Confession is the safeguarding of the soul. Does the Church of England still believe in the soul?

Jul 7, 2018 by Jill

by Gavin Ashenden:

It used to be that the most pressing arguments about souls were whether animals had them or not. In a greener more environmentally friendly world this became an issue of note for many.

But with the Church of England’s General Synod meeting in York this weekend, the question comes at us in a new form.

Does the C of have a soul, or rather better, does it believe in the existence and or priority of the ‘soul’?

It is not unusual in the history of organisations or political movements for them to lurch one way, and then stagger another as they seek to follow the currents of fashion or the dictates of public opinion.

The Church ought to be above that kind of thing, but it has of late become scared. It looks around it and discovers that the people it lives amongst no longer think that it carries any spiritual authority or expertise.

There is an early stage of psychological development, a period of arrested maturity, when the individual looks around to gauge their own self-worth and judges it by what it perceives other people think of them. It’s a kind of delegated existential authority. None of us is entirely free of it, but we grow freer as we mature and develop our own integrity.

But the Church of England appears to have regressed to a more juvenile stage of development, and has become panic-struck over what it thinks other people think of it. It has entered a stage of life where it seeks be relevant to the secular society it lives within.

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Watch: Anglican Unscripted#416 – Car Booting the Cathedrals with Kevin Kallsen and Gavin Ashenden