What does the C of E have to offer the next generation?
This is a invitee weblog post by Matthew Kirkpatrick, who teaches at Wycliffe Hall and at the Academy of Oxford.
The Westminster Religion Debate series concluding fall on 'The Time to come of the Church of England' finished with a session on 'What does the Church of England offering the next generation?' And no more than important topic could perhaps exist chosen as numbers in the church continue to dwindle. The panel was made up of well-known figures inside the church including Diarmaid MacCulloch, Vicky Beeching, Rosie Harper, and Christina Rees. Although the contend was not designed to be representative of the diverse voices across the Church of England, many of the themes touched upon would have received broad sympathy.
Without wishing to oversimplify their words, the four central themes were as follows: (1) the church must seek forgiveness for its guilt in having remained silent in the confront of injustice (in this instance, to the homophobic deportment of some in the Anglican Communion); (2) the ecclesial reigns must be handed to the youth to discern the shape and content of their hereafter church, without the prejudices of the older generation limiting their vision; (3) the church building must strip abroad the 'religious' elements of its life that stand every bit a barrier to the next generation in terms of what they tin can relate to and find meaningful; (4) and finally, whilst retaining its symbolically of import cathedrals, individual churches should meet in people'south houses and relinquish their former buildings which are both financially and missionally crippling, joining perhaps fifty-fifty with other denominations to encounter the needs of the community.
Each of these penetrating visions offers the church a rightful challenge that it must respond. However, what I found hitting, and this will belie unashamedly my own academic training, is that each of these independent concerns sit at the heart of the prison theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, murdered in Flossenbürg prison for his function in the German language resistance. Written at the crescendo of the Second Earth War, Bonhoeffer'south circumstances were markedly different from those of us sitting comfortably in the grandeur of Oxford's Academy Church. However, each panellist had unwittingly picked up on one of the major themes that Bonhoeffer addresses.
As Bonhoeffer surveyed Europe from his prison prison cell, the guilt of the church was all likewise apparent. The church had failed to speak up for the voiceless and counter the injustice that information technology saw all effectually. Information technology had lost itself in its own theology, crippled past its affidavit of the condition quo and the autonomous rights of the state, and rendered woefully unprepared past years of inactivity. Withal, it had also constructed a course of "religion" that failed to recognise the changing needs and identity of the people it claimed to minister to. While in his youth this was possibly limited to the predominantly bourgeois church's failure to engage with the proletariat, so now it gained definition in the structures of its life that it required people to adapt to for faith and fellowship to be received. Bonhoeffer summarizes both of these actions under a single guilt: that the church had fought for its own survival. It had not only kept its head under the parapet in the face up of danger, merely in the confront of a world that was irresolute and becoming more mature, it had belligerently insisted upon forms and structures to its cultic life that made it not simply distinctive but also essential. Bonhoeffer was non trying to eliminate specific elements of a church'south liturgical or communal life, just rather to ask honestly, what exercise preaching, liturgy, community and church life more than generally await like in a "religionless Christianity." What are the essential elements of religion in Christ, and what just the hoops of an outdated institution?
As a response to this guilt, Bonhoeffer argued that the church of his generation had lost the right to speak in the proper name of Christ. Similar the Hebrews wandering in the wilderness, his generation could non enter to promised land. They must confine themselves to prayer and acts of justice. It is rather for the side by side generation, as yet untarnished, to re-establish the church in a new fashion, with a new language that will be shocking, peradventure, but also liberating and redeeming—as information technology was when Christ spoke. When Bonhoeffer considered what the church might await like he argued that it must "share in the problems of secular life," and peradventure even requite its possessions to those in need, to live and work at the heart of the community and be sustained by it. However, every bit the body of Christ, its identity could simply be established by beingness "for others."
The importance of bringing Bonhoeffer into the discussion is non merely to point out curious similarities, or even just to suggest that Bonhoeffer'southward vision remains relevant to the church (which I think it is). Information technology is rather to allow Bonhoeffer to question the positions that bear something of his image. What was very noticeable in the panellists' presentations was that no i actually engaged with the precise question beingness discussed—what does the Church of England offer the next generation—not what information technology should, could, or might practise. So much energy was spent on saying what was wrong with the church building that nil was left to say what was correct. With one panellist suggesting that in their reforms "everything'due south upwardly for grabs," the question must be "What does it hateful to exist the Church of England?" "How much can exist changed before it loses its essential identity?" Bonhoeffer did not have time before he died to give examples of what he might consider "religious" elements that could exist struck from church exercise. Nonetheless, at the centre of his theology lies the notion that cutting abroad dead elements from something and redefining its limits is non so much to focus on what is wrong with it, simply rather on what is essentially right, in order to bring it back to life. So what is this for the Church of England? Why should the next generation exist Anglican, as opposed toanother denomination that may already answer the panellist'south criticisms much meliorate?
Information technology is doubtless crucial for the Church of England to reconsider its course and presentation, but information technology cannot do this until it has established what its essential cadre actually is, and fabricated every endeavour to communicate and inspire the side by side generation to its identity. Unfortunately, many of the panellists remained and so unified on their desire for radical change, that the real contend virtually what this cadre might really exist rarely reared its head. So is at that place something most the church'due south liturgy and worship, its construction and communion, its history and heritage that remains of import? If so, is the radical task not to discard these in the name of modernisation, but to excite those to whom they appear foreign? Several times during the proceedings, the discrepancy between the beliefs and opinions of the clergy and those of the laity were noted—evidence once more of a church that is lost to its academics and fatally disjointed from its people. But is the radical job, therefore, to give the church up to the people, or to inspire those same people about the riches, dynamism, and truthfulness of the doctrines and Scriptures that lie behind it?
As the church considers its future, ane affair is certain: information technology must not fight for its ain survival. Perhaps it will have the strength to realise that there is, actually, nothing distinctive almost it that trulyneeds preserving amongst the denominations, and will show the greatest sacrifice for others by facilitating its own demise. Or, perhaps, it will understand that there is something well-nigh the Church of Englandas the Church building of England that is important— something that is not worth fighting for in itself, but which is so crucial to its illuminating truth, so essential to its gospel message, and so intuitive to its mission, that information technology becomes the foundation of its fighting "for others." Merely have we given up on this job? Doubtless reform is needed. Just what is the core on which it must exist founded? Are we then articulate on our own ideas of what needs irresolute that we tin no longer see what doesn't? Perhaps nosotros still need to ask: Whatdoes the Church of England offering the next generation?
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