A Jesus Christ centred church, simpler, humbler, bolder – yeah, go for it, Stephen Cotterell. The Jesus Christ centred church that is simpler, humbler, bolder, isn’t remotely visible on the horizon yet. You and your comrades in the House of Bishops are lost in an almost impenetrable maze of scriptural authority, archaic traditions and invalid reasons that you are showing no signs of the vision and courage necessary to develop the church of your dreams.
Here I am, posting another blog dealing with the Church of England in crisis when I really want to be writing about the far more critical existential crisis going on moment, of which this week’s events are but one element. There needs to be a far, far more radical transformation of the life and culture of the Church of England, a movement developing in the root, seeing and feeling the essence of unconditional love.
The toxic culture of prejudice and abuse affected by public school pathology and an addiction to substitutionary atonement theology advocated by conservative evangelicals is not going to be overcome until the Church of England Synod and in particular the House of Bishops and the Archbishops’ Council are shaken into a radically changed attitude in their understanding, teaching, practice, liturgy, doctrine and corporate life leading to a dramatic change in C of E culture and teaching.
In the period of my lifetime, I have witnessed a movement in church and society from reliance on interior to exterior authority. This movement has happened because of changes that have taken place that have increased human anxiety and insecurity at the same time as we have become more scientific, more aware, more person-centred, more able, potentially, to diagnose and heal physical and emotional disturbances to our bodies and psyches. Externalised authority and awareness has become dominant in the Christian Church today over and against our internal intuition and wisdom.
There is something very unpleasant going on in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion since 1998 that leaves me feeling increasingly conflicted and abused emotionally and spiritually – assaulted by dogma and doctrine and a cruel, ruthless God. This is where the rich, creative, inspiring Christian heritage of my first five decades has brought me; deep disagreement about my sexuality, my priesthood, my membership of the Church of England, my theology and my spiritual vision. It has become more and more difficult to live with this - and it gets worse.
I have never believed in the God believed in by the Church of England Evangelical Council, the HTB hierarchy and the Anglican Global South majority – never. After seventy years in which time our ideas about God have continued to evolve, the regressive, authoritarian, dogmatic, supposedly orthodox, traditional theology and teaching still dominates the conservative evangelical mindset of the Church of England Evangelical Council and the Global South majority of the Anglican Communion.
