generalspeaking

Practising One's Faith

Clearly the Anglican Church in England has undergone some very difficult times. Declining church attendance, a sense of Christian commitment being entirely superficial to 21st Century lifestyles. Those lifestyles including the advancement of women's rights right into the pulpit, and the ordination not only of female priests but gay bishops as well. At least in the American version of Anglicanism, the Episcopal Church.

The raging debates and furious dissent and counter-accusations that have cropped up over the past decade relating to what are considered to be progressive attitudes in a changing society have caused fractures in the cohesion of the Anglican Communion. That same Anglican Communion that has seen its strength and commitment in the West decline abysmally, while a more muscular conservative version is alive and well in Africa.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who is so compellingly courteous and amenable to compromise and unity that he suggested greater accommodations within Britain for Islam, including widening the legality of Sharia, is now stepping down from his post. And he does so with an acerbic comment on "dim-witted prejudice" against symbols of Christianity such as the wearing of the cross.

Presumably included in his condemnation of stiffening social attitudes to obvious symbols of religiosity in public life, is suspicion directed to those who wear the hijab and the niqab - burka also, presumably. Little wonder he is somewhat despondent, given his inability to prevent what is seen as a schism in his Church. Those who defy his blandishments to overlook conservative transgressions of tradition, have embarked on their own Communion.

"I would hope that my successor has the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros", he stated, wittily. Contending with a "tone-deaf" society spurning the place of religion in their lives has not been a happy decade for this agreeable man.

"There's a great deal of interest still in the Christian faith and although I think there is also a lot of ignorance and rather dim-witted prejudice about the visible manifestations of Christianity, which sometimes clouds the discussion, I don't think that there's somehow a single great argument that the Church is losing.

"There are an awful lot of people now of a certain generation who don't really know how religion works, let alone Christianity in particular. And that leads to confusions and sensitivities in the wrong areas. Does wearing a cross offend people who have no faith or non-Christians? I don't think it does."

Nor does it, as long as one has the native intelligence to confine one's journey in life within Western-oriented societies. Practising one's faith, for example, and wearing those Christian symbols in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Syria can be rather foolhardy. The punishment may be not be being declared persona non grata, but becoming very, very stone-dead.

Not to worry. The Anglican Church will endure, even if the Communion becomes disengaged from the Mother Church. On the other hand, polarization will be far less intense should the reputed front-runner to take Archbishop's Williams' place indeed turn out to be Uganda-born John Semantu, Archbishop of York. Whose robust conservatism will turn the Anglican Church back to basics.

Labels: Africa, Britain, Human Relations, Human Rights, Religion

posted by Pieface @ Monday, March 19, 2012