Church faces implosion and life underground, says senior adviser

[emad]

The Times
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent


A SENIOR adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury has issued an apocalyptic warning about the future of the Church of England, forecasting that Christianity in Britain will be driven underground and that the Church will fragment.

In a private document presented this week to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Dr Rowan Williams and Dr David Hope, Jayne Ozanne suggested that a time of great persecution was coming.

She gave warning that the outlook for the established Church was not good and that the Church would continue to implode and self-destruct over gay clergy and other matters. She says that its future will be one of an underground movement comparable to resistance movements during the Second World War.

Her paper, leaked to The Times, was delivered as a parting shot to the meeting at Lambeth Palace on Tuesday of the Archbishops’ Council, of which she has been one of 19 members.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-1398588,00.html

[VivaKerry]

1. Well, if people being open about what they have been....

since the onset of man on earth brings the church into an implosion.... then the church probably didn't have a leg to stand on! Be off with them!

[displacedtexan]

2. Churches always thrive when they're "persecuted."

Just my personal observation (and an undergraduate minor in Religion)...

Persecution and going "underground" always inspire followers to tithe more and more.

Look to history.

[MADem]

4. Interesting thesis, it has merit

So, the Nostradamus of the COE is actually a publicist? Write a report, then "leak" it to frighten the masses and require them to give up even more than they have already given.

Sounds like a religion I know headquartered in DC that worships a pinhead who likes to wear "outfits" at his public events!

[bemildred]

3. Ah yes, the doughty victims fend off attacks from the establishment. nt

[Mend]

5. Sounds more like it is shriveling from lack of interest eom

[atommom]

6. Just read an interesting piece in the Guardian about victimhood...

"Save Our Christmas," screams the Sun, in what must surely rank as one of the oddest campaigns ever to be run by a newspaper. Just as houses are coming out in rashes of bright, sparkling lights, just as the shop windows clog up with fake snow, weird electronic Father Christmases and children are chorusing Away in a Manger, the Sun takes it upon itself to warn us of the dire threat that our Christmas is under.

There's a curious phenomenon in the complex politics of identity that is increasingly evident, and the Sun's campaign is a superlative example: it is how the established majority inverts its status to one of victimhood. So while the odd mishmash of Germanic tribal customs and vestigial religious meaning that gives us Christmas goes from strength to strength in a secular consumer society, we are now told by the Sun that it is under attack by the political correctness of local government's multicultural policies.

The same phenomenon of inverted victimhood is evident in another campaign - that run by Rowan Atkinson against David Blunkett's proposal to extend the law against incitement to racial hatred with a clause to cover religious hatred. Atkinson's intervention has, of course, garnered more coverage in which to explain his muddled grasp of the clause than Blunkett has ever had to explain the very limited measure he is, in fact, proposing. So most people will have been left with a vague but profound sense of unease that our freedom of speech is being curtailed, and that humour and wit about the iniquities of religions will be restricted.

That inverted victimhood quickly takes grip: a Telegraph commentator rallied to the cause this week, accusing the government of "cravenly allowing so-called leaders of the British Muslim minority to alter our fundamental laws". From there, it's a quick slide into absurdity: the British legal system has no competence, the article continued, to "establish when the legitimate expression of fundamentally incompatible faiths tips over into incitement to 'religious hatred'".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1371499,00.html

It does, indeed, remind me of our own Religious Right....

[tanyev]

7. Well, that's how it all started.

I don't recall Jesus laying out a 2000 year plan with the ultimate goal being worldly wealth and political power.

[emad]

8. See DU LBN about first US christian bank:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1063396

[pop goes the weasel]

9. what bunk

The Church of England may be having a hard time filling the pews, but there are plenty of other Christian churches in England. So the Church of England is worried about being disestablished? Not having official government backing sure hasn't hurt the churches in the US, or the evangellies in Britain, for that matter.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Ms. Ozanne sounds as if she's been ingesting...something

:shrug:

[ixion]

11. after all the persecution suffered at the hands of these 'christians'

I seriously find it difficult to have empathy for their institution. :eyes:

[ozymandius]

12. Self-victimization draws no pity from me.

If this is, at all, a cry for help, then this crisis has no one but the church's self-destructive practices to blame. Any refusal to ackowledge the multi-colorful realities of humanity for the sake of religious rigidity invites bitterness of seeing the world overcome archaic thinking.