Pheonix church

Grandmère Mimi said,

But the church, as we know it, is moribund. A new thing will arise from the ashes of the old, but it will not look much like what we have now.

Perhaps it's moribund. Though it's not dead yet. In fact it seems to have enough energy to squabble and fight in a very lively way.

And the church 'as we know it' has surely always been passing away, it's just that each successive generation knew it as something slightly different and laments the loss of what was good and forgets the bad - a kind of rolling golden age.

But I'm not accusing Grandmère Mimi of nostalgia. I think she means something much bigger - that whatever happens at Lambeth or with covenants or by any official attempts to decide anything, TEC has been torn up and scattered to the winds. The legacy of anger, bitterness, sorrow will poison its soil for a generation. TEC's hurt will wound other parts of Anglicanism, leaving scarring, and possibly a broken body. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I recognise the hurt in Linda McMillan's comment and the expectation on her blog of something new (and not just great looking tomatoes).

I guess that only when historians have had the time and distance to turn around and make measured assessments of this period (and their problem will be the excessive number of words poured into the conflicts) will there be a way to assess what has died and what still lives.

So what is important, I think, is to do what we can for the present, not for tomorrow. I add my little voice to the chorus of those who want no greater concentration of power with the Primates (or bishops, for that matter), no top-down power to determine narrow bounds of acceptable doctrine, no command morality. I do this for now, not for the future church.

But I think we do need rules. (I'm thinking I'll post something about why I think rules are important, and the necessity and difficulties of having them in a church, but it may not be straight away.) The rules I want to see would place the people who sit in the pews and chairs on a Sunday, who pray together in small groups, who follow the call of God whever the dance leads them, right as the centre of the church. Rules which require all the paid people, especially the clergy, bishops, bureaucrats, globe-trotting Primates, to be accountable to their congregations. Let there be a hierarchy, by all means, so long as it's upside down.

It seems to me, looking from a distance, that TEC is much further along this line than the CofE is (and possibly will ever be). It clearly isn't a recipe for happiness. And, in a voluntary body which should inherently reject policing and enforcement, rules will only work with those willing to making them work.

This is the life I want to work for, not out of the ashes but mired in the mud.