Dechristianization of Britain Update

The Daily Mail online reports on the latest push to rid Church of England of more distinctively Christian elements, as there is a drive to excise offensive texts from the rite of Baptism:

Complaints centre on three sections of the baptism service from the Church’s latest prayer book, Common Worship, authorised for use in 1997.

In one, parents, godparents or an adult being baptised are asked to ‘reject the devil and all rebellion against God’ and to renounce ‘the deceit and corruption of evil’. They are asked to ‘submit to Christ as Lord’.

The Reverend Dr Tim Stratford, from Liverpool, who is putting the plans before the synod, said in a paper that ‘there remains some unhappiness about the language not being earthed enough’.

He added: ‘The concern is one of the language not making strong enough connections to life choices in such a way that it can be heard.’

Part of the problem is the baptism of infants when neither parents nor sponsors are seriously committed to Christ in the first place. Proper catechism might teach them the language of faith. The traditional language of the rite, after all, isn't rocket science.

Part of the rite of chrismation in the Orthodox church is the anointing of the ears so that we CAN hear. We've inherited a bit of self-inflicted deafness from our father Adam who seemed to prefer not to hear the Lord calling him. The Church of Christ is here to heal spiritual deafness, not live with it; I don't know what the Church of England, continuing down this path, will be here for.

Comments

[Bull]

"Part of the problem is the baptism of infants when neither parents nor sponsors are seriously committed to Christ in the first place." That goes for a lot of church weddings too.

Great post.

[Respectabiggle]

‘The concern is one of the language not making strong enough connections to life choices in such a way that it can be heard.

I don't even know what that sentence means. It's not surprising that a man who thinks and speaks like that would have a problem with plain language like "submit to Christ as Lord".

[Anthony Christian]

The Church of England is now, much like the Monarchy, an ornament, merely there as a vestige of the past and a veneer of tradition while the substance has been effectively emascualated.

[Biscuitnapper]

I think you'll find that not all is as it seems: http://churchmousepublishing.blogspot.com/2011/02/general-synod-in-media-when-there-are.html

Of course, as an Anglican I am biased, so am wont to leap into defense against our rather sad stereotype (though like all stereotypes, I suppose it is based on some reality...)!

[Anton]

I would qualify the modern Church of England not as an 'ornament', but as a rotten corpse. A church that accepts homosexuality as something 'normal' despite the very explicit teaching of the Bible and of the whole Christian tradition, a church that ordains women as 'priests' and 'bishops', a church many of whose clerics no longer believe in Christ's Resurrection, is no longer a church. It is nothing but a pitiful caricature. If it disappears tomorrow, this will not be a loss for Christianity.