Which gospel shall be preached this Harvest? And which will the congregation hear?

Oct 13, 2019 by

by Martin Sewell, Archbishop Cranmer:

We are now well into the season when our priests planning their services and delivering sermons in churches and schools to celebrate and give thanks for Harvest time, and in doing so they will be treading a thin line whatever they do or preach. They should, of course, be setting worship within the traditional context of hymning the harvest home with gratitude, for Christians believe ‘All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above, then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord for all his Love’.

However, as Extinction Rebellion has been filling TV and social media screens of late with apocalyptic messages and pagan rituals every bit as bizarre as those which accompanied the celebration of the golden calf, our priests will naturally and properly seek to engage with people’s concerns. But calibrating their responses is far from easy, for there is now an heretical Green gospel being inculcated which is every bit as troublesome as the Gnostic variety of old.

If our churches embrace the priorities and mirror the concerns of of the day, they risk being condemned for being political, yet if they ignore contemporary anxieties in favour of the comfortable and traditional, they will be criticised for their complacency and lack of prophetic urgency. It really is not easy for them.

I hope it is not presumptuous to offer a few words of encouragement and advice. I was once active in the Green movement but had to chose between deploying my available time between continuing within its increasingly authoritarian mode of thought, and preaching the gospel as a Reader. I do not regret the choice I made. So here is my advice to preachers.

Read here

Read also: Bishop endorses Extinction Rebellion by Archbishop Cranmer

Extinction Rebellion – the new religion with Greta as its saint by Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack, The Conservative Woman

and from 2015:

Harvest: reminder of reality, by Andrew Symes, Anglican Mainstream

and for the sake of balance, a very different viewpoint:

Extinction Rebellion Diary, by Ruth Musgrave, Green Christian

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