Church of England has a problem with the Lord’s Prayer

[The Liturgist]

It's not just Episcopalians. Most historic Reformed churches continue to use the Lord's Prayer, as do Lutherans.




Jesus lived in a culture in which that type of prayers were customary. Jews still don't engage in much extemporaneous prayers.

It's not the originality of a prayer that determines it's worth, but the sincerity behind it.

Amen.

 

[The Liturgist]

And furthermore, in addition: Revs Welby, Cotterell, Nye and C Rees, and their decoration collecting comperes in the tradition of the logic-free influencer John Stott, present themselves as weak. But they are the spiritual ruling class, almost world wide.

Dr Welby in fact didn't have a dad around, like a great many excellent people. It would have looked obvious if he had made this "point" individually.

The C of E make a song and dance that churchmanship is a protected characteristic and not up for debate. Yet the only sole real permitted ideology is that parishioners (and better bishops including one woman) have to fall in line, whether the trouble is taken to claim to refer to Scripture or not.

They call the latter "evangelical" which is a virtue signalling word. But the actual evangel comprises the meanings of all Jesus' teachings. Which used to be conveyed adequately by evensong and flowers. As well as by simple old style vicars and believers up and down the land (a lot of whom were the genuine kind of low church). We were evangelicals, before partisans pushed for power usurping our common belief.

What the C of E ruling class really hold is the carbon copy of the materialist moralisers who seized the seven mountains in the flesh by inventing "gender theology". Their religion is ad hominem which is why no-one truthful should follow it, whatsoever.

A number of commentators have traced this back through the "muscular christianity" of Bash Nash, Carl Henry, Teddy Roosevelt, etc. In that scenario, their god really is a monster. It's nice for the elite that they have abolished their god in their own privacy.

Another thing many people's mothers were nastier than their fathers.

One of my old denominations had a holy "Father" and a "Mother" church but never dared ask us to pray to the image of those.

Revs Nye, C Rees, Cotterell et al, are culprits in the harm they created by presuming to mix up evangel with the dominionism on which they coat tailed for their status.

Will a provident god whom the non elite will look to, be impressed by the political status these enjoy?

Indeed much of your criticism of the C of E I agree with, although there are parts of the C of E, such as the theologically conservative traditional Anglo Catholic movement known as Forward in Faith, which has expanded into a group of male bishops who are determined to preserve in the C of E apostolic succession, since the implementation of female bishops potentially compromises the apostolic succession of the English church.

That said I have to say I am slightly confused by what your overall argument is. Are you trying to say that praying the Lord’s Prayer or other liturgical prayers is bad? Or are you criticizing the Church of England for their liberalism? Because I can agree with the latter while being forced to disagree with the former on the basis of the extreme antiquity of liturgical worship in the Christian church, where indeed the oldest attested liturgy presently in use can be traced to the second century via the Strasbourg Papyrus (this being the liturgy used by the Church in Alexandria founded by St. Mark the Apostle), and the liturgy is potentially older, quite possibly dating to the first century, it is simply that the oldest manuscript we have of it is the fragment in the Strasbourg Papyrus.

Given that all of the ancient liturgical churches despite wide variation in the structure of their liturgies pray the same prayers, essentially, just arranged in a different manner and with different hymnody, it seems reasonable to assume that Christian liturgy originated with the Apostles in the First Century and was derived from Jewish synagogue worship as instituted by St. Ezra the Priest and St. Nehemiah the Prophet.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

what your overall argument is. Are you trying to say that praying the Lord’s Prayer or other liturgical prayers is bad? Or are you criticizing the Church of England for their liberalism? Because I can agree with the latter while being forced to disagree with the former on the basis of the extreme antiquity of liturgical worship in the Christian church

On the contrary and it's not only contemporary Jews, but any person who is often inarticulate who can fall back on "set" prayers to good effect. And if you are fluent in your own vocabulary, also good (from me).

In my young day it was held to be devilish (across a number of movements) to use a prayer that had been prayed before, or was printed.

As to "liberalism" maybe it's like "leaves on the line", there may be "wrong liberalisms" especially that by the self proclaimed "non liberals" . . .

I feel the only thing the C of E are really objecting to is their own god that they have invented. But it's dangerous to claim that is the same as a hypothetical objective One somehow there for everybody.

Given that it's for each, to word our prayers by our own discretion, it's presumptuous of the C of E to wield prerogative to give us permission. The Bible never belonged to any church organisation.

The war of the sexes is not in the meaning of Scripture and it's dishonest of any organisation to perpetuate that war by the "logic" of their statements.

The C of E (with its deeply ingrained codependency from top to bottom) should never have been preaching ad hominem in the first place.

Grammar always was metaphorical and the C of E should not be lying to the public about the nature of language either.

In recap, beware dishonesty from any quarter about:

- god(s)
- Scripture meanings
- prayer and spiritual life
- language
- reason

Take refuge in your true private interpretation, without reference to organisational personnel, and not the sleight of hand with gracious permission of these, who queered the pitch in the first place (that is a sloppy error that so called "horsemen" or "new atheists" complacently exult in).

 

[OldAbramBrown]

Now watch the same organisation heads (and their analogues in other denominations, traditions or trends) replacing "fake non liberalism" with "new fake liberalism", equally overbearing. When we use genuine private interpretation we gain potential to stop intruding and start supplicating.

 

[The Liturgist]

In my young day it was held to be devilish (across a number of movements) to use a prayer that had been prayed before, or was printed.

Well as an Orthodox who was previously Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and high church Congregationalist, I find such a view incredibly ignorant and offensive, for two reasons:

Firstly, we know the Early Church was liturgical and used liturgies in manuscripts, and we know this both from the writings of the Early Church Fathers and from archaeological evidence in the form of recovered manuscripts that contain fragments of liturgical texts still in use, such as the second century Strasbourg Papyrus, which contains part of the Alexandrian Eucharistic Liturgy still used by the persecuted Coptic Orthodox Christians of Egypt, as my friend @dzheremi will confirm, and the first century Didache, which contains a liturgical text also found as part of a Eucharistic Liturgy found in a fragment in a monastery in upper Egypt, and other ancient manuscripts of the East Syrian Eucharistic Liturgy attributed to the Holy Apostles Addai (Thaddeus) and Mari, who worked with St. Thomas the Apostle to evangelize Syria, Persia, Mesopotamia and India (specifically Kerala and the Malabar Coast, which had an Aramaic-speaking population including many Jews as a result of the establishment of trade routes to the Subcontinent by Alexander the Great).

Secondly, it remains the case that the most persecuted churches of the 20th century and at present were all liturgical churches. We are talking about those churches who suffered under militant Islam, then Communism and now once more suffer under Islam such as the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, all of whom experienced genocide at the hands of the Turks, with the Armenians also being oppressed in their own land by the Soviets, and all three now being persecuted by state-sponsored terrorism and also more Turkish violence and in the case of Armenia, invasion by the Islamist regime of Azerbaijan, the aforementioned Coptic Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Christians of Ukraine and Poland, the Ukrainian Lutheran Church, the Lutheran and Orthodox churches of the Baltic States, and in particular the Catholics and Orthodox of Albania, where the Communists under Enver Hoxha attempted, unsuccessfully, to suppress all religion, and who now experience persecution from radicalized Muslims, who have also taken over historically Christian Kosovo and engaged in terror attacks against the Orthodox Christians in Macedonia, and the Pontic Greek Christians, who like the Armenians and Syriacs were victims of genocide by the Turks followed by ethnic cleansing as a result of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, and the Ethiopian Orthodox and Eritrean Orthodox Christians, who suffered under the Italian Fascist occupation, the Derg communist regime, and now a military dictatorship in Eritrea and Islamic persecution and martyrdom in some provinces of Ethiopia and the surrounding countries, which are fraught with ISIS activity, except for South Sudan where a civil war is killing large numbers of Anglicans. And then you have the Chinese Orthodox Church which was literally killed off in those areas captured by the PRC, such as Harbin, where one of its cathedrals survives, and Shanghai, where many of its members lived, surviving only in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Also there is the Confessing Church in Germany (the Lutherans opposed to the Nazi regime, such as the martyred pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer), and the various Roman Catholic dioceses in the Communist countries of the Warsaw Pact, which were treated harshly by the Nazis and the Soviets after the fall of the Axis. All of these are liturgical churches, and they account for the vast majority of Christians tortured, imprisoned or killed for their faith since 1900.

So the idea that the primary mode of worship of these churches, and also the persecuted early church which suffered so much under the Roman Empire, the Persian Sassanian Empire, and later the Umayyid Caliphate and its even more brutal successor, the Fatimid Caliphate, following the rise of Islam, is ”devilish”, is unbelievably offensive and contrary to the history of Christianity as established by Patristic and Archaeological commentary. And it is equally offensive to Lutherans, Anglicans, Orthodox, Methodists, Catholics, Congregationalists and Calvinists, all of whom have used and continue to use liturgical prayer, such as the Book of Common Prayer in the case of the Anglicans.

Also, the idea that the C of E has invented its own God is preposterous, and is such an inflammatory statement that I respectfully suggest you edit your post, to remove that remark.

Regarding the people who taught you that liturgical or repeated prayer is devilish, I have to ask, who were those people? To what churches did they belong? Because I have occasionally heard of such sentiments, for example, there was resistance to the introduction of liturgical prayer in the Stone-Campbell Movement, but it happened anyway in the case of the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ, and likewise the Mormons refuse even to say the Lord’s Prayer or any repetitive prayer in their regular Sunday worship (although conversely they do have a set ritual they use in their secretive temples, which are closed to outsiders and Mormons who lack a “temple recommend”, but I don’t think they regard the fixed parts of it as prayer).

 

[seeking.IAM]

In my young day it was held to be devilish (across a number of movements) to use a prayer that had been prayed before, or was printed.

I find the notion amusing that a movement comes along nearly 2,000 years after the fact only to tell those who preserved the faith for 2,000 years that they were doing it wrong all this time.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

I find the notion amusing that a movement comes along nearly 2,000 years after the fact only to tell those who preserved the faith for 2,000 years that they were doing it wrong all this time.

Such movements have been coming along during all of those years, that's why we need our own knowledge and initiative. What I've seen wasn't amusing.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

... the idea that the C of E has invented its own God is preposterous, and is such an inflammatory statement that I respectfully suggest you edit your post, to remove that remark. 1

Regarding the people who taught you that liturgical or repeated prayer is devilish, I have to ask, who were those people? To what churches did they belong? Because I have occasionally heard of such sentiments, for example, there was resistance to the introduction of liturgical prayer in the Stone-Campbell Movement, but it happened anyway in the case of the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ, and likewise the Mormons refuse even to say the Lord’s Prayer or any repetitive prayer in their regular Sunday worship (although conversely they do have a set ritual they use in their secretive temples, which are closed to outsiders and Mormons who lack a “temple recommend”, but I don’t think they regard the fixed parts of it as prayer). 2

1 - A dominant tendency organisationally became anti-intellectual, and geared to moralising and manoeuvring. They now appear to be objecting to what they (and theological tendencies they look to) created in their own image. I am referring to an organisation not personal believers.

2 - Yes they were influenced by the people you have listed and there were a lot of them. There probably still are a lot of them but they aren't clear headed enough for it to occur to them to admit it.

 

[Gary K]

Well as an Orthodox who was previously Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and high church Congregationalist, I find such a view incredibly ignorant and offensive, for two reasons:

Firstly, we know the Early Church was liturgical and used liturgies in manuscripts, and we know this both from the writings of the Early Church Fathers and from archaeological evidence in the form of recovered manuscripts that contain fragments of liturgical texts still in use, such as the second century Strasbourg Papyrus, which contains part of the Alexandrian Eucharistic Liturgy still used by the persecuted Coptic Orthodox Christians of Egypt, as my friend @dzheremi will confirm, and the first century Didache, which contains a liturgical text also found as part of a Eucharistic Liturgy found in a fragment in a monastery in upper Egypt, and other ancient manuscripts of the East Syrian Eucharistic Liturgy attributed to the Holy Apostles Addai (Thaddeus) and Mari, who worked with St. Thomas the Apostle to evangelize Syria, Persia, Mesopotamia and India (specifically Kerala and the Malabar Coast, which had an Aramaic-speaking population including many Jews as a result of the establishment of trade routes to the Subcontinent by Alexander the Great).

Secondly, it remains the case that the most persecuted churches of the 20th century and at present were all liturgical churches. We are talking about those churches who suffered under militant Islam, then Communism and now once more suffer under Islam such as the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, all of whom experienced genocide at the hands of the Turks, with the Armenians also being oppressed in their own land by the Soviets, and all three now being persecuted by state-sponsored terrorism and also more Turkish violence and in the case of Armenia, invasion by the Islamist regime of Azerbaijan, the aforementioned Coptic Orthodox Church, and the Orthodox Christians of Ukraine and Poland, the Ukrainian Lutheran Church, the Lutheran and Orthodox churches of the Baltic States, and in particular the Catholics and Orthodox of Albania, where the Communists under Enver Hoxha attempted, unsuccessfully, to suppress all religion, and who now experience persecution from radicalized Muslims, who have also taken over historically Christian Kosovo and engaged in terror attacks against the Orthodox Christians in Macedonia, and the Pontic Greek Christians, who like the Armenians and Syriacs were victims of genocide by the Turks followed by ethnic cleansing as a result of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, and the Ethiopian Orthodox and Eritrean Orthodox Christians, who suffered under the Italian Fascist occupation, the Derg communist regime, and now a military dictatorship in Eritrea and Islamic persecution and martyrdom in some provinces of Ethiopia and the surrounding countries, which are fraught with ISIS activity, except for South Sudan where a civil war is killing large numbers of Anglicans. And then you have the Chinese Orthodox Church which was literally killed off in those areas captured by the PRC, such as Harbin, where one of its cathedrals survives, and Shanghai, where many of its members lived, surviving only in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Also there is the Confessing Church in Germany (the Lutherans opposed to the Nazi regime, such as the martyred pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer), and the various Roman Catholic dioceses in the Communist countries of the Warsaw Pact, which were treated harshly by the Nazis and the Soviets after the fall of the Axis. All of these are liturgical churches, and they account for the vast majority of Christians tortured, imprisoned or killed for their faith since 1900.

So the idea that the primary mode of worship of these churches, and also the persecuted early church which suffered so much under the Roman Empire, the Persian Sassanian Empire, and later the Umayyid Caliphate and its even more brutal successor, the Fatimid Caliphate, following the rise of Islam, is ”devilish”, is unbelievably offensive and contrary to the history of Christianity as established by Patristic and Archaeological commentary. And it is equally offensive to Lutherans, Anglicans, Orthodox, Methodists, Catholics, Congregationalists and Calvinists, all of whom have used and continue to use liturgical prayer, such as the Book of Common Prayer in the case of the Anglicans.

Also, the idea that the C of E has invented its own God is preposterous, and is such an inflammatory statement that I respectfully suggest you edit your post, to remove that remark.

Regarding the people who taught you that liturgical or repeated prayer is devilish, I have to ask, who were those people? To what churches did they belong? Because I have occasionally heard of such sentiments, for example, there was resistance to the introduction of liturgical prayer in the Stone-Campbell Movement, but it happened anyway in the case of the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ, and likewise the Mormons refuse even to say the Lord’s Prayer or any repetitive prayer in their regular Sunday worship (although conversely they do have a set ritual they use in their secretive temples, which are closed to outsiders and Mormons who lack a “temple recommend”, but I don’t think they regard the fixed parts of it as prayer).

Were Jesus' prayers ritualistic? He would sometimes pray all night and we have no evidence from scripture that God had given Israel prayer rituals to perform. In fact Jesus told us not to use repetition in prayer. Which rells me we are to send up prayers that are meaningful to us at the moment we pray.

Mat_6:7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

... In fact Jesus told us not to use repetition in prayer ... 1

Were Jesus' prayers ritualistic? 2 ... we are to send up prayers that are meaningful to us at the moment we pray. 3

1 - My longer version of the Bible tells me the fact that Jesus added a word, the VAIN kind. Jesus adding to the Bible, tut tut.

2 and 3 - Are you trying to imply that ritual is hypocritical? Do you undervalue Scripture to the point of undermining it? Do you think God doesn't want it to be held in trust for all?

What gives you your expertise in other people's meaning?

I knew holders of your view had gone underground but thought you were too unclear of mind to admit it.

 

[Gary K]

1 - My longer version of the Bible tells me the fact that Jesus added a word, the VAIN kind. Jesus adding to the Bible, tut tut.

2 and 3 - Are you trying to imply that ritual is hypocritical? Do you undervalue Scripture to the point of undermining it? Do you think God doesn't want it to be held in trust for all?

What gives you your expertise in other people's meaning?

I knew holders of your view had gone underground but thought you were too unclear of mind to admit it.

How is Jesus spending entire nights in prayer ritualistic? Do you have liturgies that last an entire night? I ask because I've never seen/heard a liturgy. I just can't imagine it being useful as my relationship with God is personal. God is my friend as well as my Savior.

Joh_15:15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

 

[FireDragon76]

Were Jesus' prayers ritualistic? He would sometimes pray all night and we have no evidence from scripture that God had given Israel prayer rituals to perform. In fact Jesus told us not to use repetition in prayer. Which rells me we are to send up prayers that are meaningful to us at the moment we pray.

I guess you are completely ignoring the Torah? It's full of prayer rituals.

 

[The Liturgist]

Were Jesus' prayers ritualistic? He would sometimes pray all night and we have no evidence from scripture that God had given Israel prayer rituals to perform. In fact Jesus told us not to use repetition in prayer. Which rells me we are to send up prayers that are meaningful to us at the moment we pray.

Wrong. He told us not to use vain repetition, which is quite different. Furthermore, from his remark about “much babbling”, I believe he was referring to certain Pagan mysteries where prayers consisted of the repetition of certain meaningless syllables in a sort of glossolalia, based on the perceived spiritual impact these syllables have. We also see this in some heretical texts rejected by the early Church.

Furthermore, we do have evidence from Scripture that Israel had been given liturgical prayer, in the form of the Books of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and other texts, and also in Nehemiah and the books of Ezra (St. Nehemiah the Prophet and St. Ezra the Priest were jointly responsible for implementing the system of thrice daily prayers in the Temple and the Synagogue, to which contempory Christian liturgy and contemporary Jewish liturgy ultimately trace their ancestry). We also know of the existence of liturgical prayers of table blessing called Barekot, from which one of the two oldest extant Eucharistic liturgies, that of St. Addai and Mari, follows the form of with great precision, and the influence of which is seen in all ancient Eucharistic liturgies. The Passover Seder was a special type of barekot, or table blessing, intended for the Paschal feast, and our Lord departed consciously from the existing Paschal liturgy when instituting the Eucharist.

 

[The Liturgist]

I guess you are completely ignoring the Torah? It's full of prayer rituals.

Indeed, the entire book of Leviticus is basically a manual on how to do liturgical services in the Tabernacle.

 

[The Liturgist]

Do you have liturgies that last an entire night?

Yes, in the Orthodox Churches, and I have never felt as close to Christ my Lord, God and Savior as when participating in them. You see, I also regard Christ as a friend, but not as a peer, for He is my Lord, God and Savior, together with His majestic Father and the Holy Spirit our Paraclete, and to him is due all honor and glory now and ever and unto the ages of all ages.

 

[FireDragon76]

Indeed, the entire book of Leviticus is basically a manual on how to do liturgical services in the Tabernacle.

There are some scholars that believe the Torah began as a kind of manual for a priestly elite, and only later was applied to the people as a whole, during the Second Temple period.

 

[The Liturgist]

There are some scholars that believe the Torah began as a kind of manual for a priestly elite, and only later was applied to the people as a whole, during the Second Temple period.

Indeed, and there is some reason to believe this, in that prior to the Second Temple period, the people would hear the law read from Deuteronomy during the Feast of Tabernacles, when they would gather around Jerusalem and build tabernacles, and the King or a high priest would read that portion of Deuteronomy, which was likely what was read in Nehemiah for the first time since the Babylonian Captivity that brought the people to tears.

 

[High Fidelity]

Sadly unsurprising.

The Church of England has neutered itself gradually over the years and will soon become irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Hostels for confused travellers in a wasteland of sin and sickness, and the meal they're serving lacks any real sustenance.

They will continue to 'modernise' in a bid to stay relevant, but it's a lost cause. Soon they will have rainbow flags flying and trans Vicars, nothing will be off limits.

 

[OldAbramBrown]

Sadly unsurprising.

The Church of England has neutered itself gradually over the years and will soon become irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Hostels for confused travellers in a wasteland of sin and sickness, and the meal they're serving lacks any real sustenance.

They will continue to 'modernise' in a bid to stay relevant, but it's a lost cause. Soon they will have rainbow flags flying and trans Vicars, nothing will be off limits.

have you noticed that all the things we've listed are "evangelical"?

In 1966 evangelicals were warned not to seek to influence. Led by the annihilationist with political connections, "evangelicals" took over the C of E including the nominally "non evangelical" with their patronising attitude. Ordinary pew goers are either embarrassed or, mor e likely, taken in and go too much with the shallow flow.

regarding Gary's point obviously Jesus would repeat psalms.

 

[Gary K]

Yes, in the Orthodox Churches, and I have never felt as close to Christ my Lord, God and Savior as when participating in them. You see, I also regard Christ as a friend, but not as a peer, for He is my Lord, God and Savior, together with His majestic Father and the Holy Spirit our Paraclete, and to him is due all honor and glory now and ever and unto the ages of all ages.

I consider Him all of those things plus I regard Him as my best friend. The miracles He has worked in my life leave me no other option if I'm not to be a jerk without gratitude.