In a world better than ours, conservatives and reactionaries of all tendencies would promptly recognize that there is good theology dating back to the middle-ages (and before) according to which...
In a world better than ours, conservatives and reactionaries of all tendencies would promptly recognize that there is good theology dating back to the middle-ages (and before) according to which God cannot be confined, limited, or defined by human attributes such as gender.
Yeah I can't see them debating this with a theologian, in the way they have debated musicologists in the past over whether rap is real music. They'll probably disregard the theological point...
Yeah I can't see them debating this with a theologian, in the way they have debated musicologists in the past over whether rap is real music.
They'll probably disregard the theological point entirely and spin this as 'woke branding' being forced onto religion through an imaginary online pressure campaign. My prediction is that the 'church of England' detail will be forgotten quickly and americans will be all over twitter convinced that Biden (or whoever) is mandating that all churches teach that god uses they/them pronouns.
The interesting thing is that it kind of is the world that the Church of England lives in. In many ways it's a quiet, genteel, thoughtful organisation very much unlike the US-inspired image of...
The interesting thing is that it kind of is the world that the Church of England lives in. In many ways it's a quiet, genteel, thoughtful organisation very much unlike the US-inspired image of Christianity that dominates in popular culture. It's also a dying organisation, because as you rightly say, the rest of us don't have the luxury of pretending that well reasoned points and spirited debate will win out in the end - the marketplace has spoken, and it has selected for fire and brimstone fundamentalism.
I know nothing about the Church of England (in fact, this post was the first time I learned of its existence). The internet tells that its some kind of Protestant/Catholic hybrid. Is that true?
I know nothing about the Church of England (in fact, this post was the first time I learned of its existence). The internet tells that its some kind of Protestant/Catholic hybrid. Is that true?
I'll preface this by saying I'm far from an expert, so this is just my layman's* understanding. The Church of England as a whole dates back around 1500 years, long before Protestantism existed,...
I'll preface this by saying I'm far from an expert, so this is just my layman's* understanding.
The Church of England as a whole dates back around 1500 years, long before Protestantism existed, but in the 16th century Henry VIII formally rejected the authority of the Pope, declared the monarch (i.e. himself, at the time) to be the head of the church, allied himself with the Protestants, and seized and disbanded monasteries throughout the country. Jump forward 500 years to the present day and you get an unequivocally Protestant church, in many ways defined by it's aggressive rejection of Catholicism, but one that had been Catholic for a millennium before that.
Unlike the US, the UK actually is a de jure Christian nation. To this day, the monarch is both the head of state and head of the church. However, less than 1% of the population actually go to church, and if the monarch ever used their powers to override parliament we'd be a republic by dinner time, so it's largely academic at this point.
All of that is to say that the Church of England is formally very important to the country and its history, and still wields a measure of direct political power - not popular influence in the American sense, but actual direct offices in government - but practically speaking has almost no relevance to the lives of most people in the UK. As a result it's become quite an interesting organisation in modern times: progressive by the standards of religion, but still slow moving by the standards of society; liberal compared to many other similar authorities, but still ultimately constrained by scripture; increasingly academic and thoughtful as its power and influence dwindles. As with a lot of things in the UK, it's complex and somewhat contradictory as a direct result of evolving over a long, meandering history.
*I was about to say that may be the first time I've had the opportunity to use the formal meaning of that word, but it turns out it only applies to non-clergy members of the church, rather than non-clergy in general.
Thank you for this great explanation. Okay, so my intuitions were correct. The Church of England, while not Catholic, is in a position similar to Catholicism in much of the world: a fading power...
Thank you for this great explanation.
Okay, so my intuitions were correct. The Church of England, while not Catholic, is in a position similar to Catholicism in much of the world: a fading power that persists more as a source of tradition and rite than actual faith.
All @phoenix means is that "Anglican Church" is what the Church of England is called outside of England. When the English colonised various regions around the world, they took their state religion...
All @phoenix means is that "Anglican Church" is what the Church of England is called outside of England.
When the English invadedcolonised various regions around the world, they took their state religion (Church of England) with them. For example, here in Australia, when the First Fleet arrived carrying convicts from England, the priests on the ships were Church of England priests. Of course they were. It was the official religion of the country of England, and it was an English colony. Of course the priests were Church of England priests. And they set up local churches and parishes and dioceses out here in Australia.
The same happened wherever the English went: they took their Church of England with them.
And the Church of England remained a prominent religion in those English colonies for years, decades, even centuries. We had a "Church of England in Australia and Tasmania" until 1981, nearly 200 years after the first Church of England priests arrived here. (TIL that the English church didn't consider Tasmania to be part of Australia!)
However, as the colonies grew up and became independent, it didn't make sense for countries like Australia and New Zealand and Canada and India to have a Church of England, when they weren't England. So, they came up with an alternate name for the Church: the Anglican Church. "Anglican" is the Latin form of "English"; they're both linguistically descended from the word "Angles", which was the name of a group of tribes that settled in Britain about 1,500 years ago.
So, the Church of England is now just one branch (albeit the original branch) of the global Anglican Communion.
It's a little more confusing in the U.S. (because of course it is). In the United States, the Episcopal Church (which was the branch of the Church of England which split from the CoE in the...
It's a little more confusing in the U.S. (because of course it is). In the United States, the Episcopal Church (which was the branch of the Church of England which split from the CoE in the American Revolution) is a member of the global Anglican Communion. But there is also the "Anglican Church in North America" (which split from the Episcopal Church after TEC ordained an openly gay bishop) which is not a member of the Anglican Communion. So ACNA is anglican in the sense that it is descended from the Church of England, but not Anglican in the sense that it is a member of the Anglican Communion.
Yeah, we now have two Anglican churches here in Australia, too. Also because of those pesky homosexuals - although, in this case, the split was triggered by the Australian synod failing to vote...
Yeah, we now have two Anglican churches here in Australia, too. Also because of those pesky homosexuals - although, in this case, the split was triggered by the Australian synod failing to vote against a motion supporting same-sex marriage (yes, that double-negative is confusing). We now have a Diocese of the Southern Cross. But it still considers itself Anglican.
But, for the purposes of explaining to someone who doesn't even know that Church of England is Anglican, I decided it wasn't necessary to go into that much detail.
At the end of the day, they could pick a fight in an empty room. I hope that, in our lifetime, those news channels are deliberately targeted in the same way they target minorities, and global...
At the end of the day, they could pick a fight in an empty room. I hope that, in our lifetime, those news channels are deliberately targeted in the same way they target minorities, and global campaigns are led to get them successfully shut down and reform the rules of news broadcasting. That'd be totes amaze, TBH.
I'm constantly struck by foolish optimism, so personally I think the moral panic headlines are so incredibly repetitive that people will just lose interest eventually, except for a (relatively)...
I'm constantly struck by foolish optimism, so personally I think the moral panic headlines are so incredibly repetitive that people will just lose interest eventually, except for a (relatively) small group of ultra-intense adherents who'll coalesce into a terrorist group and live in the woods under covert surveillance for the rest of their lives.
Like how many times can they run this cookie-cutter "[WHATEVER THING] is queer now, the woke mob is invading this thing with its ideology and kids might see it and if you even have an opinion about it they're gonna cancel you" without everyone getting bored? And even if they can keep going more and more extreme to hold their interest, once that pot's at a boil you're not going to coax any more frogs in there.
The only novelty in it at this point is in how they manage to twist and stretch the actual news to fit into the template. The 'Mr. Potato Head is nonbinary' one for example, that was a creative enough lie.
This reminds me of how the novelist Colleen McCullough depicted the prayers of ancient Romans to their gods: Are the Anglicans going to do something similar to the Lord's Prayer? "Oh Father - or...
This reminds me of how the novelist Colleen McCullough depicted the prayers of ancient Romans to their gods:
"O mighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus - if you wish to be addressed by this name, otherwise I hail you by whatever name it is you wish to hear - you who are of whichever sex you prefer - you who are the spirit of Rome [...]"
Are the Anglicans going to do something similar to the Lord's Prayer?
"Oh Father - or Mother - or Parent of whichever gender you prefer - who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name."
Removing gender from their God is an admirable goal, but the implementation could get quite clunky.
I know you're joking, but from my experience with the Episcopal church here in the US, there are a few approaches. I've heard of parishes which alternated masculine and feminine pronouns. I've...
I know you're joking, but from my experience with the Episcopal church here in the US, there are a few approaches. I've heard of parishes which alternated masculine and feminine pronouns. I've also heard of ones which just avoid using pronouns for God altogether. I've also heard of a few which use titles to replace the traditional trinitarian formula (ie, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer - rather than Father, Son, Holy Spirit) to avoid gendered language. TEC is apparently all over the place on this. There is an official liturgy but it's not uncommon for Episcopal churches to tweak the liturgy or use alternate/trial liturgies for things like this.
I find it interesting that they recognize their God as not having a gender, and it reflects a rule of English that the deity still needed one. There's also a stretch to an implication that the...
I find it interesting that they recognize their God as not having a gender, and it reflects a rule of English that the deity still needed one. There's also a stretch to an implication that the pronoun used is the male one, but it's not even particularly wild considering the patriarchal strictures that exist around organized religion.
The Old Testament - the Jewish bible - was mostly Hebrew, but the Christians aren't really supposed to read that one. Especially Anglicans, they're definitely New Testament sorts. No fire and...
The Old Testament - the Jewish bible - was mostly Hebrew, but the Christians aren't really supposed to read that one. Especially Anglicans, they're definitely New Testament sorts. No fire and brimstone and mushroom trips in the desert for the Church of England. They're more about a nice cup of a tea on a sunday morning and maybe some cake. So their bible was mostly written in Greek and Aramaic. If I recall correctly Ancient Greek has neutral pronouns available, don't know about Aramaic though.
Anyway it technically can't be wrong in whatever language it's written in, can it? As long as that edition has been approved by a Pope, it must be correct. In-universe, at least.
The reactionary media circuit are going to have a field day with this one.
In a world better than ours, conservatives and reactionaries of all tendencies would promptly recognize that there is good theology dating back to the middle-ages (and before) according to which God cannot be confined, limited, or defined by human attributes such as gender.
Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in.
Yeah I can't see them debating this with a theologian, in the way they have debated musicologists in the past over whether rap is real music.
They'll probably disregard the theological point entirely and spin this as 'woke branding' being forced onto religion through an imaginary online pressure campaign. My prediction is that the 'church of England' detail will be forgotten quickly and americans will be all over twitter convinced that Biden (or whoever) is mandating that all churches teach that god uses they/them pronouns.
The interesting thing is that it kind of is the world that the Church of England lives in. In many ways it's a quiet, genteel, thoughtful organisation very much unlike the US-inspired image of Christianity that dominates in popular culture. It's also a dying organisation, because as you rightly say, the rest of us don't have the luxury of pretending that well reasoned points and spirited debate will win out in the end - the marketplace has spoken, and it has selected for fire and brimstone fundamentalism.
I know nothing about the Church of England (in fact, this post was the first time I learned of its existence). The internet tells that its some kind of Protestant/Catholic hybrid. Is that true?
I'll preface this by saying I'm far from an expert, so this is just my layman's* understanding.
The Church of England as a whole dates back around 1500 years, long before Protestantism existed, but in the 16th century Henry VIII formally rejected the authority of the Pope, declared the monarch (i.e. himself, at the time) to be the head of the church, allied himself with the Protestants, and seized and disbanded monasteries throughout the country. Jump forward 500 years to the present day and you get an unequivocally Protestant church, in many ways defined by it's aggressive rejection of Catholicism, but one that had been Catholic for a millennium before that.
Unlike the US, the UK actually is a de jure Christian nation. To this day, the monarch is both the head of state and head of the church. However, less than 1% of the population actually go to church, and if the monarch ever used their powers to override parliament we'd be a republic by dinner time, so it's largely academic at this point.
All of that is to say that the Church of England is formally very important to the country and its history, and still wields a measure of direct political power - not popular influence in the American sense, but actual direct offices in government - but practically speaking has almost no relevance to the lives of most people in the UK. As a result it's become quite an interesting organisation in modern times: progressive by the standards of religion, but still slow moving by the standards of society; liberal compared to many other similar authorities, but still ultimately constrained by scripture; increasingly academic and thoughtful as its power and influence dwindles. As with a lot of things in the UK, it's complex and somewhat contradictory as a direct result of evolving over a long, meandering history.
*I was about to say that may be the first time I've had the opportunity to use the formal meaning of that word, but it turns out it only applies to non-clergy members of the church, rather than non-clergy in general.
Thank you for this great explanation.
Okay, so my intuitions were correct. The Church of England, while not Catholic, is in a position similar to Catholicism in much of the world: a fading power that persists more as a source of tradition and rite than actual faith.
You may have heard of the Anglicans; if so, those are adherents of the Church of England.
This is getting too complicated. Don't the British ever secede?
All @phoenix means is that "Anglican Church" is what the Church of England is called outside of England.
When the English
invadedcolonised various regions around the world, they took their state religion (Church of England) with them. For example, here in Australia, when the First Fleet arrived carrying convicts from England, the priests on the ships were Church of England priests. Of course they were. It was the official religion of the country of England, and it was an English colony. Of course the priests were Church of England priests. And they set up local churches and parishes and dioceses out here in Australia.The same happened wherever the English went: they took their Church of England with them.
And the Church of England remained a prominent religion in those English colonies for years, decades, even centuries. We had a "Church of England in Australia and Tasmania" until 1981, nearly 200 years after the first Church of England priests arrived here. (TIL that the English church didn't consider Tasmania to be part of Australia!)
However, as the colonies grew up and became independent, it didn't make sense for countries like Australia and New Zealand and Canada and India to have a Church of England, when they weren't England. So, they came up with an alternate name for the Church: the Anglican Church. "Anglican" is the Latin form of "English"; they're both linguistically descended from the word "Angles", which was the name of a group of tribes that settled in Britain about 1,500 years ago.
So, the Church of England is now just one branch (albeit the original branch) of the global Anglican Communion.
It's a little more confusing in the U.S. (because of course it is). In the United States, the Episcopal Church (which was the branch of the Church of England which split from the CoE in the American Revolution) is a member of the global Anglican Communion. But there is also the "Anglican Church in North America" (which split from the Episcopal Church after TEC ordained an openly gay bishop) which is not a member of the Anglican Communion. So ACNA is anglican in the sense that it is descended from the Church of England, but not Anglican in the sense that it is a member of the Anglican Communion.
Yeah, we now have two Anglican churches here in Australia, too. Also because of those pesky homosexuals - although, in this case, the split was triggered by the Australian synod failing to vote against a motion supporting same-sex marriage (yes, that double-negative is confusing). We now have a Diocese of the Southern Cross. But it still considers itself Anglican.
But, for the purposes of explaining to someone who doesn't even know that Church of England is Anglican, I decided it wasn't necessary to go into that much detail.
At the end of the day, they could pick a fight in an empty room. I hope that, in our lifetime, those news channels are deliberately targeted in the same way they target minorities, and global campaigns are led to get them successfully shut down and reform the rules of news broadcasting. That'd be totes amaze, TBH.
I'm constantly struck by foolish optimism, so personally I think the moral panic headlines are so incredibly repetitive that people will just lose interest eventually, except for a (relatively) small group of ultra-intense adherents who'll coalesce into a terrorist group and live in the woods under covert surveillance for the rest of their lives.
Like how many times can they run this cookie-cutter "[WHATEVER THING] is queer now, the woke mob is invading this thing with its ideology and kids might see it and if you even have an opinion about it they're gonna cancel you" without everyone getting bored? And even if they can keep going more and more extreme to hold their interest, once that pot's at a boil you're not going to coax any more frogs in there.
The only novelty in it at this point is in how they manage to twist and stretch the actual news to fit into the template. The 'Mr. Potato Head is nonbinary' one for example, that was a creative enough lie.
Ahhh, they shoulda just ripped the piss out of the media and run with it. Pototo, Patata and Peyteytey.
This reminds me of how the novelist Colleen McCullough depicted the prayers of ancient Romans to their gods:
Are the Anglicans going to do something similar to the Lord's Prayer?
"Oh Father - or Mother - or Parent of whichever gender you prefer - who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name."
Removing gender from their God is an admirable goal, but the implementation could get quite clunky.
I know you're joking, but from my experience with the Episcopal church here in the US, there are a few approaches. I've heard of parishes which alternated masculine and feminine pronouns. I've also heard of ones which just avoid using pronouns for God altogether. I've also heard of a few which use titles to replace the traditional trinitarian formula (ie, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer - rather than Father, Son, Holy Spirit) to avoid gendered language. TEC is apparently all over the place on this. There is an official liturgy but it's not uncommon for Episcopal churches to tweak the liturgy or use alternate/trial liturgies for things like this.
I find it interesting that they recognize their God as not having a gender, and it reflects a rule of English that the deity still needed one. There's also a stretch to an implication that the pronoun used is the male one, but it's not even particularly wild considering the patriarchal strictures that exist around organized religion.
The Bible wasn't written in English.
The Old Testament - the Jewish bible - was mostly Hebrew, but the Christians aren't really supposed to read that one. Especially Anglicans, they're definitely New Testament sorts. No fire and brimstone and mushroom trips in the desert for the Church of England. They're more about a nice cup of a tea on a sunday morning and maybe some cake. So their bible was mostly written in Greek and Aramaic. If I recall correctly Ancient Greek has neutral pronouns available, don't know about Aramaic though.
Anyway it technically can't be wrong in whatever language it's written in, can it? As long as that edition has been approved by a Pope, it must be correct. In-universe, at least.
OT
I am instantly put in mind of this Mitchell & Webb sketch.
More OT
I thought it was going to be this Mitchell & Webb sketch.
Further OT
OH THAT'S MUCH BETTER