{"id":5670,"date":"2013-06-21T10:06:25","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T16:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5670"},"modified":"2013-06-24T08:40:48","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T14:40:48","slug":"is-the-church-of-england-desperate-or-just-confused-about-paganism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5670","title":{"rendered":"Is the Church of England Desperate or Just Confused about Paganism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the obvious news peg of summer solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, the Telegraph <\/em>reports on a rather odd initiative from the Church of England.<\/a> The article begins,<\/p>\n

The church is training ministers to create \u201ca pagan church where Christianity [is] very much in the centre\u201d to attract spiritual believers.<\/p>\n

\n

Ministers are being trained to create new forms of Anglicanism<\/a> suitable for people of alternative beliefs as part of a Church of England drive to retain congregation numbers.<\/p>\n

Reverend Steve Hollinghurst, a researcher and adviser in new religious movements told the BBC: \u201cI would be looking to formulate an exploration of the Christian faith that would be at home in their culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it would be \u201calmost to create a pagan church where Christianity was very much in the centre.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To which I can only ask, what are they talking about? Is this Christianity with mistletoe and pentacles? Do they think that they can attract the “party Pagans” to drum circles in the parish hall? The article continues,<\/p>\n

\n

The Church Mission Society<\/a>, which is training ministers to \u201cbreak new ground\u201d, hopes to see a number of spiritual people align themselves with Christianity.<\/p>\n

Andrea Campenale, of the Church Mission Society, said: \u201cNowadays people, they want to feel something; they want to have some sense of experience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is that.<\/p>\n

Related: a Church Mission Society article on “being the light of Christ” at a Pagan festival in 2012.<\/a> They gave free henna tattoos and did card readings with the “Jesus Deck.”<\/p>\n

UPDATE: An Anglican priest involved says that the Telegraph’s<\/em> article overstated what was going on.<\/a><\/p>\n

i do not believe that a Christian church could adopt Paganism and remain Christian nor that a Pagan group (or individual) could adopt Christianity and remain Pagan. i do think that Paganism has much to say and offer to the world today and much that Christians can adopt – for instance whilst Christianity isn’t polytheistic, the Trinity does include the divine feminine as well as the divine masculine and those, including Pagans, who have criticized an apparently male lone christian deity are right to do so, and we as Christians need to acknowledge that and recover out own tradition of the divine feminine. similarly Pagans have often put Christians to shame when it comes to the environment when St Paul time and again talks of Jesus not saving people from the world but wanting to set the whole of creation free from suffering – we need to recover this ecological vision. i could go on but i hope you get the idea – that is what i meant by saying a Pagan church – on reflection i think i should have said a church in Pagan culture or one that learnt lessons from Paganism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the obvious news peg of summer solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, the Telegraph reports on a rather odd initiative from the Church of England. The article begins, The church is training ministers to create \u201ca pagan church where Christianity [is] very much in the centre\u201d to attract spiritual believers. Ministers are being trained to create […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,21,5,217],"class_list":["post-5670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christianity","tag-england","tag-paganism","tag-stonehenge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1ts","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1692,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1692","url_meta":{"origin":5670,"position":0},"title":"Anglican Priest Decides Pagans are ‘Connected’","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Via The Wild Hunt, a story of another Anglican priest with an attraction to Druidism. I'm actually a priest of the Church of England \u2013 but with a difference. Though I'm still in \"holy orders\", I now work full time as a magician, writer and retreat leader. I've been described\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=34","url_meta":{"origin":5670,"position":1},"title":"Solstice at the Stones","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 30, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Archaeology magazine got around to noting the contemporary Pagan use of Stonehenge and Avebury circles. The link will give you an abstract of the article; the full version is print-only.","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":743,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=743","url_meta":{"origin":5670,"position":2},"title":"Who’s a Celt now? – 3","author":"Chas S. 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Clifton","date":"March 31, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Why Men Really Hate Going to ChurchWMHGTC, by Alaska TV writer David Murrow, is the umpteenth try to understand the \"feminization\" of American Christianity, The pro baseball player-turned-preacher Billy Sunday (1862-1935) was just one manly man who fought the same fight.Murrow is a little shaky on pre-Reformation church history: he\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1113,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1113","url_meta":{"origin":5670,"position":4},"title":"Copyediting Religion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Orthographic payback is a bitch.For years--starting when I wrote for Gnosis in the 1980s--I was one of those pushing for the capitalization of the words Witch and Pagan when used to describe first, the followers of the new, self-consciously created polytheistic mystery religion and, second, Pagan as a more general\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":296,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=296","url_meta":{"origin":5670,"position":5},"title":"Can you be a Druid\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 30, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Can you be a Druid and an Episcopalian? The controversy over \"Pagan\" elements on an official Episcopal Church Web site and the husband-and-wife clergy connected with them continues to bubble. Christianity Today's blog has their bishop's statement: the situation is \"extremely serious,\" but there is no rush to the stake,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5670"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5672,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5670\/revisions\/5672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}