Anglican Unscripted 555 - The Paradox of Seminaries

welcome to another edition of Anglican unscripted episode 555 I am Kevin Coulson I'm George Conger I'm Darrin Ashenden it's the tenth Sunday it's a tenth of December 2019 second Sunday in Advent [Music] okay people viewers around the world our international audience we walk you back we know you're not all Anglicans that's funny we know you love us and we appreciate that and you like what we talked about with the news before we get started please share this program with your friends if you get a chance click on that like button when if you see it on Facebook or YouTube if you have not subscribed to the program now's your chance you're late to the game but right now if you're looking at YouTube you see that little red rectangle it says subscribe click it and then a bell will appear next to it click the bell and you will get instant notifications from what I hear that there's a new show posted gentlemen I think we're all back no we're not I'm back where I belong I'm in Connecticut George's back in his church in Florida Gavin you're not in England where are you oh I'm in Normandy and if it rains we're gonna lose the Internet almost instantly a lot of you said about for socialism in France and that would be one of my commentaries is and as a technology person yes the wires they're a bit loose so we'll make sure it's not raining you told me in the pre-show that I person maybe wot coming around you and cleaning while we're doing this the the maid is on site too if our audience can worst and my wife using the hair blower downstairs while we're going to show they can certainly handle a cleaning lady one of the great problems about my coming and going is that my my capacity if the domestic hygiene is highly intentioned but sub-optimally efficient and so wonderfully we have discovered IRA this I think the language iris like it iris needs employment and I need help so this means I can come and go without without causing domestic offence people one of things that happens to me because we have opened fires a lot of dust falls and my my story is it doesn't matter how much I just stopped in at the dust is in the air but the alternative view is I don't do it very well and we need a professional so we have my father wise and wise in many ways taught me earlier Kevin if you don't want to continue to have to do something don't do it well that don't really catch on to me until my first couple years in marriage when my wife and I split domestic responsibilities 50/50 and I didn't like dusting so I learned not to do it well and I wasn't asked to do it again and a few the choice choice chores I didn't want to do I just didn't do well and that's that served me well for 30 years now George welcome back to SEO to me and Kevin you know this from sharing hotels with me over the years oh my gosh that I am a rather bit of a neat freak and it bothers me that Kevin doesn't make his bed with Hospital corners in the morning when we reach our hotel room and that you know I would want to take a quarter and flip it and see if it bounced on the mattress whereas Kevin has got this lump of towels and clothing and sheet and socks and a plate with the pizza crust on it and I'm making room for the bud but the bedbugs we had in a Kenya you know I don't want to kick them off the bed they were such so in companions it was a bit of an odd couple feel Oscar so onto your back in America now George how was your time in st. Barts very nice very nice indeed glad to be back not really fully up to speed I have got back the end of last week and have been scheduling doctor's appointments ever since to slice and dice skin cancers and take blood pressures and all these things and my holiday in France was also a holiday from doctors and life responsibilities that's good alright let's move on to the news I think we covered our pre-show stuff first story breaking this week was Tory Belgium is no longer the rector of Truro in Virginia and this has kind of been an a completion to an ongoing story true true all through Tory Balcom had tried to maintain peace with the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia much the consternation of some people in the ACA and others around the world including ourselves the way it was handled and I thought we could talk a little bit about this first George what do we know well on Friday of last week the best REE released an email to the Congregation sanctuary Balcom was going to resign as rector and at bye years and he and his wife would be received into the Roman Catholic Church then there was the second statement as that allegations have been raised against him and an investigation has been launched that Torre Balcom will cooperate with then this Monday and then and this past weekend the Junior Warden read this letter plus an additional letter which we were given and posted on Monday saying that the vest that this is not this is not an instance of misconduct in the sense of sexual or anything like that but to paraphrase one of my sources the parish Tory was just an sob to his staff so I don't know you know there are plenty of SOPs in the ministry it's standing operating it's SOP standing operating procedure in some churches but the rector is a little king or tyrant but it's unfortunate that he's leaving under a cloud but Kevin I'd want to uh sort of stretch out what you said earlier it wasn't that Errol parish was cooperating with the Episcopal Church thank people cooperate all the time I cooperate with the synagogue and lots of stuff here in town rather they were seeking to launch joint joint training and teaching ventures with the bishop Diocese of Virginia so they were going beyond neighborliness to active cooperation and advancing a particular agenda and they didn't clear this with the bishop and they didn't clear this with the ACA and the attitude of Truro was well we're a rich parent with the attitude that came across whether rightly or fairly was we're a rich parish we can do what we want and if we're gonna do this we're gonna do this and so John Guernsey sort of squash this and sort of scaled the rebellion because Truro was acting as a semi Baptist congregation in its understanding of ecclesiology and now we have and now we're at this point people been writing letters complaining about Tory welcome because he doesn't do what they want well every church is people writing letters complaining shut ministers who don't do what they want so please don't hear us need to be saying that there is misconduct or he's a bad person Tory's on a faith journey and he pleased that this will lead him to the Roman Catholic Church but that's not really where you could be if you want to be an AC and a rector church or true we also have news over in England a couple news story first st. John's Seminary closings yes this isn't John's Nottingham when I was training to be a priest I said John's nodding was the if you went if you wanted guitars singing in tongues and and the prospect of of converting people to Jesus in in a high-octane charismatic way and a lot of people said well if if they've got the future right if the future looks like that this is the best place to train but if if the taps of the Holy Spirit don't stay on in the way they they appear to be in the 1970's then this will be disastrous because you'll be training people in ways that aren't particularly methodical deep profound and Anglican especially our Anglican so it's it's a number of it's interesting that Sir John's nodding off just folded at this point because the great vision for renewal that was the church they within the Church of England in that in the 1970s particularly driven by David Watson and a few other no man that West whatsit left because it appears to have left a whole range of seminaries that are full of feminism the relativism and and religion but they don't convert people they they their mission mainly is to is to soothe people that allow them to experience a bit of comforting spirituality and that's not going to save of the Church of England well where do the most bishops send their ordinance now in the Church of England there are so many different models are doing things the the bishop might refuse to let you go somewhere but he's unlikely to force you to go okay there's a new ordinance themselves partly choose and theological colleges do everything they can to attract people but if I can be narcissistic for a moment but there's auntie you know I got an e graph saying one more Cathedral it's selling its wares and in this case flogging it's it's pews we think you have views on on the mission of the Church of England and it's and it's cathedrals and would you like to say something so I did I gave him a fifteen minute lecture and so this is a context in which I'm making my remarks but that the phrase he chose to use was the Church of England run out of belief money and people it's good yeah no I think that's probably right the problem is that it doesn't have belief so this is this is coming back to theological colleges the the way in which people are trained is not to call a country back to Christ in a way that we were very comfortable with even twenty years ago the decade of evangelism but it's to offer some form of spiritual therapy so the theological ecology is are set up on that basic is the entire feminism frames if they subscribe listen well essentially they subscribe to Marxism rather than Jesus and this might sound a bit polemic but it's becoming more and more clear to me as time goes by that the really critical paradigm shift that's taken place in Christianity in England at any rate I think throughout the West is just moved from after power so so love in the Christian sense I think we should probably use the words holy compassion because otherwise love can mean sleeping with the person you like most but but holy compassion has been exchanged for power and and power in this sense means the redistribution of power from those who used to have it to those who are victims which sounds kind and caring and it's it draws on little bits of the prophecies of Isaiah and but but but in a utopian way and what the Church of England has done is to bought in by buying into feminism it's bought into power rather know it into dust other than holiness and that's why it mattered enormous me that the there aren't any theological colleges that are training people in in biblical apostolic Christianity they've gone over to this new zeitgeist narrative here in America at least we have in adoption of pantheism lavas love you know it's it's the God is the force from Star Wars and use the Force Luke is the way to get people encouraged enlightened and on to the work of the Lord and I we just had a story we've posted from Jeff Walton about a visit to the Diocese of Michigan from Presiding Bishop Michael Curry can you give us the details of that George northern Michigan but before we go there I want to press Gavin Gavin a bit more I think it's instructive that essentially as I understand you Gavin it's a marketplace for seminaries in other words the failure of st. John's is not that it had some scandal or or it was undercapitalized I assume most seminaries are undercapitalized but rather they couldn't compete in the marketplace and the marketplace in the Church of England was that ordinance are that the people coming forward are not those that are comfortable with the new wine movement or the charismatic renewal movement there are more corporatists and whatnot and you can you compare that situation to the United States where Pisco seminaries at our liberal and catholic either have closed or i think general general theological seminary which is was the flagship is the flagship has less than two dozen students whereas trinity seminary and other seminaries of that ilk are doing very well in an open marketplace and the IRD has done these studies of seminaries and Methodist Presbyterian Episcopal United Church of Christ seminaries that are on the liberal side are shutting down left and right whereas those that he-he'd to a more traditional Christian worldview are doing quite well so that the market you you made that you made the comment at in previous episode that the market place really doesn't apply to the English world or mindset whereas in the United States it really does seem to apply I think that's right and so why is the story different in the states in terms of the marketing of seminaries I think in in Anglican terms everywhere has become well defied so essentially that we used to have the angular Catholic the the muscular evangelical and the effete mid liberal middle we've lost the angular Catholics and Stevens house was a crack in having done with the University of Oxford who are trying to impose women celebrants on sin Stevens house and I thought well that's a terrible thing until I discovered they already have capitulated the the the one the most anglo-catholic college in the whole the Church of England already has a woman celebrant celebrating so I mean if you worry if you're truly an angular Cathy where earth would you go to train because they've already given in so the University of Oxford saying well okay you have one a week we'd like you to have three or four a week and one the poor portion Stevens house is faced with trying to decide on whether it goes independent from the University of Oxford over who decides the rotor for how many women celebrant a week I mean it's a terrible situation to be a so anyway the angular Catholics are have have effectively diminished to the point of of being cost cosmetically integrated into Church of England the muscular they be just Anglican they have a great deal of trouble persuading the rest of the Church of England that that though killed their Anglican in any meaningful sense so all you have in the middle then is this liberalism the reason why it's surviving is that for as long as there is money to train people they will go to those places there isn't anywhere else that that mixed economy of anglicanism allowed for a cross fertilization of different models of holiness has given way to a bland feminized liberalized spirituality and so for a long as any money at all they their bills are paid Gavin is there in the United States we're seeing a phenomenon of old fear ordinance I was probably in that lay I was in my late 20s and I was a little bit older than some of the other students three or four years older when I went to seminary and I think mine was the last generation of people who went straight into seminary after maybe a year or two work I'd had five years seven years of employment after college before I went to seminary and that that model of residential training for three years was designed in an age at a time where there were single men who could uproot themselves spent three years in at place and live frugally and now when you're in your 50s and starting ordination you have family you have children and so for instance in our diocese we have people trained who are in that plot place they trained for two years at a Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando which is a reformed Presbyterian place and then go off for a year of Anglican finishing school either to the show to house or what another place because the model of ordination has changed we have these second career third career people is that affecting the Church of England's sort of model of theological education enormous ly in my lifetime we moved from the model that you described George which was mine - I remember when I was sat down and said my advisor I I've trained and qualified as a lawyer I'd like to go to the bar for 10 years and become a grown-up professional and then give myself to the church my early thirties he said no no we want you to go now sacrifice your career for the church and and and you know we'll put you on a fast track to to have experience well the next thing that happened was they changed the model completely but effectively what's happened is it seems to me the Church of England's turned into a kind of rather like a religious ply primary school pride primary here is sort of from from ages 3 to 11 and what you have in particular is is large large groups of ladies who in their mid 40s decide they want to be religious primary school or other they won't be clergy but but in the primary school model in the same way that primary schools became completely feminized or no men in there whatsoever that they're that they're run entirely by my big gated middle-aged ladies mature opting messy Church for example has become a form of religious extended primary school run by part-time very well-meaning middle-aged ladies doing self seeking spirituality and religion but this is this is not the church and it Endon and nor is it a place where a wide range of people feel comfortable because it's a very distinctive kind of ethos so so we are I think it's one of the things that has contributed to the to the very rapid demise of the Church of England and what used to be an immensely rich spirituality do you think it has any to do with the feminization of the truth the absence of men in the pews yeah I met there very well I would say there very few working-class men who can walk into any Church of England parish and look up and see somebody who may identify with it was always beautiful I used to go into the pub I used to gather men together so I'm gonna get in it particularly as in terms of Vickers who were seen as being rather limp wristed wristed and of questionable levels of hormone facility and so you know the men would test you to see whether you actually a half-decent man of any kind that they could trust one of them essentially and until he proved yourself to be one of them they wouldn't pay any attention they wouldn't offer you any respect and that's complete that's disappeared entirely with the homosexual ization of the church and the feminism of the church whether there are huge sways of of ordinary and by that don't just mean masculine but I mean wider wider vistas of of sociological profile that are completely untouched and the do trouble is that the Christianity religion is always in despite the fact people complain the patriarchy be running it religion has always in terms of a psychological profile of the Minette bactrim so the problem is at the moment you lose the balance you go totally feminine and I think a total either has it means that evangelism is very difficult and this this is one thing I've never quite understood about the English scene compared to the American scene it's in essence the absence of religiosity among if you will the Tommy Robinson types of in the United States people people just assume that the Conservatives are members of the religious right that that there's a faith component and that people like Franklin Graham who it's not a minister but he's a faith leader he's a layman he has a conservative voice and he is a religious presence and that is non existent as far as I can tell in England I think let me take a risk and tell you a story oh hi Tommy went to see me and I went to see your brother broke up right you broke up for a second if you want to repeat that right the sentence again a while ago Tommy Robinson asked to see me and I went to see him and and I just I did I had one shot to evangelize him and so in the context of our conversation I said you're doomed unless you turn to Christ and you turn to Christ I will help you in your turning to Christ but if you don't turn to Christ you're you know nothing you stand for because because there is a disparity between what he appears to stand for the demonization of the press and what he really is which is something rather different but I said unless you turn to Christ I'm here to help you do that at that mine that's my my sole concern is is to help you have a relationship with God so that what you want to do to society is transformed by Christ anyway it's like Christians you're you are wet you are weak he gave me a kind of Nietzschean rant effectively he didn't know his nature he was channelling but but it was and he said the only people I respect any Christians I respect other are Polish clergy a Polish Roman Catholic clergy and he said if you were like polish Roman Catholic clergy I'd give you more time of day I argued with him I asked if I could pray over him and a week later I saw a YouTube clip where he said this this religious nutter bishop came to see me and tried to make me a Christian but he failed so what happened about what is it about a Polish Catholic clergyman that would appeal to that did the man and the white land in England well the interesting thing is it it's it would be a kind of Christianized version of Islam because actually although also respected because it is muscular it's powerful its authoritarian its confrontational it doesn't compromise and there's something about of the white van man but would be or X football hooligan the respects that level of muscular potentially violent ways of doing life but the neat but but for him that would need to be something between your your tough Muslim terrorist and your limp wrist and and and your yeah your part-time lady your part-time lady Vika so the part-time lady Vika doesn't do it the full-time man Vika doesn't do it the Roman Catholic priest standing in doing a little laser whatever against his respect but anything short of that doesn't I don't know the way to I tried it well I think when it's time for a few martyrs in the Church of England that the blood should flow so that the faith clogs but that's easy for me to say it is easy for you to say George I expect the Lord may provide it well you have an election coming up too right I have a what in the election summon an election yes well you're in France and so there's a translation is she going on between my microphone in your ears but to Boris or not to Boris to brexit or not to brexit seems to be some a issue that will be decided within 48 hours and there's lots of information and disinformation and typical campaigning going on what's the latest backing up I've I've kept out of politics in most of my life mainly mainly because I was so fed up with a bunch of left-wing colleagues never never stopping to offer religion and and the whole cultural progressive agenda as part of their sermons but I've given up keeping out of religion out of politics because I think I think things have changed I think the the agenda of the progressive left is so anti-semitic and so anti-christian that it's entirely proper for a Christian to stand against them it that doesn't mean one necessarily is Pro conservative in any way that the left and the right are not there they're not symmetrical opposites by any means one can want to keep certain values in society that have worked for its mental and political and financial hygiene and at the same time want some very valuable safety the poor and the weak and the vulnerable are taken care of there isn't an obvious place in the political spectrum to express that kind of of mix but at the moment anything could happen and we could either find ourselves left with a hung parliament that continues this dreadful political impotence and fostered rage between the right on the left or Boris could win by a landslide and and nobody has any idea at all I I just you know I I have no doubt at all that if the Left win they will do what they always do which is take us further into debt at a point where the whole Western world is on a knife edge of having the debt bluff called and banks and institutions fold under under pressure so the thought of making ourselves more vulnerable to that it's really quite ending in this mix cavern of a hyper politicized life in England we had a little story where the Bishop of Sheffield will compete Wilcox put out a pastoral letter that in an inning in a very English using double negatives and it's insinuation says don't you dare cooperate with the Franklin Graham crusade the Franklin Graham is controversial and in the end in looking at some Facebook groups the comprising of English conservative evangelicals they were all saying yes Franklin Graham is a bad person because he supports Donald Trump and all this and that and if he took their American counterparts I think he would have a almost a complete mirror opposite what's wrong with Franklin Graham in the English worldview that would cause a bishop to go out of his way and say don't cooperate with this Seyed I think that the third thing is the view we presented in English Christian culture and Anglicanism anglicanism has moved a very long way to the left it's the interpreter politically correct culture it breathes it exudes it through all its pause all the all the bishops subscribe to more bishops subscribe to politically correct culture than subscribe to the resurrection it's but it's not just that the the the whole of our society and culture has moved drastically to the left in the last 10 years and one we could argue how that came about on what does it but but it means that people who used to be really quite moderate politically are deeply right-wing and so you know if Billy Graham himself came to to do a mission back from back from the dead the values that he came with in the 1960s and 70s would be deemed to be so far a riot of in fact another well I you know believed the Billy Graham foundation hasn't changed English culture and English bishops and Anglicanism has I'm thinking Lee to the left you know we just claimed him to be a phobic you know phobia this phobia that phobia this you know that's kind of what's been happening in our culture is it's not just not to like it but you have to proclaim that the other side hates and Christians hate and Jesus hates and people like Franklin and Billy Graham hate now Franklin doesn't do himself a lot of favors but it's benign I this greatest context and it's sort of funny because as he's being beaten up by the left and England Franklin Graham is being beaten up by the right in America because he's saying give chick-fil-a's leadership a few days a week to explain themselves give him the benefit of the doubt and so here the poor man is getting it both directions from people who saying chick-fil-a will never go back because there's sell out to the leftist worldview and then the leftist worldview as represented by English Bishops saying qín grandis is beyond the pale we can't have this man in our town with an old place of giveth considerable anxiety in terms of polarization I've just finished reading Douglas Murray's of madness of crowds and if you really really want to frighten yourselves read the last chapter on trans the level of the level of psychotic collective madness we have got into appears to be something we can't turn back from as a society it's gonna get worse George now I suspect you're right on that I mean feminism has lost two transgenders and it's it's interesting to watch the only living feminists alive today are the those who oppose transgenderism who figure out wait a minute or if there's no gender there's no feminism and I have nothing to speak for so you know we'll have to watch how that plays out over the next six years but I think at this point the pendulum is really swung and especially at the university level people are losing rights left in left and right to transgenderism and the there is no gender caucus I did want it before we end here talk about Northern Michigan with the visit Presiding Bishop Michael Curry George what's the latest news there oh the presiding bishop did is on his goddess love tour or Love Wins I forget its exact name any way of love and he took it to a northern Michigan and Jeff Walton of the ir ID wrote a really great story essentially Michael Curry gave his regular stump speech but it was framed by the liturgy put together by the Diocese of Northern Michigan that begins by saying creator Redeemer and sustainer which is I think they called modal astute for Father Son and Holy Spirit to not using scripture but poems for gospel readings and using the prayer book for New Zealand the really artsy fartsy one for the for the prayers so it's substituting that the Lord's Prayer for instance with a New Zealand prayer that begins said of our Father who art in heaven you say eternal spirit earth maker pain bearer life giver source of all that is and that shall be father and mother of us all loving God and whom is heaven as Jeff Walton points out this is all about narcissism this is not about Christianity or God or Jesus it's not it's religious and narcissism in theism I definitely to tell you in brackets I spent 15 years writing liturgies like that really I really I really really did I didn't change the Gospels for poems but but that kind of stuff it flowed out of me I was good at it but I had to repent because they rightly said it was narcissism the and know that a little bit of history here about 15 years ago Steve roaring and I beliving Church broke a story about a bishop elect who was a priest of the Diocese of Northern Michigan was also a practicing Zen Buddhist priest and in his parish he had done some innovations like dropping the Creed's and and all this and that and for the first time in maybe a hundred odd years a bishop was turned down by the House of Bishops this is what before the mark Lawrence and the Gene Robinson styling may not have been around Jean Robson but nonetheless he was turned down but because he was theologically not on the up-and-up and life goes on and the theology that this man was espousing 15 years ago is now the mainstream in the diocese of northern Michigan which has less than 700 members on average in church on Sunday we took began the show talking about rural parish and that has more than 700 people one parish has more than 700 people than this whole diocese does on Sunday Turo parish is going to pull out of this it's going to be just fine they just had to clean house and get their act together but I'm afraid that the Death Watch is it has begun for so much of the Episcopal Church typify by places like than michigan sure well we talked last week about you know kind of the death watching in Canada the Episcopal Church is not going to be far behind they have obviously Trinity Wall Street money I got to walk by turn to you all street the other day still has this money doing a big renovation on the inside so we'll have to see what happens in the long term there guys let's talk quickly about our schedules we got Christmas and holy weeks Christmas week coming up I are we able to tape on Thursday or Friday this week or you want to do something next week I can't a yeah I'm fine I'm typing I'm trying it back tomorrow so our election is on Thursday I might be I think I'm planning up to watch it to play on what it or I don't know if I'll be able to go to bed otherwise but yes we could we can find a date yeah actually Peter old and I did a livestream with the last the brexit vote maybe we'll do something like that again as the the vote happens in kind of funny do Ethan is young and vigorous and he loves stats and numbers he he's a he's fun to have on the program all right gentlemen another great show I'm Kevin Coulson I'm George Conger I'm Gavin Ashton and you've been listening to episode 555 what are we going to do and we get to 666 of Anglican unscripted complications you

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Length: 37min 59sec (2279 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 10 2019