I said some time ago that I intended to link on this site to any member of a Chelmsford South church with a blog. To my knowledge, this only means one person: Peter Kirk, who blogs at Gentle Wisdom. Here is an example of his writing to get your attention:
"It seems that the only way to satisfy the aspirations of opponents [of whom Peter is not one] of women priests and bishops, is for them to separate from the current provinces of Canterbury and York and set up their own province, perhaps still nominally in the Church of England, without women clergy. Indeed this is what many of them want. This new province would necessarily be non-geographical, with its own structure of dioceses and parishes, or at least non-parochial congregations, which would necessarily cut across the current geographical hierarchy. And they could hardly expect the continuing Church of England to avoid working at all in the former parishes of churches which have joined the new province. So this “third province” idea more or less implies the end of the geographical hierarchical system of the church."Perhaps this is why there is strong opposition within the church hierarchy to the “third province” proposal, as well as to the recent moves in North America for parishes and even dioceses to put themselves under the authority of foreign provinces. But this opposition is misplaced. The geographical system of provinces, dioceses and parishes is an anachronism, a relic of the “Christendom” of mediaeval Europe in which everyone could be assumed to be a Christian and in which church and secular authority were closely linked. The perpetuation of this system in the early days of the Church of England may have limited the bloodshed of those early days. But now it is time to dismantle this system and replace it with something more suited to the 21st century."
If you want to give an opinion on whether the parish system is an anachronism, or know of other Chelmsford South bloggers, please leave a comment to let us know!
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Someone has given us a chocolate advent calendar. Our Vision, as adopted on November 28 2007: |