Hierarchy, Bishops and Leadership in the Church

Sep 20, 2021 by

Hierarchy, Bishops and Leadership in the Church

by Stephen Parsons, Surviving Church: A few years ago, I was giving a paper on Joan of Arc. The details of that talk are not important here, except for one point I made. Joan’s command of an army to fight the English around the city of Orleans in the early 1430s was an exceptional event.  Socially she was of fairly humble stock, certainly not officer class. Her authority to command soldiers had to be given to her and supported by someone who actually had the legal/feudal power to occupy a...

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Woke Power Grab in the C of E Reflects Corporate Obsession With ‘Diversity’

Sep 19, 2021 by

Woke Power Grab in the C of E Reflects Corporate Obsession With ‘Diversity’

by Will Jones, Daily Sceptic: This week the Church of England unveiled proposals for a shake-up of its national governance structure in what critics have called “a coup by Archbishops to take control of everything”. I won’t bore you with the details (you can read the full report here, headed-up by the anti-Brexit Bishop Nick Baines) but what stood out to me was the barely concealed aim of replacing the organic accountability of democracy with a sterile rule by a woke technocracy. One purpose...

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Australia: We don’t urge law-breaking, but we cherish religious freedom

Sep 19, 2021 by

Australia: We don’t urge law-breaking, but we cherish religious freedom

by Phil Colgan, Sydney Morning Herald: Every Sunday morning before I go to church (at present to preach to a camera in an empty building) I have a ritual of reading the newspaper over breakfast to see if there is anything of note. Imagine my surprise last Sunday when I opened it to see my name printed with the implication that I was encouraging civil disobedience against COVID-19 compliance. In the hours that followed I received unsolicited messages from people I have never met telling me that...

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Only chaos can redeem the Church

Sep 16, 2021 by

Only chaos can redeem the Church

by Giles Fraser, UnHerd: […]  Unfortunately, the Church of England learned very little from its encounter with Occupy. Just this week it was unveiling a new plan for its future organisational structure, and it is a doubling down on the whole centralising tendency that has been going on for the last 30 or so years. Just as protest movements were out there “taking the knee”, Church leaders were poring over their spread-sheets and flow charts. Organisationally, the Church of England is a...

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C of E review proposes new body to take over (almost) every central church function

Sep 14, 2021 by

C of E review proposes new body to take over (almost) every central church function

by Ed Thornton, Church Times: Archbishops’ Council should be replaced; House of Bishops influence should be scaled back, says review A RADICAL shake-up of the Church of England’s central governance has been proposed by an official review group. The Governance Review Group’s proposals, released on Tuesday, include scaling back the powers of the House of Bishops to set national policy, and placing most of the activities currently overseen by the Church Commissioners and bodies such as the...

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Review group: Oh, and the General Synod needs reforming, too

Sep 14, 2021 by

Review group: Oh, and the General Synod needs reforming, too

by Ed Thornton, Church Times: THE Church of England should give “serious attention” to reforming the General Synod, says the Governance Review Group’s report, published on Tuesday. “The General Synod sets the budget of just one of the NCIs [National Church Institutions],” the report notes, “elects board members to some but not all of them, receives annual reports from some but not all of them, and can pass motions ‘calling upon’ any of them to do things which it cannot necessarily enforce....

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