Anglicans to Watch – 2013

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I’m planning to do a blog post in the New Year highlighting some movers and shakers in the Church of England to watch in 2013. I have a few (some cheeky) ideas already, but would welcome your suggestions.

In the comments below suggest a name (or twenty) together with a brief reason.

By the way, by “Anglican” I mean “Church of England”. Welcome for suggestions beyond the boundaries of York and Canterbury but they must be people who will impact the Church of England. Also, can we stick to nominations and ideas rather than getting into a detailed discussion of the merits or otherwise of the various candidates.

That’s it. Get to it.

Thanks!

88 Comments on “Anglicans to Watch – 2013

  1. +Christopher Cocksworth goes to Durham?

    Phillip Giddings survives as chair of laity?

    ++Justin Welby allows Catholic ordinariate?

    Christina Rees goes back to ECUSA?

  2. Peter,

    I don’t know whether you have already seen this post (http://livingtext.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/modern-anglican-theologians.html), which overlaps with (although is not identical to) your question here (I don’t know the author, but it is not a bad initial list).

    Lee Gatiss is also mentioned on that list, what is not mentioned is that he is about to take over as Director of Church Society, which means that he will be in a position to make a splash.

  3. Philip North – now that he won’t be going to Whitby, what *will* happen to him?

    Vivienne Faull – still a candidate to be a + when the time comes.

    Lee Gatiss – as previously mentioned

  4. Rev Justin Welby for obvious reasons…
    Vicky Beeching, Sally Hitchner & Richard Coles, I will suggest together as they have been over the last few months, and I hope into 2013 the acceptable human face of the C of E in the media, and whilst these people at the very least are in the media the C of E stands a small chance of being relevant to today’s society.

    • *shudders* I know Welby can’t exactly disown his past, but one would have thought that HTB millionaire’s playground type Christianity wouldn’t be the best fit for today’s culture!

        • No. But if we’re playing anectodal: the one person I do know/did know personally who’s spent time regularly worshipping in HTB worked, very successfully, in banking.

          • I used to work for HTB, and though I had/have my frustrations with it, the ‘millionaire’s playground’ accusation that is often thrown about is not a particularly accurate one – there are plenty of people who regularly worship there from all walks of life.

            • Playground might have pejorative connotations, which I regret, but if there was some data available (amount of quota paid, house prices in the area etc) that could reliably indicate the ethos, profile etc of all the C of E churches, wouldn’t you expect HTB to come out near the top? That’s not to say that such an exercise would be a good idea of course. But, in my own evangelical church attending days, I knew of more than a few believers who were quite unapologetic in contrasting their rich, evangelical, modern, youthful churches with the (not uncoincidently) liberal, High churches in less salubrious areas!

              • Oh no! What’s that you say? Bankers becoming Christians? No! Not bankers?! Please not the bankers! That might lead to something drastic – like responsible banking!

                  • Plenty of good evangelical churches in less salubrious areas CB. My last one was at the bottom of the pile for multiple deprivation, a previous one had a sex club next door (and we once got some punters in a service ‘cos it wasn’t open yet!)

          • >No.

            It shows.

            You could perhaps usefully spend a week visiting some HTB projects and church plants to come to an informed view :-).

            If they are all successful bankers, it’s remarkable how versatile successful bankers can be.

            • Thanks Matt, I’ll check out the accounts.

              I’d reiterate that (in my experience) big evangelical churches are themselves prone to boast of their success (a reward for cleaving to the Bible in contrast to the dwindling churches of liberalism etc), and that exceptions are exactly that. Indeed, I can recall Glasgow’s leading pisky evangelical, boasting that Mark Driscoll’s church attracts more people than the whole of the SEC.

              Your link includes the information “Voluntary Income” with annual “Gift Aid” of over £4 million and collections of over £2 million. The evangelical church I attended, although very middle/upper class, still had to have a fundraising campaign to get the million and a half quid needed for a vanity project new hall. HTB does indeed seem very atypically wealthy, with obvious implications in terms of its probable average members. I don’t see why this kind of speculation is frowned-on. I, despite being working class, enjoyed my time at one of Scotland’s oldest universities, and I’d have loved to have went to St.Andrew’s (not being smart enough for Oxbridge!). But it remains true that St.Andrew’s is (on average) very posh and (again, on average) most students there don’t need student loans. Churches might, solipsitically, like to think that they attract everyone, but I’m not that such arrogance is helpful.

              I’m certainly not using middle/upper class as insults. Give me John Lewis and Samantha “Queen of the MILFS” Cameron over “deceit and ruin” and “wages that run away,like love” any day! ;)

              • I think your 2nd para is a fair summary. Knightsbridge probably helps, as will property gains by members over the last 20 years – a lot of relatively old money will be around, since major growth at HTB started around 1975-1980. And London has low quota payments (here 10 FTE paid).

      • No, in nightmare moments, Eton, Oxford and HTB seem more a suitable past for a pantomime Squire Nastee than an ideal pontifex cantuariensis, but I am sure we can be reassured by the fact that Cameron, Osborne and Boris are also Eton and Oxford…. (though not, alas, HTB :-)

  5. Nick Baines. A good communicator, says interesting things, able to defend his arguments without sounding as if he’s demonising or patronising his opponents, establsihed media profile, Bishop of a diocese with interfaith significance, heavily engaged in one of the most ambitious diocesan reorganisations the CofE has tried in decades.

    • Oh dear God no!! Not Nick Baines!
      Are we allowed to use this thread to name those who we would like moved and shaken out of the Church of England into some other denomination?

          • lol, I’d like to see such a list Jill! You’re prone to remark that me and you are on different planets, Jill, but you’ve probably spent a lot more time than me having a go at Peter’s positions , suggesting that there aren’t quite as many people in your disgusted-of-Tunbridge-Wells team as your like. I’d be interested to see just how many C of E clergy (50? 10? 5?) meet your strict “male/male/woman double penetration is one of the horrors of the gay lifestyle” standards ;-) Crockford’s would end up as a pamphlet.

            This is a fun thread :)

        • > its crude

          Or, presumably, libellous.

          Unless you can find away to get Sally of our Alley to retweet it, in which case you get an automatic indulgence and I will donate a free beercrate to Mr Sally.

      • OK, so you don’t like him (though suggesting he be cast out seems a bit strong) . He doesn’t exactly match where I come from either. But the question was Anglicans to watch, not Anglicans we like. And like it or not, the Church of England is pretty broad.

        • lol, this is Jill we’re talking about who, in a rare break from disgusted-of-Tunbridge-Wells anti-gay rhetoric, has previously called this this a ‘liberal blog’, presumably because us liberals aren’t banned automatically. I’d imagined she’s disappointed that Peter isn’t blogging on the topic of “1000 Supposed Anglicans That Hanging’s Too Good For” ;)
          (j/k Jill, you know I love you ;))

        • Actually, w_s, thinking about it, I would actually cast out nearly all of the bench of bishops and a goodly proportion of the clergy, in fact all who voted ‘yes’ in the recent synod vote, who would obviously like to see the back of people like me and don’t intend to make proper provision for them. I suppose ‘tit for tat’ isn’t very Christian, though, and it might make for a few empty churches.

          • If anybody is wondering what this is all about, Ryan likes to talk about people behind their backs, as it is easier for him to tweak what they may or may not have said 25 years ago and report back on it to his own advantage. Needless to say, none of it is actually true.
            Happy Christmas to you too, Ryan.

            • Wrong. Behind your back? This is,er, public. I’d imagine most people subscribe to posts so they can respond to comments, whereas you prefer the chap-door-and-runaway approach. I’m reminded of Fiddlesticks having a go at me for a point I made on The Christian Institute; I responded with lots of factual links, Fiddle Sticks ignored them. In fairness to Fiddle Sticks, she was probably in one of her characteristic huffs at the time.

              I think I’ll dig up some more of your comments and let the reader decide who is and who is not lying. If you dislike people calling you on your nonsense then you could always not spout it in public?

              • As I have already explained, Ryan, I didn’t reply because I wasn’t questioning what you’d said about the Christian Institute, I was taking issue with the way in which you said it.

                • Do you talk like that to your students, FS? If you could drop the finger-wagging schoolma’am manner I think you wouldn’t put people’s backs up so much.

                  • It’s my way of trying to cope with all the evo-bashing that goes on on this website. ‘Prick us and do we not bleed? Tickle us and do we not laugh?’ etc etc. It’s a pity, as we could have had a lot of fruitful discussion around the topics that come up on this blog. You might find there’s a lot more going on than the ‘flat fundamentalist’ view of the world you seem to imagine that we all hold, if you opened up your mind a little bit.

                    However, this is the last you’ll be hearing from me. I’ve been neglecting my husband, and, as marriage isn’t the easy thing of heterocentric Holywood movies, that’s never a wise thing to do.

                    Goodbye Ryan, my love. Good luck with your thesis and I hope one day you’ll find that girl! Thanks for hosting us Peter. You’re a patient man, though I do regret we didn’t get a proper go at thinking through those Changing Attitude points on marriage, but can’t have everything.

                    • If Tom conflated all varieties of evangelical Christianity with flat fundamentalism then he would hardly require the latter label to refer to the ideology he was addressing, would he? And of course Tom could in good conscience also mount an argument as to why evangelicalism *does* warrant conflation with fundamentalism, which hardly makes it evo-bashing. Of course lots of individual evangelicals are good human beings. Compare-and-contrast with the dehumanising all-gays-are-paedos/disease-spreaders nonsense that gets dished out by some (but hardly most, or all, of course) ‘conservatives’ on this blog.

                      So too with me and ‘evangementalist’. And light teasing is exactly that, an no barrier to serious discourse (no offence, but I’ll take a serious argument/analysis coupled with some allegedly fiery rhetoric to a piece of MOR prose that, ultimately, offers nothing!). To use your quoted text; antisemitism led to the gates of Aushwitz and was indeed often supported by societal prejudice manifest in language. Isn’t that what a feminist like yourself would say in issues such as ”bitch” and ”hoe’ being sexist and part of the spectrum of violence and persecution, whereas, due to male privilege, ‘men are stupid’ generalisations are not? Extending that analogy, don’t evangelicals have a similar level of privilege in a way gay people, being a minority, do not? It’s hard to take seriously the notion of poor persecuted Lord Carey types.

                      Ha! If wishes were horses ;) My facebook photo was me being kissed by a (Rangers supporting! Natalie Portman resembling!) former model, but I fear no-one will regard it as non-photoshopped. Best wishes to yourself (and Mr Sticks!) – remember most guys prefer anal to socks ;-)

                      Imagine you’ll be back though….this blog is addictive (”just when I thought I was out….they pull me back in!”)

                      Merry Christmas (and Happy Festivus! ;))

                    • That’s a nice post Ryan, and you have said it better than I could. I think FS can’t fairly blame us for missing opportunities to deepen the discussions she says she wanted – we didn’t get answers to the serious points we made in so many instances that I find the comment a trifle disingenuous. For example my challenge
                      That we can know nothing of Jesus’s opinions outside the narratives recorded in the gospels after FS challenged me to show where He supported one man marrying another. But I think you are right FS will be back withis avatar or another – this blog is addictive. I wonder if Peter could bottle it so we could apply it to something practical LOL. Happy Christmas.

                    • I’m sorry, Tom, but when Ryan rakes up an argument from about 5 months ago and you accuse me of being the one who’s unreasonable I think it should be very obvious why I’ve chosen this time to go. I’ve also lost count of the number of thoughtful posts I’ve put time into writing which have gone without a reply. That’s just how these blogs go. I’m guessing you’re a really nice guy, Tom, that’s been hurt a lot by life. I’m very sorry for it, but I’m not responsible for it – any more than I’m responsible for whatever happened to Ryan in that evangelical church he attended in Scotland. I’m not going to stick around to be your punch bag. I wish you and your partner well and I hope you work these issues through and find peace.

                    • Ha! So you were gone for all of 16 hours! I was hoping that your predictable comeback would have been with a new name and a vow to be more rational (as happened last time; alas, you didn’t keep to that promise).

                      Five months ago? And? A fallacious argument made five months ago, or a year ago, or two years ago remains so; so, too, with valid points (unless of course it was founded on something that changed significantly in the interim, but that’s not true here). I cited it as it was a good, recent example of what Jill was doing. I stand by that point. And I see you’re still projecting horribly. I want to have a serious discussion, and offer analysis and arguments. So does Tom. Neither of us (I’d suspect) are here to work through our issues (!). We engage. You go in huffs. And may I note that implying that Tom treats you – or anyone else – as a metaphorical punching bag is ad hom. You are not, and never were, on any kind of high ground.

                      In any case, there’s a lot more to life than arguing on teh internetz. Best wishes, and make sure Mr Fiddlesticks gets his Christmas Nat King Cole ;-)

                    • On the contrary, I don’t come on this blog looking for someone to use as a punchbag to compensate for what you surmise are the hurts life has dealt me. How would you like it if Ryan or I started cod-psychologising that you are compensating for your own marital difficulties with your hubbie who has had enough of your attention-seeking martyr complex, and are here looking for someone else to work out your passive aggression on, or some other patronising twaddle to make people who don’t share your personal moral viewpoint feel guilty?

                    • The issues thing was a bit of a girly thing to say. I forgot how patronising it could sound to a man. We all have our issues to sort out – we wouldn’t be human otherwise. However, if you didn’t want things to turn sour, you should have thought before getting involved in Ryan’s campaign of misrepresentation. You can’t expect respect from people when you don’t give it back. I now realise I never called anybody a liar. For a moment I thought maybe I had in a moment of thoughtlessness, but I never did. It’s all mind games. I was here to throw some ideas around and maybe present a different angle on some issues – not to make anybody feel guilty for having a different moral viewpoint than me. I was not here to play mind games. I’ve had enough.

                    • There you go again. ‘Girly’? Neither me nor Tom care about your gender, nor can you presume that we react as we do to your comments because of how your comments ”sound to a man”. Not sure what your fellow feminists would think of your poor-me (a nice alternative to the ‘dear’ ‘love’ soppy crap, admittedly) tactics. I am not playing mind games. In contrast, you might want to google transactional analysis and work under the assumption that your (unconscious?) stratagems are neither veiled nor terribly interesting.

                      Misrepresentation? I claimed that Jill’s accusation (or, if we’re being charitable, implication) that I was lying reminded me of your behaviour in relationship to the ‘Christian’ Institute. I stand by that characterisation. If you disagree with it, then the respectable thing would be to engage and explain why, not alternate, bi-polar style, between huffs and patronising attempts at sarcasm. As to your supposed abundance of reasonable points that went unanswered, I can’t recall many of them. Can anyone? NB it’s amusing that you appear to be shocked at the notion that you could accuse me of being a liar, whilst above you accuse me of a campaign of misrepresentation. Do you make an important moral distinction between the grave sin of lying and being merely engaged in a campaign of misrepresentation Curious.

                      Respect? Perhaps you could earn some if you responded to comments instead of engaging in pseduo-psychologist (to go with the pseudo-schoolteacher) behaviour. I find it striking that, although you can write off my comments as presumably the pathological elaboration of my supervillain-origin-story style experiences at an evangelical church, that Tom’s comments don’t cause you to reflect on your own behaviour here.

                      Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, dear ;-)

                      Alternatively, just move on and play fair. We’re all bound by the same rules.

                    • No. I think it would be better for everyone if I just left. Apart from anything else, I don’t have the energy to try to explain that I’m not a feminist. I don’t know where you got the idea that I am. It’s just another example of how you don’t want to have a conversation with me, you’re having a conversation with some made up version of me that represents all the problems you’ve ever had with evangelical churches. I’ve had a lot of problems with evangelical churches myself, and am in the process of considering whether Catholic spirituality might have grasped a lot of aspects of Christianity that we’ve missed, but I try not to take it out on other people.

                      I must be a pretty rubbish martyr, because I can’t do this thing of arguing with people who despise me and everything I believe, but then get terribly offended if they feel I’ve misunderstood them (which I’m sure I have on occasion). It seems to be based on this idea that there are the ‘marginalised’ in society, who can do not wrong, and the ‘dominant’, who can do no right and have to be corrected or ‘informed’ in order to humanise them. As far as I’m concerned, we’re all human beings who do some right and do some wrong. But I’ve discovered my limitations. This is bringing out the worst in me, and I’ve no desire to ruin everybody else’s fun.

                      I was going to say that this death is longer than Hamlet, but it’s more like the end of the horror movie ‘Carrie’. I’d better go before I cut Peter in half with a piece of gym equipment ;-)

                      [cue: Ryan pours on more slime]

                    • Projection and ad hom! End as you sadly started. Hopefully you’ll leave, but I’ll make sure of searching for the posts that informed my opinion that you were a feminist and post them publicly. That’s intellectual honesty. If ultimately the posts do not justify my opinion that you’re a feminist then I will, of course, apologise for misrepresenting you.

                      Again, we’re trying to have a serious discussion, you’re the one pouring out the slime of ad hom and cod-pscyhologising, as well as, of course, the arrogance of assuming that people take issue with your particular posts because they object to evangelicals per se. I’ve certainly had my share of demented critics over the year. One recalls ”Dad” , presumably banned, who tried to diagnose me with a mental illness and compared my posts, pejoratively, to Faulkner (!). Unfortunately for him, I actually own a DSM-IV and have studied American Literature at Yooni. I responded with lots of factual posts, which ”Dad” ignored, although he was forced to respond when Peter pointing out that trying to diagnose another commentator with a mental illness (which is very similar to what you’re doing with me and Tom btw) to avoid dealing with their points is very bad form. Was ‘Dad’ attacking all liberals? No, he was attacking me. Was ‘Dad’ being persectued because of his evangelical beliefs? No, he was reaping the natural consequences of his behaviour. And so it goes.

                    • Again you sidestep the point I was making. It was about the tone of put-down in this ” I wasn’t questioning what you’d said about the Christian Institute, I was taking issue with the way in which you said it.” “The way in which you said it” is an emotional response – you didn’t disagree but you didn’t like Ryan’s use of language. This, as Ryan says, is nothing to do with ‘girly’ talk or the silly he-said-she-said stuff that seems to entangle your thought processes. Even David Shepherd hadn’t noticed if you were male or female (he assumed you were a he) because he engages in the arguments themselves and is not interested in ad hom and sexist innuendo. As an academic feminist I’d expect you to get beyond the Jane Austin position that she could never imagine what men talked about when there were no women in the room.

                    • For anybody who is confused about what’s happening here: about 5 months ago Ryan called the Christian Institute ‘lying morons’ for suggesting that young girls were ‘sexless virgins’ who were being seduced by young boys. I felt that ‘sexless virgins’ showed a rather derogatory attitude to women and that it wasn’t really on to call people ‘lying morons’, no matter how unreliable their reporting. Ryan has had it in for me ever since. I’m sorry that you all had to listen to this. I’m leaving now so that you can get back to having interesting discussions and won’t have to bother with all this tedium.

                    • Wrong, I cited the CI discourse on pure-young-girls-and-nasty-boys as an example of its lies; it was not the primary foundation for me identifying, accurately, the CI as liars. I cited examples of the CI lying (NB note also Peter’s post on the CI’s claim – lie – that the gay blood ban was overturned unscientifically due to gay lobbyists). You ignored them.

                      Given that’s about five times in the last two or three days you’ve posted a message claiming that you’re quitting this blog, perhaps the reader can draw their own conclusion on who is and is not lying.

                      And I don’t have it in for you. Love your enemies, and all that ;)

                    • NB – just to read into the record – my calling the ‘Christian’ Institute lying morons and then citing a comment by them does not necessarily mean that the comment in question is the foundation for my ‘lying morons’ characterisation. Indeed the links I supplied showed that I good, pre-existing reasons to regard the CI in the way I did (at one point, the ‘C’I website had three stories on the SEC, two of which contained flat-out lies and distortions. Hardly an impressive strike rate, eh?). If anything, I think I was overgenerous in playing along with your red-pen schoolmaam condemnation of my language.

                    • Perhaps, at the time, it would have been easier, Fiddle Sticks, for you to go to Peter and demand that I write out “I must be nicer when talking about the ‘Christian’ Institute’ 100 times ;-)

                    • I see that you’ve replaced ”slime” with ”pig’s blood”. So have you now left in the sense of ‘no longer posting’, but you’re now going back and editing comments, perhaps to make them sound more rational? A dirty trick, but I can’t say I’m surprised.

                    • NB since you’re fond of giving out unsolicited Style Advice, let me reciprocate – “pig’s blood” has connotations of the pagan, or faux-Satanic, inflated and jarring even for you. In contrast fear of vagina dentata and its “slime” is entirely consistent with the kind of gynophobia you’re fond of, madly, attributing to your ”enemies”. Works much better, goes well with the whole passive-agressive ”poor me/knife in your back” shtick you’ve got going on (or – may it be so! – had going on ;-))

                    • yes, quasi-satanic oogie-boogie, which I addressed. So are you now doing at least one ‘final’ post per day now? As patronising schoolmaam finger-waggers might say: I’m disappointed, but not surprised. We all just want what’s best for you.

                      ;-)

                    • Ref:

                      “However, this is the last you’ll be hearing from me.”

                      “I think it should be very obvious why I’ve chosen this time to go”

                      ” I’m leaving now so that you can get back to having interesting discussions”

                      ;-)

                    • Well said Tom. Given Fiddle Stick’s bungled attempts at sardonic humour (needlessly inflated sarcasm, calling me ”turtle dove” etc) one has to wonder at her arrogance in feeling qualified to dish out aesthetic advice. And that’s aside from the arrogance of anointing herself as this blog’s Style Guide Police-person in any case!

            • Exhibit 1
              https://www.peter-ould.net/2012/01/30/sobering-reading-on-changing-attitudes-blog/

              Ms Nolland is also an enthusiastic advocate of the spurious slippery slope argument: tolerate homosexuality and we will be engulfed by all manner of perversions and we will drown in vile pornography. She distributed several ‘information’ sheets including a list of the most popular acts advertised and depicted on the internet such as ‘double anal’ in which ‘a woman is penetrated anally by two men at the same time’, ‘multiple men ejaculating onto a woman’s face’, ‘a penis thrust so far down a woman’s throat that she gags’ etc etc.

              https://www.peter-ould.net/2012/03/09/stats-watch-number-1/

              jillfromharrow Peter Ould • 9 months ago

              I do think the stuff you do is important, but I think the stuff Lisa does is important too. The same-sex attracted strugglers already mentioned are as disgusted as the rest of us with the material presented at the conferences. This is the kind of life they want to escape. These materials are there to warn the uninformed of the horrors of the gay lifestyle

              • And this, also by your good self, and aimed at our gracious host, is positively McCarthyite

                “While you are busy with your magnifying glass, gay activists are continuing with their work unimpeded.”

                O noes! It’s a sad day when even evangelicals won’t rally to your crusade! Think of The Children! ;-)

          • Did you hear Sister Wendy on Desert Island Disks today, Jill? She was asked what she thought about women bishops and she answered with perfect theological sense. She said the episcopacy is the fullness of the priesthood, so once you have women priests the principle is granted and you can’t refuse them the episcopacy. It’s a silly battle for the trads to have now – they’s all better join B16’s Ordinariate.

            • I also remember Mother Theresa saying ‘women have other things to do’ when asked the same question. Women have plenty of things to do that men can’t. Anyhow, this thread is not about the ordination of women, and as for your last phrase, you have made my point for me very well.

              • Still a problem for the evos though – they don’t like transubstantiation, so it is rather ruled out for them.
                Sister Wendy rather implied that the Church moves exceedingly slowly (over condoms for Africa) but eventually comes to the “right” decision, or a least the lesser one between two evils. Unlike the Anglican Discontents, she sticks with the Church in it glacial progress.

              • Like picking up dying people from the gutter and then giving them nothing but aspirin, while meanwhile having the very best medicare for yourself ?

          • Didn’t you refer once to being retired Jill? I suspect dodgy liberals would say you’re covered by their nefarious ”Dinosaurs who will die off before too long” strategy. No provision required! ;-)

              • It was a reductio ad absurdum parody of what Jill thinks of liberals, not an insult. I contrast, I regard being called a liar a very serious slur indeed, which is why I will be very shortly be doing some laborious research even though I suspect Jill, like Fiddle sticks, will simply ignore it.

                That said, I apologise unreservedly for any upset caused by anyone misperceiving any of my comments as offensive. Sorry, won’t happen again.

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