jewell.

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That's basically a tautology Pete. Any Anglicanism that becomes separatist won't be Anglican for very long! The Puritans sought to reform the CofE from within and when they got frustrated many of them increasingly became separatist.

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I don't think you have to be a conservative evangelical bishop to be a bit more representative of evangelical opinion in general. However, this is not a criticism of you in particular but a more general one. I think a lot of evangelical clergy and laity (and not exclusively from the con evo camp) are very unhappy with the silence of evangelical bishops on the civil partnerships pastoral advice. The point I was trying, evidently unsuccessfully, to make is that Reform's analysis of the crisis within Anglicanism is shared much more widely among evangelicals now than just con evos. The point on which many open evangelicals would differ from con evos is the response to that crisis. If you view it as a choice between truth and unity, we open evangelicals are likely to go the extra mile for unity in the belief that both are thus better served.

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Originally posted by pete173:
Yes, they lost. And left.

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(That is presuming a PSA model of atonement Pete, if we assume CV then they won ... victory in defeat )

You miss the point ... but perhaps deliberately ... within the CofE the seeds of 'reformation' have been sown. Every group will claim that they are the true CofE and will try to 'reform' it to their own principles. Some will get frustrated and leave. If your definition of the CofE communion is as poor as 'if you don't like it then you can leave' then Turnball's ecclesiology is suddenly looking very rich indeed.

Still, as I've said before, there'll be plenty of time to be Baptists in heaven

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Originally posted by pete173:
Yes, they lost. And left.

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Originally posted by pete173:

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Originally posted by Johnny S:

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Originally posted by pete173:
The point I'm making is that, with the CofE, evangelical Anglicanism has never been separatist. We are not heirs of the Puritans, but heirs of Hooker and Jewell.

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That's basically a tautology Pete. Any Anglicanism that becomes separatist won't be Anglican for very long! The Puritans sought to reform the CofE from within and when they got frustrated many of them increasingly became separatist.

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Yes, they lost. And left.

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Originally posted by Johnny S:

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Originally posted by pete173:
Yes, they lost. And left.

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(That is presuming a PSA model of atonement Pete, if we assume CV then they won ... victory in defeat )

You miss the point ... but perhaps deliberately ... within the CofE the seeds of 'reformation' have been sown. Every group will claim that they are the true CofE and will try to 'reform' it to their own principles. Some will get frustrated and leave. If your definition of the CofE communion is as poor as 'if you don't like it then you can leave' then Turnball's ecclesiology is suddenly looking very rich indeed.

Still, as I've said before, there'll be plenty of time to be Baptists in heaven

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Originally posted by pete173:
The deal is that the CofE is reformed and catholic (and semper reformanda), but that we have already worked through the Puritan issue and decided that we will not be a Puritan church. (Which is why I left the Baptists and became an Anglican). Bishops, connexionalism, being a church for everyone, catholicity, comprehensiveness, are all givens. I'm not seeking to chuck them out; but they need to recognise the reality of the bottom lines of what it means to be CofE.

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Originally posted by pete173:
I'm not seeking to chuck them out; but they need to recognise the reality of the bottom lines of what it means to be CofE.

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Baptists are not Puritans.

By virtue of being Baptists they can not be Puritans.

Worked through, seems to me as someone from historic non-conformity to be code for "used strong armed tactics against". Not nice but historically more accurate.

Lets imagine an inverse situation today to this working through. Lets have Reform become the dominant force in the Church of England. They insist that nobody can hold a parish who does not sign up to the 39 Articles. If you can not in all honesty sign not only are you out of your living but you are fined six months pay for being in the living under false pretences. They also make the rule that you cannot take a living with another denomination within the same county. So you have to move and upset any relationships you have with locals if you want to continue to minister. This is almost exactly the way the Puritans were forced out of the Church of England.

Please do not white wash the Church of England's past.

I think all you are seeing now is what would inevitably happen and that is certain strands of Puritanism would return once allowed to do so.

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Originally posted by Callan:
Originally posted by Spawn:

Evangelicals sign up to position that isn't wholly condemnatory of homosexuality shock! Woe unto fucking Ilium! Iscariot and Arius are wearing blue shirts and sitting in the House of Bishops! <Rends garments, beats breast> Does it never occur to you that if, as you claim, you are interested in unity that you might just have to occasionally put up with people who disagree with you?

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As for "a commitment to mission" - as Richard Turnbull makes clear, the word "mission" is henceforth to be regarded as a nasty Librul smokescreen. It is not a commitment to mission, but to evangelism (and often an aggressive version of it - remember 95% of the UK population are going to hell, so unless you are an evangelical, you're really screwed).

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch

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As for "a commitment to mission" - as Richard Turnbull makes clear, the word "mission" is henceforth to be regarded as a nasty Librul smokescreen. It is not a commitment to mission, but to evangelism (and often an aggressive version of it - remember 95% of the UK population are going to hell, so unless you are an evangelical, you're really screwed).

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Sorry if this is a naive question but is evangelism considered a bad thing by some people ? I don't care what view of the atonement a bishop has or what he thinks about civil partnerships but I would be disappointed if a bishop wasn't committed to evangelism. I had always thought evangelism was something that all elements of the church believed in, and carried out in their different ways.

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Originally posted by Doublethink:
Please tell us the lads were over 18.

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Originally posted by Callan:
Really Spawn, you think that the evangelical members of the House of Bishop should have criticised their own policy in the national press and then accuse me of losing the plot?

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My point about gay people was that in most of the conversations I have had with them, including a number of rather painful discussions with a confirmand at my church, Church of England is not perceived as a body which is excessively lenient or indulgent in its attitudes to gay people. I imagine if you ask one of your gay mates about this they will doubtless confirm this perception. If you think that it is you and your new found chums really ought to get out more. You may enjoy politicking about this sort of thing but IME Actually Existing gay people seem to object to becoming lay figures on whom conservatives can project their anxieties and pick up soundness points.

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Kindly demonstrate the sleight of hand, changing facts on the ground and subversive tactics or go into the kitchen, put on the kettle and pour yourself a nice hot mug of shut the fuck up.

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Originally posted by Spawn:
In the Church of England we now have a situation whereby the Bishops have done a similar thing. Without seeking the judgement of General Synod, they are regularising relationships which were previously anomalous. Everyone knows that civil partnerships amount to gay marriage - that is apart from the Bishops. This is the wrong way round. Permission to enter into civil partnerships should have come at the end of a theological process of debate in which the Church debated marriage and human sexcuality in general.

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Originally posted by Spawn:
The Bishops should never have allowed clergy to enter into civil partnerships. I would have like to have seen the law tested in terms of your claim that it might be illagel to prohibit clergy from entering into civil partnerships.

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Yes, they should have done. After all, Peter Selby distanced himself from the pastoral advice. Rochester, Durham, Winchester, Chichester also were publicly critical (of government policy, in particular) in their ad clerums.

I have no problems with freedom of conscience for laity, but over clergy the Church can and should exercise discipline. The Bishops should never have allowed clergy to enter into civil partnerships. I would have like to have seen the law tested in terms of your claim that it might be illagel to prohibit clergy from entering into civil partnerships. If that is so, the Bishops' pastoral advice probably remains illegal given that it requires clergy to conform to certain standards set forth in 'Issues' (which of course, they and the bishops ignore in any case).

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I don't underestimate the pain that gay men and lesbians experience, but they don't have a monopoly on pain. Frankly, it's rather unpleasant for you to suggest that I 'enjoy' politicking about these issues - I would much prefer to be arguing with you against me, because that would be the easier course. To stand in front of a cultural juggernaut that is riding roughshod over centuries of Christian theology is not a particularly comfortable place to be. Nevertheless, the case for changing church teaching is far from proven. I'm not an impossiblist and am willing to hear a 'killer' argument to change my mind, but so far all I've heard is special pleading, arrant nonsense and a failure to actually engage with what the Bible fully says about human relationships.

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Quite simply, allowing clergy to enter into civil partnerships represents a kind of 'Righter' moment for the C of E. In the 'Righter' judgement the court of Bishops ruled, that ECUSA had no 'core doctrine' to prevent the ordination of a practising homosexual. Despite the fact that the court went on to say, it wasn't ruling on the substantive issue, this gave the green light, and was considered widely to do for homosexuals what an act of General Convention had never done permissively.

In the Church of England we now have a situation whereby the Bishops have done a similar thing. Without seeking the judgement of General Synod, they are regularising relationships which were previously anomalous. Everyone knows that civil partnerships amount to gay marriage - that is apart from the Bishops. This is the wrong way round. Permission to enter into civil partnerships should have come at the end of a theological process of debate in which the Church debated marriage and human sexcuality in general.

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Originally posted by Callan:
To do Turnbull justice I doubt he meant it as an exact figure. That said, it was still a pretty ghastly thing to say.

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