My “randoms” are usually a mix of light and serious, so since these links lean serious, I’ll call them…links.
- This is an excellent column from the Telegraph summarizing much I’ve been thinking about over the past years, about the substitutes for religious practice that a secular culture evolves in order to meet the needs of our still-present spiritual sensibilities.
Religion’s departure invariably leaves a vacuum in our worldviews; which new shibboleths will emerge to fill. This is because the needs religion addresses haven’t gone away: to belong, to trust, to hope and to sense a dimension beyond our own. But do new communities spring up, miraculously, to replace their faith-based predecessors? More often than not, we are left with atomisation, the snarky faux-communities of social media, or cult-like devotions to contemporary fads: my diet, my wellbeing, my half-marathon times, my gym sessions.
Other arguable substitutes include politics, doomsday environmentalism, even more marginal observances such as the anti-Brexit movement that still descends on Westminster with quasi-religious fervour. As Parliament Square regulars can attest, Steve Bray, the “Stop Brexit Man”, is often indistinguishable from the preacher who mounts his pulpit nearby to rant about the end of the world – just louder and more annoying. To paraphrase G K Chesterton: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in everything.”
While Christianity begins with the idea that we are all fallen beings, implying a certain level of humility, new articles of faith are invariably of the “me-me-me” variety. What are Tik-Tokkers if not preachers? But what they preach is the self, and all the attendant anxiety that comes from never getting away from it. Cancel culture assumes a religious censoriousness without the possibility of forgiveness or redemption.
Papal and ecclesial legislation generally reflects a current official theology. If the legislation is defective, that is often because the official theology upon which it is based is bad. This might be a fearful, contempt-ridden theology of Judaism, or it might be a recently invented and pastorally damaging liturgical theology. The only sure route to reversing the legislation is public and effective criticism of the underlying theology: establishing not only its erroneous nature but also the clear distinction between the official theology and genuine magisterial teaching, especially magisterial teaching that really is infallible. The critique must be effective enough to convince, if not a reigning pope (who may well be beyond convincing), then at least his eventual successors. That means convincing, over time, the clergy from whom those successors will be drawn.
Of course past canonical legislation governing conduct towards the Jews was morally quite different from the modern papal legislation reforming liturgies and forbidding traditional forms. Just in its content the former legislation was in immediate conflict with morality as the liturgical legislation plausibly is not. But if the Church really can gravely damage Her own mission by legislating in ways that violate morality directly – the impossibility of this, remember, was supposed to be especially obvious – we can hardly exclude serious damage to Her mission from legislation that is defective in other ways.
The legislative primacy of the pope serves unity—but a Christian unity that rests, ultimately, on truth. Truth will win the sooner if within the Church there is a culture that tolerates, even encourages, legitimate criticism of the exercise of papal primacy and especially of the theology on which that exercise relies. Without such a culture of open criticism, as history shows, the damage from bad Church law can be immense and last for centuries.
As I have said before, defenders of various current church (diocesan and Vatican-generated) policies and who do so, not by reasoned discussion but by playing the pearl clutching, astonished, concerned – are-you-sure-you’re-in-communion-with-the-Holy-Father card are mostly the same people who have spent – or even built – their careers on casting a deeply skeptical critical eye on church actions and teachings generated in the past, placing them carefully in historical context, explaining why they were limited in scope, why they don’t apply any more, why we don’t need to worry about them.
Consistency, please. That’s all – consistency.
Before you read: Consider the deeper point, approached a few paragraphs in. This isn’t just about teachings. It’s about institutional control and the drain, rather than life, these churches feel that being bound to a greater institution brings.
Food for thought.
Just days ago, 487 United Methodist churches were approved for disaffiliation from the denomination, bringing the total of ratified exits to 1,314. Hundreds more have already voted to exit and are awaiting final approval. Almost all of them are theologically conservative churches anticipating the denomination’s official and enthusiastic liberalization on LGBTQ issues when its governing General Conference meets in 2024.
By the end of next year (the deadline for exiting with church property) at least 3,000 and possibly 5,000 churches are expected to exit. United Methodism has 30,000 U.S. churches. Denominational agencies are preparing for a 38 percent drop in funding for 2025-2028, which implies an approximate expected membership loss of 2.3 million members from the nearly 6.3 million the denomination had in the United States in 2020. That is not a minor exodus.
Most exiting churches, perhaps 80-90 percent, are expected eventually to join the new Global Methodist Church. On the other hand, White’s Chapel United Methodist Church outside Dallas typically has nearly 6,000 worshippers weekly, making it one of the denomination’s largest. On Nov. 7, 93 percent of 2,505 voting church members resolved to exit United Methodism, surprising many observers, since the church is not known as particularly conservative.
White’s Chapel evidently does not want United Methodist progressivism nor Global Methodism’s conservatism. So the congregation is forming what it calls a “Methodist Collegiate College” “to create a new form of connectionalism — one of shared ministry, equal accountability, and practical governance.” The church wants to retain “Wesleyan Theology” and “Methodist traditions, rites & rituals” while escaping denominational ownership of property, payments to the denomination, appointment of clergy by bishops, and oversight of clergy ordination by the denomination. It hopes to put “people over polity.”
These aspirations reflect the current spirit of American Christianity, which is increasingly post-denominational and less interested in centralized church bureaucracy or denominational authority. The new Global Methodist Church, although a conservative denomination, reflects this same spirit. It stipulates that congregations will own their own property, have authority over their pastoral appointments by bishops, and make minimal payments to the denomination, whose bureaucracy, such as it exists, will be lean.
Another church that is leaving the UMC and becoming independent is St. Andrew United Methodist Church of Plano, Texas. With 6,500 members, it’s the 7th largest United Methodist church in Texas. Pastor Arthur Jones explained: “Everyone involved has a deep love for the denomination that birthed us, but the fractures and flaws of the institution are too deep to ignore.”
Even slightly comparing what’s happening with Francis and the TLM with what happened historically with the Church and Jews that led to the Holocaust is, to my mind, very close to obscene.