Monday 2 December 2013

The continuing agenda

Fresh from their (pyrrhic?)  victory in the western Anglican culture wars, it was highly predictable that the members of WATCH (Women And The Church) should press on with their radical feminist 'theological' agenda: perhaps those who still, even now, consider women's ordination to be a valid extension of the tradition of Catholic holy order might begin to have a few doubts .....
Hilary Cotton, the present chair of WATCH offers her view on the organisation's priorities for the next three years: [emphasis is mine]
"......Thirdly, as Christina Rees used to say (and I dare say still does) we need to continue to challenge and move beyond the patriarchal model on which the Church of England is built.How we do that, and what the next steps are, is to some extent down to you, the membership, and what you want WATCH to do.
My personal driver for this is that I have had enough of an almost exclusively male God, in our prayers, hymns, speech and images.I’m not suggesting another campaign – that really would be madness, since many within the Church of England would currently consider calling God ‘she’ really weird.
But I hope after the exhausting years of campaigning we have had, WATCH will be able to offer some respite to the weary.
I think WATCH needs to offer ways and places – many already there but hidden – where women and men can re-discover what has been on the sidelines for twenty years, since women were ordained as priests.Places and ways where we can experience different ways to worship, discover and explore more expansive images of God, and remind ourselves of the wisdom in feminist theology. Because we as women and men, the Church of England, and, as our Vice-President Nicola Slee would remind us, the whole created cosmos, need this in order to live life in all its fullness.
I think that these three priorities are vital for WATCH’s future...."  [here]
Again, so much for revealed religion and, indeed,  the Incarnation itself. Rumour has it that one woman senior cleric in these islands was overheard - on that subject - to ask, 'Surely you don't still believe in all that, do you?' Apocryphal? Perhaps - yet only time will tell whether it reveals a startling heterodoxy beneath the 'inclusive' facade and the myth of Anglican business as usual...
But one has to wonder exactly how "the whole created cosmos" has survived until now without WATCH and its priorities...

In case anyone doubts how influential this particular group has become, here is a post written just a few days before the fateful vote in Wales in September this year. The advice given, to avoid at all costs "a complicated and legalistic manoeuvre that tries to achieve the impossible" (that is, the two stage process designed to further the principle of women in the episcopate while also seeking to grant adequate provision for those opposed) was precisely the successful aim of that little "manoeuvre" of their own Welsh acolytes which changed the bill out of all recognition and has made the future so much darker and more uncertain for orthodox Christianity in the province, in the principality, if not in the whole created cosmos itself....


6 comments:

  1. Joseph Golightly2 December 2013 at 20:52

    Well you all now know what to expect. Your friends who lead Forward in Faith seem to have accepted that the fudge on offer is good enough and will do anything to stay despite moving further and further away from what the Catholic World (including the Orthodox) believe. It is really horrid to see the disintegration of what many believed to be an authentic catholic church. t is not too late to realise what is happening and to seek refuge with the nearest Catholic bishop.

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  2. Time to smell the coffee and do the only obvious thing? The door is open.

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  3. I presume what these women are saying does not represent the majority of female clergy? What they're saying reminds me of those new-agey, 'post-Christian' nuns one hears tell of in the USA.

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  4. I'm afraid this is the 'future trajectory' - for as long as 'official' Anglicanism in the West can survive it, that is ...

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  5. Just remember, you always have options!

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  6. In the light of the article quoted above, there is an 'interesting' comment from Hilary Cotton in her "advice" to the Church in Wales in the last link: "As a child of Welsh parents and someone who has a great love of the Principality, I know the passion, courage and generosity that characterize “the Land of my Fathers”.

    Perhaps the next item on her campaign agenda will be to rewrite the hymn as "Land of my Mothers"!

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