Some people are outraged by it, I'm amused by it. Something about how my mind works. The mainline Protestant Churches are a source of fascination for Old Publius. It is not because I have much of an interest in joining them, or agree with them on all that many issues. It's the history angle. Once upon a time Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian Churches - I capitalized on purpose - were central institutions in the civil society of Canada. It was from the pulpit and Sunday School teacher than millions of Canadians learned morals and manners. I am not here to argue the problems with Christian ethical teachings, I've gone over that enough times and anyone with a decent familiarity of the works of Ayn Rand will know where I'm coming from.
Yet despite their enormous cultural power, which moderns have great difficulty in grasping, Canada was never anything like a theocracy. Certainly Bishop Bourget did his best in French speaking Canada, and Bishop Strachan accumulated more power in Upper Canada than should rightly be held by any public figure in one of the Crown's dominions. The Canada that fought two world wars and helped preserve the peace during the Cold War - at least until the Paul Hellyer years - seems to have been an altogether decent and civilized place. The current age, sensitive to certain concerns that age was oblivious to, is inclined to find only fault in the Old Canada. Yet people of every race, creed and belief risked life and limb to come here. One of the great liberal democracies was established and maintained. The mental framework of those builders would have found a society as secular as our own inconceivable. The landmarks of their mental - and literal - view were the mainline churches.
These mighty powers are now laid low. It is not only that many now find them irrelevant but that the institutions themselves have contributed to that irrelevance. The obvious answer is not the correct one. It is not that they have failed to change with the times, become more secular as society has become so. Rather the opposite. They have marched with the times in perfect beat. Amazingly enough some of their members wish them out of existence. Edward Michael George provides an anatomy:
But let's just see if we can get this straight:
1) The Anglican Church is "a transnational institution, under the oversight of bishops, meeting in councils to establish doctrine and policy" that "engages with the world and provides moral guidance to its members." (Note: apparently eternal salvation falls under the catch-all "moral guidance".)
Baber suggests that if only the Anglican Church would stop doing those things, then people would recognize that it serves none of those ends.
2) The Anglican Church would be well-advised to abandon its own outreach programs and serve their secular equivalents, because there is absolutely no difference between the two, given premise 1).
3) "Most" Anglicans have no interest in "theological correctness". Which is to say, most Anglicans have no interest in being Anglicans. Therefore aren't Anglicans; therefore the Anglican Church does not exist. Therefore the Anglican Church has no business claiming to exist.
[...]
What's worth noting, though, is that I don't think I know a single atheist as terrified of using the name of Jesus Christ as Baber apparently is. Heck, many of them even know that He has something to do with Anglicanism.
Something indeed. My point is perhaps obscure, but no less essential. The mainline Protestant churches have had for sometime a problem with that Jesus fellow. He seems to get caught in their throats. Now it seems they have a problem with being churches. If one is not a Christian or a Church, then what is one? A country club? An architectural society? A place for the elderly to relax on Sunday mornings?
The two branches of Christianity that lack such remarkable self-doubt are the Evangelicals and the Catholics. It is hard to imagine the Pope, certainly this Pope, arguing that church should some how tone down the whole Jesus thing and maybe reconsider the whole church thing too. From time to time we hear calls from liberal Catholics that the Church should modernize and become more mainstream. In otherwords, that it should abandon its basic convictions and compromise with the modern world. If the universal church isn't what it used to be, it certainly isn't the pale parody we see above. A case study, if you will, in the relatively efficacy of principles and pragmatism.
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