REFLECTION on the legacy of the Reformation continues in this autumn’s SEARCH, with articles on our interpretation of the diaconate as an “inviolate” order of ministry and on Morning Prayer as the most favoured Sunday morning service in Church of Ireland parishes. We are grateful to the Revd Kevin Conroy and Professor Steven Ellis for these.
REFLECTION on the legacy of the Reformation continues in this autumn’s SEARCH, with articles on our interpretation of the diaconate as an “inviolate” order of ministry and on Morning Prayer as the most favoured Sunday morning service in Church of Ireland parishes. We are grateful to the Revd Kevin Conroy and Professor Steven Ellis for these.The way we continue to respond to the changes and challenges in the society around us is another aspect of re ection on the Reformation, and in this area we have three important contributions: on GAFCON, on the demands and dangers of “loyalty”, and the ways community identity is liable to shift in response to political context.The last of these is addressed by Professor Andrew Mayes in relation to Ancient Israel, mining the Old Testament texts to show the successive self-identities of Israel as tribal brotherhood, monarchy and dispersed People of God and showing how each was an essential shift in response to historical and sociological change.While Andrew Mayes contends that “there is no ideology without conflict of ideology”, Rev Dr Lesley Carroll, now Deputy Chief Commissioner at the Equality Commission NI, brings the matter of competing identities into the present. Considering how easily the virtue of loyalty can turn toxic where communities vie for dominance, she looks at the conflict experience of countries as diverse as Rwanda, Bosnia and Canada, and challenges the churches to lead the competing communities of Northern Ireland into mutual respect and cooperation.On a larger canvas, that of the Anglican Communion, former ACC officer Canon Philip Groves analyses GAFCON’S challenge to the Communion and concludes that it cannot be described as an appropriate development of Anglican or biblical principle, however sincere its motivation. He calls us all to continue to “journey together in honest conversation, in faith, hope, and love, as we seek to... further the reign of God”.Finally, looking in another way to the future of the Church, Jacqui Wilkinson shares the fruits of her recent research into primary school children’s attitudes to Christianity, arguing that encouragement to prayer must be a prime value for teachers and Christian parents alike. The issue concludes with our book reviews.
Contents
GAFCON’s challenge - and the test of Scripture, Tradition and Reason
GAFCON was recently described by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, as “not a movement of the Holy Spirit, because it is divisive”. The statement must prompt those attracted by the movement to some careful consideration, despite the strong rebuttal from the Secretary General of GAFCON, Australia’s Peter Jensen.
GAFCON – the Global Anglican Future Conference – first met in Jerusalem in 2008 where it became the focus for those seeking the exclusion of The Episcopal Church from the Lambeth Conference and hence from the Anglican Communion. It portrays itself as a renewal movement within Anglicanism; but recently it has ordered itself as an alternative way of being an Anglican church. The Conference believes that “serious disagreement over core doctrines is not good diversity which can be managed by institutional control and re-organization, but a sign of serious sickness in the body.” The GAFCON vision is of a church united around a confession with a Council holding all to account.
Loyalty, identity and toxic belonging: calling the churches to the public space
FAMILY LIFE, friendship, academic institutions attended in youth, commitment to sports clubs or a faith community, are all areas where loyalty is considered a virtue. Some organisations demand, rather than elicit, loyalty. Politicians foster loyalty and oaths of allegiance and solemn pledges are uncompromising in the loyalty they demand.
However, when societies break down into competition and violence, loyalty becomes an unstable and even toxic notion. Virtue is lost when identity politics aligns groups, makes them dependent on diminishing or dehumanising others and bolsters self-aggrandisement with violence. Michael Blanding, the award- winning, Boston-based journalist notes how “loyalty” has changed in its usage and moved from its virtue status:
While [loyalty is] ostensibly a positive trait, we are much more apt these days to hear about loyalty in the context of problems – loyalty to a country or religion leading to fanatical acts of chauvinism or violence, loyalty to family or friends leading to nepotism of cronyism in government, or loyalty to co-workers or a company leading to cover-ups of nancial chicanery or unethical dealing.
Morning Prayer and the Church of Ireland – a Reformation tradition?
THIS ARTICLE assesses a tenacious but seldom-remarked tradition of the Church of Ireland: the practice of Morning Prayer as the principal service of public worship on Sundays. The tradition is rooted in the laity’s adverse reaction at the Reformation to an innovation in the new Book of Common Prayer (BCP): regular lay communion in the context of corporate public worship. In response, the authorities concentrated on promoting corporate worship without insisting on Communion. The tradition continued into modern times for very di erent reasons and is most recently expressed in the Liturgical Advisory Committee’s present proposal for ”An Order for Morning and Evening Prayer for use on Sunday”.
When initiating liturgical revision of the traditional church services, a major concern of Archbishop Cranmer and his colleagues was to promote frequent lay communion in both kinds as part of the Protestant move towards parish worship which balanced Word and Sacrament. Cranmer’s problem was that, while Mass had been celebrated regularly as the church’s central act of worship, the laity only went to confession or received communion once a year at Easter. Otherwise, they were distant bystanders in the nave at a spectacle performed behind a screen by the priest in the chancel.
THE USUAL response from priests when asked for a view of the permanent diaconate is that they are deacons, permanently, and that their ordination to the priesthood does not, in any way, undo their diaconate. When asked what the diaconate is, responses typically describe what the deacon cannot do, comparing the call to that of the presbyter and pointing towards the inability of the deacon to preside at Communion, as though this is a de ciency and somehow reduces the usefulness of deacons in the Church. We are not unique in struggling to understand the diaconate. According to Andrew Orton of Durham University, “this role has also proved particularly controversial, sparking wider ranging debates both within individual denominations and between them in wider ecumenical discussion”.
We see in the Preamble and Declaration that the Church is committed to “maintain inviolate the three orders of bishops, priests or presbyters, and deacons in the sacred ministry”. What does this mean? Perhaps the Church was only concerned with maintaining ecclesiological continuity with the pre-disestablished Church. Whatever the aim, the Church is committed, at least according to the Preamble and Declaration, to the maintenance of the diaconate as a distinctive order.
Pupil attitudes toward Christianity: a study amongst 4th – 6th class pupils
THE STRUCTURE of the provision of primary education in the Republic of Ireland has featured strongly in public debate in recent times, as pressure for a reduction in the 96% dominance of church run primary schools is vocalised from an increasingly diverse society. The most recent census gures show that 9.8% people state they have no religion - an increase of 73.6% since 2011. 28% of the general population are in the 20-39 year age group, yet 45% of those with no religion fall into this category.
These are the parents, now and in the coming years, of primary school pupils. The predominantly denominational system of primary education has had to face the reality of demands for change, not just in the provision of religious education but also in relation to access and school enrolment policies, especially where patrons are under pressure to “divest some of their schools to accommodate the needs of those of minority or no faith backgrounds”.
Shifting Identities in a World of Change: an Old Testament Journey
EACH INDIVIDUAL has multiple identities: Irish, British, Jewish; Catholic, Protestant, atheist; teacher, nurse, lawyer, banker, or whatever. None of these has priority over the others at all times. Yet the many identities of an individual are coherent, held together by an “I”, however that “I” is to be understood, according to the needs of particular times and contexts.