Return to the Third World
Father Raymond de Souza describes the impact of demographics on the Anglican Church in the National Post. The upward trajectory in the number of Christians in the Third World has met the descending trend line of First World congregations and has inexorably shifted the center of Christianity away from Europe to Asia, Latin America and Africa. In a very short while, nearly 70% of Christians will be in the non-European world. As a result, the doctrinal compromises made by the Anglican leadership in the West to mollify their post-Christian flock will soon be under severe attack.
In less than 20 years, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, the world's 2.6 billion Christians will be comprised of 623 million Latin Americans, 595 million Africans, 513 million Europeans and 498 million Asians. The growth of Africa has been astonishing, from 10 million Christians in 1900 representing about 10% of the population, to some 360 million in 2000, representing about 50% of the population. In such a world, the concerns and cultural mores of the Upper West Side of Manhattan are marginal at best.
The consequences of the new majority has already provoked a crisis within the Anglican Church. Recently, Anglican bishops meeting in Tanzania have rejected the idea that "that homosexual acts should be judged morally licit, and even sacramental."
The big and getting bigger Anglican churches in Africa have kept to the constant Christian teaching that such acts are sinful. Between the two, the Archbishop of Canterbury has valiantly attempted to fashion a compromise. But of course something cannot be both a sacrament and a sin, so matters had to be resolved one way or the other. The plain meaning of the Tanzania meeting is that the leading Anglican archbishops have given the U.S. Episcopal Church a Sept. 30 deadline to recant of their approval of same-sex marriage and actively gay bishops. If they do not recant, the apparent consequence would be that the U.S. Episcopal Church will be expelled from the Anglican Communion, and those American Episcopalians who hold to the Christian heritage on such matters will be provided for in some other way -- likely to involve the same African archbishops who have insisted on calling the U.S. Episcopal Church to account. If that indeed happens in September, the Archbishop of Canterbury will have to finally decide whether to throw his lot in with the north or the south. If he opts for the north, he might find himself the last Archbishop of Canterbury to claim leadership of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Christianity has so often been described -- often by Leftists -- as a "Western" religion that it is easy to forget that its roots are in the Middle East and that the oldest Christian communities are in places like Iraq, Syria and Ethiopia. Recently, I engaged in a dinner table discussion with a Jewish friend who recalled the shameful behavior of Christians in Russia, Eastern and Western Europe in the years before and immediately after the Second World War. I wondered rhetorically how much of what is ascribed to "Christianity" was really European behavior as opposed to anything doctrinal. And now the question will be become sharper across the board as non-Europeans inexorably gain the majority in church councils.
There are two further implications Father de Souza doesn't address which will have a gradual but growing impact. The first will be the effect of the numbers and unapologetic style of Third World Christians in the current clash of civilizations between the West and Islam.
An oft-quoted Christian poet from Ghana, Afua Kuma, has a contemporary hymn that would no doubt drain the remaining colour from the pallid faces in a typical northern Anglican choir: "If Satan troubles us, Jesus Christ You who are the lion of the grasslands You whose claws are sharp Will tear out his entrails And leave them on the ground For the flies to eat."
For many Europeans (though maybe not to Americans like Donald Sensing) the days of the pistol-packing padre belongs to the pre-modern age. But as the International Herald Tribune's coverage of atrocities on the Philippine island of Basilan reminds us, Something Has Survived.
The Reverend Cirilo Nacorda, the Roman Catholic parish priest in this small seaside town, says he carries his .45-caliber handgun only when he's tending to his flock in nearby villages. Otherwise, when he's at home in his rectory here, his two bodyguards stand among the wooden pews of his church and keep watch. . Father Nacorda needs the protection these days. The stocky, 44-year-old native of this strife-torn island has ignited a firestorm of public controversy in the Philippines. He has angered both the military and local outlaws by accusing the military of being involved in kidnapping, the most lucrative, and deadly, business here on Basilan island, 800 kilometers (500 miles) south of Manila.
The second implication is more subtle. Many of the cultural products of Hollywood and the publishing industry are now tuned to be what will be an increasingly obsolete understanding of Christianity and Christians. The stock depictions of bumbling, hypocritical and flamingly homosexual clergymen might represent a certain reality in the Sceptered Isle of England but they would hardly correspond to Father Cirilo Nacorda. They would have to bring back Friar Tuck to get anywhere close.
Just how far out of tune many of the current assumptions about Christianity are turning out to be was illustrated by the recent ban by British Airways on employees who wore any symbols resembling a cross. It had initially suspended Nadia Eweida after she wore a small necklace with a cross over her uniform. But the airline rescinded its policy after meeting opposition from the Archbishop of York, of Ugandan origin, Dr. John Sentamu. Nor did he apologize for actions.
"Praise the Lord! I am grateful that BA has finally shown grace and magnanimity in this change of policy so as to enable their Christian employees to display their commitment to their faith. I welcome the efforts made by BA to allow the wearing of the Cross by those Christian employees who wish to do so. Nadia Eweida’s courage and commitment to her Lord is a challenge to us all that love and loyalty to Christ conquers in the end."
How could BA have gotten it so wrong? Probably by assuming what is no longer true: that the values of post-modern Europe are also the values of global Christianity.
posted by wretchardthecat at 2/22/2007 02:09:00 PM
14 Comments:
Spengler has written that the "southern cone" which is the term of art for third world surgent Christianity understands the Bible as the writers wrote it as a tribal and preagricultural document. It gives an Anglican (and should a Catholic as well) pause when after a couple of thousand years of sophisticated theological analysis that the future of the religion is the past and a rural African one at that (See Spengler at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HL12Aa01.html )
The staying power of any religion is its ability to provide meaningful answers and context for real world problems. What should a liberal churchman have to say on Basilan?
I recall one Leftist professor wo tried to come to terms with the death of her son after he had enlisted in the Communist cause. She did the rounds of the cancer war at the Philippine General Hospital, perhaps because among the dying she felt closest to her dead son. After a while she carried around only the Bible and religious texts. No one in the cancer ward had any interest or use for the Teachings of Chairman Mao Tse Tung.
A couple of Anglican congregations in the US have submitted to the jurisdiction of African Bishops in order to avoid the homosexual obsession of the US hierarchy. The charges of imperialism against Christian missionaries look so 20th century.
Cedarford wrote: Though I think it would be just so deliciously ironic for the whole effete English pile of PC, obligated to say Anglicism is all about advancing women and gays - to be tossed out of the Church of England as apostates by a pile of Nigerians, Bahamanians, Jamaicans, New Guineans.
I wonder if the New Men in the leadership of the Anglican Communion are going to do a little revisionist history on the very event that caused their break from Rome. The new improved C of E absolutely draws the line against equality for women and enchanted people of both genders, so I wonder if they think it was okay for King Henry VIIIth to father children on seven different women.
What robert says is last year's news. It is more than "a couple" of Anglican/Episcopol US churches which are now gladly under an African bishop's jurisdiction. As the CofE/Anglicans continue to rot away from their unspiritual and bible-denying center, the move towards third world dominion has become a growing western trend that this fall could turn into a landmark rupture of that ancient creed.
Rome can only watch and shudder as the pendulum of power slowly begins to accelerate away from European 'personal opinions' toward the basic values of a less sophisticated - but more honest - world.
It will be an interesting ride.
If Satan troubles us, Jesus Christ You who are the lion of the grasslands You whose claws are sharp Will tear out his entrails And leave them on the ground For the flies to eat.
I didn't know he was of the Tribe of Judah
We can only hope that the African Christians will continue to fight back against the African Muslims.
A Christian is one who believes that the coming of a personal Saviour was long foretold. That when Christ came, He communed with His disciples in such wise as to promise life everlasting, that they would meet their Maker for Judgement in end days.
Christ chose His disciples, they did not choose Him. Herein lies mystery... God's Judgement is not for man to know. But the Christian believes his Lord will come again, "to judge both the quick and the dead".
Theologians (sic) are chronocentric, geocentric-- born in given places at a given time. Over two millenia, virtually no aspect of Christ's message has escaped over-elaboration by self-important clerics intent on twisting doctrine to political advantage.
But we have just stated all one needs to know of Christianity. As to Christ's teachings, absorb them as you will. Centuries later, neither Henry VIII nor any Pope can have the slightest bearing on our Master's Word: Love one another, I am with you always, trust in me for I am Son of God.
Anyone who thinks this message obsolete, or that "Do unto others" will ever be superseded by some paltry attitudinizing, does not know Christ the King. We most certainly do not, but permit us Communion with our beloved Master, for there is always Hope.
I didn't know he was of the Tribe of Judah
The Christ of Rome is a Roman. Isus might have been of Judah, but the Romans erased that which was of Judah and replaced it with that of Isis. What is left, is an imperial vessel of Rome. And Rome, well, you know well enough of Rome.
"Psychics were recruited by the Ministry of Defence to locate Osama Bin Laden's secret lair,
it was claimed yesterday. However, after running up a bill of £18,000 of taxpayers' money, defence chiefs concluded there was 'little value' in using psychic powers in the defence of the nation and the research was taken no further."
Teaching in an Anglican school, I have no doubts as to which way the Singapore Church will jump when the schism point arrives. That is, we're still very conservative.
I must say, even as an atheist, that I find myself greatly amused at the circumstances the Western section of the church now finds itself in. They have replaced honest spirituality not with a more intense or fundamental morality, but with a vacuum of post-modernist non-philosophy, and they will now pay the price.
BTW, an Ugandan pastor came by last year to give the students a talk on faith and determination. He was impressive, to say the least.
I earned an MDiv degree from an Episcopal seminary two decades+ ago and was a candidate for ordination. After looking long and hard at the church, I moved away from that option.
Bart Hall is correct in his description, but he even understates it. Two female priests in PA recently attempted DRUID 'ceremonies' without rebuke from their bishop.
Count me among those for whom ordination of women is not unBiblical and not outside the realm of possibility within tradition.
That said, however, the manner and motivation for ordaining women and gays in PECUSA is hollow and corrosive. For too many, it is being done for secularist reasons rather than prayerfully.
I say this as a woman.
I'm up on the north shore of oahu today. I've been to a couple different services this weekend. The worship services included mostly songs that I know. Typically the words to the music were projected up on the front screen instead of being read from hymnals. And sometimes movie and video clips would be played to display a pastoral point. Sometimes the words would be displayed in English, Hawaiian, Philipine/Tagalog, Japanese & chinese. I really think this use of technology in worship here is having as profound an effect as the introduction of the gutenberg press had on the reformation. further I think the introduction of moving pictures into the worship process rebalances the (almost islamic) emphases on the written word over imagry in worship that came with the reformation.
The new improved C of E absolutely draws the line against equality for women and enchanted people of both genders, so I wonder if they think it was okay for King Henry VIIIth to father children on seven different women.
The Nigerian Anglicans, and African Christians in general, have bigger fish to fry.
The former Episcopal Church USA, now the Episcopal Church, is another church of the secular left. They control a majority of the Episcopacy but the people in the pews in the USA are far more conservative. The schism in the US you are reading about is between conservatives and liberals. There would be no problems without the hierarchy pushing a leftist agenda. The African church is not the cause, it is a haven for Episcopalians who are fleeing their G_dless bishops.
Like the University system, the Episcopal church's leadership is another institution in which leftists have infiltrated and purged their ideology enemies. Wish them good luck because demography is not on their side.
Some months ago, we were holding an "Adult Forum" (Sunday school for the grownups) at our Episcopal church at which we were talking about The DaVinci Code and its suggestion that Jesus was married and fathered a child. Now, the Episcopal church claims to rest on the "tripod" of faith, scripture, and intellect (man, I hope I got that right!), so, like everyone else in the crowd, I was very comfortable with the idea of discussing the possible ramifications of this alternative history... but I was shocked to find that I was the only one (speaking, at any rate) who thought that there might be certain doctrines which you must profess in order to consider yourself Episcopalian. I didn't care about whether Jesus was a virgin or Mary Magdalene was his wife, or even whether they had a child, though it certainly would muddy the waters Here Below; I did, however, care that it's evidently possible to call yourself "Episcopalian" yet not believe that Jesus is the Son of God and in some mysterious way also God Himself. Here I thought it was a Christian sect... and that those things in the back of the Book of Common Prayer had some meaning and utility to the Church.
And then we get to the already-mostly-sainted Bishop Kate, and her approving remarks on how members of the American Episcopal Church, being all progressive and enlightened, tend not to reproduce very much. Did I say "approving"? Sorry, I meant "damnfool."
When we first moved to Philadelphia's western 'burbs, we were church-searching. One of our potential church homes was a church where (we heard) the rector and his ?associate rector? ?wife? ?both? were practicing Druid rituals during Mass. St. Francis in the Fields was the church, which is, incongruously for its name but logically for this practice, in the woods. We ruled it out without even a visit, reasoning that we didn't want to step into the middle of that fight.
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