Losing my Religion?

Ordinangst is sure that the blogosphere is going to be alive with comments on Anne Widdecombe's telly programme on the future of Christianity which aired last night.  Ever a herd animal, Ordinangst thought he would put his pennies' worth in.  Now Ordinangst secretly quite likes Widdie and her fearlessness and the fact that she managed to keep the joke firmly on the programme and not herself in Strictly, which she should have won incidentally.

But it was a rather depressing programme.  Depressing because it presented stark statistics of a projected ongoing decline in Church attendance, (by 2020 Ordinangst thinks he is going to have to become a hermit (an hermit?) because there aren't going to be any other Christians left) and the UK Christian church is now only being shored up by Polish Catholic Immigrants and Pentecostals, or somesuch.  Depressing because Widdie herself presented a view of Christianity which missed the point entirely.  Ordinangst paraphrases, but she said something like:  "I believe that Jesus was the Son of God, who came to earth in human form (OK so far) was crucified and rose again (topical and correct) and as a result we are expected to live according to the bible, and especially the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes.   And?  And?  Hmm. 

Ordinangst smells a rat here.  Widdie's omission of the God's grace, of justification, and of forgiveness clearly plants her in the realms of James and away from Galatians.  Either way, it didn't describe Ordinangst's faith or, I suspect the faith of the majority of Christians in the UK.  It also struck Ordinangst that Widdie's brand of Christianity was thoroughly unattractive, and she, as a follower of Christ, missed a golden opportunity to advertise the good news to the nation.  Instead she presented Christianity as a blueprint for living and not a route to eternal life, against a backdrop of Churches closing and a nation that is totally disinterested in spirituality. Which is a shame.

Ordinangst was quite cross by the end and found himself wishing the Widdie had stuck to tripping the light fantastic in duchesse satin.  Her bit on Alpha and HTB and @_nickygumbel and the church plant in Brighton filled with people didn't explicitly tie this exciting movement (that, incidentally brought the hapless Ordinangst to faith fifteen years ago) to the Church of England.  This struck Ordinangst as a bit unfair given her focus on growth in the Catholic and Pentecostal Church.  A hidden agenda perhaps?

Another thing that leapt out to Ordinangst was quite how bad our esteemed Archbishop is at aggressive television interviews.  Ordinangst has nothing against ++Rowan, who has an impossible job, a brain larger than Wales and also is apparently a good bloke,  but Ordinangst wishes that he wouldn't "do" as much media, like the Pope who very rarely talks to the press.  ++Rowan's problem last night was that he was the one lone voice who tried to bring God into the proceedings.  Shame on Widdie for not doing it in the first place, but ++Rowan's position - that declining Church numbers are not a cause for panic because God has a plan and the Church always has and always will bounce back - whilst probably right seemed very odd against the context of the rest of the programme  that  treated the  fall of Christianity as more of an inevitable sociological phenomenon than a question for spiritual reflection.  It also fell rather flat because, dare I say it, ++Rowan lacks the television "presence" to carry a message like that and make it stick.  

I Gotta Have Faith

Ordinangst has just finished his holiday reading.  Shunning the temptations offered by the autobiography of Alexander Orloff, founder of Compare the Meerkat dot com,  he plumped instead for a book sent to him by a dear ordained friend in America.   The Future of Faith, written by Harvey Cox,  who is a Professor of Divinity at Harvard, and who Ordinangst figures must know more than he does about Theology.  Which isn't saying much.  He's also very liberal, which Ordinangst isn't currently although he is losing his fundamentalist evangelical edges as the ordination training grinds on.

Now, occasionally Ordinangst picks up a book that knocks his socks off.  Ordinangst freely admits to blubbing his way through William Young's The Shack, discovering his inner mountain man (not a pretty sight) in Eldridge's Wild at Heart and being introduced to the whole idea of sacrament in Timothy Radcliffe's Why Go to Church (he blubbed his way through his one too, much to the embarrassment of Mrs Ordinangst given that (i) the Ordinangsts were poolside in a rather lovely hotel  (sans Ordinangstettes) in Amalfi at the time, and (ii) Timothy is *whispers* a Roman Catholic).

But I digress.  Although Ordinangst isn't nearly brainey enough to pick apart what is, in many ways, an extraordinary book, there aspects of it that strike him as really rather profound.  First, Cox points out that the Christian universe in general is much better at inter-faith dialogue than it is at inter-denominational dialogue.  In other words, we're much better at discussing theological differences with Jews, Hindus and Muslims than we are with each other. Ordinangst thinks this is probably true, and it strikes him as really rather silly.  Turn the microscope up a bit higher and Ordinangst thinks the same could be applied to the CofE.... ++Rowan seems much happier to comment when a Christian is martyred in Pakistan, or to maintain dialogue with archbishops of obscure countries - or even cones - in the Anglican communion than he is to foster and encourage dialogue (and perhaps reconciliation) between the branches of the Church in England who currently seem to be growling at each other or leaving for good.  This can't be a good thing.

I’m Happy, Hope You’re Happy Too……

Ordinangst is fascinated by Richard Layard’s launch this morning of his Action for Happiness campaign.  The cynic in Ordinangst notes that an organisation that already boasts 4,500 members (wooh – a mass movement!) managed to garner more airtime on Radio 4 this morning than any Church could reasonably expect.  That’s obviously because the idea plays safely into the secular liberal agenda that seems to be everywhere at the moment (cf Big Society, Anthony Seldon on Trust etc etc)  Here's a link to Layards’s website which contains some interesting material.

Layard’s idea is simple – provide a blueprint of ten steps (none of them involving faith by the way) for how to achieve happiness - because happiness leads to a better sense of wellbeing and is also infectious. Bingo! in C21st,  happiness becomes the Opiate of the Masses.  Layard was at pains this morning to emphasise that his movement has nothing whatsoever to do with any religious organisation – and Ordinangst finds this need to distance his ideas (which have to be well-intentioned) from faith rather depressing.

The Today programme put Layard’s ideas into action with a simple experiment in a coffee shop.   An individual commits an act of spontaneous generosity to a stranger – the next person in the queue – by offering to buy them a cup of coffee.  This offer is accepted (and, interestingly is then spontaneously repeated to the next person – Ordinangst wonders if this was because the BBC was listening) down the line until it comes to a grinding halt from some poor soul who doesn’t play ball.   The participants are then interviewed and, Lo and behold! The giving and receiving of generosity makes people feel happy.

Ordinangst hopes this news won’t come as a revelation to his (largely) Christian readership.  “A gift freely given” models (in a tiny Starbuckian way) God’s grace to us.  Ordinangst subscribes to the “God Shaped Hole” theory and believes that all people have a yearning for God in their lives and because of this they will nearly always respond to acts of grace positively.  What worries him is that initiatives like Layard’s – which encourage Christ-like behaviour without introducing Jesus into the equation - are filling the gap with behaviours that lead ultimately to a dead end (literally).  And the problem is that, as we all know, following Jesus doesn't lead to happiness all the time.  In fact it can be very tough - with as many lows as there are highs. 

Ordinangst is sorry to sound grumpy, but an initiative aimed at making people happy all the time is, inane.  Anyone who claims to be happy constantly is either living in some soma-induced haze or is on some spectrum or another.  If we are encouraged to measure our life on some inane happy-ometer we are going to end up feeling worse than ever. 

Express Yourself........

Ordinangst is a tiny bit worried by the Fresh Expressions movement.  He is training with some very wonderful people who are planning to “do” Fresh Expressions church once they are fully dog-collared (probably not literally) and let loose on the outside world.  There are a couple of big issues here that Ordinangst would love to hear some views on.

·         Is Ordinangst alone in wondering whether the whole Fresh Expressions movement is a bit of a knee-jerk over-reaction in response to heart-stopping declines in punters going to traditional Churches?  Wouldn’t it be best to work out ways to encourage parish churches to think radically about their offer rather than encourage Fresh Expressions ministers to set up new expressions of church at Starbucks just down the road?    According to the Fresh Expressions website “The initiative has resulted in hundreds of new congregations being formed alongside more traditional churches”.  Doesn’t that just present a divided Church (yet again) to the outside world?  And it must be heart-breaking for some parish priests if this happens to them.  Ordinangst really hopes this isn’t another example of the evangelicals flexing their muscles.

·         Ordinangst hopes he isn’t overstepping the mark when he says that he thinks that some bishops and their dioceses haven’t got their minds round Fresh Expressions at all.  From a training perspective, Ordinangst can see a calamity or two approaching, where gifted and talented people have been accepted for training on a Fresh Expressions ticket and have slogged their way through theological college and are struggling with their diocese to work out what job they are going to at the end of the process.  Worst case scenario is that they won’t get ordained as a result.  That isn’t great for the student, and it is a blinking waste of Church funds too.    

·         It worries Ordinangst that if Dioceses haven’t got their minds round Fresh Expressions, then there is going to be inadequate control over what is being done and inadequate pastoral support for Ministers setting up Fresh Expressions churches.   Lots of people training for this kind of ministry are, in Ordinangst’s view, naturally anti-authority.  While these lone wolves will do a brilliant job of challenging perceptions of what Church can be, and may well be successful in bringing the the “unchurched” into the fold,  Ordinangst thinks they could no more run a church (in whatever guise) than he could run a space programme.   Ordinangst shudders to point his dear readers to what happened at St Thomas’ in Sheffield in the 1990s where the young and trendy Chris Brain took his congregation into some sort of heretical la-la land and caused enormous damage to the public perception of the CofE as a result.  We need to be jolly sure that this can’t happen again.

·         And who is supposed to be paying for all this?  And how are we supposed to keep up our church buildings if everyone is going to be encouraged to join a Church in Yo Sushi?  Ordinangst happens to think church buildings can be brilliant places to grow congregations and also thinks the parish system has a lot going for it….it worries him that Fresh Expressions could blow this all apart. 

I Want You To Want Me.......

Ordinangst is in a bit of a stew about this latest survey of NSMs published in this week’s Church Times.  Here's an article on it if you haven't seen it.  Ordinangst is training to be an NSM and he is very sad to hear that they are treated like second class citizens by some ordained clergy who are paid. Ordinangst is aware that it takes the Church ages to get its mind round any sort of change, so it isn’t surprising to him that there are residual pockets of resistance to the whole idea of non-stipendary ministers but he is sad that the Church might not welcome him with open arms once he has slogged his way through training.

Ordinangst has done some thinking about why he is so hot under the collar about this. Here are his reasons:

• He quite clearly and powerfully was called to become a vicar. This was quite a shock to him (he is still trying to get his mind round it and Mrs Ordinangst is still bouncing off the walls.) The Ordinangsts are just relying on the fact that if God called us so clearly, then there must be a plan at the end of it. It appears from the survey that lots of NSMs end up doing no more ministry than they did prior to training and ordination. Ordinangst reckons he will be quite cross and frustrated if this turns out to be the case for him.
• He passed his BAP. In fact the Panel decided to pass him for NSM or full time ministry. This means that the Church agrees that he has been called and recognises that he has the necessary attributes to be either a full time or NSM minister.
• He is now in training, alongside a number of other Ordinands who are going down the full-time route. He has to do the same number of essays as them, and they are blind marked so he gets no preferential treatment. He will (God willing) graduate with the same degree as his fellow full-timers. Without wishing to sound big-headed unlike many of his fellow students, he is lucky enough to have a Masters degree already so his academic qualifications aren’t too shabby.
• Ordinangst is a little bit older than some of his fellow students, but he does have the advantage of having had a career in the outside world which he believes gives him lots of skills that might be useful to his ministry. He has also done lots and lots of things within Church contexts over the years that means he is quite experienced pastorally. Ordinangst has seen a bit of life in other words.
• And he still has a day job. He and Mrs Ordinangst are working very hard to juggle the demands of this with studying and parenting four children. Mrs Ordinangst actually thinks that he should have gone into full-time training because it would have given him more chance to see the Ordinangst-ettes.
• Sacramentally speaking – if Ordinangst is going to be ordained a priest, surely that is what he is going to become – not an NSM priest but a priest. With all the bells and whistles.

The Ordinangsts do so hope that this is all going to be worth it in the end and that the Church isn’t going to see his ordination as a “lite” version of the real thing. That would be incredibly depressing.