- Nov 26, 2019
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As many of you know, I love Gloucester Cathedral: the exquisite, luminous architecture, wherein the roof of the cathedral seems to float atop curtains of stained glass, the music program, indeed, even the service of Choral Evensong composed for the cathedral by Herbert Howells is my favorite of all of his services, most of which I would note were composed for or in honor of specific churches (his services for Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, Worcester Cathedral, Christchurch Cathedral, the Chapel Royal, St. Augustine’s, and St. Luke’s in Dallas, are also especially memorable, but all of them are good, however, his service for Gloucester Cathedral is sublime).
Over the years, in listening to recordings held by the Archive of Recorded Church Music, I have consistently found Gloucester Cathedral to be among the very best, on a par with York Minster and Westminster Abbey (I am also very fond of Durham Cathedral, King’s College in Cambridge under the direction of Stephen Cleobury, and two of the newer cathedrals in Britain, in Manchester and Birmingham, and I have frequently been disappointed by the musical program of Canterbury Cathedral despite considering the idyllic town of Canterbury to be one of the most beautiful in Europe, indeed, I would love to live in Canterbury). As recently as the Three Choirs Festival in 2015, Gloucester Cathedral was absolutely majestic, with incredible music relative even to very good performances from Chichester Cathedral and Buckfast Abbey.
Since that time however I have noticed a decline, and while many churches and cathedrals have sprung back into full gear following the appalling (and in the case of the American Episcopalian church of St. Thomas Fifth Ave., illegal and unconstitutional*) suppression of their worship, indeed, the boys’ choir at St. Thomas Fifth Ave. might be the best one this year in the Anglican communion, services at Gloucester Cathedral have been consistently disappointing to watch and listen to. Indeed given the high praise I have frequently lavished upon Gloucester Cathedral, readers of my posts on beautiful liturgics might well have noticed its conspicuous absence.
In addition to the increasingly bland and mediocre music, which now tends to feature a mixed childrens’ choir rather than the fantastic boys’ choir and the promising girls’ choir (which was well on track to rival the legendary pioneering girls’ choir of St. David’s, the cathedral of the Archbishop of Wales) which previously served so well, have also been dismayed by recent photographs, which show the altar decorated with exceedingly tacky frontals, frontals which seem all the more inappropriate when compared to the exquisite artistry that characterizes the arrays decorating the altars not only at St. Thomas Fifth Ave, but also at parish churches like St. Bartholomew the Great (and presumably the Less, since both now comprise one parish) and All Saints Margaret Street.
I myself suspect the decline since 2015 might well have something to do with the new Bishop Treweek installed that year, whose attitudes seem in violation of the official policies of the Church of England concerning homosexuality and also contradict the approved liturgical texts: “Treweek believes that God should be considered to be neither male nor female and tries to avoid using gender-specific pronouns when referring to God. Explaining this view, "she said she personally prefers to say neither "he" nor "she", but "God". "Sometimes I lapse, but I try not to," the bishop told The Observer." The Diocese of Gloucester announced that, in January 2017, Treweek would preside at an LGBTI Eucharist with Inclusive Church.”
Considering that both the Book of Common Prayer and Common Worship direct that God be referred to as “he”, this is a problem.
I propose that Gloucester Cathedral is a microcosm, demonstrating in one cathedral church everything that is going spectacularly wrong with the mainline Protestant churches, for we also see the same contempt of church policies concerning homosexuality that exists among United Methodist bishops in the United States, who have caused so much suffering among traditional Methodists, by ignoring the lawfully enacted Traditional Plan, and then by attempting to force a schism, one in which they would retain control of the powerful United Methodist brand name despite having lost the vote in 2018, and receive a large payout from departing parishes, and now, seeing the departures are more than anticipated, are seeking to backtrack and force those parishes to remain. They have also, perhaps in the vain hope that the African conferences might change their mind and reject the clear teaching of the Bible on human sexuality, delayed the General Conference from 2022 to 2024.
And we have seen this same pattern before, in the Episcopal Church USA, which the Supreme Court ruled illegally attempted to retain ownership of the properties of the Diocese of Fort Worth, which correctly departed for ACNA…unfortunately the Diocese of San Joaquin unlike those of Fort Worth and South Carolina conceded their property to the Episcopal Church at the time of their departure, which is a shame, in my opinion, although given the vast sums of money (something like $50 million) spent by the Episcopal Church on litigation against departing dioceses, they were doubtless afraid of being outspent.
The tragedy in the case of both the UMC and the Episcopal Church is the amount spent on litigation could have been so much better spent on charity, or evangelism. Part of the reason why I have a soft spot for congregational polities is that in the case of the United Church of Christ and the American Baptist Convention, as conditions became less amenable to preaching scriptural doctrine regarding human sexuality, there were no impediments to parishes departing for greener pastures. Indeed given a disturbing leftward shift in the venerable Southern Baptist Convention, and the tarnishing of its brand by a tragic sex scandal, if the likes of Dr. Albert Mohler were to call for reorganization, which to be clear would be a very dark and very sad day indeed, such reorganization could be accomplished swiftly and efficiently.
This all being said, a well structured episcopal polity can be of enormous benefit. I would note that the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Communions have remained maximally doctrinally stable*.
Likewise, while some people criticize Presbyterian churches for being doctrinally unstable and for generating schisms, a closer look at Presbyterianism shows this not to be the case: in particular, the Covenanters, the Reformed Presbyterian Churches of Scotland and North America, are extremely doctrinally and liturgically stable, with their continued use of A Capella Exclusive Psalmody and an approach to worship that Calvin and Knox would recognize and approve of.
In contrast, the Congregational church went from being Puritan to being the UCC, although I would note in defense of our heritage that the main leftward shifts occurred firstly with the schismatic Unitarian heresy in the 18th century, where our polity possibly protected us, by ensuring that the heretical congregations simply departed (unfortunately taking Harvard and half the churches of Boston with them), and secondly in the 20th century, where this time, in two phases, the first in reaction to a perceived increase in liberalism and the second in reaction to the merger with the quite liberal Evangelical Reformed Church, it was possible for the dissenting congregations to simply leave, rather than engage in a battle royale.
Finally, I feel I should close by stressing the extreme tragedy of what is happening to the mainline denominations. These denominations own many of the most beautiful churches in the world and still account for a substantial percentage of the churchgoing public. And while a great many parishes in these churches have not yet been affected by the attempts of modernists and those who would discard Scriptural teachings they disagree with on human sexuality, and many other things, the unfortunate fact is that I literally cannot bear to watch a service livestreamed from Old South Church in Boston (United Church of Christ) one of the most beautiful churches in the United States, due to the relentless political content.
*Alas the same is not the case for the Assyrian Church of the East, however, in its defense, it has been disrupted in its missionary work by having most of its people killed by the Uzbek warlord Tamerlane in the 12th century, on such a large scale that it was reduced from being larger than the Roman Catholic Church, or indeed any other church of the time, both in terms of membership and geographic territory, to consisting of two functionally separate regional churches, one in Mesopotamia, Iran and Eastern Syria, whose territory overlapped that of the Syriac Orthodox Church and to a lesser extent the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and the Malankara Church, consisting of the St. Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast. And this church, greatly reduced in size, suffered from further reductions when a large portion of the Mesopotamian Church became the Chaldean Catholic Church, and under the influence of the Portuguese conquistadors, an even larger portion of the Malankara Church became the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (or in some cases simply became Roman Catholic), and the remaining church, which found itself under a hereditary Patriarchate in violation of its own canons, which preclude the Patriarch from naming his own successor, was disorganized to the point that correspondence sent to it from the remnant of the Indian Church determined not to be converted wound up being answered by the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, and thus the Malankara Church became Oriental Orthodox and adopted the West Syriac liturgy. So, in summary, the minor doctrinal consistencies we see in the Assyrian church are fully understandable given the uniquely horrible situations that church found itself in, and to the extent its doctrine has changed, I would argue it has changed for the better, with the uncanonical hereditary Patriarchate being abolished, the teaching of Universalism suppressed, and most importantly, a move to distance the church from the errors of Nestorius.
Over the years, in listening to recordings held by the Archive of Recorded Church Music, I have consistently found Gloucester Cathedral to be among the very best, on a par with York Minster and Westminster Abbey (I am also very fond of Durham Cathedral, King’s College in Cambridge under the direction of Stephen Cleobury, and two of the newer cathedrals in Britain, in Manchester and Birmingham, and I have frequently been disappointed by the musical program of Canterbury Cathedral despite considering the idyllic town of Canterbury to be one of the most beautiful in Europe, indeed, I would love to live in Canterbury). As recently as the Three Choirs Festival in 2015, Gloucester Cathedral was absolutely majestic, with incredible music relative even to very good performances from Chichester Cathedral and Buckfast Abbey.
Since that time however I have noticed a decline, and while many churches and cathedrals have sprung back into full gear following the appalling (and in the case of the American Episcopalian church of St. Thomas Fifth Ave., illegal and unconstitutional*) suppression of their worship, indeed, the boys’ choir at St. Thomas Fifth Ave. might be the best one this year in the Anglican communion, services at Gloucester Cathedral have been consistently disappointing to watch and listen to. Indeed given the high praise I have frequently lavished upon Gloucester Cathedral, readers of my posts on beautiful liturgics might well have noticed its conspicuous absence.
In addition to the increasingly bland and mediocre music, which now tends to feature a mixed childrens’ choir rather than the fantastic boys’ choir and the promising girls’ choir (which was well on track to rival the legendary pioneering girls’ choir of St. David’s, the cathedral of the Archbishop of Wales) which previously served so well, have also been dismayed by recent photographs, which show the altar decorated with exceedingly tacky frontals, frontals which seem all the more inappropriate when compared to the exquisite artistry that characterizes the arrays decorating the altars not only at St. Thomas Fifth Ave, but also at parish churches like St. Bartholomew the Great (and presumably the Less, since both now comprise one parish) and All Saints Margaret Street.
I myself suspect the decline since 2015 might well have something to do with the new Bishop Treweek installed that year, whose attitudes seem in violation of the official policies of the Church of England concerning homosexuality and also contradict the approved liturgical texts: “Treweek believes that God should be considered to be neither male nor female and tries to avoid using gender-specific pronouns when referring to God. Explaining this view, "she said she personally prefers to say neither "he" nor "she", but "God". "Sometimes I lapse, but I try not to," the bishop told The Observer." The Diocese of Gloucester announced that, in January 2017, Treweek would preside at an LGBTI Eucharist with Inclusive Church.”
Considering that both the Book of Common Prayer and Common Worship direct that God be referred to as “he”, this is a problem.
I propose that Gloucester Cathedral is a microcosm, demonstrating in one cathedral church everything that is going spectacularly wrong with the mainline Protestant churches, for we also see the same contempt of church policies concerning homosexuality that exists among United Methodist bishops in the United States, who have caused so much suffering among traditional Methodists, by ignoring the lawfully enacted Traditional Plan, and then by attempting to force a schism, one in which they would retain control of the powerful United Methodist brand name despite having lost the vote in 2018, and receive a large payout from departing parishes, and now, seeing the departures are more than anticipated, are seeking to backtrack and force those parishes to remain. They have also, perhaps in the vain hope that the African conferences might change their mind and reject the clear teaching of the Bible on human sexuality, delayed the General Conference from 2022 to 2024.
And we have seen this same pattern before, in the Episcopal Church USA, which the Supreme Court ruled illegally attempted to retain ownership of the properties of the Diocese of Fort Worth, which correctly departed for ACNA…unfortunately the Diocese of San Joaquin unlike those of Fort Worth and South Carolina conceded their property to the Episcopal Church at the time of their departure, which is a shame, in my opinion, although given the vast sums of money (something like $50 million) spent by the Episcopal Church on litigation against departing dioceses, they were doubtless afraid of being outspent.
The tragedy in the case of both the UMC and the Episcopal Church is the amount spent on litigation could have been so much better spent on charity, or evangelism. Part of the reason why I have a soft spot for congregational polities is that in the case of the United Church of Christ and the American Baptist Convention, as conditions became less amenable to preaching scriptural doctrine regarding human sexuality, there were no impediments to parishes departing for greener pastures. Indeed given a disturbing leftward shift in the venerable Southern Baptist Convention, and the tarnishing of its brand by a tragic sex scandal, if the likes of Dr. Albert Mohler were to call for reorganization, which to be clear would be a very dark and very sad day indeed, such reorganization could be accomplished swiftly and efficiently.
This all being said, a well structured episcopal polity can be of enormous benefit. I would note that the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Communions have remained maximally doctrinally stable*.
Likewise, while some people criticize Presbyterian churches for being doctrinally unstable and for generating schisms, a closer look at Presbyterianism shows this not to be the case: in particular, the Covenanters, the Reformed Presbyterian Churches of Scotland and North America, are extremely doctrinally and liturgically stable, with their continued use of A Capella Exclusive Psalmody and an approach to worship that Calvin and Knox would recognize and approve of.
In contrast, the Congregational church went from being Puritan to being the UCC, although I would note in defense of our heritage that the main leftward shifts occurred firstly with the schismatic Unitarian heresy in the 18th century, where our polity possibly protected us, by ensuring that the heretical congregations simply departed (unfortunately taking Harvard and half the churches of Boston with them), and secondly in the 20th century, where this time, in two phases, the first in reaction to a perceived increase in liberalism and the second in reaction to the merger with the quite liberal Evangelical Reformed Church, it was possible for the dissenting congregations to simply leave, rather than engage in a battle royale.
Finally, I feel I should close by stressing the extreme tragedy of what is happening to the mainline denominations. These denominations own many of the most beautiful churches in the world and still account for a substantial percentage of the churchgoing public. And while a great many parishes in these churches have not yet been affected by the attempts of modernists and those who would discard Scriptural teachings they disagree with on human sexuality, and many other things, the unfortunate fact is that I literally cannot bear to watch a service livestreamed from Old South Church in Boston (United Church of Christ) one of the most beautiful churches in the United States, due to the relentless political content.
*Alas the same is not the case for the Assyrian Church of the East, however, in its defense, it has been disrupted in its missionary work by having most of its people killed by the Uzbek warlord Tamerlane in the 12th century, on such a large scale that it was reduced from being larger than the Roman Catholic Church, or indeed any other church of the time, both in terms of membership and geographic territory, to consisting of two functionally separate regional churches, one in Mesopotamia, Iran and Eastern Syria, whose territory overlapped that of the Syriac Orthodox Church and to a lesser extent the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and the Malankara Church, consisting of the St. Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast. And this church, greatly reduced in size, suffered from further reductions when a large portion of the Mesopotamian Church became the Chaldean Catholic Church, and under the influence of the Portuguese conquistadors, an even larger portion of the Malankara Church became the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (or in some cases simply became Roman Catholic), and the remaining church, which found itself under a hereditary Patriarchate in violation of its own canons, which preclude the Patriarch from naming his own successor, was disorganized to the point that correspondence sent to it from the remnant of the Indian Church determined not to be converted wound up being answered by the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, and thus the Malankara Church became Oriental Orthodox and adopted the West Syriac liturgy. So, in summary, the minor doctrinal consistencies we see in the Assyrian church are fully understandable given the uniquely horrible situations that church found itself in, and to the extent its doctrine has changed, I would argue it has changed for the better, with the uncanonical hereditary Patriarchate being abolished, the teaching of Universalism suppressed, and most importantly, a move to distance the church from the errors of Nestorius.
