Category Archives: Anglican

Anglicans, Christmas, and the birth of God?

St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney

Cathedral Church of Andrew the Apostle

(courtesy Wikipedia)

Sydney NSW 2000, Australia - panoramio (291) adj.jpg

West front

By Spencer D Gear PhD


This article first appeared in:

ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Anglicans, Christmas, and the birth of God?

By Spencer Gear – posted Thursday, 3 December 2020

I’m an orthodox evangelical believer. I watched the Christmas Eve service 2011 which the Dean of the Cathedral, Phillip Jensen, led from St. Andrews Cathedral, Sydney, telecast on ABC1 in Australia. It was a magnificent Christ-centred service led by Dr Jensen. I know his church is a member of the evangelical Anglican diocese of Sydney which has been an orthodox stalwart in the midst of an Anglican church that has become theologically liberal in many states.

Anglicans in Australia

What is happening to the liberal Anglicans in Australia? The Rev. Dr. Mark Thompson, at the Sydney ‘Lambeth Decision Briefing’, St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, Friday 14th March 2008, wrote of ‘The Anglican Debacle‘. Here he stated the obvious for that denomination in Australia that biblical Christianity has struggled under the Anglican umbrella. There was never a time when it was uniformly accepted by the church hierarchy.

He pointed out that early Anglicans such as Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer were burnt at the stake with the consent of most of the rest of the bishops in Mary’s church.

According to The Melbourne Anglican (2017), the 2016 census revealed the ‘number of Australian Anglicans fell by 580,000 in five years.’

Primate of Australia, Archbishop Dr Philip Freier, attributed the decline in the Anglican Church to a number of factors, singling out a culture ‘that no longer “carries” Christianity.’

A Sydney Anglicans news’ release about the event in 2011 stated it was the first time in many years ABC Television screened an evangelical Christmas Eve service. It was chosen by the ABC for a 6pm Christmas Eve service. It featured Dean Phillip Jensen, the Cathedral choir, guest musicians and orchestra. Jensen said: ‘This broadcast provides a great opportunity to express the message of the birth of our Lord in a genuinely modern and Australian fashion.’

What’s at the heart of the Anglican problem?

Senior Associate Minister at St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Parramatta, Sydney, is David Ould, becoming a minister in 2013. His beef with the undermining of Anglicanism is very different from the liberal wing of the denomination. He considers one of the main problems is with integrity of the ministers.

What? He is crystal clear on what he means. He used an illustration from the world of advertising: If you were a marketing director for a major drinks’ company who drank the opposition’s leading brand of milk at a press conference, you would expect to lose your job if the company had any integrity.

However, what has happened with the Anglicans? They discuss an aging population, schisms over sexuality issues, young people preferring experiential over traditional worship, etc. However, Ould does not see this at the core of the problem. For him the nucleus of the issue is over promises made by bishops which states: ‘I firmly and sincerely believe the Catholic faith and I give my assent to the doctrine of the Anglican Church of Australia as expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons; I believe that doctrine to be agreeable to the Word of God.
 I do solemnly and sincerely declare my assent to be bound by the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia.’

Then the bishops set about rejecting the standards set by Scripture, refusing to support the content of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, fail to accept the 39 Articles as the ‘standard of doctrine’, not using the Book of Common Prayer as the worship standard, and rejecting some of the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia.

What then should these prodigal bishops and ministers do, since they deny fundamentals of biblical Christianity and of the Anglican requirements for ordination? C S Lewis got straight to the point of what should happen:

It is your duty to fix the lines (of doctrine) clearly in your minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession. This is your duty not specially as Christians or as priests but as honest men.
 We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing in your ministry after you have come to hold them (‘Christian Apologetics‘, 1945:1).

Evangelical Anglican: Christmas as the birth of God

One phrase caught my attention from Phillip Jensen several times in the telecast as he spoke about Christmas being a celebration of ‘the birth of God.’ Could this kind of language give the wrong impression? He has a brief article online that is titled, “Celebrate the Birth of God” (published 2 December 2005). In it he writes of Christmas as a time to ‘celebrate the coming of the Lord Jesus, who is God in the flesh’ and ‘give thanks to God for the great privilege of celebrating the birth of our Mighty God in this way.’

He seems to be trying to communicate that Jesus is both God and man, but does the language, ‘the birth of God’ have potential problems? These are my questions:

  • Is it misleading to speak of the birth of God when God the Son has always existed and has had no birth eternally? The God-man was born in Bethlehem.
  • Could it be better to say that the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, became flesh (a man) and we celebrate His birth at Christmas time?
  • Many do not understand how a virgin could conceive and give birth to the Son of God as flesh, without the insemination of a male. Does the language of ‘the birth of God’ convey orthodox theology, or is it meant to get the attention of secular people who celebrate Christmas for materialistic and holiday reasons?
  • I cannot ever understand the supernatural act of God in the virgin birth if I reject miracles as John Shelby Spong (an Episcopalian/Anglican) does when he states, ‘Let me say bluntly that I no longer think that the miracles of the gospels have anything to do with what we once called the miraculous.’

Phillip Jensen clarified this in 2013, ‘We celebrate more than the birth of the baby, Jesus. When we retell the history of his birth, we are celebrating the meaning and purpose of God’s action in our salvation.’ That’s a better way of putting it.

Prophecy of Jesus’ birth

The prophecy of Christ’s birth in Isaiah 9:6 states, For to us a child is BORN, to us a son is GIVEN.’ For this one event of the incarnation, there are two distinct matters.

(1) A CHILD is born – this is the human Jesus, and

(2) A SON is given. The Son was not born; Jesus the Son was GIVEN. He was from eternity.

I am not sure that Phillip Jensen made this distinction as clearly as he should have. I consider that he ought to have made it unambiguous about the humanity of Jesus (a child is born) and the deity of Jesus (the eternal Son is given). God was not born on the first Christmas Day. God the Son has always existed as God and he became a human being on that first Christmas Day but there was no ‘birth of God’ as such.

We know this from a well-known verse such as John 3:16, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ So, God SENT his Son. This presupposes that the Son was always with the Father and was ready to be sent.

The apostle Paul is clear about what this means at Christmas time. According to Romans 1:3-4,

concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord (ESV),

W4BDA9-1The eternal generation of the son is orthodox Christian doctrine. The Nicene Creed affirms the eternal nature of the Son:

(The Nicene Creed at the First Council of Nicaea, image courtesy Alamy)

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.

The Scriptures state that the child was born at the first Christmas, but the Son was given. The eternal Son of God was not born at the first Christmas. He was from eternity the Son.

I have been warned not to be another Nestorius

Since I see that Christmas celebrates the birth of the humanity of Jesus, the God-man, some have written to me warning that my view could come close to the false teaching of Nestorius (ca. 386-451). Most Christians would not know of Nestorius and his teaching.

The Nestorian controversy came to a head at the Council of Ephesus in 431. This Nestorian website gives a summary of the Christological controversies surrounding the teaching of Nestorius who was bishop of Constantinople in 428. He came from the Antioch school and was taught theology there by Theodore of Mopsuestia.

He opposed a new theological teaching of theotokos. This affirmed Mary was the ‘God-bearer’ or ‘Mother of God.’ Nestorius was concerned with this teaching when applied to Jesus because it could infer that the Son of God had a beginning and then suffered and died.

I confirm none of these things could happen to the infinite God. Therefore, instead of a God-man, Nestorius taught there was the Logos and the ‘man who was assumed.’ He favored the term ‘Christ-bearer’ (christotokos) as a summary of Mary’s role, or perhaps that she should be called both ‘God-bearer’ and ‘Man-bearer’ to emphasise Christ’s dual natures of God and man.

Nestorius was accused of teaching a double personality of Christ – two natures and two persons. He denied the charge, but the term Nestorianism has always been linked with such a teaching.

Yes, he was from the Antiochene ‘school’ (now in Turkey) and wished to emphasise a distinction between Christ as man and Christ as God. He did not deny that Christ was God. He said, however, that people should not call Mary thetokos, the ‘mother of God,’ because she was only the mother of the human person of Christ.

In the Nestorian view, the human and divine persons of Christ are separate.

Great opposition developed against Nestorius’s teaching and his opponents charged that he taught ‘two sons’ and that he ‘divided the indivisible.’ Even though he denied this charge, Nestorianism continues to be linked with the teaching.

Nestorius was opposed by Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, who was one of the most ruthless and unrestrained of the major early bishops. Cyril ‘condemned Nestorius’s works by issuing twelve anathemas [stong curses] against him. Nestorius responded in kind. The two men were harsh individuals and fierce antagonists.’

The possible danger in my discussing the birth of the humanity of Jesus at Christmas, which is true, and rejecting anything to do with the birth of God (as the eternal God cannot be born), is that when I speak of the God-man Jesus, that I try to attribute some of Jesus’ actions to his humanity and some to his divinity. That is not what I’m saying, but I want to make it clear that God cannot be born, either as ‘Mary the mother of God’, or the celebration of ‘the birth of God’ (Phil Jensen) at Christmas.

Conclusion

The language that ‘God was born’ at Christmas does not provide biblical warrant for orthodox, biblical thinking. God, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, has existed eternally. At that first Christmas, the Son obtained his humanity through being born to a virgin. This inaugurated the God-man nature of Jesus, but the Son never ceased being God from eternity. That the first Christmas celebrates the ‘birth of God’ in Jesus, is false theologically. It was the ‘fullness of time’ (Gal. 4:4) at which God the Son became the God-man.

It’s unusual for an orthodox evangelical such as Phillip Jensen to define the incarnation as the ‘birth of God’ in his Christmas Eve service at St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, and telecast on Australian ABC1 television. I have written to him to get his views, with much of the information provided above.

God cannot be born. That’s an oxymoron. God is from eternity and is always eternally God so there can be no ‘birth of God’ or ‘God was born’.

Jesus, the Son, who also is called ‘the Word’, always existed and continues to exist as God. We know this from John1:1-2: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.’

As for the Anglican churches in Australia, they are losing attendances wholesale because ministers and bishops refuse to be loyal to their ordination vows. They suffer the consequences of lack of integrity in support of scriptural authority and other commitments made at ordination.

If Anglican ministers affirmed the full authority of Scripture at their ordinations and stray from that path they should do as C S Lewis recommended,

‘You must change your profession‘ to be honest men.

Copyright © 2021 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 6 June 2021.

Swirly rainbow decoration vector drawingSwirly rainbow decoration vector drawingSwirly rainbow decoration vector drawing




Was Jesus the Son of God or only the son of a woman?[1]

Photograph of Dawid Samoszul

(Photograph of Dawid Samoszul

Close-up street portrait of Dawid Samoszul, probably taken in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland, between 1936 and 1938. Dawid was killed in the Treblinka killing center at the age of 9. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Abe Samelson, View Archival Details)

By Spencer D Gear PhD

Whenever I write a Christian-based article for On Line Opinion, it is guaranteed to receive a rant of abuse – mainly through the use of logical fallacies. These were some of the responses to my article, Anglicans, Christmas, and the birth of God?

1. Reactions from anti-Christians

One fellow who is known for his hostility wrote:

Jesus never claimed any more than the son of man. He’s on the record as allegedly saying, with regard to the miracles, it is not I who does these things, but the Father in me.
Only fundamental (sic) fanatics try to make him more than a man born of woman. . . .

They also claim that Jesus was God (a false premise) and believe that confers some authority! And just risible rubbish, given they never ever had such authority! Never![2]

2. Was Jesus the Son of God?

It is too bad Alan B didn’t acquire accurate biblical knowledge to counter the ignorant statements like this. What he said here is blatantly false.
God, the Son, is regarded as God. He has the attributes of deity:

(1) Eternity (Jn 1:15; 8:58; 17:5, 24);

(2) Omniscience (Jn 2:24-25; 16:30; 21:17);

(3) Omnipresence (Mt 18:20; 28:20; Jn 3:13);

(4) Omnipotence. ‘I am the Almighty’ (Rev 1:8; Heb 1:3; Mt 28:18);

(5) Immutable (Heb 1:12; 13:8);

(6) He does the actions of deity:

  • creator (Jn 1:3; Heb 1:10; Col 1:16);
  • holds things together (Col 1:17; Heb 1:3);
  • forgives sin (Mt 9:2, 6);
  • raises the dead (Jn 6:39-40, 54; 11:25; 20:25, 28);
  • he will be the Judge (Jn 5:22) of believers (2 Cor 5:10), of Antichrist and his followers (Rev 19:15), the nations (Ac 17:31), Satan (Gen 3:15) and the living and the dead (Ac 10:42).

Only Alan B’s bigotry against biblical content has caused him to reach his erroneous conclusion.[3]

3. A fundamentalist fanatic’s response[4]

“Only fundamental (sic) fanatics try to make him more than a man born of woman.”

Yes, mate, evangelical believers like me, who take the Scriptures seriously, know that you are dumping your presuppositions on us.

You don’t know the Bible, do you? Why don’t you own up to the logical fallacies you use whenever articles on this forum clash with your worldview, particularly Christian-related topics?

Let’s check the Scriptures: ‘Jesus answered, “The fact is, before Abraham was born, I Am.” When he said this, they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hid, and then he left the Temple area” (John 8:58-59).

We know from John chapter 5 that Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. This did not please the Jewish leaders as they questioned Jesus about his violation of the Jewish law. Jesus claimed authority over the Sabbath.

Those Jews began trying to make Jesus stop these actions on the Sabbath. ‘But he said to them, “My Father never stops working, and so I work too.” This made them even more determined to kill him. They thought it was bad enough that he was breaking the law about the Sabbath day. And now he was saying that God is his Father, MAKING HIMSELF EQUAL WITH GOD’ (John 5:16-18).

Have you ever read this in Scripture? Peter called Jesus, “Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16)? Did Jesus support your view and emphatically deny he was the Son of God? Not at all! Jesus’ response was: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven” (Matt 16:17).

Jesus emphatically affirmed he was the Son of God and not just the son of man. The Bible contradicts your view. I suggest you obtain a REAL theological education by taking the Bible seriously and examining its claims.

4. An atheistic perspective

An atheist could not resist this jibe: “Here we go again, arguing over who has the correct sky fairy”.[5] My reply was just as pointed, “I hear the wind blowing; the thunder and lightning are flashing and clapping; the cyclone is blowing our way from your ‘sky fairy’ fantasy.”[6]

5. Questioning my orthodox view over liberalism

Diver Dan took a different line:

I take you to task on your confessed orthodoxy. You may be an orthodox Christian in these times, but Christianity is historically built on shifting sands with orthodoxy.
Lack of consistency in its literature over two thousand years, has added confusion.

The belief in the trinity has been an evolutionary process. Explaining away the Christian God head from the orthodox stance as you do, relies on the belief of the infallibility of the biblical text as it now stands.
The Liberal view is Academic. It is more inclined to see the evolution of the Christian faith in term of history.

I see a danger in both views. The extreme of the liberal view is effectively disbelief in the creed, which I see as created by an overly questioning study for which it’s (sic) reward is lack of faith, followed by agnosticism; because the text through the years has been inconsistent and often tied into current historical events.
I think all orthodoxies should be questioned without risking loss of faith. You say your views are orthodox, but are they also fundamentalist by the same nature.

Fundamentalism led to the extreme of orthodoxy with the creation of Jimmy Jones, and his people’s Temple horror story.[7]

6. My response to “shifting sands” of Christian orthodoxy

“Christianity is historically built on shifting sands with orthodoxy.”

Then you gave not one example of these “shifting sands”, so you built a straw man fallacy.[8]

“Lack of consistency in its literature over two thousand years, has added confusion.”

Have you read EVERYTHING of Christianity from the 1st to 21st centuries to conclude about the “lack of consistency”? Or is this a fallacy of hasty generalization that springs forth from your worldview?

“The belief in the trinity has been an evolutionary process.”

False again! The trinitarian teaching is orthodox from the “us” of Genesis 1 to the full blown articulation in the New Testament. Ray Pritchard asked: “What is the Trinity? Christians in every land unite in proclaiming that our God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Those who deny that truth place themselves outside the pale of Christian orthodoxy. Having said that, I admit that no one fully understands it. It is a mystery and a paradox. Yet I believe it is true”, http://www.christianity.com/god/trinity/god-in-three-persons-a-doctrine-we-barely-understand-11634405.html.

The Trinity is not an “evolving” doctrine but one that is seen more clearly with progressive revelation in moving from Old Testament to New Testament.

“The Liberal view is Academic.”

No, the Liberal view changes what the Bible states. There are sound, evangelical, academic views of the orthodox Trinity.

“You say your views are orthodox, but are they also fundamentalist by the same nature.”

I said my views were “evangelical”. You have inserted “orthodox” and “fundamentalist.” I do not shy away from labelling my theological views as containing fundamental theology at its core – including the inerrancy of Scripture in the original documents, Christ’s atoning blood sacrifice, the bodily resurrection of Jesus and Christ’s second coming. However, the language of “fundamentalist” comes with too much baggage, as seen in your linking me to Jim Jones and his fanatical group.

“Fundamentalism led to the extreme of orthodoxy with the creation of Jimmy Jones, and his people’s Temple horror story.”

This is an ad hominem (guilt by association) fallacy. Here you have a negative view of my beliefs because of its supposed association with Jim Jones, that you view negatively. We cannot have a rational conversation when you engage in this kind of fallacious reasoning.

7. “Who is Christ?” has many answers

Diver dan had this comeback. How accurate was he?

One of the problems dealing with people on this site, is accommodating their hypersensitive natures.

I’m not about to trade scriptural references towards proving a theory I put forward to you, based on my observations over a lifetime on this subject.

But like it or not, the question of “who is Christ” has as many answers as history has to any other subject.

So the difficulty with the answer is, the difficulty of who debates the question, and the biases that are natural in the mix. And historically, the question of who is Christ, has shifted through the years; that’s the point I make.
On another point you raised, which I noticed in your article, which was the differing opinions adding a different emphasis on scripture, between Liberals and evangelicals.

Unless there is consistency, then there are dangers in both views.
Jimmy Jones began his ministry with good intentions, but he lost the plot and strayed from tradition. Tradition is very much where the Liberals are. Viz Peter Selleck on this forum.
[9]

How should I reply as his response contained some fundamental errors?

8. Who are Hitler, James Cook and Aristotle?

“But like it or not, the question of “who is Christ“ has as many answers as history has to any other subject.”

American soldiers enter the Buchenwald concentration camp following the liberation of the camp. [LCID: 09807](US soldiers enter the Buchenwald concentration camp following the liberation of the camp. Buchenwald, Germany, after April 11, 1945. Photo courtesy Holocaust Encyclopedia)

 

If I want to know about “who is Hitler?”; “Who is Captain James Cook?”; “Who is Aristotle?”, I go to the historical sources that deal with this historical information.
Since I want to know who Jesus Christ is, I go to the primary documents of the Gospels that deal with this information. I don’t go to the pseudepigraphical Gospel of Peter and the “Cross Gospel” which John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar promotes.

“Tradition is very much where the Liberals are. Viz Peter Selleck on this forum.”

To the contrary, the Anglican tradition is with the formulators of the 39 Articles, which provide a very evangelical statement of beliefs in The Articles of Religion 1562.
They are not Liberal Anglicanism but support evangelical, Bible-believing Anglicans. I suggest you get your facts straight on this topic.

The heart of the Anglican doctrines is evangelical and does not synthesise with the teaching of John Shelby Spong or Peter Sellick. See HERE.

9. Conclusion

Notice what most of these comments contain:

(1) They avoid dealing with the primary content of the article. This means they choose to,

(2) dump their presuppositions on the reader.

(3) They allow their ignorance about a topic to be exposed, and

(4) It is a common trait of these anti-Christian antagonists to use logical fallacies to divert attention away from the main topic.

Logical fallacies are common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim. Avoid these common fallacies in your own arguments and watch for them in the arguments of others.

10. Notes


[1] This topic began as a blog on one of my ejournal articles with On Line Opinion, 3 December 2020. I blog as OzSpen.

[2] Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 3 December 2020 11:03:22 AM.

[3] Posted by OzSpen, Thursday, 3 December 2020 11:53:35 AM

[4] This was a response to Alan B, posted by OzSpen, Thursday, 3 December 2020 8:29:56 PM.

[5] Posted by TheAtheist, Thursday, 3 December 2020 6:28:41 PM.

[6] Posted by OzSpen, Thursday, 3 December 2020 6:40:50 PM.

[7] Posted by diver dan, Thursday, 3 December 2020 8:29:15 PM.

[8] Posted by OzSpen, Friday, 4 December 2020 12:50:38 PM.

[9] Posted by diver dan, Saturday, 5 December 2020 7:31:15 AM.

Copyright © 2020 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 5 December 2020.

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Anglicans, Christmas, and the birth of God?

St Andrew's Cathedral c.1868.jpg

(St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, Australia. Image courtesy Wikipedia)

By Spencer D Gear PhD

This article was published in On Line Opinion, ‘Anglicans, Christmas, and the birth of God?’ (3 December 2020)

I’m an orthodox evangelical believer. I watched the Christmas Eve service 2011 which the Dean of the Cathedral, Phillip Jensen, led from St. Andrews Cathedral, Sydney, telecast on ABC1 in Australia. It was a magnificent Christ-centred service led by Dr Jensen. I know his church is a member of the evangelical Anglican diocese of Sydney which has been an orthodox stalwart in the midst of an Anglican church that has become theologically liberal in many states.

Anglicans in Australia

What is happening to the liberal Anglicans in Australia? The Rev. Dr. Mark Thompson, at the Sydney ‘Lambeth Decision Briefing’, St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, Friday 14th March 2008, wrote of ‘The Anglican Debacle’. Here he stated the obvious for that denomination in Australia that biblical Christianity has struggled under the Anglican umbrella. There was never a time when it was uniformly accepted by the church hierarchy.

He pointed out that early Anglicans such as Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer were burnt at the stake with the consent of most of the rest of the bishops in Mary’s church.

According to The Melbourne Anglican (2017), the 2016 census revealed the ‘number of Australian Anglicans fell by 580,000 in five years.’

Primate of Australia, Archbishop Dr Philip Freier, attributed the decline in the Anglican Church to a number of factors, singling out a culture ‘that no longer “carries” Christianity.’

A Sydney Anglicans news’ release about the event in 2011 stated it was the first time in many years ABC Television screened an evangelical Christmas Eve service. It was chosen by the ABC for a 6pm Christmas Eve service. It featured Dean Phillip Jensen, the Cathedral choir, guest musicians and orchestra. Jensen said: ‘This broadcast provides a great opportunity to express the message of the birth of our Lord in a genuinely modern and Australian fashion.’

What’s at the heart of the Anglican problem?

David Ould(photo David Ould from his website)

Senior Associate Minister at St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Parramatta, Sydney,  and a prolific blogger is Rev. David Ould, who became a minister in 2013. His beef with the undermining of Anglicanism is very different from the liberal wing of the denomination. He considers one of the main problems is with integrity of the ministers.

What? He is crystal clear on what he means. He used an illustration from the world of advertising: If you were a marketing director for a major drinks’ company who drank the opposition’s leading brand of milk at a press conference, you would expect to lose your job if the company had any integrity.

However, what has happened with the Anglicans? They discuss an aging population, schisms over sexuality issues, young people preferring experiential over traditional worship, etc. However, Ould does not see Core Value - Integritythis at the core of the problem. For him the nucleus of the issue is over promises made by bishops which states: ‘I firmly and sincerely believe the Catholic faith and I give my assent to the doctrine of the Anglican Church of Australia as expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons; I believe that doctrine to be agreeable to the Word of God.
 I do solemnly and sincerely declare my assent to be bound by the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia.’

Then the bishops set about rejecting the standards set by Scripture, refusing to support the content of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, fail to accept the 39 Articles as the ‘standard of doctrine’, not using the Book of Common Prayer as the worship standard, and rejecting some of the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia.

What then should these prodigal bishops and ministers do, since they deny fundamentals of biblical Christianity and of the Anglican requirements for ordination? C S Lewis got straight to the point of what should happen:

It is your duty to fix the lines (of doctrine) clearly in your minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession. This is your duty not specially as Christians or as priests but as honest men.
 We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing in your ministry after you have come to hold them (‘Christian Apologetics’, 1945:1).

Evangelical Anglican: Christmas as the birth of God

Neapolitan presepe of Maiori (nativity scene courtesy Wikipedia)

This phrase caught my attention from Phillip Jensen several times in the telecast as he spoke about Christmas being a celebration of ‘the birth of God.’ Could this kind of language give the wrong impression? He has a brief article online that is titled, “Celebrate the Birth of God” (published 2 December 2005). In it he writes of Christmas as a time to ‘celebrate the coming of the Lord Jesus, who is God in the flesh’ and ‘give thanks to God for the great privilege of celebrating the birth of our Mighty God in this way.’

He seems to be trying to communicate that Jesus is both God and man, but does the language, ‘the birth of God’ have potential problems? These are my questions:

  1. Is it misleading to speak of the birth of God when God the Son has always existed and has had no birth eternally? The God-man was born in Bethlehem.
  2. Could it be better to say that the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, became flesh (a man) and we celebrate His birth at Christmas time?
  3. Many do not understand how a virgin could conceive and give birth to the Son of God as flesh, without the insemination of a male. Does the language of ‘the birth of God’ convey orthodox theology, or is it meant to get the attention of secular people who celebrate Christmas for materialistic and holiday reasons?
  4. I cannot ever understand the supernatural act of God in the virgin birth if I reject miracles as John Shelby Spong (an Episcopalian/Anglican) does when he states, ‘Let me say bluntly that I no longer think that the miracles of the gospels have anything to do with what we once called the miraculous.’

Phillip Jensen clarified this in 2013, ‘We celebrate more than the birth of the baby, Jesus. When we retell the history of his birth, we are celebrating the meaning and purpose of God’s action in our salvation.’ That’s a better way of putting it.

Prophecy of Jesus’ birth

The prophecy of Christ’s birth in Isaiah 9:6 states, ‘For to us a child is BORN, to us a son is GIVEN.’ For this one event of the incarnation, there are two distinct matters.

(1) A CHILD is born – this is the human Jesus, and

(2) A SON is given. The Son was not born; Jesus the Son was GIVEN. He was from eternity.

I am not sure that Phillip Jensen made this distinction as clearly as he should have. I consider that he ought to have made it unambiguous about the humanity of Jesus (a child is born) and the deity of Jesus (the eternal Son is given). God was not born on the first Christmas Day. God the Son has always existed as God and he became a human being on that first Christmas Day but there was no ‘birth of God’ as such.

We know this from a well-known verse such as John 3:16, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ So, God SENT his Son. This presupposes that the Son was always with the Father and was ready to be sent.

The apostle Paul is clear about what this means at Christmas time. According to Romans 1:3-4, ‘concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh  and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord’ (ESV).

The eternal generation of the son is orthodox Christian doctrine. The Nicene Creed affirms the eternal nature of the Son:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.

The Scriptures state that the child was born at the first Christmas, but the Son was given. The eternal Son of God was not born at the first Christmas. He was from eternity the Son.

I have been warned not to be another Nestorius

Since I see that Christmas celebrates the birth of the humanity of Jesus, the God-man, some have written to me warning that my view could come close to the false teaching of Nestorius (ca. 386-451). Most Christians would not know of Nestorius and his teaching.

The Nestorian controversy came to a head at the Council of Ephesus in 431. This Nestorian website gives a summary of the Christological controversies surrounding the teaching of Nestorius who was bishop of Constantinople in 428. He came from the Antioch school and was taught theology there by Theodore of Mopsuestia.

He opposed a new theological teaching of theotokos. This affirmed Mary was the ‘God-bearer’ or ‘Mother of God.’ Nestorius was concerned with this teaching when applied to Jesus because it could infer that the Son of God had a beginning and then suffered and died.

I confirm none of these things could happen to the infinite God. Therefore, instead of a God-man, Nestorius taught there was the Logos and the ‘man who was assumed.’ He favored the term ‘Christ-bearer’ (christotokos) as a summary of Mary’s role, or perhaps that she should be called both ‘God-bearer’ and ‘Man-bearer’ to emphasise Christ’s dual natures of God and man.

Nestorius was accused of teaching a double personality of Christ – two natures and two persons. He denied the charge, but the term Nestorianism has always been linked with such a teaching.

Yes, he was from the Antiochene ‘school’ (now in Turkey) and wished to emphasise a distinction between Christ as man and Christ as God. He did not deny that Christ was God. He said, however, that people should not call Mary thetokos, the ‘mother of God,’ because she was only the mother of the human person of Christ.

Great opposition developed against Nestorius’s teaching and his opponents charged that he taught ‘two sons’ and that he ‘divided the indivisible.’ Even though he denied this charge, Nestorianism continues to be linked with the teaching.

Nestorius was opposed by Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, who was one of the most ruthless and unrestrained of the major early bishops. Cyril ‘condemned Nestorius’s works by issuing twelve anathemas [stong curses] against him. Nestorius responded in kind. The two men were harsh individuals and fierce antagonists.’

The possible danger in my discussing the birth of the humanity of Jesus at Christmas, which is true, and rejecting anything to do with the birth of God (as the eternal God cannot be born), is that when I speak of the God-man Jesus, that I try to attribute some of Jesus’ actions to his humanity and some to his divinity. That is not what I’m saying, but I want to make it clear that God cannot be born, either as ‘Mary the mother of God’, or the celebration of ‘the birth of God’ (Phil Jensen) at Christmas.

Conclusion

The language that ‘God was born’ at Christmas does not provide biblical warrant for orthodox, biblical thinking. God, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, has existed eternally. At that first Christmas, the Son obtained his humanity through being born to a virgin. This inaugurated the God-man nature of Jesus, but the Son never ceased being God from eternity. That the first Christmas celebrates the ‘birth of God’ in Jesus, is false theologically. It was the ‘fullness of time’ (Gal. 4:4) at which God the Son became the God-man.

It’s unusual for an orthodox evangelical such as Phillip Jensen to define the incarnation as the ‘birth of God’ in his Christmas Eve service at St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, and telecast on Australian ABC1 television. I have written to him to get his views, with much of the information provided above.

God cannot be born. That’s an oxymoron. God is from eternity and is always eternally God so there can be no ‘birth of God’ or ‘God was born’.

Jesus, the Son, who also is called ‘the Word’, always existed and continues to exist as God. We know this from John1:1-2: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.’

As for the Anglican churches in Australia, they are losing attendances wholesale because ministers and bishops refuse to be loyal to their ordination vows. They suffer the consequences of lack of integrity in support of scriptural authority and other commitments made at ordination.

If Anglican ministers affirmed the full authority of Scripture at their ordinations and stray from that path they should do as C S Lewis recommended, ‘You must change your profession’ to be honest men.

Copyright © 2020 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 4 December, 2020.

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Church growth or decline in the United Kingdom

Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (courtesy Wikipedia)

By Spencer D Gear

Have you read the article from The Telegraph [UK] with the heading, ‘Former archbishop of Canterbury: We are a post-Christian nation‘?[1] It began:

Exclusive: Former archbishop of Canterbury [Lord Rowan Williams] says Britain is no longer a nation of believers, as Telegraph poll reveals Christians are reluctant to express their faith.

Britain is now a “post-Christian” country, the former archbishop of Canterbury has declared, as research suggests that the majority of Anglicans and Roman Catholics now feel afraid to express their beliefs.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Lord Williams of Oystermouth says Britain is no longer “a nation of believers” and that a further decline in the sway of the Church is likely in the years ahead.

While the country is not populated exclusively by atheists, the former archbishop warns that the era of regular and widespread worship is over (emphasis in original).

But do the statistics support such a negative view?

This article from The Telegraph states that Williams’ comments are a ‘stark assessment’ after Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron, ‘urged Christians to be “more evangelical” about their faith’. Cameron dared to state that ‘Britain should be a more confidently Christian country’.

Well that’s sure to put the cat among the theological pigeons. And when did Cameron make such comments? Just prior to Easter 2014. As expected, according to this article, atheist and secular groups were furious about the Cameron comments. The leader of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, Nick Clegg, even called for ‘the disestablishment of the Church of England’.

This is a summary of The Telegraph poll:

clip_image001

 

Source: The Telegraph [UK], 26 April 2014[2]

Is Rowan Williams giving an accurate picture of a post-Christian UK?

Williams was reported in The Telegraph as saying:

“But [Britain is] post-Christian in the sense that habitual practice for most of the population is not taken for granted,” he said. “A Christian nation can sound like a nation of committed believers, and we are not that.”

The former archbishop, who remains a member of the House of Lords, continued: “It’s a matter of defining terms. A Christian country as a nation of believers? No.

“A Christian country in the sense of still being very much saturated by this vision of the world and shaped by it? Yes.”

Lord Williams suggested that there may be “a further shrinkage of awareness and commitment” as a result of a lack of knowledge about Britain’s Christian legacy among younger generations, under the age of 45.[3]

There is a different view: Widespread church growth

But there is a different response to Christianity in the UK that emerged in 2012 that provides a divergent perspective to that of Rowan Williams.

The Church of England Newspaper of 2 May 2014 (but it is a rolling date) had an article by David Goodhew of Cranmer Hall, Durham University, ‘Startling academic research shows widespread Church growth in Britain (originally reported in 2012).[4] This research states that:

An international team of leading researchers, based at Cranmer Hall, Durham, have just published a study entitled Church Growth in Britain from 1980 to the Present. Here are just a few of the extraordinary statistics that have been unearthed:
– There are 500,000 Christians in black majority churches in Britain. Sixty years ago there were hardly any
– At least 5,000 new churches have been started in Britain since 1980 – and this is an undercount. The true figure is probably higher
– There are one million Christians in Britain from black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities
– The adult membership of the Anglican Diocese of London has risen by over 70 per cent since 1990.
Research Endorsed by Bishops and Leading Academics
This research has been endorsed by a range of senior academics and church leaders – from Justin Welby, the new Bishop of Durham, to Archbishop Vincent Nicholls, head of the Roman Catholic Church. Professor David Bebbington, the leading historian of evangelicalism comments: “This is excellent research. It is commonly supposed that the Christian church in Britain is moribund, but the essays in this volume all demonstrate, from different angles, that in the recent past there are signs of vitality and growth”.

I recommend a read of this second article online to see the results of this research. It is contrary to Rowan Williams opinion. Would that surprise you?

This newspaper story is only a grab of a few highlights from a church newspaper. If you want to find more complete details of the research at Durham University, I’ll leave it to you to search out the research document. But this newspaper source does state that:

An international team of leading researchers, based at Cranmer Hall, Durham, have just published a study entitled Church Growth in Britain from 1980 to the Present. Here are just a few of the extraordinary statistics that have been unearthed:

So this is not research by some Mickey Mouse researchers trying to demonstrate something that is not there. I’m not here to defend what they found. That’s for other researchers to critique. I’m simply reporting what I found in a newspaper that provided some drop down examples of what was found:

Where you look affects what you find. The real picture for the last 30 years looks something like this:

– Roughly the same number of churches have closed as have opened

– Some denominations have seen serious decline – notably the ‘mainline’ denominations – Anglican, Methodist, URC, Catholic

– Some churches have seen major growth; especially churches rooted in ethnic minority communities and newer denominations

– Some parts of the mainline churches are seeing growth – Anglican growth centres on the Diocese of London (the one Anglican diocese which has consistently grown over the last 20 years) and new Anglican churches/fresh expressions.

This research from 2012 has been resurrected to gain fresh publicity at about the same time as this statement from Rowan Williams, ‘Former archbishop of Canterbury [Lord Rowan Williams] says Britain is no longer a nation of believers, as Telegraph poll reveals Christians are reluctant to express their faith’. It shows that some churches saw major growth while mainline churches showed serious decline. Overall, there is another picture to provide a divergent view to that of Rowan Williams.

What do the online critics say?

I put some of the above information on a Christian forum[5] and received these kinds of sceptical comments:

  • ‘Can’t speak for the entire country, but at least locally, church attendance has been on the decline’ (Britain).[6]
  • ‘Those data points look a bit all over the place and cherry picked to me’ (Germany).[7]
  • ‘Rowan Williams is an incredibly intelligent man and has nothing to gain by lying about Christianity in Britain to portray it negatively’ (Britain).[8]
  • ‘The established Churches such as CoE expect its members to accept the whole package, if you will, the good and the tough ones. Whereas people in liberal democracies are tough consumers who prefer choice and freedom to choose, instant gratification, convenience, reinforcement and echo chambers for their personal world views and values.
    Then there’s the “entertainment” factor, for instance, “low church” churches vs. solemn or “boring” same old same old liturgy of “old” Churches. Handsome English cathedrals are a selling point: 41% said the cathedral building was the attraction’ (Finland).[9]
  • ‘The link you gave is really vague and doesn’t seem to tell me whether the number of people at church has gone up or down overall. eg: The same number of churches shutting as opening doesn’t show anything. The new churches could be half the size.
    In many polls, most British people consider themselves to be non-religious, and only a small percentage (~10%) go to church regularly. In the census an abnormally high number say they are Christian (compared to other polls); I’m guessing because they just want to put something down, and they feel that Christian is the default. I put that I was Christian on the last census, though I wouldn’t now.
    Looking at how people act in society, and how few people go to church regularly, I’d say Britain isn’t a Christian country’ (Britain).[10]

Here are some of my edited responses:

  • Here in Queensland, wherever theological liberalism has affected lots of Anglican churches, I observe decline. But there is a flourishing Anglican church locally that is very evangelical and has an outreach focus. But most of the Anglicans in Qld are infected with liberalism, whether that is modernism or postmodernism.
    I have a close friend who is a recently retired evangelical Anglican clergyman in Qld and he tells me of the demise of churches across the state under liberalism and their acceptance or promotion of homosexuality. That’s what is happening locally for me.
    But I was quoting research from the UK that was released today, 2 May 2014 (I’ve since found it was from June 2012).[11]
  • Have you investigated the research methodology and conclusions from the research? I haven’t. The CoE Newspaper is giving a summary of the research and is not giving the research document.[12]
  • But he’s also liberal in his theological views. Intelligence doesn’t exclude liberalism. George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, was an evangelical. Was he intelligent or not?[13]

My investigation for an assessment of the Australian 2011 census found these details regarding the Anglican Church: It is

the main protestant religion in Australia, most Anglicans naturally have their ancestry in England. This group declined significantly over the past 20 years. Traditionally dominant in the more affluent suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, these are the main areas where Anglicans have lost adherents to “No Religion”.  Anglican remains a dominant religion in many rural areas, particularly northern NSW and regional Queensland, the WA wheatbelt, most of Tasmania and parts of Perth with large UK-born populations. At a state level, Tasmania has by far the highest proportion, with 26.0%, followed by NSW with 19.9%.[15]

ABC News, religion and ethics, reported that ‘the number of Australian Anglicans has decreased sharply by 5.2% over the last twenty years from 23.9% of the population in 1986 to 18.7% in 2006’.[16]

Liberalism and decline of church attendance

That is not surprising to me. The history of theological liberalism has led to decline in church attendance. The president of the Uniting Church in Australia has admitted this in an article in the Eternity magazine in 2012 :

clip_image003The new President of the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA), Reverend Professor Andrew Dutney says that liberal theology is in decline.

Andrew Dutney speaks to Eternity on the decline of liberal theology, and an update from UCA’s national assembly

“There is no question that the liberalism with which the Uniting Church and its predecessors were associated with in the past is very much in decline,” Dutney told the ABC’s Andrew West.

“As horizons have been broadened by the contact that different kinds of Christians are having with each other, people who might formerly have been liberal are discovering that there are other ways of reading the Bible that are not liberal. That you don’t try to explain away all the difficult stuff, but you can sit with some of the paradoxes and read the Bible more directly into your own life and your own situation.”

Dutney became President of the UCA at a meeting of its national assembly in Adelaide last month.[17]

What are other assessments?

The negative of the mainstream media: Or is it the truth?

  • The UK newspaper, Daily Mail Australia (online), had these headlines:

clip_image005 Just 800,000 worshippers attend a Church of England service on the average Sunday

clip_image005[1] Numbers in the pews have fallen to less than half the levels of the 1960s

clip_image005[2] Census evidence shows a widespread fall in allegiance to Christianity

clip_image005[3] Numbers of Christians has fallen more than four million in a decade (Daily Mail, 22 March 2014).

  • Calum Brown has written a provocative assessment of what has been happening in, The death of Christian Britain: Understanding secularisation, 1800-2000 (Brown 2009). At the conclusion of this study he wrote:

The death of Christian British culture, or the rupture in Christianity as McLeod puts it, was a real and – I would argue – a cataclysmic event of the 1960s. Sweeping as it may seem, the conclusion of the first edition of this book still stands. I wrote 
 that the churches will not die, but would continue to exist in some skeletal form (which is what seems to be suggested by most British Christian sociologists). What I did write is that ‘the culture of Christianity has gone in the Britain of new millennium. Britain is showing the world how religion as we have known it can die’. The emphasis here is upon ‘religion as we have known it’, and should not be taken as a statement that the rest of the world will follow Britain or that religion itself is ending. From what even my most strident critics are saying, based on the present evidence, mutation is precisely the best the Christian faith can hope for in the circumstances of British secularisation (Brown 2009: 232-233).

Thus, for me as a committed evangelical Christian, the only hope for the UK is for it to get back to the core of the Gospel which it once spread to much of the rest of the world. There is no cure to the decline of Christianity, other than this God-sent conviction returning: ‘This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:11-12 ESV).

But you won’t get that message from theologically liberal pulpits where the preachers do not believe the Bible or the Gospel.

Works consulted

Brown, C G 2009. The death of Christian Britain: Understanding secularisation, 1800-2000, 2nd ed (online). Abingdon, Oxon/New York NY: Routledge. Available at: http://www.evolbiol.ru/large_files/secular.pdf (Accessed 10 July 2014).

Notes


[1] This article was written by Tim Ross, Cole Moreton and James Kirkup, 26 Apr 2014.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] However, this research was originally reported in this newspaper on 7 June 2012 and is available online at Anglican Mainstream, 7 June 2012, available at: http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2012/06/07/startling-academic-research-shows-widespread-church-growth-in-britain/ (Accessed 3 May 2014).

[5] OzSpen#1, Christian Forums, News & Current Events, ‘Rowan Williams ignorant of church growth in the UK’, available at: http://www.christianforums.com/t7819828/ (Accessed 3 May 2014).

[6] Ibid., PyGame#2.

[7] Ibid., Nithavela#3.

[8] Ibid., PyGame#4.

[9] Ibid., Kalevalatar#8. This woman gave a more detailed exposition of her views compared to the others.

[10] Ibid., Paradoxum#9.

[11] Ibid., OzSpen#5.

[12] Ibid., OzSpen#6.

[13] Ibid., OzSpen#7.

[14] Ibid., OzSpen#11.

[15] Glenn – the census expert 2012. ‘Census 2011 – The geographic distribution of religion’, September 13. Available at: http://blog.id.com.au/2012/australian-census-2011/census-2011-the-geographic-distribution-of-religion/ (Accessed 12 June 2014).

[16] Peter Kurti 2011. It’s Anglicanism, Jim, but not as we know it, ABC, Religion and ethics, 2 September. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/09/02/3308163.htm (Accessed 12 June 2014).

[17] John Sandeman 2012. Liberal theology in decline says new UCA president, Bible Society Live Light. Available at: http://www.biblesociety.org.au/news/liberal-theology-in-decline-says-new-uca-president (Accessed 12 June 2014).

 

Copyright © 2014 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 18 November 2015.

George Carey on Anglican demise in UK

The Lord Carey of Clifton,
former Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop george carey1.jpg

By Spencer D Gear PhD

There is an article in the issue of AP (Australian Presbyterian, Summer 2013/14), ‘Battle for the Bible’ in which Peter Hastie states:

Wherever churches in the Protestant world have identified with theological liberalism they have diminished in size or are dying. I can’t think of a Protestant church anywhere in the world that has embraced an anti-inerrancy view that is thriving right now – they just don’t exist in the English-speaking world (see: http://ap.org.au/images/2013AP/AP11.13.pdf, p. 4)

We know that when Spong was bishop of Newark NJ, 40,000 people left the Episcopalian church in that diocese. See my articles:

However, I’m not convinced that one has to believe in inerrancy for a church to grow. I’ve encountered many in the Pentecostal-charismatic movement who wouldn’t take an overt stance on inerrancy and yet their churches are attracting the numbers. That would be an interesting exercise to survey AoG, CLC, Vineyard and other such Pentecostal-charismatic denominations to find the views on Scripture of their leaders.

What’s the status of the evangelical Anglican diocese of Sydney? Are the churches growing or in decline? Tony Payne wrote an article in Aug 2011 for The Briefing, out of the evangelical Anglican Sydney diocese, in which he asked, ‘Why aren’t we growing?‘ Provocative and interesting article, based on research.

What did the former Archbishop of Canterbury, an evangelical, George Carey have to say about the demise of the Anglican Church?

On 18 November 2013, the British newspaper, Daily Mail, in its online edition had the heading: “Church ‘is on the brink of extinction’: Ex-Archbishop George Carey warns of Christianity crisis”.

In the article, Mail Online had these sub-points from Carey:

clip_image004 ‘Lord Carey said Church of England is at risk if ‘urgent’ action is not taken’;

clip_image004[1] ‘He warned Church could be just one generation away from extinction’;

clip_image004[2] ‘The 78-year-old Reverend laid the blame at the feet of Church leaders’;

clip_image004[3] “He said should they be ‘ashamed’ of their failure to bring youngsters in”;

clip_image004[4] ‘Lord Carey’s stark message has been echoed by the Archbishop of York’.

The Mail Online also stated:

‘Lord Carey’s warning was delivered in a speech at Holy Trinity Church in Shrewsbury as part of the Shropshire Churches Conference 2013.

Church of England Sunday congregations are running at half the numbers of the 1960s, and over the past two decades Roman Catholic churchgoing has seen a similar decline.

Christian numbers are rising fast in some parts of the world, notably in Africa. Worldwide, the Anglican churches have between 70 and 80 million followers – many of whom look to the Church of England for a lead.

However Christian churches are under pressure from Islam, particularly in West Africa, and persecution and violence in parts of the Middle East and Pakistan.

A. George Carey placed blame with aggressive secularism

Back at the time of Easter 2013 (end of March), The Independent reported George Carey:

A former Archbishop of Canterbury has accused the Prime Minister of doing more than any other recent political leader to make Christians feel a “persecuted minority”.

Lord Carey of Clifton said David Cameron’s government was “aiding and abetting” aggressive secularism in its approach to same-sex marriage.

His attack coincides with the Easter celebrations and the release of a survey for the Coalition for Marriage, which highlights the resentment felt by some Christians about the Prime Minister’s support for gay marriage.

“It was a bit rich to hear the Prime Minister has told religious leaders they should ‘stand up and oppose aggressive secularism’ when it seems that his government is aiding and abetting this aggression every step of the way,” said Lord Carey, 77, who led the Anglican Church from 1991 to 2002.

“At his pre-Easter Downing Street reception for faith leaders, he said that he supported Christians’ right to practise their faith. Yet many Christians doubt his sincerity.”

Citing the ComRes survey of 535 churchgoers, which suggested that two-thirds of Christians felt they were a persecuted minority, he wrote in The Daily Mail: “The Prime Minister has done more than any other recent political leader to feed these anxieties.”

A spokesman for Mr Cameron  rejected Lord Carey’s accusations,  saying: “This Government strongly backs faith and Christianity in particular. Christianity plays a vital part in the Big Society. The Prime Minister values the profound contribution that Christianity has made and continues to make to the country.”[1]

B. What about the real rot? Theological liberalism!

As indicated above, Peter Hastie, has stated that ‘wherever churches in the Protestant world have identified with theological liberalism they have diminished in size or are dying’. The evidence points in that direction. Let’s take a peer into the Anglicans, their beliefs and their decline.

C. The sickness in the USA Anglicans

In February 2005, Bill Boniface wrote an article that exposed the theological disease in the USA Anglican ranks (the Episcopal Church): ‘A SENIOR WARDEN’S LAMENT: “Why I left my liberal parish“’. Here he articulated the problem:

Some of you doubt the very notion that there’s a serious and divisive situation in the Episcopal Church[Anglicans USA] today. Please don’t rely on me or any one person to sway you. Make your own decision from the following facts and then decide on your own whether this is serious enough:

Over 40,000 faithful Episcopalians left the Church last year (didn’t just change congregations, but left it altogether).
100 entire congregations have left together to form new churches or worship under the protection of foreign Anglican primates or bishops.

11 dioceses have formed a Network within the Episcopal Church structure in opposition to the direction their Church is going.

These dioceses represent 1,100 clergy, 735 congregations and 176,000 faithful communicants.

Cathedrals and multi-million dollar retreat centers are being closed down and sold to raise money for the Episcopal Church due to losses of parishioners who took their money with them.

The Washington Diocese alone is tapping $1.9 million from a trust fund just to continue operating ($1.4 million this budget year alone).

In the Diocese of Newark (NJ), where there is reputedly the strongest support of any diocese for the Episcopal Church’s new agenda, 40 parishes are projected to close this year.

22 of the other 37 provinces in our Anglican Communion have declared impaired or broken communion with the Episcopal Church.

15 of these 22 provinces now officially recognize only the Network – not the Episcopal Church – as the voice of Anglicanism in the U.S. These 15 provinces represent 55 million Anglicans.

Faithful priests all over the country are being deposed and inhibited by their bishops for speaking against the church’s “new direction.”

The Episcopal Church is suing a number of Episcopal congregations for their church property in a number of states who won’t go along with the new “doctrine.”

Two parishes in the Washington Diocese have joined the Network in opposition to the church’s policies and 13 vestries in the Diocese of Maryland have joined together as “confessing vestries” whose congregations refuse to follow the church’s new policies.[2]

Information about the demise continues. One of the most damning pieces of evidence against John Shelby Spong’s theologically liberal views are contained in what happened when he was bishop of the Episcopalian Church diocese of Newark, NJ. It is reported in ‘Newark’s Disastrous Decline Under Spong: Post-Mortem of a Bishop’s Tenure’. Here it was reported:

Prior to Spong’s arrival as bishop coadjutor in 1977, the Diocese of Newark, like the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A (ECUSA), was facing a slow but steady decline from its peak membership in the 1960s. After Spong became the bishop in 1979, the rate of decline began to pick up.

Between 1978 and 1999, the number of baptized persons in the diocese fell from 64,323 to 36,340, a loss of 27,983 members in 21 years. That’s a disastrous 43.5% decline. The Episcopal Church, by contrast, saw a decline in the number of baptized persons from 3,057,162 in 1978 to 2,339,133 in 1997, a loss of 718, 499, or a substantial 23.4%, according to the 1998 Church Annual.

The Diocese of Newark under Spong, thus, has declined at a rate 20.1 percentage points higher than the rate for the entire Episcopal Church. This rate of decline is 86% faster than the Episcopal Church, whose losses are considerable in and of themselves.

As any statistician would note, the losses in the Diocese of Newark represent a highly statistically significant variation from the trends within the Episcopal Church. No systematic effort has been made to get at the exact causes that made losses in the diocese so much greater.

Ominously for the future, church members in the diocese are also getting older and there are fewer children in Sunday School. In 1976 there were 10,186 children pupils in Sunday School. In 1999 there were only 4,833, a loss of 5,353. That’s 52.6% decline.

By 1997 the diocese had closed at least 18 parishes or missions which had existed when Spong became bishop. All of these parishes or missions were in urban areas. The details of the closing of these churches was reported by the author in an article in United Voice in 1997 titled “The Diocese of Newark’s Graveyard of Urban Ministry.”

The rate of decline under Spong – already fairly torrid – sharply accelerated after 1995. During the 1980s and early 1990s, there was often a loss of 1,000 members a year. From 1995 to 1998, there was a stunning drop from 44, 246 to 36,597 in only three years, a drop of 7,649 — or more than 2,500 a year.

The rate of membership decline under Spong is disastrous by any reasonable measure. Such a pace of decline cannot continue if the diocese is to survive and if the Episcopal church is to retain more than a marginal presence in northern New Jersey.

What’s the truth about the death of theism? This is but one example of what happens when theological liberalism has taken hold. Church numbers have crashed.

Continuing with the USA Episcopal Church as an example, this recent article, ‘Episcopal Church Task Force Releases Report on Restructuring Plans’ (July 17, 2013), stated.

“Entrenched bureaucracies and dozens of committees or commissions have accumulated over time. This has occurred even as the Episcopal Church has dropped from a high of 3.6 million members in the mid-1960s to 1.9 million members today,” said Walton. “The large amount of money that sustained these structures in the past is long gone, and the church looks very different than it did a generation ago.”

What’s the cause of this crisis in the Episcopalians in the USA? Bill Boniface nailed it:

So what is it that’s behind this dangerous agenda? A radical agenda orchestrated by supposedly “gay rights” activists that seeks far more than just rights. Who in this congregation is not for equal rights for all people? Who in this congregation wants any among us to have fewer rights than us? I can tell you from experience that all those dioceses and parishes who are standing in opposition to the Episcopal Church’s new direction aren’t against those things. And I seriously doubt that any of us are.

But it’s not about equal rights. That’s simply the strategic sound-byte. It’s about taking human experience and desire, laying it up next to Holy Scripture, and asserting that it’s the Holy Scripture that’s in error and has been for these almost two thousand years.[3]

How does it happen? Read Boniface’s section on ‘Moving the Strategy into the Church’ and you’ll see how ‘the most liberal philosophy and the most “flexible” theology’ can take over The Episcopal Church and send the attendance figures plummeting.

When John Shelby Spong was the Episcopal bishop of Newark NJ, the Episcopalians of Spong’s diocese voted with their feet while he was bishop there. One report said that

The Episcopal Church, with due respect, has suffered declining membership since 1965. Spong has been the Episcopal Bishop of Newark since 1976. He has presided over one of the most rapid witherings of any diocese in the Episcopal Church. The most charitable assessment shows that Newark’s parish membership rolls have evaporated by more than 42 percent. Less charitable accountants put the rate at over 50 percent (Lasley 1999; Virtue 1999).

Could a similar liberal theological rot be affecting the UK Anglicans (as it is here in Australia, except for the Sydney diocese, some of the Melbourne diocese, and isolated churches around the country)?

D. Roots of liberal theology

Mike Ratliff has written an article in The Aquila Report (November 18, 2013) that asks: ‘What is the Root of Liberal Theology?’ Its subheading is, ‘Unbelief is the root of Liberal Theology. Never forget, the attacks we are witnessing in our day on our faith are coming from within the visible Church’.

See my articles:

clip_image006 Is liberal theology heresy? 
clip_image006[1]  Damning evidence against theological liberalism
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E. Theological liberalism in UK Anglicans: A scholar states it like it is –  liberalism supremo!

Emeritus Professor Paul Badham, has written of ‘The Anglican Liberal Tradition’ (April 2006), in which he makes these statements of its dynamics:

Liberalism has always existed within Anglicanism wearing different labels at different times: Latitudinarian, Broad Church, Modernist, Liberal, Radical
. More serious to traditional Christianity was liberal criticism of belief in original sin, substitution atonement or hell
.

More serious to traditional Christianity was liberal criticism of belief in original sin, substitution atonement or hell
.

The most widespread success of liberalism has been the near collapse of belief in hell. When disbelief in hell was pronounced as legal in 1864 almost half the clergy signed a petition to say they still believed in it. But preaching of hell fire has become very rare in contemporary Anglicanism and the doctrine was repudiated as incompatible with belief in the love of God in the Doctrine commission report The Mystery of Salvation in 1995.

On the doctrine of the atonement Bishop Stephen Sykes is right to say that ‘phrases and sentences’ associated with the older atonement beliefs are ‘the common coin of the Church’s worship’, but he also rightly notes that explanations of such language are ‘not obvious’. The problem is that theories of atonement in terms of a sacrifice by which God was placated, or of a bait through which the devil was deceived seem increasingly implausible.

However liberal theology offers an understanding of Jesus’ death which has become increasingly popular. This is that God was present in Jesus’ suffering on the cross and that this illustrates the way in which God shares in the sorrows of humanity. This understanding of the cross has been endorsed by the 1995 Church of England Doctrine Commission report on The Mystery of Salvation as the ‘only ultimately satisfactory response to evil.’

One further characteristic of liberal doctrine is that liberals believe that God has nowhere left himself without witness but has created all human beings with a yearning to feel after him and find him. Hence they believe that the logos of God which found expression in Christ was also at work in other religious leaders
.

Liberal Anglicans consistently supported the ordination of women to the priesthood and now support their consecration to the episcopate. In the case of homosexuals, liberals accept the empirical evidence that suggests that homosexuality is a natural state for certain people to find themselves in, and believe they should be allowed the same opportunity to find fulfilment in a stable relationship as heterosexuals enjoy.

Liberal Anglicans find it puzzling that a Church which was formerly in the van of theological and social reform and which played a key role in changing public attitudes should now find itself increasingly at odds with the beliefs and values of modern society.[4]

That is the kind of sickness that will decimate British Anglicans. This is the disease that will kill the Anglican Church and it is what George Carey should be addressing.

F. Theological liberalism in UK Anglicans: A new evangelical graduate experiences the sickness

How does Paul Badham’s liberal Anglican tradition work itself out with new Anglican graduates who are seeking a parish? This is what liberal Anglicanism is doing to evangelicals in that church.

An article in Mail Online (23 December 2013) gives a sample of the disease that has infected the Anglican Church. It seems to have come from a much earlier time. The article is titled: ‘Michael Howard’s son tells how liberal Anglicans have thwarted his ambition.

clip_image008Photo of Nick Howard, courtesy The Week. ‘The son of Tory MP Michael Howard, age 33, is an evangelical Christian who lives off the kindness of believers’.

I urge you to read this article in its entirety to get a feel for the virus that is infecting Anglicans in the UK. It starts:

The son of Michael Howard, the former Conservative Party leader, has spoken for the first time about his distress at being turned down for ordination by the Church of England.

Nick Howard, who completed a theology degree this summer, was not ordained because of his “unwillingness to listen” to other viewpoints.

He told The Mail on Sunday that his strongly held evangelical beliefs on homosexuality and multifaith worship marked him out as a “troublemaker” even though they reflect official Anglican doctrine.

During his three-year training at Cranmer Hall, a theological college attached to the University of Durham, Nick discussed his concerns with tutors but found little comfort in their “blase attitudes”. Fellow students, although often sympathetic to his orthodox views, did not want to incur the wrath of college authorities by speaking out.

Nick, however, quietly reinforced his views by refusing to take Communion at the college’s weekly Tuesday evening service. Instead he stayed in his pew, his head bowed in reflection.

“An ethics tutor at the college was saying publicly that you can be in a gay sexual relationship and follow Christ,” he explains. “That is incompatible with the teaching of the New Testament.”

Nick was also encouraged to accord equal spiritual value to Muslim, Sikh and Hindu religions in the name of “multifaith ministry”.

“As a Christian, I believe that Jesus died for Sikhs and Muslims, too,” he says, “so I long to share the good news with them so that they can be saved. It felt a bit awkward sitting there when everyone else was going up [for Communion] but I couldn’t physically have done anything else because I can’t pretend someone shares the same religion as me if, in reality, they don’t.”

Yet, as a result of this silent declaration of belief, 30-year-old Nick now finds himself ostracised from the Anglican Church he so desperately wants to be a part of.

At the end of his final year, a panel of tutors explained that his “unwillingness to listen” would make him an unsuitable vicar.

It was an extraordinary decision because Nick’s view – that gay people are welcome to belong to the Church if they remain celibate – is official Anglican teaching.

But many may feel that Nick’s defence of the basic tenets of Christianity should be welcomed by the Church. After all, woolly-mindedness in its beliefs has seen a huge decline in congregations, while the clear dictums of Islam have contributed to its rapid growth around the globe.[5]

Anglican Mainstream, an Anglican newspaper, addressed this issue back in 2006 when Nick Howard’s ordination was rejected. So this is intimating that the original article about Nick Howard’s rejection of ordination was in 2006. This online magazine’s assessment was:

The trouble is that unrepresentative and unorthodox views, especially on human sexuality and the uniqueness of Christ, have become mainstream in some circles of the Church of England. Even an evangelical institution like Cranmer Hall undoubtedly has a problem with this ‘slippage’. The presence of the widely-respected gay theologian, Michael Vasey, led inevitably to changes in the ethos of Cranmer Hall.

I suspect that if recent evangelical giants of yesteryear like John Stott, Michael Green, and Jim Packer were ordinands or prospective ordinands today they would also be accused of an ‘unwillingness to listen’.[6]

This is the kind of sickness that will kill the Anglican Church and it is what George Carey should really be addressing – BIG TIME!

G. Conclusion

When core doctrines of biblical Christianity, the Gospel content, and a high view of Scripture are abandoned, Nick Howard’s experience should become the norm. Theological liberals cannot tolerate evangelicals and evangelicals will not buy into the liberal agenda.

What is left for the picking? I can’t see any future than to let the liberal Anglican churches die and the evangelicals to do church planting of evangelical Anglican churches – probably under another name. Or, the evangelical Anglicans will migrate to another evangelical denomination.

The ‘Anglican Down Under’ website questions, ‘A Post Anglican Denomination Emerging in New Zealand?’ which involves evangelical Anglican clergymen from Australia. Churches have been planted in Auckland and Christchurch. The author of this article mentioned The Campus Church in Christchurch and stated that ‘Its current pastor I have heard in personal conversation describe himself as Anglican, but he has no formal relationship with the Bishop of Christchurch. Its site is here and I do not think you will find on it any sign as to whom the leadership of the church is accountable’. Is this the evangelical Anglicanism of the future in regions of liberal Anglican influence?

The ‘Reformed and Post-Anglican’ website has noted:

To the distress of the bishops of yet other, mostly Anglo-Catholic [Anglican], dioceses Sydney has offered a process of ‘affiliation’ to so-called independent Evangelical churches in their territories, sometimes so placed as to be in direct competition with a bona fide [Anglican] parish of the diocese.

Although the diocese has not formally planted these churches outside its diocesan boundaries, they have often been seeded by individual Sydney parishes in a wave of cross-borders incursions dating from the 1990s.[7]

The challenge is that of 1 John 4:1, ‘Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world’ (ESV). Liberal Anglicanism does not agree with Scripture in some prominent areas (see Paul Badham’s summary above), so it is promoting false teaching and needs to be corrected. If correction is refused, the churches need to be abandoned as liberal theology promotes a dangerous virus that is deadly to vital Christianity.

H. Works consulted

Lasley, D M 1999. Rescuing Christianity from Bishop Kevorkian, review of John Shelby Spong’s, Why Christianity Must Change or Die (online), Anglican Voice, June 2. Available at http://www.anglicanvoice.org/voice/spong0699.htm (Accessed 4 November 2001). On 23 December 2013, this article was no longer available at Anglican Voice, but was available at Virtue (1999).

Virtue, D 1999. Rescuing Christianity from Bishop Kevorkian – A Baptist looks at Spong (this is the review by Marty Lasley). Virtue Online (online), 2 June. Available at: http://listserv.virtueonline.org/pipermail/virtueonline_listserv.virtueonline.org/1999-June/000415.html (Accessed 23 December 2013).

I.  Notes


[1] Lewis Smith 2013. ‘Former archbishop Lord Carey attacks David Cameron for “aggressive secularism” in the Government’s approach to same-sex marriage’, The Independent (online), 30 March 2013. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/former-archbishop-lord-carey-attacks-david-cameron-for-aggressive-secularism-in-the-governments-approach-to-samesex-marriage-8554864.html (Accessed 23 December 2013).

[2] This article was published on 13 February 2005, VirtueOnline.org. Available at: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/print.php?storyid=2076 (Accessed 23 December 2013).

[3] Ibid.

[4] The article states that ‘Revd Prof Paul Badham is Emeritus Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David (Lampeter Campus) and a Modern Church Vice-president’.

[5] The date of publication of this article at the top of the article is given as 23 December 2013. However, the original publication date must have been ;prior to this as the article has this statement at its conclusion: ‘Nick Howard will be speaking on God and Politics at Lansdowne Baptist Church, Bournemouth, at the 6.30pm service on 1 October’. I can’t imagine that this is referring to 1 October 2014. There was an article title, ‘Michael Howard’s son turned down for ordination because of biblical views’ (online), The Daily Mail, 30 September 2006, available at EV News. Available at: http://www.evangelicals.org/news.asp?id=511 (Accessed 23 December 2013).

[6] Mainstream Anglican 2006. Serious issues over ordination (online), 5 October 2006. Available at: http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2006/10/05/serious-issues-over-ordination/ (Accessed 23 December 2013).

[7] This is the article, ‘Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism’ (online), August 29, 2011. Available at: http://reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/sydney-anglicans-and-threat-to-world.html (Accessed 23 December 2013).

Copyright © 2013 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 14 September 2021.