‘On Consulting the Faithful’ in Matters of Human Identity, Sexuality and Gender

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-47
Author(s):  
Christina Beardsley

This article considers a perceived gap between Church of England House of Bishops’ statements on human identity, sexuality and gender, and the outlook of many congregations. It does this under five headings suggested by a brief study of St John Henry Newman’s On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine. Topics are the bishops’ teaching responsibilities, how doctrinal consultation works in the Church of England, the tendency to prioritise church unity and the role of formation and of emotion. It concludes that the Church of England’s protracted conversations on sexuality should be resolved in a General Synod debate on equal marriage.

Author(s):  
Mark Hill QC

This chapter focuses on the clergy of the Church of England. It first explains the process of selection and training for deacons and priests, along with their ordination, functions, and duties. It then considers the status and responsibilities of incumbents, patronage, and presentation of a cleric to a benefice, and suspension of presentation. It also examines the institution, collation, and induction of a presentee as well as unbeneficed clergy such as assistant curates and priests-in-charge of parishes, the authority of priests to officiate under the Extra-Parochial Ministry Measure, the right of priests to hold office under Common Tenure, and the role of visitations in maintaining the discipline of the Church. The chapter concludes with a discussion of clergy retirement and removal, employment status of clergy, vacation of benefices, group and team ministries, and other church appointments including rural or area deans, archdeacons, diocesan bishops, suffragan bishops, and archbishops.


2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Alan Gregory

ABSTRACTUnderstanding Coleridge's classic work On the Constitution of Church and State requires paying close attention to the system of distinctions and relations he sets up between the state, the ‘national church’, and the ‘Christian church’. The intelligibility of these relations depends finally on Coleridge's Trinitarianism, his doctrine of ‘divine ideas’, and the subtle analogy he draws between the Church of England as both an ‘established’ church of the nation and as a Christian church and the distinction and union of divinity and humanity in Christ. Church and State opens up, in these ‘saving’ distinctions and connections, important considerations for the integrity and role of the Christian church within a religiously plural national life.


1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 384-395
Author(s):  
R. W. Ambler

In February 1889 Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, appeared before the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury charged with illegal practices in worship. The immediate occasion for these proceedings was the manner in which he celebrated Holy Communion at the Lincoln parish church of St Peter at Gowts on Sunday 4 December 1887. He was cited on six specific charges: the use of lighted candles on the altar; mixing water with the communion wine; adopting an eastward-facing position with his back to the congregation during the consecration; permitting the Agnus Dei to be sung after the consecration; making the sign of the cross at the absolution and benediction, and taking part in ablution by pouring water and wine into the chalice and paten after communion. Two Sundays later King had repeated some of these acts during a service at Lincoln Cathedral. As well as its intrinsic importance in defining the legality of the acts with which he was charged, the Bishop’s trial raised issues of considerable importance relating to the nature and exercise of authority within the Church of England and its relationship with the state. The acts for which King was tried had a further significance since the ways in which these and other innovations in worship were perceived, as well as the spirit in which they were ventured, also reflected the fundamental shifts which were taking place in the role of the Church of England at parish level in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their study in a local context such as Lincolnshire, part of King’s diocese, provides the opportunity to examine the relationship between changes in worship and developments in parish life in the period.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valéria Melki Busin

No presente artigo, apresentamos elementos da composição atual do campo religioso brasileiro em função daquilo que será necessário para iluminar a discussão sobre as relações entre religião, sexualidades e gênero. Buscamos compreender teoricamente o papel desempenhado pelas religiões, mais especificamente do Catolicismo, na vida das pessoas que aderem a elas ou na cultura envolvente. Elencamos questões relacionadas à moral sexual católica, à família e ao ethos privado. Apresentamos indagações que envolvem o Catolicismo e a desigualdade de gênero. Discutiremos a religião como modeladora de subjetividades e traremos os sentimentos de culpa e vergonha relacionados à homossexualidade e à religião. Apresentaremos uma especificidade do trânsito religioso de homossexuais e, por fim, faremos a relação entre alguns princípios religiosos relativos à sexualidade e o exercício de poder em diversas esferas: simbólico-discursiva, pastoral, privada, pública etc. Palavras-chave: religião, sexualidade, homossexualidade, gênero. Abstract In this paper, we present elements of the current composition of the Brazilian religious field in terms of what will be needed to illuminate the discussion of relations between religion, sexuality and gender. We seek to understand theoretically the role played by religions, specifically Catholicism, in the lives of people who adhere to them or in the surrounding culture. We list questions relating Catholic sexual morality, family and private ethos. We introduce questions that involve Catholicism and gender inequality. We discuss the role of the religion as modeler of subjectivities and we bring feelings of guilt and shame related to homosexuality and religion. We present a specificity of religious transit of homosexuals and, finally, we will link some religious principles relating to sexuality with the exercise of power in several spheres: the symbolic-discursive, pastoral, private, public etc Keywords: religion, sexuality, homosexuality, gender.


Author(s):  
Anthony Milton

This chapter explores a long-neglected relationship, which has escaped scholarly notice in part because of the assumption that reformation remained fixed after the sixteenth century. Historians previously focused on fragmentation within the Lutheran tradition following the death of Luther in 1546. Yet the conversion of the Elector Palatine Frederick III to the reformed faith in 1561 has more recently drawn attention for inaugurating a second reformation in central Europe along with the confessional conflicts that contributed to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. The discussion follows the peculiar role of the Palatinate in constructing the Church of England’s reformed identity from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. The unique circumstances of reform initiated by the Prince, for instance, could be used by both conformist and puritan divines.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-327
Author(s):  
Norman Boakes

Considering the importance of their role in the life of the Church of England and the Church in Wales, there is not much written about the role of archdeacons. In her recent article in the January 2019 issue of this Journal, Jane Steen focused on the legal aspect of the role of archdeacons, and reflected on how they play a key role in shaping the Church and its ministry, delighting in its beauty and rejoicing in its well-being. In this article, the recently retired training, development and support officer for archdeacons reflects on the nature of the role and, in the light of that, on the way in which it might best be carried out. Believing that process is at least as important as outcome, and that good processes lead to better outcomes, he argues that coaching provides a useful model to enable archdeacons to exercise their ministries most effectively and promote both the mission and the well-being of the Church. It is also, he argues, a better reflection of Anglican theology.


Ecclesiology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 342-354
Author(s):  
Paul Avis

The purpose of this article is to bring to light the ecclesiological reality of cathedrals, with a main focus on the Church of England. It initiates a concise ecclesiological discussion of the following aspects of the English, Anglican cathedrals: (a) the cathedral as a church of Christ; (b) the place and role of the cathedral within the diocese; (c) the relationship between the cathedral and the diocesan bishop; (d) the mission of the cathedral. The article concludes with a brief reflection on (e) the cathedral as the ‘mother church’ of the diocese.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-526
Author(s):  
Phillip M Ayoub

Abstract This piece dialogues with Htun and Weldon's exceptional new book, The Logics of Gender Justice, as it relates to LGBTI rights. Beyond engaging the authors' questions of when and why governments promote women's rights, I also engage their argument that equality is not one issue but many linked issues, including issues of sexuality and gender identity. My own reflections on their work thus address the contributions the book makes to the study of political science, as well as open questions about how their logic of gender justice might apply across other issue areas less explored in the book. Htun and Weldon's own definition of gender justice also rightly includes space for LGBTQI people, which I see as an invitation to think through the typology in relation to these communities. The piece begins by reflecting on the book's theoretical and methodical innovations around the complexities of gender politics, before moving on to the multi-faceted role of religion in gender justice, and then theoretical assumptions around visibility of the marginalized.


Theology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
James Jones

In 1989, 96 Liverpool Football Club supporters were killed at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. It was the biggest sporting disaster in British football. The original inquests returned a verdict of ‘accidental death’. For over 20 years the families of the 96 and the survivors campaigned against this verdict. In 2010 the government set up an Independent Panel with myself as its Chair. Its remit after consultation with the families and survivors was to access and analyse all the documents related to the disaster and its aftermath and to write a report to add to public understanding. The Panel’s Report was published in 2012 and led to the quashing of the original verdicts and the setting up of fresh inquests. After two years and the longest inquests in British legal history, the jury gave its determination of ‘unlawful killing’. Here I reflect theologically on the public and pastoral role of the Church of England and its mission to wider society.


1990 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 179-199

Francis Edgar Jones was born on 16 January 1914 in Wolverhampton. His father, the son of a miner, was educated at the Rugby Grammar School and a teachers’ training college, and became a teacher in 1898. He met Frank’s mother, whose family name was Franks, while teaching at Barnet. Early in the 1900s they moved north to Wolverhampton and remained there until they moved again to Dagenham in 1921. Frank was the third born in a family of two boys and two girls. At the age of just under five he was sent to the Church of England Primary School at Heathdown, Wolverhampton, where the discipline was strict. Frank had a vivid recollection of life at the school: ‘When we arrived at a quarter to nine, we first had to place our hands on the desk in front, palms face down, to see that we had clean nails. Next we had to stand on the form to have our boots inspected to make sure they were clean. After prayers, school began and our reward for a good week’s work was to be allowed to work with raffia - of different colours - on Friday afternoons.’


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