In this column

 
Main List
Supplementary List

Introductory

 

Profiles below

 

Great St Mary's Church, Cambridge: Jutta Brueck (Vicar), Ally Barrett (Associate Vicar)

Andrew Davison, Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford

Simon Jones, Chaplain, Merton College, Oxford
Michael Dormandy, Ripon College Cuddesdon

Beth Keith, Ripon College Cuddesdon and St

Mark's Church, Broomhill, Sheffield
Oliver Keenan, Ripon College Cuddesdon

Dagmar Winter, Acting Bishop, Diocese of Ely
Dr Cathy Rhodes, St John's Eco-Church, Sheffield, Diocesan Environment Officer
Alex Hughes, Archdeacon of Cambridge
Mark Smith, Dean, Clare College, Cambridge

Rick Stordy, Vicar, St John the Evangelist, Sheffield

David Whitehead, Associate Minister, St John the Evangelist, Sheffield

James Blandford-Baker, Rural Dean, Northstowe
Jonathan Collis, Rector, St Botolph's Church, Cambridge

Jane Patterson, Christ Church, Fulwood, Sheffield
Adam Innes, Eyam Parish Church, Derbyshire

 

 

More profiles to be added, when ready. For my policy on profiles, including circumstances in which I would remove profiles, see my page   About this site,' the section 'The profiles published on the site.'

Diocese of Oxford, select functionaries

 

The Main List

 

Adam AKM Tutor, New Testament Greek Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Aldred Sophie Departmental lecturer Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Allen Andrew Chaplain Exeter College Oxford
Alison-Glennie Elizabeth Chaplain Regent’s Park College Oxford
Apetrei Sarah Senior Tutor/Fellow Campion Hall Oxford
Atherstone Andrew Professor, Modern Anglicanism Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Atkins Sarah Chaplain Magdalene College Cambridge
Austin Nicholas Faculty member Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Ayres Lewis Professor, Catholic/historical Theology Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Bacon Julie Associate Archdeacon Transition Enabler Diocese Sheffield
Banner Michael Dean Trinity College Cambridge
Barlow Matt Chief Executive Officer Church Army Sheffield
Barrett Ally Dean of Chapel St Catherine’s College Cambridge
[Barrett] [Ally] Associate Vicar Great St Mary’s Church Cambridge
Baun Jane Chaplain Wadham College Oxford
Billings Alan Canon Diocese Sheffield
Blyth Myra Tutor, Liturgy/Pastoral Theology Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Bockmuehl Markus Professor, Exegesis Holy Scripture Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Boniface Tim Chaplain Girton College Oxford
Borthwick Kirsty Chaplain Christ Church Oxford
Bowyer Andrew Chaplain Magdalene College Oxford
Boxall Ian Senior Tutor/ Tutor New Testament Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Brueck Jutta Vicar Great St Mary’s Church Cambridge
Brush Sarah Tutor, Pastoral Theology Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
[Brush] [Sarah] Director, Context Based Pathway Ripon College Cuddesdon
Burette Stephanie Chaplain Corpus Christi College Oxford
Byers Andrew Affiliated lecturer Faculty of Divinity Cambridge
Caddick Jeremy Chaplain Emmanuel College Cambridge
Carnegie Rachel Chaplain All Souls College Oxford
Chaffey Jane Chaplain Wycliffe Hall Oxford
Chamberlain Malcolm Archdeacon, Sheffield and Rotherham Diocese Sheffield
Chapman Mark Professor, History of Modern Theology Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Cherry Stephen Dean King’s College Cambridge
Clark Sarah Acting Bishop Diocese Durham
[Clark] [Sarah] Acting Bishop Diocese Durham
Clifford Hywel Tutor, Old Testament Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
[Clifford] [Hywel] Tutor, Old Testament Ripon College Cuddesdon
Clifton Bruno Vice Regent Blackfriars Hall Oxford
Collis Jonathan Rector St Botolph Cambridge
Conrad Richard Fellow Blackfriars Hall Oxford
Cooper Nigel Chaplain to the Chapel Churchill College Cambridge
Cresswell Rachel Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Crockford James Dean of Chapel Jesus College Cambridge
Croft Steven Bishop Diocese Oxford
Crossley James Professor, New Testament studies Faculty of Divinity Cambridge
Crozier William Professor, Franciscan Studies Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Davies Emma Canon Precentor Diocese Leicester
Davison Andrew Canon, Regius Professor, Divinity Christ Church Oxford
De Haan Daniel Lecturer, Catholic Philosophy/Theology Blackfriars, Campion Hall Oxford
Dean Rebecca Lecturer, New Testament Ripon College Cuddesdon
Dochorn Jan Associate Professor, New Testament Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Dormandy Michael Lecturer, New Testament Ripon College Cuddesdon
Dunlop Sarah Lecturer in Practical Theology Faculty of Divinity Cambridge
Dyer Jonny Vicar Christ Church Sheffield
Edmonds Stephen Associate Archdeacon Transition Enabler Diocese Sheffield
Eyons Keith Chaplain Downing College Cambridge
Fenton Nicky Archdeacon, Sheffield and Rotherham Diocese Derbyshire
Ferguson David Regius Professor, Divinity Faculty of Divinity Cambridge
Fiddes Paul Professor, Systematic Theology Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Finnemore Tom Anglican Rector, Team Leader STC Sheffield
Foot Sarah Regius Professor, Ecclesiastical History Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Forshew-CainAndrew
Chaplain Lady Margaret Hall Oxford
Fox Peter Bishop’s Advisor, Deliverance Ministry Diocese Leicester
Gardner Lucy Tutor in Christian Doctrine St Stephen’s House Oxford
Gathercole Simon Professor, NT and Early Christianity Faculty of Divinity Cambridge
Gatiss Lee Director, Church Society Watford
Gaunt Adam Trustee Prayer Book Society Reading
Gilbert Mike Associate Archdeacon Transition Enabler Diocese Sheffield
Goddard Andrew Assistant Minister St James the Less, Pimlico London
Goodill David Lector Blackfriars Hall Oxford
Graham-HydeEdd
Senior Researcher Church Army Sheffield
Green Marcus Chaplain Worcester College Oxford
Gregory Andrew Chaplain University College Oxford
Guiliano Zachary Chaplain St Edmund Hall Oxford
Habibi Arzhia Chapel Director Somerville College Oxford
Hammond Cally Dean Gonville and Caius College Cambridge
Hampton Stephen Dean Peterhouse Cambridge
Harbridge Philip Chaplain Jesus College Cambridge
Harrison Carol Profesor, Divinity Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Heim Erin Tutor, Biblical Studies Wycliffe Hall Oxford
Him Pui Affiliated lecturer Faculty of Divinity Cambridge
Hone Ed Dean St Edmunds Colllege Cambridge
Hordern Joshua Professor, Christian Ethics Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Howe Anthony Rector St James, Garlickhythe London
Howells Edward Associate Tutor, Christian Spirituality Ripon College Cuddesdon
Howles Timothy Research Fellow, Political Theology Campion Hall Oxford
Hupfield Hannah Associate Archdeacon Transition Enabler Diocese Sheffield
Johnson Victoria Dean of Chapel St John’s College Cambridge
Johes Simon Chaplain Merton College Oxford
Jones Anna Chaplain Queens College Cambridge
Kalayci Suzan Chaplain St Hilda’s College Oxford
Keenan Oliver Academic Dean, Christian Doctrine Ripon College Cuddesdon
Keith Beth Vicar St Mark’s Church Sheffield
[Keith] [Beth] Associate teaching staff Ripon College Cuddesdon
Kells Mary Chaplain King’s Colege Cambridge
Kempson Emily Lecturer in Theology and Ministry Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Kilby Karen Professor of Catholic Theology Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Kinsey Bruce Associate Faculty Member Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Knights Chris Bishop of Durham’s Chaplain Diocese Durham
Kramer Max Chpplain Keble College Oxford
Lakey Michael Associate Faculty Member Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Lamb William Vicar University Church Oxford
Lawton Theresa Trustee Prayer Book Society Reading
[Lawton] Theresa Canon Missioner Diocese Winchester
Ling Tim Director, Organisational Development Church Army Sheffield
[Ling] [Tim] Oversight, Research Unit Church Army Sheffield
Lloyd Michael Principal Wycliffe Hall Oxford
Longfellow Erica Chaplain New College Oxford
Macdonald Claire Chaplain Harris Manchester College Oxford
Macfarlane Elizabeth Chaplain St John’s College Oxford
Marshall Melanie Chaplain Balliol College Oxford
Maude Trish Honorary Lay Chaplain Homerton College Oxford
McLaughlin Eleanor Lecturer in Theology Ripon College Cuddesdon
Muir Alex Lecturer in New Testament Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Mulcock Nathan Chaplain Mansfield College Oxford
Murray Paul Professor of Systematic Theology Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Muthalay Saju Bishop of Loughborough Diocese Leicester
Najman Hindy Professor, Interpretation Holy Scripture Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Newman Daniel Trustee Prayer Book Society Reading
O’ Connor John Regent Blackfriars Oxford
O’ Donnell Karen Diretor of Studies Westcott House Cambridge
Oermann Nils Ole Associate Faculty Member Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Ofula Kenneth Tutorial Fellow, World Christianity Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Ortiz Daniel Researcher (Qualitative) Church Army Sheffield
Percy Martyn Ex-Dean Christ Church Oxford
Perry Simon Chaplain Robinson College Cambridge
Pickersgill James Bishop’s Chaplain Diocese Leicester
Pinsent Andrew Associate Faculty Member Harris Manchester College Oxford
Plant Stephen Dean and Chaplain Trinity Hall Cambridge
Plyming Philip Dean Diocese Durham
Popham Faye Associate Director, Org’al Learning Church Army Sheffield
Pound Marcus Associate Professor of Theology Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Rasmussen Joel Associate Faculty Member Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Rex Richard Professor of Reformation History Faculty of Divinity Cambridge
Rhodes Matthew Vicar St John’s Church Sheffield
Riordan Patrick Tutor and Fellow, Catholic Social Thought Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Robinson Arabella Dean of Chapel Newnham College Cambridge
Robinson Peter Dean Diocese Derby
Rooms Karen Dean Diocese Leicester
Ross Alastair Pastoral Advisor Kellogg College Oxford
Routledge Matthew Chaplain St Peter’s College Oxford
Rowlands Anna Professor, Catholic Social Thought … Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Rutter Mike Senior Leader Network Church Sheffield
Scamman Pete Associate Vicar Christ Church Sheffield
Shamel Andy Chaplain Lincoln College Oxford
Sheen David Chaplain Brasenose College Oxford
Simpson Rick Archdeacon, Auckland Diocese Durham
Smith Mia Chaplain Hertford College Oxford
Smith Mark Dean Clare College Oxford
Smith Mark Dean Clare College Cambridge
Snape Michael Professor of Anglican Studies Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Snow Martyn Bishop Diocese Leicester
Southern Humphrey Principal Ripon College Cuddesdon
Stebbing Chris Associate Archdeacon Transition Enabler Diocese Sheffield
Steele Harry Chaplain to Bishop of Sheffield Diocese Sheffield
Stevenson Graham Chaplain Fitzwilliam College Cambridge
Strauss Anne Chaplain Trinity College Cambridge
Strawbridge Jennifer Associate Professor, New Testament Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Summers John Chaplain Trinity College Cambridge
Swyer Rebecca Trustee Prayer Book Society Reading
Teal Andrew Chaplain Pembroke College Oxford
Terry Justyn Vice-Principal, Academic Dean Wycliffe Hall Oxford
Tomlinson John Senior Researcher Church Army Sheffield
Tupling Katie Chaplain St Hugh’s College Oxford
Turner Victoria Lecturer in Theology and Mission Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford
Upton Julie Associate Archdeacon Transition Enabler Diocese Sheffield
Wainwright Robert Chaplain Oriel College Oxford
Ward Peter Professor of Practical Theology Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Warner Martin Trustee Prayer Book Society Reading
Watkins Clare Professor, Conversations … Project Dept of Theology/Religion Durham
Watson Alice Chaplain Queen’s College Oxford
Westhaver George Principal Pusey House Oxford
Wier Andy Research Team Leader Church Army Sheffield
Wilcox Pete Bishop Diocese Sheffield
Wilkinson Libby Archdeacon, Diocese Durham
Winter Dagmar Acting Bishop, Ely Diocese Ely
Wood Claire Archdeacon, Diocese Leicester
Worsfold Richard Archdeacon Diocese Leicester
Wright N T Senior Research Fellow Wycliffe Hall Oxford
Zachhuber Johannes Professor, Historical/Systematic Theology Faculty of Theology/Religion Oxford

 

Supplementary List

 

The Supplementary List contains the names of individuals / Churches / Church organizations added after publication of the Main List. The information here will be added  to the Main List at intervals.

 

James Blandford-Baker, Rural Dean, Northstowe Deanery
Rick Stordy, Vicar, St John the Evangelist, Sheffield
David Whitehead, Associate Minister, St John the Evangelist, Sheffield

Dr Cathy Rhodes, St John's Eco-Church, Sheffield, Diocesan Environment Officer

Alex Hughes, Archdeacon of Cambridge
Jonathan Collis, Rector, St Botolph's Church, Cambridge

Jane Patterson, Christ Church, Fulwood, Sheffield

Adam Innes, Eyam Parish Church, Derbyshire

 

Introductory

 

In this section, challenges to some contemporary Christians, the ones listed below, presumably  'New Creations,' all of them or most of them, people who have a relationship with Christ which qualifies them for eternal life, not eternal separation from God.  (The list will be revised and extended).

 

What is their view of the people shown in the images in the first part of the column to the left, men, women, children and babies? The first image, of a slave, is indeterminate. It's not known if the slave shown was a Christian or non-Christian. None of the people shown in the other images in the section are in the least likely to have been 'New Creations.' Most of them are Jews. Are they eternally separated from the God worshipped by Christians?

 

In my page Church Donations  I comment on my claim that orthodox Christianity, Biblical Christianity, in fact all forms of Christianity have nothing to say about any age limit for redemption. Is there an age below which a person can't be consigned to eternal separation from God - to eternal Hellfire, in some forms of Christianity, still current?

 

In the column to the left, after images of people not qualified for salvation, probably all of them, according to the Christian criteria for salvation, there are images of people who do seem to qualify, all of them believers in Christ as Saviour, it seems: repulsive, horrific 'New Creations.'  Are they really redeemed, unlike the people shown in the first section, or are the doctrines which suppose that they are redeemed unfit for purpose, repulsive and horrific doctrines which no person with any sense or any compassion could possibly share?

 

What do the people who are listed think?


Profiles of, comments on, people highlighted in the list above

 

Great St Mary's Church, Cambridge: Jutta Brueck (Vicar) and Ally Barrett (Associate Vicar)

 

 

From the Church's Website:

 

'Great St Mary's is an open and inclusive Christian community in pursuit of Truth. Our foundations were laid in 1010, and we have been the University Church since 1209. We are a spiritual home for the University and the City of Cambridge, a Church of England parish in the Diocese of Ely ... '

 

Is Great St Mary's Church really 'open?' Is Jutta Brueck, the Vicar, 'open?' She writes that she was Chaplain at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Has she ever been 'open' about her Christian beliefs concerning redemption, in a Sermon, in a publication? Would she be willing to put her belief on record? Perhaps, or perhaps not.

 

So, a few very direct questions. The same direct questions can be directed to the 'open and affirming community of faith' at Great St Mary's.  The page of the Church's Website on 'Worship' includes this:

 

At all of our services, you'll find welcoming people from all walks of life, in an open and affirming community of faith.

 

It also includes this: 'Evensong follows the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.'

 

The doctrine of redemption which has always been followed at Great St Mary's has been the orthodox doctrine of redemption, although there are variations in orthodoxy. In the many centuries when it was a Roman Catholic Church, in the many centuries when it has been a Protestant Church (variety: Anglican), the doctrine has involved salvation for those who accept Christ as Lord and Saviour (with some confusions about the role played by 'good works at some times).

 

The 1662 Prayer Book leaves no room for doubt about doctrines of redemption. Does the Vicar have any doubts about these doctrines? Does she believe that all the academics and students at Fitzwilliam College, past and present, all the people who live in the parish, in Cambridge, in the country, in the world, in fact - are condemned to eternal separation from God? The state described in the Book of Common Prayer as the fires of Hell?

 

According to the Book of Common Prayer, Francis Crick, awarded the Nobel Prize, with his collaborators,  '"for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material" was consigned to the eternal fire, or eternal separation from God 'for his failure to accept Christ as his personal Lord and Saviour.'

 

The same questions can be put to the Associate Vicar of Great St Mary's, Ally Barrett. Does Ally Barrett believe that only those who accept Christ can claim the supposed benefits.

 

I'd very much like to know what their reaction is to the problem I put in my page Church Donations. This is a short extract from the page:

 

Not discussed anywhere in the Bible, the fate of non-believing children - and babies. No age limit for redemption is mentioned in the Bible. Can very young children and even babies share the fate of adult non-believers?

 

So far as I know, I'm the first person to draw attention to this massive, shocking problem for orthodox believers.  This is a problem for 'liberal' Christians and 'progressive' Christians as well. They have some explaining to do.

 

Are the Vicar and Associate Vicar willing to explain their views? Are members of the congregation willing to explain their views? Or would that be asking too much - asking the impossible? I hope not.

 

The Website of the Church gives this information about Ally Barrett:

 

'She has a particular interest in the relationship creativity and creation, and between worship and everyday life.'

 

The mention of 'everyday life' leads me to some questions which I think many, many Christians would find very, very difficult to answer.

 

The 'everyday life' mentioned again and again turns out to be far from the humdrum norm.

 

This poster relates to slaves on the island of St Helena, colonized in 1659. Throughout its history as a slave-owning, slave flogging, slave castrating and slave executing jurisdiction - and afterwards - St Helena was Christian, with active churches, where the gospel was preached, prayers offered, Holy Communion was taken. Before the island was colonized, the Book of Common Prayer was in use. When the 1662 edition was published, the Book of Common Prayer became available for use. Nothing disturbed the buying and selling of slaves, the barbaric treatment of slaves, until emancipation of the slaves, centuries later.

 

As I point out in various places, the fact that Jesus failed to oppose slavery, the fact that St Paul failed to oppose Christianity, surely had a massive effect, ensuring that slavery went unchallenged, except for very isolated voices, and slave revolts. Again and again the Book of Common Prayer mentions sin, but buying and selling of slaves and even mistreatment of slaves never amounted to 'sinfulness.'

 

The fact that women were unable to become ordained and remained in this state until comparatively recently had a great deal to do with the fact that Jesus never mentioned the subject and never chose women to be his disciples. The person who is most to blame for the situation is surely Jesus. I view the ministry of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus as chaotic, incompetent. To believe that such a person could be God incarnate should be impossible to believe. I give a great deal of other evidence for my view in the pages of the site.

 

This is what the Christians of St Helena were capable of. There are obvious implications for the doctrine of redemption. The criteria which divide the sheep and the goats in orthodox views of redemption, ones which appeal to 'justification by faith,' don't take account of the flogging of slaves or the execution of slaves or the separation of slave children from slave mothers and fathers and the selling of slave children in slave markets.

 

Instead, according to the doctrine laid out in the Anglican documents, we find this hideous claim: that since people can, supposedly, never be redeemed by their own efforts, their own work, their own achievements, those slave owners who accepted Jesus as Saviour are saved, those slaves who accepted Jesus as Saviour are saved. Those slave owners who failed to accept Jesus as Saviour are damned, and can never attain the blissful state in union with Christ which is attained by believing slave owners.

 

And students studying at Cambridge Colleges and academics carrying out research and teaching at Cambridge colleges likewise: redemption and damnation are determined in the same way.

 

If some people at Great St Mary's have their doubts about this grotesque scheme, they might be enlightened by a talk with people at St Botolph's Church, where the focus is completely upon the supposed realities of salvation and damnation.

 

Extract from the  St Helena 'Laws and Orders, constituted for the Negro Slaves, by the inhabitants of the island, with the approbation of the Governor and Council,' 1670: 

 

That no Black or Blacks, upon any pretence whatsoever, shall wander from his master’s plantation upon Sundays, without a lawful occasion granted by their said masters or mistresses, either by writing, or some other token that shall be known by the neighbourhood, upon the penalty of ten lashes on his naked body for the first offence, fifteen for the second, twenty for the third, and so for every offence thereafter committed ...

Those that shall absent their masters’ service three days, and three nights, shall be punished according to the last foregoing article, and the master make satisfaction for what they have stolen as aforesaid. For the first offence of this kind, the master or masters shall make satisfaction for what is stolen, and repair all damages done by the slave or slaves ; so soon as taken, shall be brought to the fort, and immediately receive, on his naked body, one hundred lashes, then secured ; four days after that, thirty; six days after that, twenty more, and branded in the forehead with the letter R : for the second offence in this kind, he shall be punished as above said, and wear, for one year, a chain and clogs of thirty pounds weight ; and for the third offence, satisfaction shall be made as above said to the loser or losers, and the slave or slaves shall suffer death, at the discretion of the Governor and Council.

 

In case any, slave, from the age of sixteen years and upwards, shall presume and attempt to strike or assault any white person whatsoever, correcting him or otherwise, for any cause whatsoever, shall, for the said offence or offences (though without weapon or dangerous instrument) undergo and suffer the punishment of castration, that is to say, shall have his, testicles cut out ...

In 1693, a slave called Jamy was sentenced to be burned alive for 'sorcery.'

 

The Apostle Paul includes sorcery in the list of 'works of the flesh:' “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife . . . and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21).

 

St Helena takes its name from Saint Helena, born about 250 and the mother of the emperor Constantine. It is claimed that on a pilgrimage, she discovered the actual cross on which Jesus was crucified. As a result of this discovery, she is revered as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Church and the Lutheran Church.

 

She actually found three crosses but a woman who was very ill touched all three crosses. After touching the first and second, nothing happened but when she touched the third cross, she suddenly recovered, so Helena declared that this must be the True Cross of Jesus.

 

It was also claimed that Helena found the nails used in the crucifixion of Jesus.

 

I think it's likely that Jutta Brueck would take a very sympathetic view of St Helena, in fact, it's likely that she would be an outright admirer. In the Website page that  she developed a new monastic community in the parish of St Thomas, Ipswich. She shares 'Benedictine' values, or many of them, or some of them.

 

Some of this amounts to specific criticism of Great St Mary's, but  although the Church does have some specific faults - although 'faults' is too mild a word to use in the circumstances - they are faults generally shared with churches that have the same ethos, more or less. St Mark's Church in Sheffield is one of them - an advanced, progressive church (as they like to claim and proclaim). In my experience, they also have  many of the faults of churches that claim to be as solid and imoveable as a rock. One of them is the Rock Christian Centre in Sheffield, a church that put this declaration on its Website:

 

God hates Homosexuality.

God hates Blasphemy.

 

St Mark's and the Rock Christian Centre belong to the group of Sheffield and North Derbyshire Churches called 'Arise.'

 

Andrew Davison, Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford

 

There are many people who have migrated from Cambridge to Oxford, or in the opposite direction. He has gone backwards and forwards. Studied Chemistry at Oxford and was awarded a PhD at Oxford. Studied for an undergraduate degree at Cambridge. Went back to Oxford for his first teacthing position. Went back to Cambridge for a similar role at Cambridge. Studied for a PhD at Oxford and Cambridge - on 'the understanding of finitude in two medieval writers: Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scouts. [as in the original: he means 'John Duns Scotus.] Moved to Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge. Became Regius Professor of Divinity in September 2024 and that he's also 'a residentiary canon of the cathedral at Christ Church.'

 

 

From the Cambridge University Divinity Faculty Website, entry for Andrew Davison at the time he was there.

 

https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-andrew-davison

 

'Dr Davison is the Starbridge Lecturer in Theology and Natural Sciences. Before he moved into theology he was a scientist, and he holds undergraduate degrees and doctorates in both natural science (Merton College, Oxford) and theology (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge).'

 

This is someone with impressive academic attainments, then - I'm referring only to his undergraduate degree in Chemistry and his doctorate in biochemistry. I regard attainment in theology as 'null and void.' (Compare and contrast the Roman Catholic view of Anglican orders as 'null and void, including the orders of Anglo-Catholics. Father Davison is very much an Anglo-Catholic.)

 

On the same page of the Divinity Faculty Website:

 

'Alongside the book on astrobiology, his other principle project is a book, recently completed, surveying the 'metaphysics of participation' as a structuring principle in Christian theology.'

 

Instead of 'principle,' 'principal,' of course.

 

From the site

 

ANGLICAN CATHOLIC FUTURE

Living and proclaiming the Catholic faith in the Church of England

 

http://anglicancatholicfuture.org/fr-andrew-davison-installed-as-canon/

 

 

Fr Andrew Davison installed as Canon

The Revd Dr Andrew Davison, Starbridge Lecturer in Theology and Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and Fellow in Theology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was installed as Canon Philosopher in St Albans Cathedral on 8th June.

 

His appointment, is part of an initiative to help strengthen the Diocese of St Albans in the area of apologetics: giving a reason for belief in the Christian faith.


Immediately after his installation, he delivered his inaugural lecture: Knowing and Loving God.

 

An extract from his lecture:

 

 

 'We are probably all used to the convenient but ultimately destructive distinction between a religion of the heart and a religion of the head, between a Christianity of the heart and a Christianity of the head: one primarily of loving and the other primarily of thinking. However, if what I’m saying in this lecture has any bearing, with its contention that knowing and loving are intrinsically interwoven for the Christian, then this kind of specialism, this division of Christians into those who live primarily in their heads and those who live in the hearts, is ill formed.


'One way to bridge this gap is to look to the examples of figures down Christian history, and in our own time, who outwit any such head-heart distinction. I think of St Augustine of Hippo, for instance, who was a virtuoso of both the mind and heart, both a philosopher and a mystic. He is, on the one hand, the theological touchstone for Western Christians, whether Anglicans, Roman Catholics or Protestants, and an intellectual of the first order. But, on the other hand, his distinctive symbol in art is a heart wreathed in flames of fire. (Having mentioned Augustine, I’d like to give a plug for the reissued Augustine Synthesis by Erich Przywara, which is a magnificent anthology of passages from his writings, recently republished by Wipf and Stock.)'

 

One of the hideous beliefs of St Augustine of Hippo, this 'virtuoso of both the mind and heart,' this 'theological touchstone for Western Christians' - the belief that all babies are born with the taint of original sin and that unbaptized babies go to hell.

 

Another insight into the man who has so impressed Father Davison and Professor Catherine Pickstock, Professor Ian McFarland, and, of course, a vast number of others. This comes from Augustine's 'Tractates on the Gospel of John 31:11.'

 

 

'Even the cross . . . was a judgment seat. For the Judge was set up in the middle with the thief who believed and was pardoned on the one side and the thief who mocked and was damned on the other. Already then he signified what he would do with the living and the dead: some he will place on his right hand, others on his left.'

 

Do Father Davison, Professor Pickstock and Professor McFarland believe that Jesus will place some members of their Colleges on his right hand - the ones who are saved - and other members of their Colleges (the vast majority) on his left hand - the ones who are damned? Does their orthodoxy extend this far? (Obviously, the spatial reference isn't essential in this orthodox view.)

 

The reference in the passage from the Tractates is to the account in the Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 23:

 

'One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into[d] your kingdom.” 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” '

 

Only Luke has one of the 'criminals' saved. Matthew has both of them turning on Jesus - but Augustine hasn't a great deal to offer on the subject of the contradictions to be found in the Bible.

 

Augustine's view of the one who was damned is a striking example of the inhumanity to be found in Christianity.

 

By the time the one who was later damned spoke those words, supposedly, 'Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!' he had been prepared for crucifixion by flogging, with the gruesome Roman instrument of torture, made up of heavy leather thongs, with metal balls attached near the ends. By the time the flogging was finished, his back would have been broken open, the flesh a torn and bleeding mass. He would have had to carrry the heavy wooden cross piece to the place of crucifixion, where he was either nailed to the cross or tied to it. Then there would have been the struggle to breath, the struggle against suffocation. He spoke the words with no possibility at all of carefully considering them. At last, his leg would have been shattered with a heavy club, so that he could no longer support himself.

 

In this same lecture, he also said,

 

'You will hear plenty from me about Thomas Aquinas in the years to come, as the consummate Christian philosopher, and he is right on target in his insistence that the truth of the Son leads to love and the love of the Spirit leads to truth. Of the Son he writes that 'the Son is the Word, not any sort of word, but the one Who breathes forth Love.' '

 

A footnote gives the reference: Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.43.5 ad 2 (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1912-36).

 

Of course, Father Davison will be familiar with Thomas Aquinas' views concerning non-recanting heretics:

 

'With regard to heretics two points must be observed: one, on their own side; the other, on the side of the Church. On their own side there is the sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. For it is a much graver matter to corrupt the faith which quickens the soul, than to forge money, which supports temporal life. Wherefore if forgers of money and other evil-doers are forthwith condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death.'

 

Thomas Aquinas called for the death penalty for heretics, forgers and a very wide range of other offences - guilt was 'proved,' of course, very very often during torture of the accused. My page on the death penalty isn't comprehensive but it gives arguments and evidence against its use.

 

What are his views on redemption, including the redemption - or otherwise - of children and babies?

 

Simon Jones, Chaplain, Merton College, Oxford


At Merton College, Oxford, Simon Jones has  has overall responsibility for the Chapel and Choral Foundation, welfare provision and student financial support. He teaches liturgy and is a member of the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Theology and Religion.

 

Outside the college, he is Chair of the Steering Committee of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation, and on the board of the charitable company Hymns Ancient and Modern.  He has been involved in the work of the Church of England’s Liturgical Commission for over 20 years and is currently a consultant to it. He is an Honorary Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and a Wiccamical Prebendary (Honorary Canon Theologian) of Chichester Cathedral. 

 

The PhD thesis of 'Dr' Simon Jones was in Syrian baptismal theology.

 

Title of the thesis: 'Womb of the Spirit: the liturgical implications of the doctrine of the Spirit for the Syrian baptismal tradition.'

 

Abstract 

 

This thesis investigates the role of the Holy Spirit within the Syrian baptismal tradition and, in particular, assesses its effect upon the liturgical and theological development of initiation in East and West Syria. Primary material includes the Odes of Solomon, Didascalia Apostolorum and Acts of Judas Thomas; the writings of Aphrahat, Ephrem, Narsai, Jacob of Serugh, Philoxenus and Severus of Antioch; as well as the East Syrian and two West Syrian baptismal ordines.

 

This study provides evidence against any notion of an original Syrian baptismal pattern in which a single anointing precedes immersion, and demonstrates that the tradition witnesses to the existence of a variety of practices at an early stage. At the same time, it argues that the Syrian rite was not originally modelled upon the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, nor did its theology undergo an identifiable shift from Johannine to Pauline imagery.

 

Against this background, the incarnational image of the font as womb is identified as the principal characteristic which runs throughout the development of the tradition, functioning as the primary symbolic focus for the activity of the Holy Spirit and thereby interpreting the pre-immersion anointing(s) as a ritual preparation for baptismal regeneration by water and the Spirit.

 

The Spirit is seen as active throughout the process of initiation. It is the Spirit who identifies the candidate as belonging to Christ; it is the Spirit who prepares and brings to new birth with Christ in the womb of the Jordan; and, not least, it is the Spirit whom the candidate receives as the eschatological pledge of the final birth with the First-born, from death to eternal life.

Simon Jones belongs to the Catholic wing of the Church of England and it may well be difficult for him to enter into the world of 'graffiti covered hard evangelical Church in crime-ridden estates.' It may well be difficult for him to understand so many of the problems of the modern world. Difficulty in understanding the problems of the modern world doesn't seem to be a barrier to advancement in the Diocese of Lincoln or the Diocese of Oxford. Merton College, Oxford, is obviously a place of  contradictions, amongst its many strengths and weaknesses. A place where advanced research flourishes, in science, technology and so many other disciplines - not forgetting literary studies - and a place which benefits - or rather, fails to benefit - from the research of its Chaplain in the field of 'Syrian Baptismal Theology.'

 

Is Simon Jones a theologian who is completely unable and completely unwilling to answer reasonable objections to Christian belief? I can give a confident answer to this simple question: Yes.

 

Can Simon Jones claim that his immersion in the world of Syrian Baptismal Theology is absolutely no barrier to a keen appreciation of the problems of the modern world, such as the unprovoked aggression of Russia against the people of Ukraine, or the problems faced by people in the Lincoln Diocese? Surely, No.

 

There are limits to human versatility, allowing for rare exceptions. The chances of someone with an interest in Syrian baptismal theology having an interest in problems of the modern world aren't non-existent but i would think that his knowledge of modern problems is far less than it would have been if he hadn't spent so much time on the problems that interest him so much.  Perhaps Simon Jones can prove me wrong.

 

What are his views on redemption, including the redemption - or otherwise - of children and babies?

 

Michael Dormandy, Ripon College Cuddesdon

 

Michael Dormandy has a profile on the Website of the Oxford Faculty of theology and religion,

 

https://www.theology.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-michael-dormandy

 

He's described as a Lecturer in New Testament at 'ipon College, Cuddesdon.'

 

This is solecistic. There should be no comma between 'College' and 'Cuddesldon.' Ripon Hall in Yorkshire was merged with Cuddesdon College in Oxfordshire to form 'Ripon College Cuddesdon,' the official name of the institution.

 

Michael Dormandy isn't currently listed as a staff member at Ripon Hall Cuddesdon. I don't know the reason for this. Perhaps there has simply been a failure to update the information on the Oxford Website.

 

Michael Dormandy used to be the Chaplain of Christ's College, Cambridge. What kind of contribution can he possibly have made?

 

He's now a Lecturer in New Testament at Ripon College, Cuddesdon.

 

He studied at Wycliffe Hall, an evangelical theological college and has published on the site of the Church Society, the conservative evangelical Church of England organization.   It's very, very likely that he's in full agreement with this :

 

' ...  all people are under the judgement of God and his righteous anger burns against them.  Unless a person is reconciled to God they are under His condemnation and His just judgement against them is that they will be separated from Him forever in Hell. (Romans 1 v18, 2 v16, Revelation 20 v15).'

 

It's very, very likely that Michael Dormandy regards the achievements of the master of Christ's College and the achievements of the fellows of Christ's College as far less important than the 'realities' of God's 'just' judgement against them - or, in a small number of cases, in their favour. It's very, very likely that his view of Christ College undergraduates and applicants to the College and the porters and other staff of the College showed the same narrow, I would say inhuman focus.

 

Christ's College has a well-deserved reputation for academic excellence. This is one of the smaller Cambridge colleges but it has produced more Nobel prize winners than many of the countries of the world. But for evangelicals, unless the academically successful accept Christ as their Lord and Saviour, they are lost. This is a nihilistic view of academic achievement, as of other human gifts and talents and other strengths: ultimately, the academic achievement does count for nothing in God's eyes.

 

It's likely that the scientific achievement of Charles Darwin, who was a member of Christ's College, and, of course, one of the greatest of scientists in the field of Biology, will mean far less to the chaplain than the 'all-important' fact that Darwin lost his Christian faith - God penalizes the honest search for truth if the search ends in loss of faith, not faith in Christ the 'redeemer.'

 

From Darwin's autobiography:

 

'Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox,  & I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality.  I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, rainbow as a sign,  etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos ...

 

And this:

 

'By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, — that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible, do miracles become, — that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, — that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, – that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitness; – by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.'

 

 It's likely that Charles Darwin's condemnation of slavery will mean nothing to Michael Dormandy - after all, this is an issue unrelated to redemption by belief in Christ.  See also the section on slavery, For God so loved the world ... in my page on the 'Church of England.'

 

In the  'The Voyage of the Beagle,' 'Mauritius to England,' Darwin describes the effect of witnessing some of the horrors of slavery. The account was written at a time when he still had belief in God:

 

'On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country ... Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye.

 

...

 

'picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children ... being torn from you and sold like beasts to the highest bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth!'

 


Above, Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford.  Cuddesdon College was established in 1854 by the Bishop. He had an evangelical background and upbringing but later supported the High Church. He took part inthe celebrated 1860 debate on evolution at a meeting of the British Association, held at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. I don't provide further information here, except to mention that he and Thomas Huxley exchanged views.

 

Christ's College claims to be a 'vibrant community.' Its not so vibrant former Chaplain, the industrious Michael Dormandy,  published a secondary school Latin textbook and a critical edition, with translation and commentary, of a letter, the Epistola Fundamentalis  by the seventeenth century Roman Catholic priest, Bartholomaeus Holzhauser.

 

Bartholomaeus Holzhauser is, of course, the celebrated interpreter of the Book of the Apocolypse. According to his interpretation, the 7 stars and the 7 candlesticks which were 'seen' by St John signify 7 periods in Church history. To these periods correspond the 7 churches of Asia Minor, the 7 days of creation, according to Genesis, the 7 ages before Christ and the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit.

 

Michael Dormandy has also been working on 'scribal habits in the Greek majuscule pandects.'

 

He was a member of the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge.  The Faculty's site gives further information about the achievements of this figure, including his  'Text-critical analysis of the book of Revelation in the Codex Alexandrinus.'

 

 'https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/directory/michael-dormandy

 

The site gave the information that Dr Dirk Jongkind of St Edmund's College is a collaborator of Michael Dormandy. I've no information as to whether Dr Jongkind has conservative evangelical views, of the kind which has an interest, an overwhelmingly important interest, in the destination of the Master, Fellows, students and staff of St Edmund's - the path to redemption or damnation. Perhaps he would be able to make clear his view of things.

 

The case of Michael Dormandy is an instructive one, although there are many more like him. He shows the stupidity of supposing that a College Chaplain can minister to the 'spiritual needs' of even the academic and non-academic staff of a college, the undergraduate and graduate members of a college, who have an affiliation with the Church of England, let alone the methodists, baptists, and members of other Christian denominations, or the 'spiritual' needs which agnostics and atheists are also alleged to have, or the alleged 'spiritual' needs of people who are completely indifferent to the Church of England, to all religion, and to thinking about any of the issues.

 

If it reflects to any extent the deep divisions of the Church of England, the numerically small group of Church of England people in a college is likely to contain people who would think of themselves as evangelicals, conservative to a greater or lesser extent, Anglo-Catholics, Anglican 'free-thinkers,' people who have no belief in some or most of the doctrines which evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics would regard as essential, and 'mainstream' Anglicans, who may well evade the difficult issues raised by the presence in this 'broad church' of people with views they view with distaste.

 

Michael Dormandy couldn't possibly see to the 'spiritual' needs of the non-evangelical Anglicans. He could   only see to the 'spiritual' needs of a minority within a minority. He had and still has his futile scholarship to keep him busy, to his own satisfaction. 

 

From the information on him available on the Faculty of Theology and Religion site. It mentions his 'interest in the seventeenth-century German priest, Bartholomaeus Holzhauser, whose work he has edited.' 

 

 

He has been active in church ministry for a number of years.

Faculty Research Area(s): 

New Testament Studies, Early Christianity

Research Interests:

Textual Criticism, Pauline Studies, Papyrology

External Engagement:

Curate, St Mary’s Church, Wheatley (from July 2021); occasional preacher ...

 

Beth Keith

The realities of safeguarding in the Church of England.  A Sermon preached by Dr Beth Keith at St Mark's Church, Sheffield.

 

Dr Beth Keith was installed as the new Vicar of St Mark's Church, Sheffield in January 2025. Previously, she was the 'liberal theologian' of the place. St Mark's Church likes to think of itself as a 'progressive church.' Has it progressed to the point where it can discuss the doctrines of redemption and damnation? What does Beth Keith believe, or would that be too much to expect, embarrassing even? Perhaps she could clear up any confusions, any residual uncertainties, with Biblical and philosophical argument and evidence.

 

This is to generalize, but I have the distinct impression that this is a church which likes to avoid contradictions, which prefers harmony, such as the harmony between 'revealed truth' and the many, many difficulties for the concept of 'revealed truth.' This is a church where people certainly believe in the Holy Spirit - most of them can be relied upon to believe in the Trinity, I would think - but are uncomfortable with Jesus' quite frequent mention of demons and demonic possession.

 

 I think that a survey, or series of surveys, would be  a good idea, a more elaborate survey than the one here, on a much wider spectrum of Christian views. Many of the views held at St Mark's are much vaguer than the views at Rock Bottom Conservative Evangelical Churches but all the same, the church isn't very fastidious. It shares membership of the Church group 'Arise,' which has many member churches in Sheffield and South Yorkshire. One of the Churches has the name 'Rock Christian Centre,' as it happens, and makes no secret of its beliefs, unlike the evasive and quite secretive world of St Mark's. The Rock Christian Centre had on its Website these hideous statements:

 

God hates blasphemy

God hates homosexuality

 

Both blasphemy and homosexuality could be punished by death during the Christian ascendancy, and often were, by burning alive and other methods.

 

 

 In the sermon, she appeals for money, but no amount of money will do anything to resolve the massive problems which the church faces. The unacknowledged problems, ignored by Beth Keith herself, are on the same scale as the acknowledged problems, arising from different causes but deeply implicating the most important of all the Christian leaders. I'm referring not to Archbishops (or Popes) but Jesus himself, and 'St' Paul.

 

When faced by a moral issue - or many practical issues - Christians are encouraged to think in these terms: what would Christ do in these cicumstances? What is th Christ-centred approach? It can easily be shown that this is deeply inadequate, that it fails catastrophically in the real world, as opposed to the Christian view of things.

 

Jesus will have witnessed many examples of abuse in the part of the Roman Empire where he was based.  St Paul, who travelled much more widely in the Empire, will have witnessed many more. Neither Jesus nor St Paul refer to abuse at any time. This was something which was obviously unimportant to them, a matter of complete indifference.

 

In a ruthless state where barbaric punishments were commonplace and barbaric treatment of people was commonplace, it was the slaves who were generally treated the worst. The problem of abuse in this liberal democracy is bad enough, with many vile examples, but the problem of abuse must have been incomparably worse in all parts of the Roman empire.

 

Jesus and St Paul will have seen slaves flogged or with the wounds caused by flogging. They will have known about the torture of slaves, they will have witnessed the buying and selling of slaves in slave markets. They were silent about all these things.

 

From Quora:

 

'

What happened to children born to slaves in Rome? Often they would be killed. Their mother's owner might not want to pay for the cost of bringing up a child, or might not want the mother to be taken away from her work by the distraction of looking after an infant.

The death of a child in these circumstances was legal if ordered by the paterfamilias, the male head of the family. In the case of slaves, that would be their owner (or their owner's family head).

The usual way to perform the deed would be expositio, or exposure. The baby would be abandoned somewhere out of town, or on a rubbish heap or in a gutter, and left to die of cold, hunger, or scavenging animals.

 

The sermon was preached on Sunday 24 November 2024. The title: ‘Christ the King, Safeguarding, and Stewardship.' Here, 'stewardship' is a polite way of asking 'Give us some money.' The sermon is abysmal, superficial, unredeemable (for once, without any reference to the barbaric theology of redemption.) The sermon is available at

 

https://www.stmarkssheffield.co.uk/Publisher/
File.aspx?id=365557

 

The Sermon is about the safeguarding crisis in the Church of England, it assumes, it claims that St Mark's Church is a place of safety and security, and it asks for donations of money to support this church, which is supposedly beyond criticism. This supposition is wildly inaccurate. I don't know of any cases of abuse at St Mark's but Dr Keith will soon be in charge of St Mary's Church in Sheffield.

 

On 15 January 2025 'The Revd Dr Beth Keith was installed and inducted by the Bishop of Sheffield as Vicar of St Mark Broomhill and Broomhall, and licensed as Priest in Charge of St Mary Walkley and Oversight Minister in the Three Spires Mission Area.'

 

From the page 'Safeguarding' on the Website of St Mary's, 'The Church on the Road: inclusive, eucharistic, a safe place to be with God.'

 

In the past, admittedly the distant past, the church may not have been quite as safe as imagined. The page

 

https://stmaryswalkley.co.uk/safeguarding/

 

has this:

 

Michael Copeland

It was recently reported in the press that Mr Michael Copeland (aka Cope) has been sentenced to 16 years for sexual offences committed in Sheffield during the 1980s and 90s. He was known to attend churches within this Mission Area. [The Mission Area which Beth Keith will be responsible for.] We would urge anyone who is affected by this news to either contact their Parish Safeguarding Officer or the Diocesan Safeguarding Team. Mr Copeland left Sheffield around 2016.

 

One of the two Biblical texts included in the Sermon is this,  Daniel 7: 9, 10. An arbitrary, a bewildering choice, with nothing whatsoever linking it with the subjects of the Sermon:

 

9. As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire.

10. A stream of fire issued and came out from behind him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.

 

What are her views on redemption, including the redemption - or otherwise - of children and babies?  

 

 

Dr Beth Keith: pacifier and pacifist writing 

 

The material in the second column of the page is about a world which I think is very different from the world which Beth Keith finds congenial.

 

Beth Keith is the newly appointed vicar to St Mark's Church, Sheffield. St Mark's is a member of the group of churches in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire called 'Arise.' Rock Christian Centre is another member of 'Arise.' This is from the Website of Rock Christian Centre:'

'The fury of Almighty God against evil is evidence of His goodness. If He wasn’t angered, He wouldn’t be good. We cannot separate God’s goodness from His anger. Again, if God is good by nature, He must be unspeakably angry at wickedness.

'But His goodness is so great that His anger isn’t confined to the evils of rape and murder. Nothing is hidden from His pure and holy eyes. He is outraged by torture, terrorism, abortion, theft, lying, adultery, fornication, pedophilia, homosexuality, and blasphemy.'

' ...  your knowledge of God’s Law should help you to see that you have a life-threatening dilemma: a huge problem of God’s wrath (His justifiable anger) against your personal sins. The just penalty for sin—breaking even one Law—is death, and eternity in Hell.'

Jesus never condemned torture, just as he never condemned slavery. There's condemnation of homosexuality to be found in 'St' Paul, but Jesus never mentions the subject. The claims made by Rock Christian Centre amount to a confused mess, as also claims made by St Mark's. St Mark's Church has some explaining to do.

Dr Beth Keith is described as a 'liberal theologian.' This is how she describes herself. She identifies with 'progressive' forces in the Church of England. In fact, in the past, she found no difficulty in working in a Church environment which was, and still is, very  different. I know of no published writing of hers which documents her transition from one  theological environment to another. But I take the view that the 'liberals' and the 'progressives' in the Church of England often share many of the beliefs and convictions of conservative evangelicals and other orthodox and ultra-orthodox groups.

For the sake of honesty and clarity, Beth Keith ought to be able to give simple answers to simple but challenging questions: Beth Keith, do you believe that only Christian believers - specifically, Christian believers who in some way have demonstrated a belief in Jesus as Saviour - are redeemed, that non-believers are unredeemed? I don't ask about your view of the destiny of the unredeemed, if you believe that their destiny is very different from the destiny of people who are redeemed. I don't ask if you believe in some form of Hell.

Beth Keith has worked for extended periods in Churches which really do have a belief in Hellfire for non-believers. She has worked for extended periods in a Church  which has allowed abuse of members of the congregation: St Thomas Church, now known as STC.  Clicking on the link gives information about these cases of abuse. Beth Keith can't have been associated with STC at the time that the abuse associated with the 'Nine O' Clock Service' occurred - this abuse was much earlier - but I presume that she heard about it and knew about it.

She also worked for the Research Department of the Church Army. There are no documented cases of abuse associated with the Church Army at all, to the best of my knowledge. The material on the page Church integrity gives my very critical view of the Church Army, in particular the Research Department.

This is an extract from the page

https://www.allsaintsecclesall.org.uk/blog-list/2018/9/10/meet-our-new-associate-vicar


I am absolutely delighted to share the news that the Revd Beth Keith currently pioneer curate at Sheffield Cathedral has accepted my invitation to join the All Saints staff team as Associate Vicar. Beth is married to Laurence and they have two children.  Beth trained for the ordained ministry at Cranmer Hall in Durham including research on vocation and ministry.  Prior to studying in Durham Beth and Laurence lived in Sheffield for over 15 years and were variously linked with St Thomas Crookes and Church Army.

To explain the use of 'pacifier' here: pacifier is the North American term for what we call a baby's dummy. In my critique, I'll ask if Beth Keith's writing is perhaps closer to baby food than to work with an adequate basis in adult values. I'll give, of course,  explanatory and exploratory extracts. Is Dr Keith's writing work of substance or is it more a matter of soothing sounds? Is it satisfying or superficial? Is it wide-ranging in content, or severely limited in scope? Does the writing of Beth Keith ignore and neglect far too much of human experience or is it comprehensive and satisfying?

 On the Home Page of the site, I state that there's 'extensive criticism of  Christian beliefs without assuming that non-Christians and anti-Christians have a monopoly of good sense, without assuming that they are incapable of stupidity (and worse, much worse).'

 

The site includes critical material on some anti-Christians. I share their opposition to Christian belief, but anti-Christians may use arguments and evidence I don't support, or I may accept most of their anti-Christian views but reject other views they hold.

 

My page Nietzsche: the case against is very critical but not a comprehensive treatment. My page Heaney-Harvard  has material on Harvard University in the second column of the page. This is an extract, explaining a photograph of Professor P Z Myers (who's at the University of Minnesota, rather than Harvard.)

 

'Professor Myers in action at Skepticon 7 in 2014. At Skepticon events, guest speakers are  expound topics which include Christianity science, education and activism. The events are sponsored by American Atheists and the American Humanism Association. I appreciate very much what Professor Myers has achieved in combating Christian views, for reasons I give in detail in so many pages of the site. I loathe some of his other views, particularly his views on Israeli-Palestinian relations. Here, he writes as a dilettante. By profession, he's a biologist and he can be relied upon to observe professional standards. In his criticisms of Israel, he's simply ignorant, and I can easily show that he's ignorant, stupid, ridiculous ... '

 

There are many, many Christians who share my support for Israel, my criticism of the Palestinian cause. My page on Israel gives my reasons in quite some detail, but there are other pages as well, including the sections on other pages concerned with the Sheffield Pro-Palestinian encampment and the Oxford Pro-Palestinian encampment.

 

St Mark's Church, Sheffield is a church where the pro-Palestinian position is prevalent or common, or more common than in most Churches. This issue gives me a further reason to oppose St Mark's Church - and I intend to go on pointing out the Church's inadequacies, as I see them.

 

The inadequacies include far too much support, in general, for various 'Woke' views. To me, St Mark's Church combines the stupidity of Christianity with the very different stupidity of Woke views, but again, my perspective is a complex one. On the Home Page, I also state that there's 'criticism of people who oppose 'woke' views as well as criticism of woke views' as well as 'evidence of 'conservative' views, but with significan reservations. To many conservative media outlets take a very supportive view of Christian belief, but not the Christian belief of 'Woke' Christians.

 

In the case of most of the Churches I write about, the criticism can be more restricted than in the case of St Mark's and similar churches - I need only write about their doctrinal ignorance, which often goes with ignorance in matters of society and politics, but without the distinctive and wide-ranging woke ignorance to be found at St Mark's.

 

This is Beth Keith in action - sound only - at the epicentre of the barely discernible parochial earthquake that is Sheffield Anglicanism: Sheffield Cathedral.

 

https://www.sheffieldcathedral.org/sunday-at-sheffield-cathedral-podcasts/2018/9/3/26th-august-2018-two-kingdoms

 

What is this piece - 26th August 2018 - about?

 

We're told what to expect in the description:

 

'Water pistols, pacifism, love and poetry...

Revd Dr Beth Keith reflects on the ways the message of Christ challenges culture and challenges us to act differently. 

 

The focus of the piece is minuscule. To imagine that it does anything as vast - as impossible as 'challenge culture' is laughable. And the message of Christ challenges us to act differently in the sense that it encourages its students to act in ways that are counter-intuitive, counter to elementary common sense, in opposition to reality. But these challenges aren't explored at all in the piece. The claim as it stands is simply false.

 

The first part is mainly a set of family memories centred upon pacifism. The second is a kind of poem, but far, far closer to prose than poetry. In fact, a so-called poem which isn't a poem at all. There are many of them about.

 

The section on pacifism is infantile in its level of argument. The fact that her father was a pacifist should have been simply the starting point. Personal experience is often valuable but personal experience often misleads, leading to false generalizations, a distorted perspective.

 

The fact that her father forbade his children to use anything that resembled a weapon should have been examined, but it was impossible to have an adequate discussion of pacifism on such a slender basis.

 

The literature of pacifism and anti-pacifism is vast, the literature of war is vast - genocide, war crimes, the vital concepts - of course, far more than simply concepts - which are neglected in 'discussions' of Palestinian issues and Gaza.

 

I oppose pacifism, for reasons I give in different places on the site. My page on Israel contains some of this material. My page on ethics outlines some of the ethical principles and ethical reasoning which underlies this and other ethical issues. It wouldn't be realistic to give a similarly detailed treatment of the issues here.

 

 

Above, after the bombs had fallen and the bombers had left. Scenes from the Sheffield Blitz, which  took place on the night of 12 and 15 December, 1940.

 

There was no Holocaust in Great Britain during the Second Word War, no Einsatzgruppen shooting countless civilians. Some of the scenes from those times and places are shown in my page on Israel. If Britain had shown no resistance to the German invasion plans, Britain would have been invaded by the Nazis and the result would have been killings on a gigantic scale. Only armed resistance to Germany stood a chance of being effective. The eventual victory was won not by British armed forces, acting single-handedly, of course, but by the combined allied effort, but if Britain had not stood alone and continued the fight, the path to victor would have been a much longer one.

 

In the second part of Beth Keith's broadcast, approximately, she reads out a poem, one of her own, it seems. It's not a poem by any respectable standards and not even 'prose poetry.' It's unrhythmical, unmemorable writing, lacking in any individuality. There are many, many Youtube videos giving records of Evangelical church services where the local youth play the music to accompany the trite words. The music has no obvious musical value at all - lazy-minded, tuneless, just about emotionless, empty phrases.

 

Beth Keith's writing in the second part of the talk isn't quite so bad but it's desperately poor. I challenge anyone who listens to it to be able to say what it was about after an interval of a few days.

 

 

 

https://www.stmarkssheffield.co.uk/Groups/

395981/What_We_Believe.aspx

 

This is the Beatific Vision of St Mark's:

 

Our vision is to practise a living, thinking, loving, faith. 
Living Faith which is inclusive, vibrant & engaged.
Thinking faith which engages with scripture, tradition, reason & experience.
Loving faith which serves our communities by following Jesus. 

 

We celebrate the wonderful diversity of human life, believing that Jesus revealed God’s love for all people. We’re attracted to the big questions of life and faith and understand that we are called to engage with our world, to challenge the barriers which seem to separate the sacred from the secular or which try to define us according to categories such as gender, sexuality, wealth, race, ability or age. 

We believe that Jesus came that we might have life in all its fullness (John 10.10) and we encourage people to join in with God’s work of transformation and hope wherever they are. We are not afraid of being political, especially where people feel excluded, marginalised or misunderstood, but we try not to be partisan. 

We are committed to being rooted in Jesus of Nazareth and celebrating diversity in the community of Christ. We engage in critical and creative dialogue between the Christian faith passed down to us and the challenges and opportunities of our contemporary world. We are comfortable living with questions and exploring faith.

 

Oliver Keenan, Ripon College Cuddesdon

 

Oliver Keenan is the Academic Dean, Christian Doctrine. This profile is in preparation. I intend to focus my attention on his preoccupation with Thomas Aquinas. He's the author of the book, 'Why Aquinas Matters.' 

 

 

Above, 'Triumph of Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Angelicus, with saints and angels.' By Andrea di Bonaiuto, 1366. Fresco, Basilica of Santa Maria Novella.

 

 

A short extract on the treatment of heretics from the Summa Theologica of 'St' Thomas Aquinas:

 

With regard to heretics two points must be observed: one, on their own side; the other, on the side of the Church. On their own side there is the sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. For it is a much graver matter to corrupt the faith that quickens the soul, than to forge money, which supports temporal life. Wherefore if forgers of money and other evil-doers are forthwith condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death. On the part of the Church, however, there is mercy, which looks to the conversion of the wanderer, wherefore she condemns not at once, but "after the first and second admonition", as the Apostle directs: after that, if he is yet stubborn, the Church no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others, by excommunicating him and separating him from the Church, and furthermore delivers him to the secular tribunal to be exterminated thereby from the world by death.
(Question 11, Article 3, Summa Theologica, Vol. II-II)

 

What are Oliver Keenan's views on redemption, including the redemption - or otherwise - of children and babies?

 

Dagmar Winter, Acting Bishop, Diocese of Ely. Vacancy in See.  Bishop Winter and the Conference of European Churches.

 

Dagmar Winter, the acting Bishop of the Diocese of Ely is the Vice-President of the Conference.

 

 

Ely Cathedral is the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Ely. For a schematic diagram of the Trinity, please see the diagram above, in the entry for the Diocese of Carlisle.

 

This section gives some very brief information about the choice of a new Bishop of Ely, more exactly the failure to appoint one, and much more varied information about the acting Bishop of Ely, The Right Revd Dr Dagmar Winter, Bishop of Huntingdon. Dr Winter is of partly Swiss German descent and I provide some historical information which deserves to be better known which should enlighten anyone who supposes that the history of this part of Europe has been consistently enlightened.

 

The church  can trace its origins to the abbey founded in Ely in 672 by 'St' Æthelthryth ('St' Etheldreda). It was granted cathedral status in 1109. Until the Reformation, the cathedral was Roman Catholic, of course, and dedicated to St Etheldreda and St Peter. It was renamed  the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

There's discussion of another Anglo-Saxon 'Saint,' Cuthbert, on this page. I present the case - or some aspects of the case - against treating these saints (and any other saints) as exemplars for our times, as important for our times.

 

Recommended, to learn more about some of the superstitions of the Anglo-Saxon era and about the credulity of so many people in the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, finding out more about this saint and her 'miracles.' Even her clothes were said to have miraculous powers.

 

A political party which gave great prominence to St Cuthbert or Ste Ethelreda or other saints would never be taken seriously. How can these people have importance for the economy, for issues to do with defence, the arts, mass migration and the rest?

 

 

 

Above, floor plan of Ely Cathedral

 

https://www.elydiocese.org/about/leadership/the-bishop-of-huntingdon/

https://www.elydiocese.org/about/leadership/the-bishop-of-ely/appointment-of-a-new-diocesan-bishop/

 

The Right Revd Dr Dagmar Winter, Bishop of Huntingdon, is the acting Bishop of Ely. Comment on Dr Winter to be added.

 

On the page

 

https://www.elydiocese.org/an-update-on-the-next-bishop-of-ely.php

 

Bishop Dagmar addresses her 'Dear Friends:'

 

Some of you will have already seen the announcement released this morning by the Archbishop of Canterbury:

 

Very sadly, at the conclusion of a lengthy process of discernment, culminating in two days of interviews on 11 and 12 July, the Crown Nominations Commission considering the nomination of the next Bishop of Ely has not been able reach the level of consensus required to nominate a new Diocesan Bishop.

 

 

Over the course of the next months, the Crown Nominations Commission will need to reflect, and make a decision about which stage it wishes to re-commence the discernment process. This is not likely to be before the Spring of 2025. Together with the Archbishop of York and others, there will also need to be a period of reflection on the implications of this decision on the Church of England more generally.

 

I will be speaking with Bishop Dagmar Winter, the Bishop of Huntingdon, in order to understand from her the best way of supporting the Diocese of Ely and her episcopal ministry in the coming months.

Please continue to hold the Diocese of Ely and the discernment of the Crown Nominations Commission in your prayers.

 

Bishop Dagmar writes:

 

This is obviously a major disappointment for us all. It is my understanding that the next Bishop of Ely is unlikely to be in post before 2026.

 

...

 

Thank you for all your support, and alleluia, on we go!

 

Good wishes.

 

+Dagmar

 

What happened to all the prayers addressed to the Divine Recipient before the short list was originally put together, before the interviews of the short-listed candidates, the prayers supporting the work of the Vacancy in See Committee and the Crown Nominations Commission? All wasted, it seems. To have to wait until 2026 for a new Bishop of Ely shouldn't be necessary, but a reform of the cumbersome bureaucracy of the Church of England would fall far short of what's needed. My viewpoint is a much more radical one but, I'd claim, realistic. The Church of England has a bad habit of ignoring harsh realities and isn't about to change. Its demise will be inglorious and resisted to the bitter and embittered end. Too much is at stake - the loss of jobs and wages, or, to put it in ecclesiastical language, benefices and stipends.

 

https://www.elydiocese.org/about/leadership/the-bishop-of-huntingdon/

 

Vacancy in See Committee, Ely. Current members.

 

Chair (Elected) of the Vacancy in See Committee: Very Revd Mark Bonney, Dean, Ely Cathedral

Secretary (endorsed) to the of Vacancy in See Committee: Canon Paul Evans, Diocesan Secretary

 

Ex-Officio

 

The Bishop of Huntingdon (Suffragan)

The Dean of the Cathedral: Very Revd Mark Bonney

The Archdeacons (2 seats maximum)

  • Ven Richard Harlow

  • Ven Dr Alex Hughes  

Proctors elected by the Diocese to the Lower House of Convocation of the General Synod (currently 4 seats)

  • Revd Canon James Blandford-Baker

  • Revd Canon Nick Moir

  • Revd Canon Simon Talbott

  • Ven Dr Alex Hughes (note: also present as Archdeacon of Cambridge)

The members of the House of Laity of the General Synod elected by the Diocese (currently 3 seats)

  • Canon Dr Felicity Cooke

  • Mrs Rebecca Cowburn

  • Mr Christopher Townsend

The Chairs of the Houses of Clergy and Laity of the Diocesan Synod (2 seats)

  • Clergy: Revd Canon Sarah Gower

  • Laity: Canon Simon Kershaw

Clergy (minimum 2 places):

  • Becky Dyball (HW)

  • Simon Scott (Cambridge)

  • James Shakespeare (Cambridge)

  • Jessica Martin (HW)

  • Simon Taylor (Cambridge)

  • Dr Mark Smith (Dean, Clare College, Cambridge)

Laity (minimum 2 places)

  • Dr Ugochukwu Ajuwudike (Cambridge)

  • Dr Alice Gilbert (HW)

  • Lizzie Taylor (Cambridge)

  • Peter Maxwell (Cambridge)

 

 

 

Bishop Dagmar Winter and The Conference of European Churches

 

Bishop Dagman Winter is the Vice-President of the Conference of European Churches. The Bishop is one of a large number of Bishops and other senior clergy whose education has been centred on Biblical studies and other aspects of theology. The narrowness of context and perspective which can result, the lack of a comprehensive background, help to explain the fact that again and again, senior clerics can seem ignorant.

 

Bishop Winter studied at Erlangen-Nuremberg and at Heidelberg, where she obtained a Doctorate in Theology. I don't claim in the least that after studies in Germany, she was still left with insufficient knowledge of the Holocaust. I've no way of knowing if that's so or not. I think it may well be the case that her background knowledge of the History of Christianity in Europe isn't all it might be.

 

Some recent history, from the section above The Catholic Church and abuse

 

Some 216,000 children - mostly boys - have been sexually abused by clergy in the French Catholic Church since 1950, a damning new inquiry has found.

...

 

The inquiry found the number of children abused in France could rise to 330,000, when taking into account abuses committed by lay members of the Church, such as teachers at Catholic schools.

...

 

The burden of the report is that ad-hoc expressions of repentance and a bit of tinkering with ecclesiastical structures are no longer good enough.

 

There has to be recognition that sexual abuse of youngsters by priests was systematic. It was the Church - not rogue individuals - that was responsible.

 

 

I'll provide some background information about some episodes in Switzerland, or the territory that later became Switzerland. She may or may not know about them.  Whether she does or does not, how does she react to this material? The atrocities carried out were carried out by Christians, who prayed and attended Christian worship and who almost certainly believed in orthodox Christian doctrines. What about the Founder of Christianity? The revelation he brought was deficient in so many ways. Whether he intended this to happen or not, hatred of the Jews, anti-semitism has had vile and incalculable effects in the history of Europe. Although the events described below happened a long time ago, Christians tend to have long historical memories - and also very, very selective historical memories - if they know about the facts at all. 

 

Here, events are described very briefly and then one particular sets of events are described in more detail.

 

In 1348 and 1349,  the Black Death swept through Europe. The plague epidemic killed 30 to 50 percent of the entire population of Europe. Between 75 and 200 million people died. Christian Europe had no effective defence against the disease. The effective preventative and  control measures weren't discovered, devised and implemented for many centuries.

 

There was an usurge in violence against vulnerable people, in particular, the Jews. To give some episodes in German-speaking Switzerland:

 

In November 1348, in Bern, the Jewish community was effectively wiped out, by burning alive.

 

In November 1348, the Jewish community of Zofingen was effectively wiped out, by burning alive.

 

In February, 1349 there was the Zurich massacre. Not much further information is available but the number killed was about 60.

 

On 18 September 1349, the Jewish community of Winterthur and some other cities were killed by burning alive.

 

A great deal of information is available about the treatment of Jews in Shaffhausen. Local Jews were accused of poisoning the wells, quite a common accusation. They were burned alive on 22 February, 1349.

 

Many years later, at Easter, 1401, a four year old boy, Konrad Lori, was murdered in the town of Diessenhofen. The murderer was most likely a Christian. He was arrested, and began to claim, without any evidence, that Jews were responsible. He said that they wanted to have blood from the boy.

 

The false rumours spread to Shaffhausen. Jews were tortured to extract confessions - they 'wanted to drink the Christian blood' or use it to make preparations which would supposedly poison cattle or poison the wells in Shaffhausen.

 

Still more Jews were arrested and tortured, including women and children.

 

Thirty Jews were sentenced to death after being tortured and burned on 25 June, 1401. Three of them had been tortured so severely that they were unable to walk to the pyre where they were to be burned.

 

 

 From the vast mass of historical evidence, just a few facts concerning one of the many crusades, the 'German Crusade' of 1096, and one Crusader, Godfrey of Bouillon.  During the German Crusade, mobs of French and German Christians massacred Jews. These massacres have often been seen as the first in a series of large-scale anti-semitic events in Europe which eventually culminated in the Holocaust. Just one episode in this crusade: at least 800 Jews were massacred in the German city of Worms when they refused Catholic baptism.

 

Below, Godfrey of Bouillon, from the Roman de Godefroy de Bouillon, c. 1330.  Godfrey of Bouillon took part in the German Crusade in the Hofkirche, Innsbruck, Austria. According to the Jewish historian Solomon bar Simson, he swore 'to go on this journey only after avenging the blood of the crucified one by shedding Jewish blood and completely eradicating any trace of those bearing the name 'Jew ...'

 

 

 

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2841&context=facpub

 

Recommended: a close study of the material on the page, which has the title, 'The Medieval Holocaust: The Approach of the Plague and the Destruction of Jews in Germany, 1348-1349.' The author is Albert Winkler.

 

 

During the Medieval period, the Jews were subject to numerous attacks, and they often faced periods of devastation and mass murder. Likely, the most brutal of these were the severe pogroms unleashed on the Jews in association with the advance of the Black Death in 1348 and 1349.

 

Very early in their existence in Germany, the Jews faced prejudice and persecutions. Some early Church Fathers, most notably St. John Chrysostom, condemned the Jews largely for religious reasons. Somehow, he argued, all Jews bore collective guilt for the execution of Jesus of Nazareth, even though the event occurred hundreds of years before any the contemporaries of Chrysostom were born.2 Additionally, the Jews were denigrated for rejecting the teachings of Christianity and its new concept of salvation. The Gospel of John, for example, has Jesus condemning the Jews because they refused to believe that he was sent by God. In John 8:44 Jesus said, “Ye are of your father [who is] the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” The book of Revelations 2:9 expressed a similar sentiment, “Jews ... are the synagogue of Satan.”3 All of this demonstrated a basic paranoia of many Christians. The fact that the Jewish people, who were well versed in the culture and ethics of the Hebrew Bible, would reject the teachings of Jesus forced many insecure Christians to question the efficacy of their own religion. This was too disturbing for many of them to bear, and they frequently lashed out at the Jews, who viewed the evidence of Jesus differently.

 

 

Many Christians believed that the sin of killing Jesus, the consequences of which the Jews had somehow inherited from their ancestors, clearly made the Jews unable to attain salvation, and their punishment by divine actions continued to show how the Lord held them in disfavor.

 

...

 

Andre Benezeit, a prominent citizen of Narbonne, wrote about how confessions of wrong doing were extracted from the poor who had been accused of spreading the plague in April 1348. “Many beggars and mendicants of various countries were found and arrested” for the crime of spreading a “potion or poison.” This was “powdered substances which they were putting into rivers, houses, churches and foodstuffs to kill people.” The examinations were designed to illicit confessions rather than find the truth because torture was applied to many of the accused persons. The use of physical or psychological pain to get people to confess their guilt meant that the information gathered in such a manner was highly questionable. Clearly, when people were being tortured, they said whatever they thought necessary to get the torment to stop. No doubt this included giving false testimony, which meant saying anything their torturers wanted to hear. “Some of them have confessed as much of their own free will,” Benezeit maintained, “others under torture.” The punishment for their supposed crimes was severe. “Those who confessed in Narbonne were torn by red hot pincers, disemboweled, their hands cut off, and then burnt.”27 The Jews faced similar treatment as well.

 

Dr Cathy Rhodes, St John's Eco-Church, Sheffield, Diocesan Environment Officer

 

This section is almost entirely concerned with Cathy Rhodes as environmentalist, but Cathy Rhodes is no ordinary environmentalist but a Christian Environmentalist. Does she consider herself  to be a 'New Creation?' The reference is to 2 Corinthians 5:17. I provide context and explanation in my page New Creations.

 

If Cathy Rhodes' Christian beliefs are orthodox Anglican Beliefs, more or less, then she will believe that only those who accept Jesus as Saviour will be saved. This is one of the rewards for being a 'New Creation,' a person supposedly transformed by the redeeming power of Jesus. 

 

Those who fail to accept Jesus as Saviour are the unsaved. Does she believe that this applies to all doctors, nurses, administrators and patients in the NHS? Does she believe that this applies to all environmentalists? The Nicene Creed makes no special provision for such groups of people. According to the teaching of the Church of England, they are all damned - or subject to some sort of penalty.

 

On this page and my page Church Donations  I outline a horrific consequence of orthodox Christian Doctrine, as I see it: I find no mention in 'Bible teaching' or Church Doctrine of any age restrictions applicable to redemption / damnation. There seems to be no reason in orthodox Christian belief  why young children and babies should not be subject to damnation. There's every reason for condemning the damnation of young children and babies as revolting from a humanitarian perspective - the perspective which takes slavery to be horrific, torture horrific, and other outright abuses - abuses generally accepted during the many, many centuries of Christian domination.

 

Is she willing to make clear her personal beliefs concerning these issues? If not, why not? I make the same challenge to all the other Christians listed or otherwise mentioned on this page. If I receive any replies, I'll publish them, but I would first request permission to do that. I think that many replies would be impossible, that any replies would be overwhelmingly unlikely. In my experience, the confidence displayed by Christians, found again and again on the Websites of Churches and their personal Websites, can disappear very quickly. Faced by challenges to their faith, they prefer to keep a very low profile.

 

The Diocese of Sheffield page

https://www.sheffield.anglican.org/statement-for-election-to-church-commissioners/

gives the information that the Bishop of Sheffield, 'Pete' Wilson has been appointed as a Church Commissioner. So too has Dr Cathy Rhodes, a member of the congregation at St John's Church, Ranmoor, Sheffield - and wife of the Vicar, Matthew Rhodes. He mentions the fact in his sermon on the wheat and the weeds, examined in my section on the church. The address where the sermon can be found is

https://www.stmarkssheffield.co.uk/Publisher/
File.aspx?id=336470


The sermon was delivered at St Mark's Church, Sheffield. This, the opening part of the sermon, isn't quoted in the critique and I don't discuss this part of the sermon, except for comments on encouraging the growth of wild flowers:

It is good to be with you this morning. I bring greetings from everyone at St John’s Ranmoor and many congratulations on your Gold Eco Church Award. My wife, Cathy Rhodes, the Diocesan Environment Officer, is particularly delighted to have a gold award in the Diocese. There are now 59 churches in the Diocese registered with Eco Church and we have 22 bronze and silver awards. A lot of that is down to your longstanding commitment to this vital area of mission. The hot weather that we have seen recently in southern Europe has reminded us again of the need for urgent action to combat climate change. As St Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans, the whole creation is groaning in labour pains. We hope and pray for the day when it will be set free from its bondage to decay and find resurrection and new life. And of course we all have a part to play in this as individuals, churches and nations. St John’s has got its silver award and as part of that we’ve been leaving areas of the grounds unmown. We have been really pleased with the diversity of plants that have appeared, including some bee orchids. Vicarages are included in the Eco Church scheme so I’ve been trying to create space for more wild plants.

What I do discuss, in various places in this section, is this comment of Dr Rhodes, quoted in the Diocese of Sheffield page:


“I’m thankful for the privilege and opportunity to serve as a Church Commissioner. Please keep me in your prayers as I start the role. I hope some of the role will include building on my work as DEO [Diocesan Environment Officer] in our mission to care for God’s Creation and work towards climate justice for all God’s people.”


As well as this, an extract from the 'Church Times' which quotes Dr Rhodes,

 

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/5-november/features/features/green-church-showcase-green-thread-in-the-making

For those inspired by Sheffield’s example, her advice is simple: connect with existing local campaigners; “use every medium you’ve got to spread the word”; and find some practical action to unite around, to avoid degenerating into a talking shop.

 

“And, finally, mention God and faith naturally as part of interviews and presentations, showing how our faith upholds and inspires this work.”

 

To anyone inspired by the words of Dr Rhodes, I think I can easily show that she's misguided -  in some ways, disastrously misguided - but in ways which may not be immediately obvious. Before I put the case against Dr Rhodes - as Christian environmentalist - followed by the case against Dr Margaret Ainger, another Christian environmentalist, a few words to explain 'Church Commissioners.' The Church of England has  33 of them, including four lay people from the House of Laity of the General Synod. (I don't explain what the General Synod Is. I'd like to spare myself some tedium.) Cathy Rhodes isn't a clerical functionary of the Church of England but a lay person. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the Chairman of the Church Commissioners ex officio. There's more about the Church Commissioners below.

 

From another Wikipedia page, 'Properties and finance of the Church of England

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Properties_and_finances

 

The Church of England  has a large endowment of £8.7 billion which generates approximately £1 billion a year in income (2019),[1] this is their largest source of revenue. The 2019 Financial report showed that the size of the endowment has been steady or growing slightly in recent years, delivering a return of 10% (2019) ...

The Church's Endowment fund is invested in a diversified portfolio across a broad range of asset classes. This includes a variety of equity investments in publicly listed and private companies as well as commercial/residential property and land.

Donations

 

The Church of England generates approximately £329 million from churchgoers' donations; this corresponds to approximately £15 per week per donor.

 

...

Donations comprise its primary source of income, though it also relies heavily on the income from its various endowments.

 

The article gives more information about the Church Commissioners:

 

... the church moved the majority of its income-generating assets (which in the past included a great deal of land, but today mostly take the form of financial stocks and bonds) out of the hands of individual clergy and bishops to the care of a body called the Church Commissioners,  ish expenses, including clergy pensions and the expenses of cathedrals and bishops' houses. These funds amount to around £8 billion and generate income of around £260 million each year (as of 2003), around a fifth of the church's overall income.

 

I don't have any more recent information than the information quoted from 2003.

 

I move abruptly from this word of High Finance to some disillusioning non-financial information, which I refer to later in this section.

 

The Church of England is in crisis but it can be predicted that the present crisis will be followed by others, shattering in their effects.

 

From the Website of the National Secular Society

 

https://www.secularism.org.uk/opinion/2022/12/its-not-just-the-census-everywhere-you-look-the-cofe-is-withering

Only 1% of 18 to 24 year-olds regard themselves as belonging to the C of E, and only a small proportion of them actually attend [C of E Church services.]

From a very different source, the Website of a Church of England vicar

https://livingchurch.org/covenant/

Sunday Attendance (all ages)

 

2000    950,000

2010    799,000

2019    680,000

2022    549,000

 

Sunday attendance has nearly halved since the millennium. 

You can see the deep fall in Sunday attendance over recent decades and how this sped up since COVID. All dioceses have lost between a fifth and a quarter of their Sunday worshipers, between 2019 and 2022.  And this accelerated deep pre-existing decline. Some dioceses, like Bath & Wells and Manchester, have lost 60 percent of their Sunday congregations since 1990. Some, like London and Ely, have done less poorly, but all have seen a sharp drop since 2022.

 

There are other metrics for measuring attendance. They have their virtues, but also their vices. The great virtue of “usual Sunday attendance” is that it offers a long run of years of data. And it is easy to collect. There are other measures, but they generally offer shorter runs of data and, in some cases, are highly complex to calculate, raising concerns about the reliability of data. And the other metrics support the attendance trends given above.

 

Here is “leveling down” in action. For several decades, the Diocese of London held out against the rest of the church and actually grew (modestly). At last, it has come back into line. London is now declining as fast as everywhere else. London used to be an embarrassment for many C of E bishops. Why did it keep growing, when every other diocese was shrinking? This is an issue no longer. Every single C of E diocese is shrinking.

 

Where the C of E goes next can be seen by looking at other denominations in England.

The United Reformed Church was the main home for Presbyterians and Congregationalists in England. It is leading the trend of mainline decline. In 1972 it had 192,000 members. By 2022 it had 37,000 members. In 50 years, it has shrunk by over 80 percent. 

 

My page 'Green Orthodoxy, Green Objections'

 

www.linkagenet.com/themes/greenobjections.htm

 

puts the case against green campaigners (some of them, at least), green  believers and green ideologists, but the page is far from comprehensive. The list of profiles is very small.

 

I find linkages between environmentalists - many but not all - and the Church of England. Both include orthodox believers and ultra-orthodox believers. I've no way of knowing how rampant is hypocrisy in the worls of environmentalism and the Church of England.

 

My view is that more should be done to challenge environmentalists, above all the orthodox and ultra-orthodox and Church of England clerical and lay members. Here, the challenge is to people who combine both roles - some of the believing Church of England environmentalists.

 

In the case of these people, I'd want to issue a challenge on two fronts. There wouldn't be much point in giving anything but the briefest of outlines of what I have in mind, of a declaration by these people, because it's not in the least likely that any of them will be wiling to give an answer, in the form of a declaration or in any other way.

 

A 'declaration' here is something resembling a 'Declaration of Interest,'

 

'The purpose of declarations of interests is to provide information to the public about the interests of key decision makers which might influence their judgement, decision-making and actions, or which might be perceived by a reasonable member of the public as doing so.'

 

'A declaration of interest is a statement that outlines a person's potential conflicts of interest, which could impact their objectivity or ability to perform a task. Declarations of interest are required in a number of contexts ... '

 

The Declarations I'm thinking of would give information about (1) the Christian environmentalist's record in one particular aspect of environmentalism (2) the Christian environmentalist's beliefs concerning one central aspect of Christian belief. I defer discussion of (2) but give some information about (1) very soon.

 

My page on 'Green Orthodoxy, Green Objections' begins with a section

 

Introduction: green purism

 

My practice is much closer to green purism - which I criticize on this page - than its opposite, whatever name it's given. I follow green practices but point out the problems and difficulties of green practice.

 

I take the view that the conquest of the air, the invention and development of aircraft, including aircraft for the transportation of people, is a massive, extraordinary technological achievement, requiring massive, extraordinary feats of organization, logistics, use of people, including people with extraordinary skills.

 

I also take the view that the contribution of exhaust gas pollution from planes is a very significant contributor to climate change and that people should reduce the number of flights they take, or take none at all, if possible. I take a view which is frankly and unashamedly censorious. There are very large numbers of people who misuse their opportunities. There are people who fly to holiday destinations four times a year, five times a year, or even more times a year. There are people who fly from this country to visit Santa's Winter Wonderland somewhere in or near the Arctic Circle, spend a few hours there and fly back the same day.

 

Back to the section on 'Green Purism:

 

'I'm in the older age group. Over the decades, the many decades, I've travelled by plane only a few times - once to Northern Ireland, once to Italy, twice to Germany (to visit my brother, who was seriously ill) and twice to North America (I travelled long distances inside Canada and the United States but it was by train or bus. When I travelled to Chamonix for cross country skiing, I travelled by train - and found a campsite to pitch my tent when I got there. For a very long time, I've hardly travelled outside Sheffield, except for brief visits over the county border into the North Derbyshire Peak District. My work here occupies so much of my time.   I'm content to stay in this area.'

 

I'm motivated to an extent by simple curiosity to an extent in making this suggestion - I see no point in asking for a Declaration of Practice, because if a response to an invitation to supply information is likely to be disregarded, a Declaration of Practice is even less likely.

 

In the Church of England's naive and irresponsible pseudo-visionary versions of events, conflating the minor and the major or very significant plays a large part - as it does in so much secular environmental compaigning. Secular sermons on environmentalism can have faults similar to the ones in the eccelasiastical versions, preaching to the converted and those outside the blessed circle of belief, secular or Christian, can convey similar illusions and delusions, secular and sacred environmentalists may have similar faults, may be, in the words of a dictionary definition of the word 'green:' 'Immature, unsophisticated, or gullible.'

 

These are harsh criticisms, but I make the attempt to supply all the evidence needed.

 

The Church Times article referred to above includes this advice from Dr Rhodes, '... find some practical action to unite around, to avoid degenerating into a talking shop.'

 

All the forms of practical action available to the Church of England will have an effect on the 'Climate Crisis' which is negligible or non-existent. Token Gestures are a Church of England specialism. The main result is often the benefit to the self-esteem of those taking part - in some cases, feeding the aggrandizing and empire-building vanity of those in a position of leadership. Again and again, these schemes vanish with no discernible benefits, no achievements to record (despite the claims of official records), leaving hardly a trace.

 

Some projects are worthy and even worthwhile but fall well short of what's required to make a significant contribution. Sowing of wild flower seeds, encouragement of wild flowers falls within the category of worthy or worthwhile. The Home Page of the site includes three rows of images of wild flower species I've encouraged to grow at my allotments. (One of the images shows Solanum crispum, a bush and not a British native.) Growing wild flowers can easily lead to conflicts of interest, real dilemmas, at the small scale level and at the level of national use of farmland.

 

Dr Alex Hughes, Archdeacon of Cambridge

 

In this section, I focus attention on one aspect only of the Archdeacon's work, issues to do with education. He's the Chair of the Diocese Board of Education, the Diocese being Ely.

 

An issue I raise quite often now in my pages on Christianity is the issue of the redemption of children (and, also, babies.) The redemption - or non-redemption - of children is relevant to his post. This, from my page  Church Donations, explains the difficulty, which of course is a difficulty for Christians and potentially a difficulty for non-Christian parents:

 

The belief that non-believers go to Hell (or are separated from God for eternity) is common knowledge. Vast numbers of Christians, at vast numbers of churches, have this belief, and not just  Conservative Evangelicals.   Not nearly so common now: the belief, held by 'St' Augustine (of Hippo)  that deceased babies who never receive baptism go to hell, that baptism is essential for salvation.

 

Not discussed anywhere in the Bible, the fate of non-believing children - and babies. No age limit for redemption is mentioned in the Bible. Can very young children and even babies share the fate of adult non-believers?

 

So far as I know, I'm the first person to draw attention to this massive, shocking problem for orthodox believers.  This is a problem for 'liberal' Christians and 'progressive' Christians as well.

 

 

The tone of this section may seem conciliatory in some places. I see the need for range and variety - including a wide range of campaigning techniques, approaches which vary in tone. But above all, I'm an implacable opponent of Christianity. Church schools are one target among many and I don't have the time or the resources to devote to intensive campaigning in this area. Despite the importance of the issues, it will have to remain peripheral for me, and not just for the time being. I'm far more concerned with churches, church organizations and Christians in other spheres of the Christian world. This page identifies some of them.

 

So, some comment on church schools, those agents of indoctrination, blighted, like other Christian institutions, by catastrophic errors and errors which seem relatively unimportant but which have serious unintended consequences.  The failure to consider the consequences of damnation for the many, redemption for the few,' and the inclusion of young, very young children - babies too, it would seem - in the list of the lost is far from being an unimportant matter. The inclusion of obscure specialists in theological oddities and hosts of diocesan functionaries in the list of the saved seems to me grotesque, but so much of Christian faith and practice seems to me grotesque. I've been willing to go much further than simply stating a feeling. I've presented comprehensive evidence.

 

Of course, any diocesan functionaries, whatever their skills - financial, computing, administrative or whatever - who are employed by a diocese but who haven't made the crucial decision to accept the 'saving grace' of Jesus are included in the list of the lost, according to these doctrines of redemption.

 

So, some comments on Church of England schools:

 

I recognize, of course, that education at Church of England schools is about much more than indoctrination, that many aspects of education at these schools aren't distorted by indoctrination, that these schools can be good, very good - exemplary - in some respects, in many respects.  Even so, these schools make use of privileges which are undeserved.

 

Can the staff at these schools give an assurance that the children who haven't accepted Jesus as Saviour are at no risk of sharing the fate of their parents, if they haven't accepted Jesus as Saviour - eternal separation from God?

 

This is a matter to be addressed by theologians, orthodox and liberal - such as the 'liberal' theologian Dr Beth Keith of St Mark's Church, Sheffield - a matter to be addressed at Church of England and Roman Catholic schools throughout the country - schools which promote Church of England or Roman Catholic Christianity in lessons, at assemblies, by means of posters, by every means practicable. These are schools which are educating - at the same time, attempting to influence unduly - children from non-believing families as well as believing families. In most cases, the believing families will probably amount to a small proportion of the whole.

 

I fully recognize that a secular school can attempt to impose a grotesquely biased viewpoint. From the Home Page of this site:

 

[There's] extensive criticism of  Christian beliefs  without assuming that non-Christians and anti-Christians have a monopoly of good sense, without assuming that they are incapable of stupidity (and worse, much worse)

 

There are parishes where the Church of England parish church holds one service a week, attended by a small handful of people but the Church of England primary or secondary school attracts far more pupils than the school can take - but their parents would never dream of attending a Church of England service.

 

They appreciate the fact that the school is in a desirable area or the fact that the school is so convenient, perhaps just round the corner. To enjoy these advantages, many of them or most of them are willing to have the school promote a faith which is of no interest to them at all. To continue to enjoy these advantages, many of them are happy to give money to the Church now and again. I think that their instincts are sound, their willingness to make some token contribution to the Church understandable, even if I take a much more severe view. I think it would be a big mistake to give generously to the Church. A very small sum donated every so often won't be too harmful, though. Parents of children at Church Schools are likely to have a point of view which is very different from mine.

 

The Church has such faith in the power of prayer. These people do believe that praying for peace in Ukraine or the Middle East can have some effect, or, more ambitiously, that praying for the peace of the whole world can actually have an impact on the peace of the whole world. I think they will take the view that where their own finances are threatened, there will be less reliance upon prayer, less belief that prayer will actually make a difference. I take the view that if a church is in danger of severe financial embarrassment, then the Church can carry on praying and shouldn't expect to be supported. To give money to the Church of England is to divert money from far more deserving causes.

 

The Church of England is eager to find any opportunity to confirm its  distorted view that it's still a very important part of the fabric of English life. Remembrance Sunday gives further opportunities for fostering this illusion. Christmas, far less so - the vast majority of people have absolutely no interest in Jesus the supposed Saviour who supposedly saves people - a small minority of people - from the supposed penalty for their sins. The vast majority of people have absolutely no interest in dry as dust theologians, no interest in bishops, vicars, curates and the rest who are carefully cultivating their spheres of interest.

 

I think it  would be mistaken to view  beliefs in Hell (or eternal separation from God) as confined to a small minority of Church of England believers. A belief in some form of separation from God - and probably eternal separation - can be found often, I think, in  'progressive,' 'liberal' Church circles. In their confusions, contradictions, illusions, evasions, distortions they have a great deal in common with Believers in Hellfire for Almost Everyone.

 

The Church of England is a broad church, which is not to say that it's a tolerant church. It tolerates a wide spectrum of views and beliefs, provided that they never threaten the basic belief systems of the Church. The Church has tolerated the monsters in its midst in a way which is  deeply disturbing.

 

 Its history is much, much darker than commonly recognized. There have been many, many monsters in the Church of England, as well as people not to be described as monsters but still very harmful. The many, many mild-mannered people in the Church of England are often associated with barbaric beliefs.

 

Recommended, viewing the Websites of a number of Church of England schools. In my experience, they vary widely in the thoroughness of their attempted indoctrination. To me, the milder ones go too far and others are grossly deficient, doing everything in their power to engage children in activities which take for granted the absolute truth of 'Bible teaching' and 'Church teaching' and which are designed to make converts of them or to make any alternative to Christian belief unthinkable.

 

Dr Mark Smith, Dean, Clare College, Cambridge

 

Dr Mark Smith was a member of the Vacancy in See Committee which, despite the prayers of its members, despite God's guidance has failed to deliver - deliver a new Bishop of Ely. A new Bishop is unlikely to be found this year. Only in 2025 will the Diocese benefit from the new Bishop's decisive guidance - if, that is, he or she can provide any.

 

Dr Smith has provided a historical and theological analysis of the major church councils of the mid-fifth century, from the Council of Ephesus (431) to the Council of Chalcedon (451).

 

He has analysed in detail how appeals to the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea (325), functioned to help, and to hinder, the articulation of doctrinal truth.

 

He has offered  a fresh account of the shaping of orthodoxy in the early church, and the role of councils and creeds in that process.

 

The Clare College Website, unlike so many Cambridge College Websites, gives very little detail about the pastoral responsibilities of the Dean. From the page 'Health and Welfare:'

 

'Rev'd Dr Mark Smith is responsible for the running of the Chapel and has a general pastoral role in the College.' For more on the pastoral care provided by Cambridge clergy, see my section on the Cambridge University page  Pastoral care: the College Chaplains and Deans.

 

It's not obvious to me that Dr Smith's academic interests will support his pastoral work in any way. It would be a bad mistake to imagine that people with an interest in the early church or any period of church history, with an interest in any books of the Bible, will have gained many insights of value for this very, very different field, people with many forms of  neurosis and sometimes psychosis, including people who self harm. I don't know if Dr Smith is a cheery Churchy type or if he has tendencies very different in kind. I

 

Questions for Dr Smith. You're obviously very interested in Christian orthodoxy, the construal of Christian orthodoxy, the shaping of Christian orthodoxy, the role of  councils and creeds in the shaping of Christian orthodoxy. Could your own Christian beliefs by described as orthodox? If they aren't it does seem curious that you devote so much of your time to the study of orthodoxy. If your Christian beliefs could be described as orthodox, then no doubt you believe in hell as well as heaven, and hell for the fellow academics you mix with at Clare - the ones who never go on to acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, that is, not the academics over at the Faculty of Divinity. For all I know, there may be closet atheists or agnostics working in the Faculty of Divinity.

 

The Master of Christ's College says that you provided 'very effective pastoral support to the entire College.' What evidence is available. If you have orthodox Christian beliefs, as is likely, is your view of the 'entire College' the orthodox Christian view - some of the College will be placed on Christ's right hand and some on his left: salvation and damnation.

 

Clare College is likely to have a higher 'Religiosity Index' than so many other places, but even at Clare, the percentage of undergraduates and postgraduates who have orthodox Christian beliefs, semi-orthodox beliefs and unorthodox beliefs is likely to be very low. My view is that a Christian in pastoral care can't divest himself or herself (or themself) of the baggage of faith. A much fuller discussion of these matters will be needed.

 

I appreciate that these direct questions and observations may seem rather tactless.

 

The Rev'd Canon James Blandford-Baker

 

James Blandford-Baker - another Committee Member whose Committee failed to come up with a Bishop ready and able to take on the role of Bishop of Ely. He was a Candidate for General Synod and he was successful - a form of success not to be envied. His address is bland, routine, vacuous, poor, closely conforming to and confirming the stereotypical Anglican clergyman in many respects - except for his very respectable, in fact admirable, academic background, which isn't in academic theology.

 

https://d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net/
5f0f7281dadce/content/pages/documents/
blandford-baker-the-revd-canon-james-clergy-.pdf

 

He writes - and Artificial Intelligence given a modest input of lacklustre Anglican writing could produce masses of this kind of thing -

 

I believe the calling of the Church of England is to live out and communicate the Good News of Jesus to our nation in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Kingdom of God not only transforms the lives of individuals but whole communities; this perspective is deeply biblical and Anglican!

 

A further sample of the genre. He claims that he has

 

A Desire to Learn and Grow

 

I am deeply conscious of God’s call on my life to keep listening and growing as a follower of Jesus Christ. The Church belongs to Him and not to anyone else, wherever they come from! I recognize that courage, humility and prayerfulness are essential if I am to make a worthwhile contribution to General Synod. If elected, I will greatly value your prayers; please pray for me.

 

We can be sure that there was no shortage of prayer at every stage in the failed attempt to appoint a new Bishop to the Ely Diocese. Despite the accumulated prayers, heartfelt or routine but all futile, there will be no Bishop of Ely for the whole of the year 2025, it seems. What has happened to all those prayers for Peace in the Middle East?

 

On 16 November 2023, these members of the Vacancy in See Committee were elected to the Crown Nominations Commission:

 

  • The Revd Canon James Blandford-Baker
  • Canon Dr Felicity Cooke
  • The Revd Canon Sarah Gower
  • The Ven Dr Alex Hughes
  • Canon Simon Kershaw
  • Mr Christopher Townsend

 

Rick Stordy, Vicar, St John the Evangelist, Sheffield

On a page of the Church Website, there's one of those miscellaneous / random list of entries common enough on Church Websites, designed, it seems, to show that although the person is a New Creation (my page New Creations has more on the subject) even so they aren't freaks, odd - they share many of the same interests as people not granted, or not yet granted, the privileges conveyed by the 'transforming power of Christ.'

 

According to the page

 

https://www.stjohnschap.co.uk/who-we-are/staff/

 

'He enjoys curries, running, walking, Bradfield Brewery ales and any thriller by John Grisham (though not necessarily in that order).'

 

The Curate, Pete Sewards, claims a shorter, not so eclectic mix:

 

'Pete loves American Football, Golf, and good coffee.'

 

The page

 

https://www.stjohnschap.co.uk/why-were-here/why-were-here/

 

is dreadful in its ignorance. I don't challenge its ignorance and  misrepresentations, its illusions and evasions here because I've given detailed argument and evidence on this page of the site and other pages of the site - in the pages on Christian faith and practice.  The Home Page of the site gives ready access to the pages, with links, and contains very concise information on the subject, mainly in the form of images.

 

The 'Good News' according to St John the Evangelist, Chapeltown, Sheffield (which is very bad news for the great mass of humanity, condemned to damnation - but St John the Evangelist doesn't devote much attention to this aspect.

 

The heartbeat of St. John’s is Jesus Christ.  There’s only one reason we exist and stick together as a church – and it’s him.  There is simply no one else – no person, no thing, no experience, no hero like him.  He is our God and our Friend: the One who made us and saves us, and for whom we exist.  He makes sense of our lives and gives the hope and joy we all long for.

The problem is that for many people, Jesus is about as real and relevant as the tooth fairy.  A comforting thought at a painful time, but with no real impact on our lives.

Yet Jesus is a real person who walked this earth in real time.  And who still is alive today.  Nothing in history or in our lives can ever be the same again.  So we love to offer folks the opportunity to find out more about him – and to ask their questions.  We're passionate about sharing the evidence for Jesus, and what it looks like to experience him in our lives today.

David Whitehead, Associate Minister, St John the Evangelist, Sheffield

From his profile on the page

https://www.stjohnschap.co.uk/who-we-are/staff/

'He loves touring in his motorhome, and bashing noisy things like his Djembe, as well as trying to keep up with Nick's world of Harry Potter, Star Wars and Lego!'

David Whitehead is a hospital chaplain and a Conservative Evangelical. Can he see any problems arising from these two roles? Does he believe that all the doctors, all the nurses, all the NHS administrators, all the patients (including patients who are young children and babies) are destined for damnation if they fail to accept Jesus as Saviour? Is he willing to declare openly his beliefs - and the horrific implications of his beliefs? Does he or doesn't he believe that all of these can never share in the redemption supposedly given by Jesus? What does 'Bible Teaching' tell him to believe? Is the ministry of David Whitehead helpful or harmful?

Andrew Goddard, Assistant Minister, St James the Less, Pimlico, London

 

There's nothing special about Andrew Goddard, although his Website does its best to publicize his achievements and accomplishments.

 

https://www.theologyethics.com/about-me/

 

There's absolutely nothing original in any of the work that I'm aware of. So far as I know, his knowledge of Philosophy, Politics and Economics is permeated by his orthodox evangelical reflexes - and they are reflexes, more or less automatic, not in the least the product of mature thought. The fact that he has a degree in PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) from Oxford University proves nothing.

 

If he wants to try to prove me wrong, he's welcome to contact me. I'd be glad to enter into debate with him about his views, beliefs - confused, contradictory, hideous orthodox Evangelical beliefs.

Presumably, he really does believe that all MP's are destined for Hell - apart from the tiny minority of believers in Christ as Lord and Saviour, he really does believe that all disabled children are destined for Hell - apart from the tiny minority of believers in Christ as Lord and Saviour. Obviously, the list could be extended indefinitely, to include this Statement of Belief: the entire population of the world is destined for Hell - apart from the tiny minority of believers in Christ as Lordy and Saviour. If I've misrepresented his views, he's welcome to contact me and I'll be glad to publish his opinions on these matters.

 

So to his List of Achievements, to add to his achievements at St James the Less, Pimlico:

 

I am currently Tutor in Ethics at Ridley Hall in Cambridge, teaching ethics in the Cambridge Theological Federation.  I also teach ethics at Westminster Theological Centre.

I have in the past been Tutor in Christian Ethics at Trinity College, Bristol (2008-2013) and also taught at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford where I was a member of the Faculty of Theology in Oxford University, (1999-2008). I also served for several years as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anglican Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

After studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) and completing a Postgraduate Diploma in Theology my doctorate was on the French Reformed lay theologian and social critic Jacques Ellul.  My main areas of writing in recent years have been in relation to sexual ethics and Anglicanism, including an account of Rowan Williams’ time as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Jonathan Collis, Rector, St Botolph's Church, Cambridge

 

For the time being, there's very little on Jonathan Collis and St Botolph's Church.

I'll be commenting on the page

 

https://www.stbotolphcam.org/Groups/348266/

Our_faith_and.aspx

 

'Our faith and how we practise it.'

This is an extract. Highlighted here, but not in the original, is the section Giving. Giving to St Botolph's is obviously very, very important. The claim isn't made that nothing can be more important than giving money (and time and commitment) to St Botolph's is far more important than anything else, but it's clear that this is something which should never be neglected by the congregating masses - if there are masses attending the events at the church.

 

God-centred

God, who made us all, who in Jesus died and rose for us all and who fills us all, is at the centre of the lives of all the members of our church family. All that we have is from God; all that we are is for God; all that we do is with God. Through worship, prayer, service and mission we seek to do God’s will and to build His kingdom.
 

Eucharistic

Jesus is made known to us, and we receive him, in the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine. The heart of our life and fellowship together is the Holy Communion. We aim to be  the Lord’s people around the Lord’s table on the Lord’s day on Sunday.
In the beauty of holiness of our dignified Prayer Book liturgy, we offer God thanks and worship, as we hear his word, receive forgiveness for our sins, offer ourselves to him and receive spiritual food for our journey and strength to do his work. At each Holy Communion service, we open ourselves to be transformed by the word we hear and the Sacrament we in faith receive.
 

Committed

We dedicate our lives to the love and praise of God and the love and service of our neighbour, seven whole days, not one in seven. We believe that God has given every one of us gifts and time to be used in his service, in this place to which he has called us and in all the circumstances of our daily lives. Through our baptism each of us has a ministry in the body of Christ and we encourage each other to find and exercise that ministry.
 

Serving

Jesus commands us to serve one another and to show his self-giving love. We are to be outward, not inward, looking people. We seek by our lives to proclaim the gospel both in word and deed to all whom we meet. Reconciliation, justice and peace and the care of God’s creation lie at the heart of our service to the world.
 

Giving

We believe that we have received freely from God and that we must give freely of our time, our gifts and our money. We give financially, not only for the work of our parish church, but also, through the church, to those in need and to the wider mission of the church. We aim to give sacrificially, and regularly, to uphold and further our life and witness in this place. 
 

Nurturing

All of us need to grow in our faith, so that we may bear fruit for God. All of us sit at the feet of Jesus, learning to be his disciples, learning to pray, learning the richness of his word, becoming more fully the body of Christ in this place.
 

Growing

Jesus commissions us to make disciples and each of us seeks, by the witness of our lives, to bring people to God. We seek, through the love of God and neighbour shown in our worship and our welcome, to bring more people into our church family.

Jane Patterson, Christ Church, Fulwood, Sheffield

 

Christ Church is a conservative evangelical church. In this section, the focus of my attention is Jane Patterson, not a member of the clergy or a staff member. I provide a list (incomplete) of clergy and staff members below.  Jane Patterson can be regarded as a Very Important Person in a Very Unimportant World, the world of Parish Affairs and Parish Politics.

The page

 

https://www.sheffield.anglican.org/UserFiles/
File/Synod/General/Elections_2021/-Complete-Set-Lay.pdf

gives this information:

 

2021 ELECTION FOR 4 LAY PEOPLE TO REPRESENT THE DIOCESE IN THE GENERAL SYNOD HOUSE OF LAITY


the section

'What do I believe?'

Jane Patterson gave an answer which was standard stuff.

 

'I believe that the Bible is the divinely inspired and written Word of God, that its pages tell us about who God is, His perfect plan for the world He created, His offer of forgiveness and a restored eternal relationship for everyone who believes in the death and resurrection of His only Son, Jesus and who confesses Him as Saviour and Lord. I believe that the Bible shows us how we should live and that ‘the great commission’, at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, remains the church’s mission statement 2000 years later.'

 

Not many human lives, not a vast number of human lives but all human activities are reduced in this ultra-systematic system of belief to a simple division.

 

Does Jane Patterson believe that everyone who worships at Christ Church, Fulwood, Sheffield is 'saved,' provided they have passed the test and that  everyone else, including the poor, the destitute, the victims of war, the carers, the scientists and engineers, climbers and mountaineers, miners, builders, plumbers, accountants, farmers, factory workers and philanthropists - people in every single human activity - are destined to spend eternity in hell or whatever polite term is the current synonym for hell? She does believe this, and so do  street pastors - who believe that the people they rescue from dehydration after heavy drinking need rescuing from a far worse fate, hell. (Street pastors who claim that this is a complete misinterpretation of their own beliefs are welcome to contact me.)

 

An extract from the Christ Church Staff List - wondrous to behold, or perhaps not. Be that as it may, I'm confident that despite the large number of staff and whatever theological knowledge they have, the Church won't be willing to defend itself and its Christian 'values.'

 

Jonny Dyer, Vicar (replacing the vicar who left under mysterious circumstances - more information below.)
Pete Scamman, Associate Vicar.
A curate who according to the information supplied 'enjoys chatting with young people about Jesus.')
A Minister for Training
A Minister for Students

A Students Worker
A Youth and Families Worker (who 'enjoys chatting with young people about Jesus' and 'painting toy soldiers'
A Children and Families Worker
A Junior Children, Youth and Families Worker
A Director of Operations
A Premises Manager
Ministry Support Assistants X 3 (3 of them)
Ministry Support Manager
Lead Recruiter
Ministry Trainees X 5 

 

Supplementary: extracts from

 

https://anglican.ink/2021/10/14/the-official-reason-for-the-resignation-of-the-evangelical-vicar-of-one-of-englands-largest-parishes-doesnt-pass-the-smell-test/

 

Christ Church Fulwood  in south-west Sheffield is one of the largest churches in the Church of England, so the resignation of its vicar on September 30th after a Bishops’ Visitation into his leadership is a major story. 

 

The church gets over a 1000 people through its doors on a usual Sunday, compared to the around 50 that the average CofE church gets.

 

Since Canon Paul Williams became vicar of Fulwood in 2006 after serving as curate at another CofE conservative evangelical flagship church, All Souls Langham Place in central London, Christ Church has been responsible for four church plants or grafts within Sheffield Diocese. 

 ...

After a claim on Twitter in August that ‘the head of Christ Church Fulwood’ (the tweet did not directly name Williams) had been ‘forced’ to resign, the Bishop of Sheffield, Pete Wilcox and the suffragan Bishop of Maidstone, Rod Thomas, who has delegated oversight of the church due to its opposition to women bishops, issued a joint statement.

 

Williams’s resignation, they insisted, was ‘made freely’ and had their ‘full support’.

 

But what does that mean? 

 

Did they want him to resign after the report resulting from their Visitation? 

This, according to Fulwood’s senior curate Rev Pete Scamman when he announced  his chief’s resignation to the church on June 27th, reported that ‘some within the church family’ had been ‘left feeling hurt by their experience of his (Williams’s) leadership’. The report also included Williams’s own account of his experience at the church over the previous year, Scamman said.

...

Fulwood is part of the Sheffield Hallam constituency once represented in the UK Parliament by former Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. People living in Hallamshire have amongst the highest per capita wealth in the country.

Will Fulwood revert to a vicar who plays well socially with the expensively-educated, well-paid professionals that make up a large part of the Christ Church congregation or will the church get a pastor from a different social and educational background?

 

Now, material on people 'from a different social and educational background,' with an incomparably lower 'per capita wealth,' the children who died in the Huskar Mine Disaster. Jane Patterson may believe - does believe - that the affluent go to heaven (if they make the right decision in matters of faith) and those in desperate poverty aren't eligible for heaven (if they don't make the right decision) but my view is obviously different.

 

My view is that it  would be completely reasonable to regard a belief in 'hell for everybody except for those saved by faith in JC as saviour,' to put it concisely, as a  twisted, lunatic, harmful belief, terrifying in its estrangement from reality and in its disregard for human and humane values. I think that Jane Patterson  probably regard 'human values' as irrelevant here, since these beliefs are supposedly based on higher values, on 'God's Word,' not on sinful human values. Jane Patterson is badly mistaken.

 

Adam Innes, Eyam Parish Church, Derbyshire

 

[This section is in preparation. The content is sparse for the time being.]

 

The page of the Eyam Parish Church Website

https://www.eyamchurch.org/about-us/whos-who/

gives the information that  Adam Innes is  the 'Associate Pastor,' Mel Hartley is Curate and Joanna Shapland is Reader.

 

https://www.eyamchurch.org/about-us/what-we-believe

 

Extracts: 

 

We believe there is a God who is a good Father to us, who made the whole of the universe and ourselves in his image.

This planet is a place of wonder and beauty, though marred by human evil and greed that goodness shines through. We believe this is because the creator of this world and all other worlds is God who is limitless in his power, creativity, love and goodness. The scriptures also teach us that we are made in his image and that he is like a father to us.

 

Christians believe that this death was no accident but that Jesus willingly allowed this to happen so that he could take all of humanity’s sin, hate and failure on to himself so that we would not have to suffer the consequences of our sin. He died so that we might be free from our wrong and forgiven by God.

 

Again and again, during plagues and other natural disasters, Christians have placed the responsibility on humans. It was the sins of humans, supposedly, which had caused the plague and prayers were offered to God to forgive the sins and end the plague.  It was the patient, exacting work of humans which eventually uncovered the real reasons for plague, the causative organisms responsible and which eventually led to effective means of preventing plagues.

 

The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic, the most deadly pandemic recorded in human history. It caused the deaths of 75 - 200 million people. It reached its peak in the years 1347 - 1353. Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, not, as vast numbers of Christians believed, human sin. The bacterium is spread by fleas. According to the version of events on the Website of Eyam Parish Church, God created all things, which include not just pretty flowers and cute baby animals but the bacterium Yersinia pestis and the fleas - and, also, the causative organisms in the case of all other infectious diseases.


Below, Yersinia pestis and the Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) engorged with blood.

 

 

 

This species  of flea is the primary vector  for the transmission of the bacterium.  When the flea feeds on an uninfectedhost Y. pestis is regurgitated into the wound, causing infection. This is a very long way from the very selective view of 'God's creation' favoured by Christians, such as the Christian who wrote the lyrics of the hymn 'All things bright and beautiful:"

 

All things bright and beautiful All creatures great and small All things wise and wonderful 'Twas God that made them all

Each little flower that opens Each little bird that sings He made their glowing colors And made their tiny wings.

 

The persecution of Jews during the Black Death consisted of a series of violent mass attacks and massacres. Jewish communities  were falsely blamed for outbreaks of the Black Death in Europe.  . From 1348 to 1351, acts of violence were committed ... Jews were frequently used as scapegoats and false accusations  which stated that they had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells   were circulated ... Around 2,000 Jews were burnt alive on 14 February 1349 in the "Valentine's Day" Strasbourg massacre ...   In the spring of 1349, the Jewish community in Frankfurt am Main was annihilated. That was followed by the destruction of Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne. The 3,000-strong Jewish population of Mainz initially defended themselves and managed to hold off the Christian attackers. However, the Christians managed to overwhelm the Jewish ghetto  in the end and killed all of its Jews ... One of the most significant long-term consequences of the Black Death in Europe was the migration of the Jews to Poland. The Jews migrated to Poland in an attempt to escape from the persecution which they were being subjected to in Western Europe.  This event is one of the major factors that contributed to the existence of a large population of Jews in Poland during the early 20th century. Approximately 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland at the time of Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

 

 

Above, the  plaque in Eyam village which gives the information that here, animals were baited. And the iron ring to which the chain was attached, fastened to the animal being baited.

 

Bull and bear baiting were popular events for many centuries in this and other countries. The baiting was grotesquely cruel. Chained animals were savaged by a pack of dogs, causing horrible injuries - loss of eyes, flesh ripped away. The Church did nothing to stop the abuse. Christianity has condoned, done nothing to oppose cruelty to animals. There are individual Christians who have opposed cruelty to animals but they were rare exceptions before the modern era. Baiting only became illegal when Parliament passed the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835.


Another list: Diocese of Oxford, select functionaries

 

The Right Revd Dr Steven Croft, Bishop of Oxford

The Venerable Jonathan Chaffey, Archdeacon of Oxford

The Revd Canon Professor Sarah Foot, Dean, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

Andrew Anderson-Gear, Director of Mission and Ministry

Sophie Orme, Director of Property

Andrew Green, Director of Finance

Jane Appleton, Director of Communications

Charnelle Stylianides, Director of People and Safeguarding

The Revd Canon Dr Peter Groves, Associate Archdeacon

Claire Barratt, Personal Assistant to the Archdeacon of Oxford

Rhodri Bowen, Parish Development Adviser (Berkshire and Oxford)

The Revd Dr Quentin Chandler, Diocesan Director of Ordinands

The Revd Paul Cowan, Chaplain to the Bishop of Oxford

Dr Simon Cross, Research, Engagement and Parliamentary Liaison for the Bishop of Oxford

Marian Green, Bishop of Oxford's Executive Assistant

Yvonne Morris, Discipleship Enabler (Oxfordshire) and Diocesan Children's and Family Ministry Adviser

[Vacancy] Bishop of Buckingham

The Venerable Guy Elsmore, Archdeacon of Buckingham

The Revd Canon Chris Bull, Associate Archdeacon - Buckinghamshire

[Vacancy], Secretary and Administrator to the Bishop of Buckingham

Catherine Green, Personal Assistant to the Bishop of Buckingham

Margaret Curle, Administrator for the Bishop of Buckingham's Office

The Revd Canon Rosie Harper, Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham

Heather Harris, Personal Assistant to the Archdeacon of Buckingham

The Revd Canon Val Plumb, Area Dean for Rural Mission and Development

James Wood, Discipleship Enabler (Buckingham) and Diocesan Schools Specialist

The Reverend Asa Humphreys' Parish Development Adviser (Buckingham)

The Rt Revd Gavin Collins, Bishop of Dorchester

THe Venerable David Tyler, Archeacon of Dorchester

The Revd Preb Jane Haslam
Associate Archdeacon of Dorchester

Paula Bennett,, Personal Assistant to the Archdeacon of Dorchester

Sarah Brennan, Events and Services Administrator for Dorchester

[Vacant], Parish Development Adviser

Jane Hemmings, Area Director of Ordinands (Dorchester and Oxford)

Yvonne Morris, Discipleship Enabler (Oxfordshire) and Diocesan Children's and Family Ministry Adviser

Carol-Anne Swinney, Personal Assistant to the Bishop of Dorchester

[Vacancy], Bishop of Reading

The Venerable Stephen Pullin, Archdeacon of Berkshire

The Revd Liz Jackson, Associate Archdeacon - Berkshire

Rhodri Bowen, Parish Development Adviser (Berkshire and Oxford)

The Revd Nicholas Cheeseman, Area Director of Ordinands (Oxford and Berkshire)

Isobel Hansford, Personal Assistant to the Bishop of Reading

The Revd Mark Laynesmith, Anglican Chaplain to the University of Reading

Kathryn Aboud, Discipleship Enabler (Berkshire) and Youth Ministry Specialist

Jane Sampson, Personal Secretary to the Archdeacon of Berkshire

Alison Taylor, Personal Assistant to the Archdeacon of Berkshire

Lesley Young, Personal Secretary to the Bishop of Reading

Jane Appleton, Director of Communications

Rebekah Sharrock, Acting Head of Communications

Bev Botting, Data Analyst

Steven Buckley, Communications Consultant

Ruth Hamilton-Jones, Communications Officer - Publications

Rowan Lake, Communications Assistant

Emma Thompson, Communications Officer - Digital

Andrew Anderson-Gear, Director of Mission and Ministry

Navita Pereira, Directors, CMD Team and Academic Administrator

The Revd Dr Andy Angel, Director of Formation for Ministry

Jane Barlow, Administrative Assistant to Head of Vocations and DDO

The Revd Dr Grant Bayliss, Head of IME2

Mandi Bowen, Administrator to the DDO Team

The Revd Dr Phil Cooke, Dean of Lay Ministry

Emma Firth, Project Manager (New Congregations)

Andrew Hayes, Ministry Enabler (Digital Learning)

Beverley Higgs, Administrator for the Discipleship Enabler team and Parish Returns

Marilyn Robinson-Po, Administrator (New Congregations)

Charlie Kerr, Chaplaincy Adviser [Charlie is part of the ODBE staff team]

James Leach, Theological Educator for IME1

Hannah Ling, Social Justice Adviser

The Revd Gill Lovell, CMD Adviser

Carolyn Main, Local Ministry and LLM Support Officer

Hannah Mann, Environment Programme Manager

Joanna Gallant, Head of Discipleship and Social Justice

The Revd David Pickering, IME2 Curates Hard Skills Co-ordinator

Emma Nawrocki, IME Curate Course Administrator

Alison Riggs, Environment Action Delivery Co-ordinator

Maranda ST John Nicolle, World Development Adviser

Liza Thompson, Project Support Assistant (New Congregations)

Joshua Townson, Generous Giving Adviser

[Vacant], Administrator (Generous Giving, Environment and Social Justice

The Revd Canon Janet Binns,Dean of the UKME Chapter

The Oxford Slogan



should be followed by an 'Oxford Confession,' of failure and inadequacy.

 

The Oxford Diocese has 'more parishes and churches than any other diocese in the Church of England ... 808 churches ... 29 deaneries ... 284 Church of England schools.'

 

And also: 'serving a population of 2.4 million people.' Which isn't to suggest that all or most or a large proportion of these people have any interest in the Church of England.

 

Facts and figures from the page 

 

https://anglican.ink/2024/04/21/the-church-of-england-is-losing-young-people-and-fast/

 

published in 2024.

 

The number of children attending C of E churches on an average Sunday has halved since 2003. There were 154,000 children under the age of 16 in C of E churches on an average Sunday. By 2022 it had declined to 70,000.

 

In 2003 the average adult Sunday attendance was 802,000. It was 447,000 in 2021.

 

The author of the page is a Conservative Evangelical, Julian Mann. His views on some possible causes of this decline aren't to be taken seriously. He quotes Bishop Steven Croft, now Bishop of Oxford but the Bishop of Sheffield when Julian Mann was there, who refers to one example of an injustice and then makes this assertion:

 

 

“If the Church believes this clear injustice, the argument goes, then what does this say about the rest of the beliefs of the Church? Is this an organisation that is to be taken seriously at all as a moral and ethical force in the 21st Century?”

 

This is amazing. There are so many other instances of  Church of England beliefs which are manifestly instances of 'clear injustice,' above all, the hideous injustice of believing in the damnation, or eternal separation, of people who never accept Jesus as Saviour. This is an organisation which can't be taken seriously at all as a moral and ethical force in the 21st Century - one which should never have been taken seriously at all in any previous century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 










  Church Survey: Redemption, Salvation -  Damnation? As viewed in

   Includes views at various places, including Oxford, Cambridge, Ripon College Cuddesdon, Reading (The Home of the Prayer Book Society)

 

 

In this column

 

Introduction

Ripon College Cuddesdon

The Prayer Book Society. Why the King should withdraw his patronage

Rudolf Bultmann and 'Salvation Today ...' 
'The Holy and Undivided Trinity'

The prominence of the Church of England at Oxford (and Cambridge) University
Problems facing the Church of England and Church organizations in brief
Action and inaction in the Diocese of Oxford

 

Introduction

 

This is now the newest page on the site. The material here was added very, very recently. It will be revised and extended, to include many more 'New Creations,' that is, people who have been transformed - or claim that they have been transformed - by belief in Christ as Saviour. The reference is to

 

 

Further information about 'New Creations' and the relevance of filming and photography to some New Creations on the page

 

www.linkagenet.com/themes/new-creations.htm

 

I think it's likely that the material on this page will be found very challenging, for the people listed on the page. It presents stark dilemmas which, again and again, are obscured in the Web Sites and other materials provided by Christian Churches and Church organizations.

 

The pages of the site which include material on Christian faith and practice present counter-arguments and counter-evidence on a wide range of Christian doctrines. On this page, the focus is on one aspect of Christian doctrine, but a central one - redemption and salvation. I give a long list of people, inviting them to give their view of Christian redemption, salvation and the destiny of people who don't qualify for redemption, salvation. The subject of damnation has become more and more of an embarrassment, but there are  vast numbers of Christians who still believe in damnation.

 

If people intend to give money to Churches and church organizations, such as the Church Army, they are surely entitled to have information about the beliefs of the people and the churches and the church organizations they intend to support.

 

The churches have been forced to appoint safeguarding functionaries, to emphasize safeguarding. Although people rarely give to support safeguarding specifically, it's surely important, very important, to make known the beliefs of the people involved in safeguarding. It's surely important to know if these safeguarding appointments believe that John Smyth, the horrific beater and flogger is forgiven by God and is likely to have been redeemed, whilst his victims are unredeemed, if they never accept Christ as Saviour. It would be difficult to argue that John Smyth wasn't a Christian believer, that it's impossible for him to have been a Christian believer.

 

In the column to the right, the second column of the page, there are images of  people unqualified for redemption, it seems, such as unconverted Jews, including Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Lower down the column are images of repulsive people - who qualified for salvation, it would seem, by orthodox Christian doctrines of salvation.

 

The second part of the column is very different, images, with identities, of notorious 'New Creations,' people whose status as New Creations should be not just problematic as impossible, surely. Some of these, most of these or even all of them will not be problematic to some Christians or many Christians, however.

 

In the third column of the page,   there's a list, without images, of  contemporary  'New Creations,' people who seem to have accepted Christ as Saviour - the 'New Creations.' The 'New Creations' will include clergy and non-clergy. I give the name but not the title or qualification - 'John Smith,' not 'the Venerable Canon Dr John Smith' and further information,  such as 'Bishop of ... ' or 'Associate Archdeacon Transition Enabler, Sheffield.'

 

The column contains the names of Church clergy, academic theologians and other contemporary functionaries.

 

I'll send an email to people on the list - some or many but not all. This will not be possible in the case of Church Army people, for the reason that one person at the Church Army has chosen to suppress the free flow of information.

 

If I receive a reply, then I'll include it in the line - or lines - below the name. If there's no further information, then a reply has not been received. A reply may be received in the future, but I expect a very small number of replies and possibly none at all. As I see it, the page will have various functions and various benefits. Some of the benefits are not dependent upon the receipt of replies, many or any.

 

The emphasis will be upon the Church of England - Evangelicals, Conservative Evangelicals, Anglo-Catholics, 'Liberals,' 'Progressives,' but also some Roman Catholics. I've come to the conclusion that in many, many cases - obviously, not all - the beliefs of 'liberal' and 'progressive' Christians intersect with the beliefs of orthodox and ultra-orthodox Christians. If Christians who refuse to believe that ordinary people  (who may well be extraordinary people) are consigned to eternal separation from God or some other penalty want to make it clear that they don't believe in these doctrines, then I'll be glad to include the information on this page. I won't assume that blanks on the page signify either acceptance or non-acceptance of these doctrines. In the majority of cases, or practically all cases, I have reason to believe that the listed people do believe in very adverse consequences for non-believers, not necessarily amounting to anything resembling orthodox doctrines of Hell.

 

Ripon College Cuddesdon

This section has hardly any content for the time being.

Above, Bishop Edward King Chapel, Harriet Monsell House, Ripon College Cuddesdon

The profile has only just been begun. I will explain later the claims added to the images above.

This is a list of Academic Staff and Associate Teaching Staff, from the page

https://www.rcc.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff

I only provide names here, with functions for the first three names on the list. I omit qualifications and titles, 'Dr,' 'Revd,' 'Canon' and so on. I hope to add Profiles (or comments) on some of the people listed below.

Academic Staff

Humphrey Southern (Principal)
Sarah Brush (Director, CGH and Vice-Principal
Oliver Keenan (Academic Dean, Christian Doctrine
Hywel Clifford
Rebecca Dean
Buki Fatona
Eleanor McLaughlin
Victoria Turner
Alison Walker
Richard Wyld
Pete White

Associate Teaching Staff

Mark Chapman
Paul Bradbury
Pat Brittenden
Phillip Brown
Tom Clammer
Joanna Collicutt
John Daniels
John Drane
Elaine Flowers
Ray Gaston
Stephen Goundrey-Smith
Margot Hodson
Edward Howells
Beth Keith
Luke Larner
Peniel Rajkumar
Cate Williams
Anthony G. Reddie

The Prayer Book Society. Why the King should withdraw his patronage.

King Charles III is the Patron of a large number of organizations, including Church Army and the Prayer Book Society. On the page  Church Army failures. Reasons why the King should withdraw his patronage. the page A Church Army Centre of Mission: multiple omissions  and the page The Church Army, including problems for Trustees (which also has material on the Mission Activity known as 'Messy Church') I provide detailed argument and evidence why the King should withdraw his patronage in the case of the Church Army. In this section, I will explain why the King would be mistaken to remain a Patron of the Prayer Book Society. This section will need to be extended considerably before I can do justice to the wide-ranging issues.

First of all, some simple factual information about the Prayer Book Society. When I give information about Churches (far more often than not the Church of England) or Church organizations, I often give lists of selected staff members and sometimes lists of Trustees,  as well as very brief information about finances. One of the reasons is to give a reminder - although this should be obvious already - that in opposing various Churches, my organization, 'South Yorkshire Counter-Evangelism' is at a massive disadvantage in many ways.

The Churches and the Church organizations are very well staffed, of course. Together, they have an enormous number of staff members, with all kinds of specialisms. The financial resources of the larger groups are enormous. Their income (and expenditure) are measured in millions of pounds. My own finances are precarious, completely eclipsed by the finances of Churches and Church Organizations. South Yorkshire Counter-Evangelism is the work of just one person, myself, and is very much part-time work. I'm active in various causes. Counter-Evangelism is only one area. My interests are very wide ranging, as the Home Page of the site will easily show. 

Despite these disadvantages, I find that again and again, the churches and church organizations I contact are completely unable or completely unwilling to defend themselves, to make a case. If they take the view that my organization is too obscure to concern them, that such a tiny organization with the most meagre financial resources can safely be disregarded, I do have evidence that people can be very concerned - the problem is that they lack the arguments and evidence to counter the material I provide.

I've every reason to believe that  the  Prayer Book Society will be completely unable or unwilling to defend itself and will be just as feeble as the other Christian organizations I've contacted in the course of my work, despite all the resources available to them. I've already contacted many specific people who have connections with the Prayer Book Society or who use the Book of Common Prayer in some of their services. These people may well have areas of competence, they may well have specific skills, perhaps at a high level of achievement. What none of them seem to have, in my experience, is any knowledge, any skills which would enable them to offer an effective defence. In this area, they are clueless, ineffectual, mediocre or much worse than mediocre.

The Prayer Book Society is established for the advancement of the Christian religion as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer; and, in furtherance of this Object, for the promotion of the worship and doctrine enshrined in the Book of Common Prayer and its use for services, teaching and training throughout the Church of England and other Churches in the Anglican tradition. 

So, some basic factual information  about the Prayer Book Society. I use the abbreviation PBS for the 'Prayer Book Society.'

As already mentioned, the King is the Patron of the PBS.

Information from the Annual Report and Financial Statements, year ended 31 December, 2023:

Trustees of the PBS, who are also the directors for the purpose of company law:

Revd Dr S Edmonds ['Clerk in Holy Orders']
Revd A Gaunt ['Clerk in Holy Orders']
Revd C M J Hancock [Company Director]
Revd Canon Theresa Kuin Lawton [Canon Missioner, Winchester Cathedral]
Mr P J Meitner [Chartered Accountant]
Mr I R J Milne [Solicitor]
Revd Dr D R Newman ['Clerk in Holy Orders']
Mr J D Riding [Lecturer]
Mrs F R A Rosen [Retired]
Mr B F Smith [Bookshop Manager]
Revd Canon R J Swyer ['Clerk in Holy Orders']

The page

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/
04786973/officers

gives the information that the PBS has 64 officers at the time of publication and that there were 53 resignations. The information in square brackets [...] such as the quaint [Clerk in Holy Orders] comes from the Government Website, not from the Annual Report.

I intend to make use of the information to produce comments sections on some of the people named above, to be published on this page - only in the case of Active Trustees / Directors, of course, not ones who have resigned. If sufficient information becomes available to me, I will be able to publish more substantial information, in the form of profiles.

Most importantly, this page,  is about doctrines I consider hideous, in particular, doctrines concerning the redemption or non-redemption ('damnation' or 'separation from God') of not only men and women but children and babies.

I see the need to challenge the people named on this page, members of the Prayer Book Society and people associated with Churches, Church organizations and non-Church organizations, such as the Chaplains of Oxford and Cambridge colleges. How do these people respond to the cases mentioned in the column to the right, the victims, perpetrators and people I claim as indifferent? How do these people respond to other cases - and there are obviously vast numbers of these?

What of the people doing the everyday work of the world - ordinary people, who are often extraordinary people - serving in the Police forces, protecting the members of the PBS and othersfrom the many possible causes of harm, serving in the Armed Forces of this country, protecting the members of the PBS and others from possible harm, deterring aggression, ready to actively defend the members of the PBS and others. If the country were ever to be invaded - and the history of this country's successful defence against Nazi aggression shows that this isn't in the least a purely hypothetical possibility -then the members of the PBS couldn't count on life as normal, attending Matins, Holy Communion, Evensong and the other ceremonies which they find indispensable for their happiness, provided that the services are in the archaic language which they find such a source of pleasure and fulfilment. It isn't the archaic language which is the objection but the archaic - hideous - doctrines which are expressed in the archaic language. These doctrines can be expressed - are expressed - in contemporary language without any of the resonance or associations of the language they hold dear.

It isn't self-evident that 'Clerks in Holy Orders' are incapable of stupidity and much worse - horrible abuse. I don't, of course, make any claims that any 'Clerks in Holy Orders' mentioned on this page or other pages have carried out abuse, with the exception of people who seem to have carried out abuse according to substantial evidence, who have actually carried out abuse, confirmed by evidence.

'Clerks in Holy Orders' are responsible for acts of extreme barbarity, just as barbaric as the worst excesses of Nazis, in fact. Likewise, believing Christians not 'Clerks in Holy Orders.' On this page, I refer to one of them, King James I, the King James of the Authorized Version of the Bible, who actively supported - authorized - torture and executions of alleged witches and alleged heretics.

King James I ordered changes to the Prayer Book of 1549, including the addition of the Catechism to the section on the Sacraments, leading to the 1604 Book of Common Prayer.

Eventually, a further revision was published as the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. This remains the official prayer book of the Church of England.

The lack of detail here on the versions of the Prayer Book, on the intricate theological background and content of the versions, should not be taken as an indication that this account can be disregarded. A frequent characteristic of very detailed account is this: very detailed detailed accounts may well omit essentials, concealed by the mass of detail. The theologies which underlie all versions of the Prayer Book and the contemporary versions are all defective, fail to take into account considerations which make them futile undertakings.

To return to the central theme of this page: anyone using any version of the prayer book would be using a book which promotes views of redemption which are impossible for anyone with any sensitivity or appreciation of some realities. The people using any of these versions are vulnerable.

The prayer books say nothing about the damnation of babies and young children. If contemporary users of the prayer books, including the Book of Common Prayer 1662 have no opinion on the damnation of babies and young children, if they are indifferent to the issue, then so much the worse for them.

Does the King, the Patron of the Prayer Book Society have any opinion? Is he indifferent? Is he indifferent to the fate of adult men and women who are his subjects? Does he really believe that the people of this country are consigned to Hell (or eternal separation from the God he believes in) except for the small minority of people who have accepted Christ. Is it really the case that the 'Clerks in Holy Orders' and other members of the PBS are saved but that miners, children who worked in the mines, members of the Armed Forces - all the people who for one reason or another (including very good reasons) never accept Christ as Savioru are damned?

The King needs to make clear what he believes. The Trustees and others associated with the PBS need to make clear what they believe. I think this is very, very unlikely. It isn't in the least likely that they will produce argument and evidence to support their views, it isn't in the least likely that they will make excuses. They will go on and on and on, most of them, but with diminishing returns, I think, less and less confidence, with deep harm to their reputations.

They like the consolations of fixity and fixations but like to think of their behaviour in different terms, as cherishing tradition, long after it should have been obvious that the traditions are exhausted, failing to account for changed conditions.

Modern conditions give rise to superficial, damaging, grossly damaging systems of beliefs and actions, of course. Whether the ideas are new or old, they should always be carefully examined.

The unconscious mind can give rise to all kinds of ideas, ideas to do with innovations, new projects and many other things. Very often, the birth of these ideas is accompanied by a feeling of elation. Only a proportion of these have worthwhile results. Many others are found to be defective, not worth pursuing, but often, defective. Newton's unconscious gave rise not just to the mathematical and scientific advances which confirm his genius but a great mass of pseudo-scientific, pseudo-profound ideas which were, and are, ridiculous.

Many ideas have been taken up despite any evidence that they are ridiculous, hopelessly wrong, and were codified, given the support of hopelessly wrong concepts, confirmed by committees, accepted by vast numbers of people who should have known better. My own view is that this is the case for Christian dogmas.

[Supplementary information: The document includes this:

'Praying the Psalms with St Augustine of Hippo' was the theme of our Lenten Quiet Day held at St James, Garlickhythe, in the City of London, on 11 March. Guest speaker, the Ven. Dr Edward Dowler, Archdeacon of Hastings, gave two fascinating talks on the Psalms and their role in Christian formation.'

I'll contact Dr Dowler to ask if he has anything fascinating to offer in connection with the Augustinian doctrine that unbaptized babies go to Hell. What role do they have in 'Christian formation,' or did have in Christian formation in past centuries? Almost all Christians will have given up believing in such obvious cruelties, although some members of the Prayer Book Society may be amongst the exceptions.

Before and after the talk, which won't have included these embarrassing difficulties, I can be sure, there were the reassuring traditions: 'The whole day was framed in the context of Prayer Book worship, with Matins to start and a Sung Evensong to finish; Holy Communion was celebrated at midday.

Also in the Report: 'The service was followed by the customary procession to the site of the Martyrdom in Broad Street, and wreath-laying at the Martyrs' Memorial. After lunch, Professor Alec Ryrie of the University of Durham gave an excellent lecture entitled 'The Many Purposes of the Book of Common Prayer.' After questions and discussion, Evening Prayer rounded off a memorable day.'

Comments: The martyrdoms: the focus of the PBS is surely very narrow and biased. Focusing attention on these martyrdoms and the martyrdows of other 'reformers' (who never took any steps to reform the barbarities of the law in their time, and the many Christian centuries before and after their time) is to overlook these issues. The context, during the many centuries of Church domination, was of Protestants torturing and executing Catholics, including burning Catholics alive, of Catholics torturing and executing Protestants, and orthodox  Protestants and Catholics torturing and executing heretics, non-believers and Jews - in the meantime showing no objection to the institution of slavery.

Members of the PBS, and innumerable Christians not members of the PBS, generally must attend very large numbers of Church services in the course of a single year, and often two or more in the course of a single day. Again, to attend to one thing is necessarily not to attend to others, including neglect of matters which are very important.

People with businesses to attend to (ones which aren't Church businesses, designed to attract donations and other funding), people with essential duties to attend to (not including the 'duty' to pray, attend services, give or listen to sermons, read the Bible and devotional works, perhaps go on pilgrimages, fast and so on) don't have the luxury of living a life anything like the life of a PBS active supporter.

More from the report:

'2023 saw a marked increase in trading income, driven in large part by sales of updated Prayer Books containing the new Royal Prayers, and by broadening the range of books and resources available from the Society's online shop.'

Information on PBS people from the report:

Honorary Officers

The Prayer Book Society is privileged to have His Majesty the King as its Patron (confirmed in May 2024, following a lengthy review of Royal Patronages) and the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Richard Chartres as its Ecclesiastical Patron.

Vice-Presidents

include

Miss Prudence Dailey MBE
Prof Roger Homan
The Rt Hon. Lord Hurd of Westwell CH, CBE, PC
Mr Neil J Inkley
Mr David Richardson

 Prudence Dailey is a  former Chairman of The Prayer Book Society and became a member of the Steering Committee of 'Save the Parish,' discussed in the section above, and on the present Chairman, Bradley Smith.

 

According to its Website, '

https://www.pbs.org.uk/

'The Prayer Book Society has been actively campaigning for the wider use of the Book of Common Prayer for more than 50 years.'

 

It will be no surprise that The Prayer Book Society appeals for donations. At least the appeal, on the page

 

https://www.pbs.org.uk/donate-to-pbs/

 

is restrained and decorous. The history of The Book of Common Prayer and its contents in its successive versions are anything but restrained and decorous - crude and cruel. Giving money or leaving money to an organization promoting such a book!

The Book of Common Prayer, like the King James translation of the Bible, may have idyllic associations - such as dusty volumes to be found in quiet country churches, associations with immensely long traditions, but in fact, the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible are linked with acts and beliefs which belong not to an idyllic world but a world of cruelty and  savagery.


Above, Richard Neile, Bishop of Lichfield.  He interrogated Edward Wightman. Edward Wightman wrote a document on his theological veiws and delivered copies to members of the clergy, as well as King James. It did him no good.

The final verdict and list of charges included

 

'the wicked heresies of Elbion, Cerinthus, Valentinian, Arius, Macedonius, Simon Magus, Manichees, Photinus and of the Anabaptists and other arch heretics, and moreover, of other cursed opinions belched by the instinct of Satan.'

 

He was ordered to be placed 'in some public and open place below the city aforesaid [and] before the people burned in the detestation of the said crime and for manifest example of other Christians that they may not fall into the same crime.'

 

The 1604 Book of Common Prayer,often called the Jacobean prayer book was the version in use at the time of the burning alive of Edward Wightman. It was introduced during the early English reign of King James I. it formed the basis of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is still authorized, a liturgical book not only in the Church of England but within global Anglicanism.


Supplementary information on King James I. To describe his reign as a reign of terror surely wouldn't be excessive.

 

King James VI of Scotland, who later became King James I of England, is better known for his association with the Authorized Version of the Bible, also known as the 'King James Bible,' than for his book 'Daemonology,' (1597).  'Daemonologie' endorses the practice of witch hunting in Christian society. The title page describes him as 'Defender of the Faith.'

 

 

 

He wrote in the book,

 

'The fearefull aboundinge at this time in this countrie, of these detestable slaves of the Devil, the Witches or Enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post, this following treatise of mine (...) to resolve the doubting (...) both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised, and that the instrument thereof merits most severely to be punished.'

 

The King James Bible translation of Exodus 22:18 is 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' The King will have believed that he had divine authorisation for his persecution of witches. The 'Good News Translation (!) is 'Put to death any woman who practises magic.'

 

[King James oversaw the trials and torture of many women accused of witchcraft.]

 

'One of Scotland's most notable mass witch trials occurred under the reign and supervision of King James VI.  The trials took place in North Berwick  between the years of 1590 and 1592, and led to at least 70 accused witches being condemned to violent torture and in most cases, death. The trials took place after the King experienced terrible storms whilst journeying by ship to Denmark where he would marry Princess Anne. King James VI, having seen authorities in Denmark accuse women such as Anna Kolding of using witchcraft to create the storms during the Copenhagen witch trials turned to the "witches" in North Berwick to blame for this event. Most of the information we have on the North Berwick trials  was found in the King's book  as well as a pamphlet entitled Newes from Scotland   that was published in London.'

From the Wikipedia page, North Berwick Witch Trials,

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Berwick_witch_trials

'Very soon more than a hundred suspected witches in North Berwick were arrested, and many confessed under torture to having met with the Devil in the church at night, and devoted themselves to doing evil, including poisoning the King and other members of his household, and attempting to sink the King's ship.


The two most significant accused persons were Agnes Sampson,   a respected and elderly woman from Humbie,  and Dr John Fian, a schoolmaster and scholar in Prestonpans.  Both refused to confess and were put to severe torture. Sampson was brought before King James and a council of nobles. She denied all the charges, but after being tortured horrifically, she finally confessed. By special commandment, her head and body hair was shaven; she was fastened to the wall of her cell by a witch's bridle,  an iron instrument with 4 sharp prongs forced into the mouth, so that two prongs pressed against the tongue, and the two others against the cheeks. She was kept without sleep and thrown with a rope around her head, and only after these ordeals did she confess to the fifty-three indictments against her. She was finally strangled and burned as a witch. According to Newes from Scotland, Declaring the Damnable Life of Dr. Fian, a Notable Sorcerer, a pamphlet published in 1591, Sampson confessed to attending a Sabbat  with 200 witches, Duncan among them.

 

'Dr. Fian also suffered severe torture. He endured having his fingernails forcibly extracted, then having iron pins thrust therein, the pilliwinks,  and the boot. He was finally taken to the Castlehill in Edinburgh and burned at the stake  on 16 December.

'According to Christopher Smout,  between 3,000 and 4,000 accused witches may have been killed in Scotland in the years 1560–1707.

 

Explanation of some torture instruments mentioned:

 

Pilliwinks: thumbscrew
Boot: instrument of torture which caused crushing injury to the leg and / or foot.

 

Thomas Cranmer was the editor and co-author of he first and second editions of The Book of Common Prayer, which was first published in 1549. The Book of Common Prayer which emerged bore the imprint of the Protestant Reformation. Cranmer believed in Justification by Faith: the merits of a person had nothing to do with salvation.

 

Human kindness, understanding, sympathy, tireless dedication, immensely impressive personal qualities, academic excellence, scientific and technological excellence, including the excellence which has saved so many lives and benefitted humanity - none of these make any difference at all. In the deluded world of Cranmer and all the other Christians who believe in this hideous doctrine, the complexity and variety of life, of people, aren't taken into account at all. Instead, that same deadly doctrine, which makes an appearance in all versions of the Book of Common Prayer: damnation for all but the small minority of those who have accepted Jesus as personal Lord and Saviour.

 

The doctrine of justification by faith is the doctrine which I oppose again and again in the pages on Christian belief which are part of the site, with a very wide range of illustrative examples, intended to make clear the inhumanity of the doctrine.

Here, I'll give just one illustrative example.

 Prudence Dailey of Save the Parish and former Chairman of the Prayer Book Society was a candidate at the 2001 General Election for the safe Labour seat of Pontypridd, South Wales. The election was won by Labour again and Prudence Dailey was placed third.

 

A Christian standing for election at local or national level is overwhelmingly likely to believe that his or her Christian beliefs aren't irrelevant. Do the Christian beliefs of a  candidate include the belief that all members of the electorate are destined for an eternity in hell, except for a small minority of people who have accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour? Did Prudency Dailey at the time of her election campaign (which probably didn't amount to much - as is usually the case in constituencies where it's overwhelmingly unlikely that a massive majority will be overturned, although there are obviously exceptions) have that belief? The belief that of those who voted for her at the election, any who never happen to accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour are destined to hell? The 'hell' may be a contemporary hell, divested of the lurid traditional punishments, but will still be regarded as a place of punishment.

 

I have no knowledge of the hamartiological and soteriological beliefs of Prudence Dailey so I can't be certain  that she believes in justification by faith. Perhaps she would be willing to put on record her beliefs - or perhaps not. Perhaps a bold journalist could ask her about what she believes and what she doesn't believe. She's a graduate of Oxford University - she was at Merton College. The subject she studied was PPE, which includes the study of Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Surely this agile mind, or supposedly agile mind, wouldn't object to giving certain clarifications? Or perhaps that would be too much trouble, or might involve embarrassment.

 

I wouldn't wish to concentrate too much attention on Prudence Dailey. I look forward to a time in the near future when Christians will face a far more challenging response, when questions about their faith will be asked much more often, in a courteous but not respectful way. I don't myself see the least need to be respectful in my dealings with Christians. I consider Christian beliefs to be far from harmless and far from benign.

 

I wonder what Prudence Dailey - and other enthusiasts for the Book of Common Prayer - would make of this extract from this far from harmless and far from benign book. The extract is available on the page

 

https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer/commination

 

A Commination or Denouncing of God's Anger and Judmements against sinners

 

BRETHREN, in the primitive Church there was a godly discipline, that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord; and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend.

 

Instead whereof, until the said discipline may be restored again, (which is much to be wished,) it is thought good that at this time (in the presence of you all) should be read the general sentences of God's cursing against impenitent sinners, gathered out of the seven and twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy, and other places of Scripture; and that ye should answer to every sentence, Amen: To the intent that, being admonished of the great indignation of God against sinners, ye may the rather be moved to earnest and true repentance; and may walk more warily in these dangerous days; fleeing from such vices, for which ye affirm with your own mouths the curse of God to be due.

 

NOW seeing that all they are accursed (as the prophet David beareth witness) who do err and go astray from the commandments of God; let us (remembering the dreadful judgement hanging over our heads, and always ready to fall upon us) return unto our Lord God with all contrition and meekness of heart; bewailing and lamenting our sinful life, acknowledging and confessing our offences, and seeking to bring forth worthy fruits of penance. For now is the axe put unto the root of the trees, so that every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God: He shall pour down rain upon the sinners, snares, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest; this shall be their portion to drink. For lo, the Lord is come out of his place to visit the wickedness of such as dwell upon the earth. But who may abide the day of his coming? Who shall be able to endure when he appeareth? His fan is in his hand, and he will purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the barn; but he will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. The day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night: and when men shall say, Peace, and all things are safe, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as sorrow cometh upon a woman travailing with child, and they shall not escape. Then shall appear the wrath of God in the day of vengeance, which obstinate sinners, through the stubbornness of their heart, have heaped unto themselves; which despised the goodness, patience, and long-sufferance of God, when he calleth them continually to repentance. Then shall they call upon me (saith the Lord) but I will not hear; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me; and that, because they hated knowledge, and received not the fear of the Lord, but abhorred my counsel, and despised my correction. Then shall it be too late to knock, when the door shall be shut; and too late to cry for mercy, when it is the time of justice. O terrible voice of most just judgement, which shall be pronounced upon them, when it shall be said unto them, Go, ye cursed, into the fire everlasting, which is prepared for the devil and his angels. Therefore, brethren, take we heed betime, while the day of salvation lasteth; for the night cometh, when none can work: But let us, while we have the light, believe in the light, and walk as children of the light; that we be not cast into utter darkness, where is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Let us not abuse the goodness of God, who calleth us mercifully to amendment, and of his endless pity promiseth us forgiveness of that which is past, if with a perfect and true heart we return unto him. For though our sins be as red as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow; and though they be like purple, yet they shall be made white as wool. Turn ye (saith the Lord) from all your wickedness, and your sin shall not be your destruction: Cast away from you all your ungodliness that ye have done: Make you new hearts, and a new spirit: Wherefore will ye die, O ye house of Israel? seeing that I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God. Turn ye then, and ye shall live. Although we have sinned, yet have we an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins.

 

Bradley Smith is the present Chairman of the Prayer Book Society. This is Bradley Smith, optimistic about the future of the Book of Common Prayer, publicly at least. His private thoughts may be different.Bradley Smith is someone who likes the sound of 'exciting initiatives.' This is from

 

The Facebook page of the society.

 

'The Book of Common Prayer’s time is coming again. That was the message of the Chairman of the Prayer Book Society, Bradley Smith, at its AGM in London on Saturday. (11 September)

...

'There are some exciting initiatives, Evensong and curry (Tottenham and Preston) ... and even Evensong in the City (London), with bangers, mash and booze to follow.'

 

These don't sound like 'exciting initiatives.' Perhaps he didn't give enough thought to the phrasing. What about this?

 

'There are some exciting initiatives! Evensong and curry! (Tottenham and Preston)
Evensong in the City (London), with bangers' mash - and booze to follow!'

 

But this would give an impression of desperation, a forlorn attempt to generate some enthusiasm in conditions that are far from promising.

 

A comment posted on the same Facebook page;

 

'I may be speaking out of turn Bradley but I feel concern when hear we have to offer food as a reward/incentive for attending a service. Have I got this wrong?'

 

A bleak view from Australia:

 

http://www.allsaints.org.au/prayer-book-society.html


'It is with some sadness that we announce that the Prayer Book Society of Australia (Victorian Branch) Incorporated has ceased operation.

'At the Annual General Meeting in March 2022 the eleven members who attended asked that the Committee work towards finding a way forward for the future of the Society. Our numbers continue to decrease ... we have few people available to continue the Society’s functions.'

 

Bradley Smith surely realizes that the Prayer Book Society in this country is facing similar challenges.

 

From the Website of 'Premier Christianity:'

 

Nearly three-quarters of young Britons now identify as having no religion. The number of under 16s in the Church of England has fallen by 20 per cent in five years. Three-quarters of Anglican churches have less than five under 16s in their congregation and just over a third have none. 

 

From the page

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/
2018/sep/07/church-in-crisis-as-only-2-of-young-adults-identify-as-c-of-e

 

The Church of England is facing a generational catastrophe with only 2% of young adults identifying with it, while seven out of 10 under-24s say they have no religion, research reveals.

 

C of E affiliation is at a record low among all age groups, and has halved since 2002, according to the British Social Attitudes survey. Far fewer actually attend church services on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, the trend towards a secular society has increased over recent years ...

The demographic breakdown in the new data is particularly unwelcome news for the church. Younger people are significantly less likely to identify with the C of E than older age groups, and evidence suggests that people rarely join organised religion in later life. The trend indicates that affiliation with the C of E could become negligible with successive generations.

 

Prudence Dailey, the former Chairman of the Prayer Book Society, is listed as a Conservative Woman author,

 

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/
author/prudence-dailey/

 

The profiles of authors on the site are very concise. This is Prudence Dailey's profile:

 

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/
author/prudence-dailey/

 

'Prudence Dailey is a member of the General Synod of the Church of England.'

 

This is my profile:

 

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/
author/paulhurt/

 

 

Paul Hurt lives in Sheffield and is one of those working-class Conservatives you hear about. Voted for Brexit, of course, and drives a white van.

 

The title of my article which was published on the Conservative Woman site: 'A would-be Labour leader and the shambolic Friends of Palestine.' The article can be viewed by using this link,

 

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/a-would-be-labour-leader-and-the-shambolic-friends-of-palestine/

 

The 'would-be Labour leader' is now the actual leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer.

 

My article was considered a success by Conservative Woman. I was encouraged to write more articles but I never did. I wrote the article at a time when my knowledge of Conservative Woman, its record and its policies, wasn't extensive at all. I quickly found that this wasn't an organization I wanted to be associated with. I give some of my reasons in the entry for Conservative Woman on the page on GB News and other anti-woke sites (including Conservative Woman). It has a long, rather cumbersome title

 

Christian-inanity: GB News, other anti-woke sites and other issues
Inanity: 'Lack of intelligence or imagination; senselessness' (Collins Dictionary)

 

The comments on sites which have comments sections always provide insights into the other material on the site. The comments on GB News pages are almost always abysmal, the comments on Conservative Woman pages generally of a much, much higher standard. At least the English isn't mangled to the same extent.

 

Rudolf Bultmann and 'Salvation Today; Some Reflections on the Christian Doctrine of Salvation'

 

 There are many, many 'liberal' and 'progressive' versions of Christianity which accept so many of the assumptions of the orthodox Christian world view revealed in all its stupidity by Rudolf Bultmann (who is himself  a deeply compromised thinker.' There are many 'liberal' and 'progressive' accounts of redemption which have not left behind the conservative evangelical accounts.

 

I've provided in many places in my pages on Christian belief reasons why Christian doctrines of redemption can't be taken seriously, why they are deeply disturbing - or disturbing and shallow. For this reason, I don't give specific criticism of John Perumbalath's confused account of redemption. I focus attention on one aspect only, and that is his mention, amounting to not much more than a mere mention, of some of the views of Rudolf Bultmann. Here, his distortion by omission reaches ridiculous levels.

 

The  brief extracts from one of Rudolf Bultmann's works below are sufficient to show that Bultmann's approach is a radical one, far more radical than the the superficial approach of most liberal and progressive Church of England writers, or ones known to me. The extracts are in the original German, followed by a translation.

 

These extracts are from Rudolf Bultmann's 'Neues Testament und Mythologie,' 1941. The date is very significant, of course. This was probably the year that the Nazi regime took the decision to kill all the Jews in the vast area of Europe which they had under their control. Rudolf Bultmann lived in Germany throughout the Nazi era. His record was much better than the average - the record of most German Church members was much worse - but it was inadequate. The heroic resisters of the regime very often didn't survive. They were guillotined or hanged.

 

 

 

A. Das Problem

1. Das mythische Weltbild und das mythische Heils-geschehen im Neuen Testament

Das Weltbild des Neuen Testaments ist ein mythisches. Die Welt gilt als in drei Stockwerke gegliedert. In der Mitte befindet sich die Erde, über ihr der Himmel, unter ihr die Unterwelt. Der Himmel ist die Wohnung Gottes und der himmlischen Gestalten, der Engel; die Unterwelt ist die Hölle, der Ort der Qual. Aber auch die Erde ist nicht nur die Stätte des natürlich-alltäg­lichen Geschehens, der Vorsorge und Arbeit, die mit Ordnung und Regel rechnet; sondern sie ist auch der Schauplatz des Wirkens übernatürlicher Mächte, Gottes und seiner Engel, des Satans und seiner Dämonen. In das natürliche Geschehen und in das Denken, Wollen und Handeln des Menschen greifen die übernatürlichen Mächte ein; Wunder sind nichts Seltenes. Der Mensch ist seiner selbst nicht mächtig; Dämonen können ihn besitzen; der Satan kann ihm böse Gedanken eingeben; aber auch Gott kann sein Denken und Wollen lenken, kann ihn himmlische Gesichte schauen lassen, ihn sein befehlendes oder tröstendes Wort hören lassen, kann ihm die übernatürliche Kraft seines Geistes schenken. Die Geschichte läuft nicht ihren stetigen, gesetzmäßigen Gang, sondern erhält ihre Bewegung und Richtung durch die übernatürlichen Mächte. Dieser Äon steht unter der Macht des Satans, der Sünde und des Todes (die eben als „Mächte“ gelten); er eilt seinem Ende zu, und zwar seinem baldigen Ende, das sich in einer kosmischen Katastrophe vollziehen wird; es stehen nahe bevor die „Wehen“ der Endzeit, das Kommen des himmlischen Richters, die Auferstehung der Toten, das Gericht zum Heil oder zum Verderben.

A. The problem

1. The mythical worldview and the mythical salvation event in the New Testament

The world view of the New Testament is a mythical one. The world is divided into three levels. In the middle is the earth, above it is heaven, below it is the underworld. Heaven is the dwelling place of God and the heavenly figures, the angels; the underworld is hell, the place of torment. But the earth is not only the place of natural, everyday events, of provision and work that is subject to order and rule; it is also the scene of the work of supernatural powers, God and his angels, Satan and his demons. Supernatural powers intervene in natural events and in the thoughts, desires and actions of man; miracles are not uncommon. Man is not in control of himself; demons can possess him; Satan can put evil thoughts into his head; but God can also control his thoughts and desires, can let him see heavenly visions, let him hear his commanding or comforting word, can give him the supernatural power of his spirit. History does not follow its steady, lawful course, but is given its movement and direction by supernatural powers. This aeon is under the power of Satan, sin and death (which are considered "powers"); it is hastening towards its end, and indeed its imminent end, which will take place in a cosmic catastrophe; the "birth pangs" of the end times, the coming of the heavenly judge, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment for salvation or destruction are imminent.

2. Die Unmöglichkeit der Repristinierung
des mythischen Weltbildes

Das alles ist mythologische Rede, und die einzelnen Motive lassen sich leicht auf die zeitgeschichtliche Mythologie der jüdischen Apokalyptik und des gnostischen Erlösungsmythos zurückführen. Sofern es nun mythologische Rede ist, ist es für den Menschen von heute unglaubhaft, weil für ihn das mythische Weltbild vergangen ist. Die heutige christliche Verkündigung steht also vor der Frage, ob sie, wenn sie vom Menschen Glauben fordert, ihm zumutet, das vergangene mythische Weltbild anzuerkennen. Wenn das unmöglich ist, so entsteht für sie die Frage, ob die Verkündigung des Neuen Testaments eine Wahrheit hat, die vom mythischen Weltbild unabhängig ist; und es wäre dann die Aufgabe der Theologie, die christliche Verkündigung zu entmythologisieren.

Kann die christliche Verkündigung dem Menschen heute zumuten, das mythische Weltbild als wahr anzuerkennen? Das ist sinnlos und unmöglich. Sinnlos; denn das mythische Weltbild ist als solches gar nichts spezifisch Christliches, sondern es ist einfach das Weltbild einer vergangenen Zeit, das noch nicht durch wissenschaftliches Denken geformt ist. Unmöglich; denn ein Weltbild kann man sich nicht durch einen [17] Entschluß aneignen, sondern es ist dem Menschen mit seiner geschichtlichen Situation je schon gegeben. Natürlich ist es nicht unveränderlich, und auch der Einzelne kann an seiner Umgestaltung arbeiten. Aber er kann es doch nur so, daß er auf Grund irgend welcher Tatsachen, die sich ihm als wirklich aufdrängen, der Unmöglichkeit des hergebrachten Weltbildes inne wird und auf Grund jener Tatsachen das Weltbild modifiziert oder ein neues entwirft. So kann sich das Weltbild ändern etwa infolge der kopernikanischen Entdeckung oder infolge der Atomtheorie; oder auch indem die Romantik entdeckt, daß das menschliche Subjekt komplizierter und reicher ist, als daß es durch die Weltanschauung der Aufklärung und des Idealismus verstanden werden könnte; oder dadurch, daß die Bedeutung von Geschichte und Volkstum neu zum Bewußtsein kommt.

2. The Impossibility of Reproducing
the Mythical Worldview

All of this is mythological talk , and the individual motifs can easily be traced back to the contemporary mythology of Jewish apocalypticism and the Gnostic redemption myth. Insofar as it is mythological talk, it is unbelievable for people today because for them the mythical world view is past. Today's Christian preaching is therefore faced with the question of whether, when it demands faith from people, it expects them to recognize the past mythical world view. If that is impossible, then the question arises whether the preaching of the New Testament has a truth that is independent of the mythical world view; and it would then be the task of theology to demythologize the Christian preaching.

Can the Christian message expect people today to accept the mythical world view as true ? That is senseless and impossible. Senseless , because the mythical world view is not specifically Christian as such, but is simply the world view of a past time that has not yet been formed by scientific thinking. Impossible , because a world view cannot be acquired through a [17] decision, but is always given to people in their historical situation. Of course it is not unchangeable, and the individual can also work on transforming it. But he can only do this by becoming aware of the impossibility of the traditional world view on the basis of some facts that force themselves upon him as real, and by modifying the world view or designing a new one on the basis of those facts. The world view can change, for example, as a result of the Copernican discovery or as a result of the atomic theory; or because Romanticism discovered that the human subject was more complex and richer than could be understood by the worldview of the Enlightenment and idealism; or because the importance of history and nationality came to new awareness.

Krankheiten und ihre Heilungen haben ihre natürlichen Ursachen und beruhen nicht auf dem Wirken von Dämonen bzw. auf deren Bannung[15]. Die Wunder des Neuen Testaments sind damit als Wunder erledigt, und wer ihre Historizität durch Rekurs auf Nervenstörungen, auf hypnotische Einflüsse, auf Suggestion und dergl. retten will, der bestätigt das nur. Und sofern wir im körperlichen und seelischen Geschehen mit rätselhaften, uns noch unbekannten Kräften rechnen, bemühen wir uns, sie wissenschaftlich greifbar zu machen. Auch der Okkultismus gibt sich als Wissenschaft.

Man kann nicht elektrisches Licht und Radioapparat benutzen, in Krankheitsfällen moderne medizinische und klinische Mittel in Anspruch nehmen und gleichzeitig an die Geister- und Wunderwelt des Neuen Testaments glauben[16]. Und wer meint, es für seine Person tun zu können, muß sich klar machen, daß er, wenn er das für die Haltung christlichen Glaubens erklärt, damit die christliche Verkündigung in der Gegenwart unverständlich und unmöglich macht.

Illnesses and their healings have their natural causes and are not based on the work of demons or their banishment [15] . The miracles of the New Testament are thus put to rest as miracles, and anyone who wants to save their historicity by recourse to nervous disorders, hypnotic influences, suggestion and the like only confirms this. And insofar as we reckon with mysterious, still unknown forces in physical and mental events, we endeavour to make them scientifically tangible. Occultism also presents itself as a science.

One cannot use electric light and radio, and make use of modern medical and clinical means in cases of illness, and at the same time believe in the spiritual and miraculous world of the New Testament . [16] And anyone who thinks he can do this for himself must realize that if he declares this to be the attitude of the Christian faith, he thereby makes the Christian proclamation incomprehensible and impossible in the present day.

... kann er auch die Lehre von der stellvertretenden Genugtuung durch den Tod Christi nicht verstehen. Wie kann meine Schuld durch den Tod eines Schuldlosen (wenn man von einem solchen überhaupt reden darf) gesühnt werden? Welche primitiven Begriffe von Schuld und Gerechtigkeit liegen solcher Vorstellung zugrunde? Welch primitiver Gottesbegriff? Soll die Anschauung vom sündentilgenden Tode Christi aus der Opfervorstellung verstanden werden: welch primitive Mythologie, daß ein Mensch geworden es Gotteswesen durch sein Blut die Sünden der Menschen sühnt! Oder aus der Rechtsanschauung, so daß also in dem Rechtshandel zwischen Gott und Mensch durch den Tod Christi den Forderungen Gottes Genugtuung geleistet wäre: dann könnte die Sünde ja nur juristisch als äußerliche Gebotsübertretung verstanden sein, und die ethischen Maßstäbe wären ausgeschaltet! Und zudem: war Christus, der den Tod litt, Gottes Sohn, das präexistente Gottwesen, was bedeutet dann für ihn die Übernahme des Sterbens? Wer weiß, daß er nach drei Tagen auferstehen wird, für den will offenbar das Sterben nicht viel besagen!

...  he cannot understand the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction through the death of Christ . How can my guilt be atoned for by the death of an innocent person (if one can even speak of such a person)? What primitive concepts of guilt and justice underlie such an idea? What primitive concept of God? Should the view of the sin-removing death of Christ be understood from the concept of sacrifice: what primitive mythology, that a divine being who became human atones for the sins of mankind through his blood! Or from the legal view, so that in the legal transaction between God and man, God's demands are satisfied through Christ's death: then sin could only be understood legally as an external transgression of the commandments, and ethical standards would be eliminated! And furthermore: if Christ, who suffered death, was the Son of God, the pre-existent divine being, what does the acceptance of death mean for him? Anyone who knows that he will rise again after three days obviously does not find death to mean much to him!

John Macquarrie is the author of 'An Existentialist Theology: A Comparison of Heidegger and Bultmann. He's one of the translators into English of the German of Heidegger's 'Sein und Zeit,' 'Being and Time.' I think anyone committed to a very thorough study of 'Sein und Zeit,' (which I think wouldn't be a very worthwhile objective) ought first to learn enough German to read the book in German - 'enough German' here amounts to a very thorough knowledge of German.

 

The English translation claims that 'A knowledge of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit is essential for anyone who wishes to understand a great deal of recent continental work in theology as well as philosophy.

My view is that a thorough knowledge of recent (now not at all recent) Continental theology and philosophy wouldn't be worthwhile.

 

Matters are very different in the case of Bultmann. This is someone who deserves to be far better known, far more widely studied. John Robinson, the Bishop of Woolwich, discussed Bultmann's contributions in his 'Honest to God.' His book deserves to be more widely known too. It's not very probing or very profound and doesn't lend itself to anything as thorough as study.

 

This is from the preliminary remarks at the beginning of 'Sein und Zeit.'

 

... δῆλον γὰρ ὡς ὑμεῖς μὲν ταῦτα (τί ποτε βούλεσθε σημαίνειν ὁπόταν ὂν φθέγγησθε) πάλαι γιγνώσκετε, ἡμεῖς δὲ πρὸ τοῦ μὲν ᾠόμεθα, νῦν δ᾽ ἠπορήκαμεν...

 

»Denn offenbar seid ihr doch schon lange mit dem vertraut, was ihr eigentlich meint, wenn ihr den Ausdruck seiend gebraucht, wir jedoch glaubten es einst zwar zu verstehen, jetzt aber sind wir in Verlegenheit gekommen«1.

 

Haben wir heute eine Antwort auf die Frage nach dem, was wir mit dem Wort »seiend« eigentlich meinen? Keineswegs. Und so gilt es denn, die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein erneut zu stellen. Sind wir denn heute auch nur in der Verlegenheit, den Ausdruck »Sein« nicht zu verstehen? Keineswegs. Und so gilt es denn vordem, allererst wieder ein Verständnis für den Sinn dieser Frage zu wecken. Die konkrete Ausarbeitung der Frage nach dem Sinn von »Sein« ist die Absicht der folgenden Abhandlung. Die Interpretation der Zeit als des möglichen Horizontes eines jeden Seinsverständnisses überhaupt ist ihr vorläufiges Ziel.

 

Das Absehen auf ein solches Ziel, die in solchem Vorhaben beschlossenen und von ihm geforderten Untersuchungen und der Weg zu diesem Ziel bedürfen einer einleitenden Erläuterung.

 

'For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression "being". We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed.

 

Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being'? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of Being. But are we nowadays even perplexed by our inability to understand the expression 'Being'? Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken our understanding for the meaning of this question. Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the meaning of Being and to do so concretely. Our provisional aim is the Interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being.

 

'The Holy and Undivided Trinity:' orthodox concepts, playing with words and horrific penalties for disbelief

 

 

Pater: 'God the Father'
Filius: 'God the Son'
Spiritus Sanctus: 'Holy Spirit'
Est: 'is'
Non est: 'is not'

 

Strongly recommended: consulting the Wikipedia page,

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_
burned_as_heretics

 

even though the list is far from being a comprehensive one.

 

One of the cases listed is that of Pomponio Algerio, boiled alive in oil in the Piazza Novona in Rome in 1556. He had declared at his trial that 'This Church [The Roman Catholic Church] deviates in many things from truth.'

 

I refer in various pages of the site to the case of Edward Wightman, burned alive at Lichfield in 1612 but this section gives some  additional information. Three weeks before Edward Wightman was burned alive in Lichfield, Bartholomew Legate was burned alive at Smithfield, London. Both  of these men had no belief in the Trinity and both of them fell foul of King James, who was determined that they should be executed. .

 

When Edward Wightman was charged with heresy, he wrote a summary of his theological beliefs for his defence in the case which would soon begin. He sent a copy of the document to King James I, the King James of the King James translation of the Bible. He had come to the throne in 1603 and took very seriously indeed his title, 'Defender of the Faith.' He took very seriously the creeds of the Church, the Apostles,' the Nicene and the Athanasian. He took 'heresy,' which threatened his orthodox beliefs,  very seriously too.

 

Edward Wightman referred to these creeds as  'three inventions' of man. A Commission was set up to examine the issues and the first item in the Summary of Charges was this claim by Edward Wightman: that 'there is no Trinity.'

 

The King certainly  believed that Jesus Christ was his Saviour and qualified for redemption by the grotesque orthodox doctrines of redemption.  So, the persecutor was saved and the man who didn't believe in the Trinity was damned. The King was not only an active persecutor of heretics but an active persecutor of alleged witches. He had women tortured and executed for the alleged crime of witchcraft.

 

All this is part of the 'Christian heritage,' the shameful legacy of Christian history which should be taken into account by self-proclaimed 'progressives' and 'liberals' in the Church of England and other churches. Of course, again and again they ignore all this. These progressives and liberals, like others, need to be challenged. The need to explain why they support some kind of doctrine of redemption by Jesus - and what kind of doctrine they do support, and if they don't support a doctrine of redemption, what are they playing at? Why belong to a church with a vast majority of believers in such things?

 

The next section is supplementary material on torture and execution of alleged witches, a separate matter from the doctrine of the Trinity, obviously.

 

Strongly recommended, the Wikipedia page, 'List of people executed for witchcraft,'

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed
_for_witchcraft

 

One of the cases listed is the Pappenheimer Case. The page

 

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/pappenheimer-family

 

gives a summary, but is far more than that. It does omit many of the horrific details of the tortures and executions.

 

'Show Trial. After twenty years of scraping by on the margins of legality without attracting much attention from government authorities, the Pappenheimers were arrested, having been denounced as “murderers of seven pregnant women” by a thief with whom Paulus may have quarreled. There was no evidence to support this accusation, but the Pappenheimers were clearly a family of vagrants, and the normal juridical procedure would have been to evict them from the territory after a fairly uncomfortable period in jail. Unfortunately for them, the accusation came at a moment when official and popular fear of witchcraft was reaching a peak, so instead of receiving the rough, but predictable, treatment of the vagabond, they became caught up in a show trial. The Pappenheimers, bewildered, were brought to Munich, accused of witchcraft and murder, and tortured until they confessed to unspeakable, and completely unsubstantiated, crimes. Their confessions led to the arrest of some of their friends and associates, who were also arrested, accused, and tortured until they confessed. At a public execution attended by thousands, Paulus was tortured with red-hot pincers, broken on the wheel, then impaled; Michel and Gumprecht also were broken on the wheel. [This punishment involved smashing the limbs and breaking the bones, by using a large wheel.] Since breaking on the wheel was proscribed for women, Anna simply had her breasts cut off. All four were then burned alive. Hansel, horrified, was required to watch it all before being executed by burning with other accused witches at a second public execution several months later. 

 

The Wikipedia account of the case

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pappenheimer
_witch_trial

 

 

gives more detailed information about the charges, which included a very large number of murders - including the murders of non-existent people - and alleged witchcraft causing gales and hailstorms, the poisoning of meadows and the affliction of cattle. 

 

At the first execution, the condemned were brought to the place of execution by cart and 'the carts temporarily stopped by a cross by the Neuhaus gate where they were, according to custom, led in chains to say a prayer.' This was a Christian execution, after all. The father Paulus Gämperl was executed by impalement, a sharp stake being inserted into his anus and through his intestines 

 

At the second execution, one of those executed, with five others was the ten year old who had witnessed the first execution. Hansel had been re-baptized and renamed Cyprian following the first execution.

 

'On 26 November 1600, the execution of the ten year old Hansel Gämperl and the five other condemned took place in Munich.'

Like the others, Hansel had been severely tortured in the period leading up to the execution.

 

The continued prominence of the Church of England at Oxford University and the continued employment of C of E chaplains at most of the colleges.

 

Only a small percentage of staff and students at most Oxford Colleges will belong to the Church of England. There is no generic Church of England chaplain, someone equally sympathetic to the evangelical or high church or liberal view. The likelihood is that a high church chaplain will be less well received by an evangelical student or staff member and that the evangelical would vastly prefer the services of an evangelical chaplain. Similarly for the other possibilities, such as a liberal who would prefer a liberal chaplain, a high church student or staff member who would prefer a high church chaplain.

 

A single C of E chaplain, then, is likely to be of most use not to the class of C of E sympathizers or active believers at a college but to a sub-class, a small percentage of a small percentage.

 

Those flexible people who claim to be able to accept many different varieties of Christian faith, without endorsing any in particular, fall prey to the pitfalls of relativism. As a matter of fact, Jesus gave very specific teaching about many issues (if the historical record can be trusted, in particular, the synoptic gospels. He gave no teaching whatsoever about a very large number of other issues, leaving the later church to flounder, make things up, engage in many destructive courses of action.

 

Vicars / priests in almost all other settings have, of course, vastly more people who can be regarded as possible members of a congregation. The Oxford college chaplain (and the Cambridge college chaplain) have duties which are much less onerous. In the profiles, I'll address the various ways in which chaplains can use their time, or pretend to use their time, in a way which they would regard as constructive. They include counseling, matters to do with student welfare and advice on matters to do with ethics. I'll point out some massive difficulties in this connection.

 

Many chaplains will have something approaching an orthodox view of salvation / redemption by faith: salvation available not to all but only to those who have a faith in Jesus as Saviour. It can easily be shown that this belief has horrific consequences. I give many illustrative examples in my page on Church Donations and other pages on Christian religion.

 

Does the chaplain who believes in these doctrines of redemption believe that of the students at the college, only those who have faith in Jesus will be saved? Does this chaplain believe that all academics - and other staff - in a department will be consigned to separation from God, except for those who have made the essential decision to choose Jesus? Here, I obviously use the language of the believer without any belief of my own in the doctrines. To give a further example from a very different sphere, does this chaplain believe that those members of the allied forces who helped to defeat Nazism share the same fate as members of the SS, that those who helped to save Jews, and the Jews who were murdered in the death camps, share the same fate as the staff of the death camps? Does this chaplain believe that those who executed Jews who had a belief in Jesus, at the time or later (there are such people) are saved?

 

As part of a preliminary classification, the Church of England chaplains at the colleges could be considered as belonging to one of three broad groups, evangelical Anglicans, high church Anglicans (or Anglo-Catholics) and liberal Anglicans. The most diverse group would be the 'liberal Anglicans' - the word 'diverse' isn't used here as a term of praise. 'Liberal' Anglicans'  may be people with a consuming interest in trans issues and other issues to do with sexuality and gender, or people with different priorities.

 

It can safely be assumed that all the evangelicals, certainly all the conservative evangelicals, will have a view of salvation which amounts to 'justification by faith.' The Anglo-Catholics are far more likely to consider the claims of justification by works, the 'liberals' also - but liberals can easily be found whose view of salvation is close to the conservative evangelical view.

 

Chaplains may differ in their attitude to Christians who have beliefs which very different from their own, but in many cases, their own view will amount to a conviction. My view is that convictions can be spurious, false, or worthy of respect - argument and evidence are needed to make the important distinctions.

 

Problems facing the Church of England and Church organizations in brief

 


Reputation management' is taken seriously by the Churches - for a variety of reasons, such as the wish to maintain the flow of donations, but reversing the decline of reputations can be far from easy - impossible.

 

Reversing declines in Church attendances likewise. The information which follows concerning church attendances is quite long. To skip it and read about other matters, please  click here.

 

From the page

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/
07/church-in-crisis-as-only-2-of-young-adults-identify-as-c-of-e

 

The Church of England is facing a generational catastrophe with only 2% of young adults identifying with it, while seven out of 10 under-24s say they have no religion, research reveals.

 

C of E affiliation is at a record low among all age groups, and has halved since 2002, according to the British Social Attitudes survey. Far fewer actually attend church services on a regular basis.

 

Meanwhile, the trend towards a secular society has increased over recent years. The BSA survey found that 52% of people had no religion in 2017 compared with 41% in 2002. However, the proportion last year was slightly down on 2016, when 53% said they had no religious affiliation.

 

The demographic breakdown in the new data is particularly unwelcome news for the church. Younger people are significantly less likely to identify with the C of E than older age groups, and evidence suggests that people rarely join organised religion in later life. The trend indicates that affiliation with the C of E could become negligible with successive generations.

 

People over the age of 65 are most likely to say they belong to the C of E. But at 30% it is still a minority, and the proportion has fallen from 52% in 2002. This older demographic also saw the biggest increase in those saying they had no religion, up from 18% in 2002 to 34% last year.

 

The proportion of people of all ages identifying with the C of E has fallen from 31% in 2002 to 14% last year. The sharpest decline was among 45- to 54-year-olds, from 35% to 11%.

 

Overall, 8% of people identify with the Roman Catholic church, 10% with other Christian denominations and 8% with non-Christian faiths.

 

[Only the number of those with no religious belief have risen, new figures show]

Researchers found a significant gap between people identifying with a church and those attending church services. Of those who say they belong to the C of E, only one in five attends church at least once a month, apart from weddings and funerals. Among Roman Catholic adherents, two in five attend church at least once a month.

 

In Scotland an even higher proportion of people – 56% – say they have no religion and 18% say they belong to the Church of Scotland, although only a quarter of those attend church at least once a month.

 

Roger Harding of the National Centre for Social Research, which conducts the BSA survey, said the figures showed “an unrelenting decline in Church of England and Church of Scotland numbers. This is especially true for young people where less than one in 20 now belong to their established church. While the figures are starkest among younger people, in every age group the biggest single group are those identifying with no religion.

 

The research of the Church Army can be regarded as irrelevant - frivolous, even - in the face of such challenges.

 

An extract from the page https://churcharmy.org/our-work/

 

Through our work, we want the Jesus we know to be a household name because people everywhere have found freedom and a renewed vision for life ... Your generosity is a gift, and our work is only possible because of you.

Find out how you can give.

The pages of this site, including this one, give a very different view - of homosexuality-hating Christian communities, of Christian communities which, following the example of Jesus, actively believe in demons and think that demons can be responsible for problems, of young people encouraged to pray rather than seek professional advice for health and mental health problems - and, of course, of converts and people they want to become converts encouraged to give to the Churches and to the Church Army, to believe in Jesus and to believe that the Churches and the Church Army are somehow unique. In all the areas in which they work - except, of course, for their work in 'saving souls for Christ' - there are many, many secular organizations, statutory and voluntary,  which carry out very effective work. Donors should give their money to these secular volunteer organizations rather than to the Church Armey, which diverts a substantial proportion of the money it receives into evangelism.

A direct question to the Church Army - do you or don't you believe that of the people supposedly helped by the Church Army, only the ones who accept Jesus as personal Lord and Saviour are redeemed, and that all the others, drug-dependent adolescents, children brought up in horrific circumstances, all of them, are condemned to be eternally separated from God? If you don't believe this to be the case, then I'm sure you have some explaining to do - the fact that Biblical 'evidence' shows otherwise, the fact that the majority of Christian believers, past and present, believe otherwise. I don't think it's likely in the least that you will be willing to explain.

The Church Army can't regard the relief of deprivation and helping the needy as central to its work, since according to Christian belief, poverty, disease, human suffering in general are far less important than the correct relationship with Christ, which has consequences for the eternal destinies of individuals. My view is that the relief of deprivation and helping the needy is less important to the Church Army than maintaining its paid staff in the positions they occupy. My view is that the continued flow of donations is very important to the Church Army for this reason - to pay the salaries of its staff and to maintain its buildings, even if it's not the only reason.

From the page on the outfit with the clumsy name of 'Missional Youth Church Network

 https://www.mycn.org.uk/

Enabling 11 - 18 year olds to build community and discover faith in Jesus Christ.

The Church Army's Research Unit is a money-consuming churner-out of irrelevant data and false conclusions - irrelevant and false when considered in the light of the secular statistical data and conclusions quoted at the beginning of the section.

https://churcharmy.org/our-work/research/

The page makes this claim:

OUR RESEARCH

SEEING AND SHARING WHAT GOD IS DOING IN MISSION

But the mission is failing. An honest look at the facts would surely make this conclusion inescapable. An honest look at the facts and reporting honestly wouldn't encourage the flow of donations.

How  do the people in the Church Army Resarch Unit spend their time? Some of the current research projects, taken from the page

https://churcharmy.org/our-work/research/current-research/

Jesus Shaped People outlines a 'vision' which will supposedly lead to 'the revitalisation of the Church.' Big ambition, very big ambition. Chance of realizing it by means of this initiative? Surely, non-existent. The information ends with this far less confident assertion: 'We trust that this will bring hope to all [to all?] as we seek to become Jesus Shaped People.' That is, people who believe, like Jesus, God the Son, that all the barbaric commands and actions of God the Father cited in The Law were actually the commands of God, with God the Son in full agreement.

And a few more examples of the Research Unit in action. Donors - this is how the money you give may be spent.

The page

https://churcharmy.org/our-work/research/who-we-are/

mentions 'Bespoke dashboards to support and inform mission planning.

It also mentions 'Customised survey design and analysis, including surveys and audits of fresh expressions of Church.'

Scrolling down the page gives access to the section 'Meet the Team.' It includes this, on Dr Tim Ling, 'He provides strategic oversight for the work of the Research Unit.' My own experience of Dr Ling in action is very unfavourable. My experience is of him as a banner and blocker. More on this below.

'Fresh expressions of Church' is a phrase often used in these circles. It refers to initiatives, supposedly exciting initiatives which attempt to convert people in settings outside the buildings of the established Church. A decisive objection to these initiatives is that they leave the dogmatic core of the faith which is offered untouched. They rely upon  stale (and frequently horrific) Biblical teaching. They have nothing to offer to the modern world. They have close linkages with the Christian belief of previous centuries. I've no need to give a reminder of the abuses and cruelties of those centuries here. Other pages of the site, and this page too, provide abundant evidence.

Action and inaction in the Diocese of Oxford


 

 

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/28-july/news/uk/vicar-s-spiritual-abuse-went-on-for-decades-despite-complaints-to-his-bishop-review-finds

 

Extract from the article on abuse and inaction.


' ... abuse was able to go unchecked in a parish in the diocese of Oxford  for almost 20 years, owing to inaction at the parish and diocesan level ...'

In one instance, the churchwardens wrote to unhappy parishioners telling them to be reconciled with Hall, quoting Hebrews 13.17: “Obey your leaders and submit to them.”

The lessons-learnt review describes an incident in which Hall blamed the parents of a seriously ill child when his prayers for the child did not improve their condition. Complaints were made to the then Area Bishop of Buckingham that Hall had told a parent that it was evil to put flowers on her child’s grave, and had told another bereaved parent that it was evil to watch a video of her child.

The reviewers found no evidence that this particular complaint was investigated, or even received a reply.

 

Complaints about Hall’s inappropriate sexual behaviour also went unheeded, including allegations that Hall had encouraged men to touch women sexually as they arrived at a party, and that he had engaged in naked saunas and massages with members of the congregation, which, he claimed, was part of a “healing ministry”.

 

Steven Croft, the Bishop of Oxford, has been strongly criticized for his inaction in some case of abuse. Criticism is obviously not the same as proof. Recently, the Bishop of Liverpool resigned, following what he says is 'trial by media.' If victims deserve justice, alleged perpetrators deserve justice, should be regarded as innocent until proved guilty. Obviously, the procedures intended to pronounce on these matters will be in accordance with standards which aren' the same as the standards in courts of law.

 

This is the view of an Anglican, but a very critical Anglican,

 

https://survivingchurch.org/2023/05/16/why-the-bishop-of-oxford-should-be-suspended/

The writer makes it very clear why Steven Croft should be suspended, in his view. An extract:

 

'The future of Church safeguarding must surely now involve the unequivocal embracing of secular standards of jurisprudence and about time too; ask the many, many abuse survivors who have campaigned for vital reform in the wake of the Matt Ineson case.

 

'That case became, perhaps, the first very public cause célèbre because Matt had the courage and integrity to put his own name into the public domain as he told his harrowing story. When he saw one of the bishops who had wronged him promoted from Sheffield to the important see of Oxford, he protested outside Christ Church Cathedral at the enthronement. It was a low-key protest but it has become hugely symbolic.'

 

Trevor Devamanikkam was a Church of England  priest who raped Matthew Ineson in the 1980s. Ineson was just 16 years old. In the end, Steven Croft apologized for his inaction. The catalogue of cases of abuse in the Church of England. The catalogue of apologies for doing nothing or next to nothing grows longer and longer, as does the catalogue of refusal to apologize for doing nothing or next to nothing in cases where the facts of the matter are clear-cut.

 

The head of the college is the Dean of Christ Church. Christ Church is unique among Oxford colleges in that

 

Christ Church, formally titled "The Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford of the Foundation of King Henry the Eighth" is the only academic institution in the world which is also a cathedral,  the seat (cathedra) of the Bishop of Oxford. Its Head of House, who is head of both college and cathedral, must be an Anglican cleric appointed by the crown as Dean of the cathedral church. The Dean lives on site in a grand sixteenth-century house in the main quadrangle.

 

From the Wikipedia entry on boiling alive, a punishment which has a linkage with the Founder of Christ Church, King Henry VIII:

 

In England, the ninth statute passed in 1531 (the 22nd year of the reign of King Henry VIII  made boiling alive the prescriptive form of capital punishment for murder ... This arose from a February 1531 incident in which the Bishop of Rochester's cook, Richard Roose,  gave several people poisoned porridge,  resulting in two deaths. A partial confession having been extracted by torture,  the sentence was thus imposed by attainder and without benefit of clergy.  

 

A contemporary chronicle reports that

 

'He roared mighty loud, and divers women who were big with child did feel sick at the sight of what they saw, and were carried away half dead; and other men and women did not seem frightened by the boiling alive, but would prefer to see the headsman at his work.'

   

Boiling to death was employed again in 1542 for a woman, Margaret Davy, who had also used poison.

 

These are episodes in the vast and horrific history of Christian cruelty. People at Christ Church, Oxford, some of them at least, must surely be aware of boiling alive, and so many other instances of cruelty committed on the orders of Henry VIII, but the depiction of the King on Website materials published by the college don't mention them, or at least the extracts I've seen.

 

It can take centuries before the Church of England apologises for obvious wrongs.

 

Eight hundred years after Christian leaders introduced a host of antisemitic laws, the Church of England apologised for 'shameful actions”' against Jews. Although, it has to be said, the Church of England was not in existence at the time, many, many people in the Church of England choose to stress continuity, the supposedly glorious history of Christianity in this country, the supposed blessings of 800 years or 1000 years or whatever of Christian history.

 

A service attended by representatives of the Archbishop of Canterbury was held on 8 May 20222 at  Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford to mark the anniversary of the 1222 Synod of Oxford.

 

The Archdeacon of Oxford, Jonathan Chaffey, said before the commemoration of the Synod of Oxford was a 'symbolic opportunity' to apologise for 'the shameful actions of past prejudicial and persecuting laws of the Church against Jews.'

He elaborated: 'On Sunday 8 May we will celebrate the positive Jewish-Christian relations ... ' 

 

People like this tend to be very fond of 'symbolic opportunities,' far less interested in harsh realities, such as the harsh realities presented by the Christian faith they adhere to.

 

I've no knowledge of the exact nature of  Jonathan Chaffey's Christian beliefs. If they are orthodox beliefs, then these are some of the hideous implications: all Jews, apart from the tiny minority who come to feel that their sons are forgiven by the personal Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, have this fate: eternal separation from God, eternal damnation. During all the Christian centuries, this has been the majority view, the almost universal view amongst Christians.

 

Does Jonathan Chaffey believe that all the Jews murdered by the Nazis in the extermination camps or murdered in other ways are eternally damned? Does he ever find such difficult questions raised at Christ Church? Is he completely sure that his view of the blessings of Christianity over the centuries isn't based on wishful thinking and denial of realities? I wouldn't claim that the Christ Church surroundings tend to encourage these tendencies, however. The same mistakes are made at graffiti covered hard evangelical Churches in crime-ridden estates.

 

Crime-ridden estates are part of the 'wider society' referred to in this quotation, from the page

 

https://www.oxford.anglican.org/archdeacon-of-oxford/

 

'I love the liturgical rhythm of Cathedral life, but also the opportunities for prayer and proclamation that it brings. Christ Church Cathedral is unique in the world. That creates wonderful opportunities to build bridges between the Church and wider society.'

 

As well as being Archdeacon of Oxford, Jonathan Chaffey is a member of the 'Cathedral Chapter of Christ Church' and a member of the 'Governing Body of Christ Church.'

 

Andrew Anderson-Gear, the Director of Mission and Ministry in the Oxford Diocese, isn't very familiar with crime-ridden estates, I I would think. He writes on the Diocesan site,

 

"I am thrilled at being appointed as the new Director of Mission and look forward to getting to know those areas of the Diocese I don't know as well," said Andrew.

 

"As a lay person, I believe passionately in collaborative ministry and shared leadership and I am so excited at the energy around mission that has grown in this Diocese.

 

I understand the joys and struggles we face in our churches and through the work of the Department of Mission and I look forward to serving the churches of this Diocese in this new role and to seeing where God is leading us. "

 

This is surely affected, gushing, overeffusive, formulaic. The post is from 2015 but he's still there, in the same post. From his current Linkedin profile:

 

'Specialties: Leadership development; developing vision & strategy; fresh expressions of church; coaching & consultancy.' This too is standard stuff, despite the high claim, 'developing vision and strategy.'

 

 All the signs are that the Church of England is going forwards and at an increasingly rapid rate -   to a condition of greater and greater irrelevance, less and less power. Giving far less money to the Church, giving far less often to the Church is my advice. It will be ignored by people with far more money than sense, so I hope that there will be fewer and fewer of these people.

 

The Oxford Diocese has a new Director of People, Charnelle Stylianides, not an Anglican but a Roman Catholic. Information about the person and the event can be found at

 

 https://www.oxford.anglican.org/news/new-director-of-people.php

 

The Roman Catholic Church is in a state at least as pitiful as the state of the Church of England. The problem of abuse in the Roman Catholic Church is far worse. The site contains summaries of the situation in a number of countries - Ireland, France and Germany.

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- lists all the pages  of the site including pages on Christian religion, with links and other material

 

Email  


      

 

 

In this column

 

1. Victims and indifference
2. Perpetrators

 

1. Some victims, and indifference

 

 

Above, from my page Church Donations: After a flogging, a slave in Louisiana. Does the 'eternal destiny' of this slave depend upon whether the slave had accepted Christ as Redeemer or not? What of the slave owner and flogger, who may have been the same person? Jesus and St Paul never condemned slavery. Throughout most of the history of Christianity, slavery has not been regarded as sinful by Christians.

 

 

Above, member of Nazi Einsatzgruppe about to shoot mother and child, Ivanhorod, Ukraine. The Einsatzgruppen murdered over two million people, including well over a million Jews.

 

My page Church Donations, includes this, with fuller information:

 

The belief that non-believers go to Hell (or are separated from God for eternity) is common knowledge. Vast numbers of Christians, at vast numbers of churches, have this belief, and not just  Conservative Evangelicals.   Not nearly so common now: the belief, held by 'St' Augustine (of Hippo)  that deceased babies who never receive baptism go to hell, that baptism is essential for salvation.

 

Not discussed anywhere in the Bible, the fate of non-believing children - and babies. No age limit for redemption is mentioned in the Bible. Can very young children and even babies share the fate of adult non-believers?

 

So far as I know, I'm the first person to draw attention to this massive, shocking problem for orthodox believers. This is a problem for This is a problem for all shades and kinds of Christianity, including 'liberal' Christians and 'progressive' Christians.  They have some explaining to do. I regard Christianity as harmful, for many different reasons, but the loathsome Christian doctrines of redemption are central. If some are redeemed, the many are damned (or subject to 'eternal separation from God.)

 

 

Above teenage boy with murdered family members, just before being executed himself.

 

 


Above, Jews beaten to death with metal rods during the Kaunas pogrom, watched by the crowd. The crowd may well have included Christians.



Hungarian Jews walking to the gas chamber, Auschwitz-Birkenau. What of the eternal destiny of this woman? What of the eternal destiny of the children, you academic theologians, Diocesan functionaries, Parish priests, members of religious orders and the rest? Are you able to answer objections to the moral certainty so many of you claim? Can you defend your view of things? Are you willing to give your ideas on the subject? If not, why should students study with you, why should anyone give money to your church or church organization? What do you have to offer the general public?



After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen camp, a liberation which came too late for these and many more victims.



After the liberation of Buchenwald Camp: some of the bodies.



Above, Edward Wightman being burned alive iat Lichfield, 2 April, 1612. He was sentenced to death for heresy. He had denied the doctrine of the Trinity. More on this execution below, in connection with King James I, the King James of the King James bible.



Above, monument to the victims of the Huskar Pit Disaster, South Yorkshire. Huskar  Pit was just outside the village of Silkstone Common. On 4 July, 1838, there was heavy rainfall in the area, making unusable the winding engine and stranding the underground workers at the pit bottom. They included many child workers. A nearby stream burst its banks and 26 children were drowned.

The disaster had a national impact and the inquiry which followed led eventually to the 1842 Mines Act, which gave some protection to child workers and prohibited the employment underground of boys and girls under the age of 10. The dark - black - underground world and its acute dangers - crushing rock falls, death from poisonous gases, the ever present risk of industrial accidents, as well as the dangers of flooding, is far, far removed from the world according to the Book of Common Prayer, the world of most academic theologians, the world of diocesan ceremonies to celebrate this and that.

These are the names and ages of the victims:

Catherine Garnett       11 years

Hannah Webster         13 years

Elizabeth Carr             13 years

Ann Moss                    9 years

Elizabeth Hollings      15 years

Ellen Parker                15 years

Hannah Taylor            17 years

Mary Sellors                10 years

Elizabeth Clarkson      11 years

Sarah Newton             8 years

Sarah Jukes                 10 years

 

George Birkinshaw     10 years

Joseph Birkinshaw      7 years

Isaac Wright                12 years

Abraham Wright         8 years

James Clarkson           16 years

Francis Hoyland         13 years

William Atick             12 years

Samuel Horne             10 years

Eli Hutchinson            9 years

George Garnett           9 years

John Simpson              9 years

George Lamb              8 years

William Wormersley   8 years

James Turton               10 years

John Gothard              8 years


A monument was erected outside the Parish Church with this hideous inscription: no mention of the human cost of the disaster, instead the claim that this was an instance of divine judgment:

 

Take ye heed watch and pray for ye know not when the time is. Mark X111 Chap 33 Verse.

 

THIS MONUMENT

 

Was erected to perpetuate the remembrance of an awful visitation of the Almighty which took place in this Parish on the 4th day of July 1838.

 

On that eventful day the Lord sent forth His Thunder, Lightning, Hail and Rain, carrying devastation before them, and by a sudden irruption of Water into the Coalpits of R.C.Clarke Esqr. Twenty six human beings whose names are recorded here were suddenly summon’d to appear before their Maker.

 

READER REMEMBER!

 

Every neglected call of God will appear against Thee at the Day of Judgment. Let this solemn Warning then sink deep into thy heart and so prepare thee that the Lord when he cometh may find thee WATCHING.

 

So, orthodox Christians - what do you think about the destiny of the child victims and the child victims of other disasters ? Are the only ones saved the ones who somehow or other have managed to accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour? Are the ones who never managed to accept Jesus - perhaps because their lives were far too hard for them to think about such things, or perhaps, in the case of some of them, because they found the representatives of the established Church so lacking in human feeling, so indifferent to their suffering, that they were repelled by the institution.


2. Some perpetrators

 

 

 

From my page Church Donations:

 

Ernst Biberstein, who studied theology from 1919 to 1921. He became a Protestant pastor in 1924. During the war, he was the commanding officer of Einsatzkommando 6,  which executed between 2000 and 3000 people.  This Einsatzkommando was part of the Einsatzgruppen, mobile death squads, which killed about 1.3 million Jews. After the war, he was tried and sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted. He was released in 1958 and returned to the clergy. He resumed the preaching of the 'Gospel of Salvation,' an abbreviated name for the 'Gospel of Salvation and Damnation.'

 

 

Above, King James I of England and Wales, the King James of the 'King James Bible.'

 

From the site

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2014/07/

king-james-i-demonologist.html

 

'James personally oversaw the trials by torture for around seventy individuals implicated in the North Berwick Witch Trials, the biggest Scotland had known ... The trial resulted in possibly dozens of people burned at the stake, although the precise number is unknown.

 

'In 1597, James published Daemonologie, his rebuttal of Reginald Scot’s skeptical work, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, which questioned the very existence of witches. Daemonologie was an alarmist book, presenting the idea of a vast conspiracy of satanic witches threatening to undermine the nation.

 

'In 1604, only one year after James ascended to the English throne, he passed his new Witchcraft Act, which made raising spirits a crime punishable by execution.

...

'In 1612, the King’s paranoid fantasy of satanic conspiracy, planted in the minds of local magistrates eager to win his favor, culminated in one of the key manifestations of the Jacobean witch-craze—the trials of the Lancashire Witches, accused of plotting to blow up Lancaster Castle with gunpowder. Eight women and two men were executed.

 

The dedication in the King James Bible:

 

'TO THE MOST HIGH AND MIGHTY PRINCE JAMES, [BY THE GRACE OF GOD,] KING OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND IRELAND, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, &c.

'The Translators of the Bible wish Grace, Mercy, and Peace, through JESUS CHRIST our Lord.

'GREAT and manifold were the blessings, most dread Sovereign, which Almighty God, the Father of all mercies, bestowed upon us the people of [England], when first he sent Your Majesty's Royal Person to rule and reign over us.'

 

The King James Bible saw the scriptures rewritten to further the King’s agenda. Exodus 22:18, originally translated as, “Thou must not suffer a poisoner to live,” became “Thou must not suffer a witch to live.” '

 

 

The Good News Translation is

'Put to death any woman who practices magic.'

 

 

Above, painting by Rubens: King James being carried to heaven by angels.

 

King James played a leading part in ensuring that Edward Wightman was executed for heresy.

 

 

Above, John Smyth, abuser and believing Christian - someone with the belief that Jesus was his Saviour, someone who presumably prayed often.

 

A long extract from the page

 
https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/
default/files/2024-11/independent-learning-lessons-review-john-smyth-qc-november-2024.pdf

"The scale and severity of the practice was horrific. Five of the 13 I have seen were in it only for a short time. Between them they had 12 beatings and about 650 strokes. The other 8 received about 14,000 strokes: 2 of them having some 8,000 strokes over the three years. The others were involved for one year of 18 months. 8 spoke of bleeding on most occasions (“I could feel the blood splattering on my legs” – “I was bleeding for 3½ weeks” “I fainted sometime after a severe beating”). I have seen bruised and scored buttocks, some two-and-a-half months after the beating. Beatings of 100 strokes for masturbation, 400 for pride, and one of 800 strokes for some undisclosed “fall” are recorded."

: "The walk up the path to the shed was agonizing. We always held hands. It was a twominute walk from the house. Sometimes we would walk in silence. Sometimes I would ask how many I would get this time. Trips to the shed were never quick. Quick beatings happened in the house, in his study or the upstairs bathroom. The shed was about the experience.

positioned himself as a spiritual authority, not just in my life and my Mum’s life, but other people’s lives.

y Dr Hanson in her research for this Review32, her findings can be summarised as follows: (a) Several forms of abuse were perpetrated by John Smyth – physical violence, sexual abuse, coercive control, psychological abuse and emotional neglect (of his own children). These abuses interact and overlap. He used parts of the Bible and religious authority to assist his abuse, which can be seen as a distinct form of abuse – spiritual abuse – or as a layer of his coercive control and psychological abuse. (b) His core motives for committing the abuse - sexual gratification, pleasure from other people’s pain (including their humiliation), status, a desire to be at the top of hierarchy and to be admired and revered and the dominance and control of others. (c) He had narcissistic personality disorder of a grandiose type and, related to this, little interest in relational connection; little ability or willingness to self-reflect; a focus on his self-interest above those of others; and little or no empathy. (d) He displayed exhibitionist and voyeuristic tendencies; callousness; and an ability to charm (a magnetism). (e) He had a sexual interest in boys and young men, not incompatible with a sexual interest in his wife. (f) He held several core beliefs that likely played a role in contributing to his abusive behaviour - these were that he was more important than others (i.e., a sense of entitlement); that being gay or having gay sexual experiences is a serious moral wrong; and that some people are ‘elected’ and endowed with special qualities to lead and be an authority over others, in particular himself.

Dr Hanson offers a very helpful analysis of how this enabled him to abuse: "…John established himself to the boys (and the wider peer group) as a Christian authority (their most important one), central to their salvation and faith, and as a father figure welcoming them into his family.

more insidious than simply spreading the word of God. For example: "We looked at this passage together from Hebrew’s Chapter 12 which was all about how God is a father and how all fathers discipline their children. No child likes the discipline at the time but afterwards it reaps a reward in terms of good behaviour. It was at this point that he started to talk about the beatings. He said, ‘A father will chastise his child and in the Bible it says, ‘Do not spare the rod’.’ So, he brought in this metaphor of the rod, only it wasn’t a metaphor because he meant it literally. He said ‘And I don’t believe that I should spare the rod with you either….’ So I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well, with your friends, I beat them.’ It was just 3 words: ‘I beat them’. I thought in my head when he said, ‘I beat them’ that what he meant was 6 of the best, like at boarding school." "I recall him talking to me in his study at Orchard House and he introduced the subject of a physical form of repentance by referring to scriptural verses from Hebrews and I believe from Samuel. He made specific references to marking your repentance by either shedding blood or I think there was a verse that talks about stripes on your body. John Smyth used these verses to suggest to us that the time had come in our spiritual growth to begin to show proper repentance for the sins that we were committing." "Then after supper, let's go and have a chat, and this was all "firesidey", let's look at some verses from the Bible about how the Lord disciplines those he loves, you haven't yet resisted sin to the point of shedding your blood, from the Letter to the Hebrews. When you stop to think about it, that is so terribly twisted out of context, because that was written to Christians who had been persecuted like people in North Korea now, that kind of thing, but, of course, he had another agenda with that."

"We were encouraged to live lives which were holy and to be as good Christians as we could be. This was an attempt to remove what’s commonly known as sin from our lives. Small sins like being lazy or white lies and sexual sins or what are regarded as sexual sins like lust and masturbation. He stated that God likes sex and sex is good but that there are certain rules like no sex outside of marriage and so forth." "The conversation must have gone something along the lines of ‘God doesn’t want you to masturbate. It’s not in God’s plan for you and of course it’s really powerful and the devil really wants to take you away from being focused on God’s work and take you away from it. He will distract you with all sorts of things, including thoughts about having sexual relationships with people, with women and masturbation, so all of that is getting in the way. God is really calling you to something special.

 

...

The earliest account of physical abuse that we have received is 1977. The physical abuse took place in the form of beatings of a ferocious nature, with a cane. His victims were wholly or partially naked, with John Smyth either partially or fully naked. They were persuaded by John Smyth that these beatings were an appropriate step in their Christian progression. 11.3.35 John Smyth justified beatings to be administered for a number of key “sins” that had been committed and listed by the victims. Victims describe being asked to write these down and bring them to John Smyth: "I recall having to have a list of my sins written out on a piece of paper and this paper was placed on the chair that I was leaning on. He was encouraging me to pray and repent for the sins that were listed on the sheet of paper in front of me but the pain was so intense that it that became impossible."