On this weeks Kitchen Table Steve and I discuss my earlier article on Civic Religion
The Kitchen Table 32 – Judgement Day
This is the song I mentioned….
The Blog of David Robertson
The Blog of David Robertson
On this weeks Kitchen Table Steve and I discuss my earlier article on Civic Religion
The Kitchen Table 32 – Judgement Day
This is the song I mentioned….
The denial of the resurrection and ascension by Anglican Church Southern Queensland ministers and the spiritualism preached in the cathedral is really shocking.
It is strange that as soon as a liberal theology is adopted by a church, its morals go downhill.
What has happened at the Cathedral and the inner city parishes is terrible but it isn’t just limited to them. Just about all of the Sunshine Coast parishes including the hinterland ones have adopted Progressive Christianity to varying degrees
The Progressive antiChristians are seeking to overturn every established doctrine and moral us Christians hold dear. The ‘spiritualist’ sermon is the nadir.
The Progressive antiChristians have ruined the church here with their twisted ideas and morals. Pleawe pray for us.
The cathedral sermon is shocking.
It is very sad to see them destroy themselves like this. We must pray they will return to the Bible and start being faithful to what is taught in it. God will not be mocked!
I’m not easily shocked but that cathedral sermon left me teeling. I’ve never been as appalled in my life as I am at that.
My english not good but what happening at cathedral, parishes a disgrace. Promote sodomy lifestyle, mock believers and say they all fundamentalist simpleton, throw 10 commandments away, blaspheme Christ with erotic prayers, say resurrection and ascension myths, and use new age ritual. I leave anglicans behind and find better church that believes bible and God and not tell lies. Forgive my bad english. I still learning.
That cathedral sermon is shocking. I’m really scared now. I never dreamt they’d allow something like that to be preached.
I am appalled to learn an occultist’s spiritualist, out-of-body experience esoteric vision was elucidated and promoted in the context of a cathedral sermon. My blood runs cold at the very thought of this. Shame on the cathedral for allowing this to happen! How could this ever be justified in a Christian context? This is the ultimate proof they’ve completely lost the plot. I’m glad I’m no longer Anglican. Thankfully God rescued me from that denomination, all praise to Him!
The operative word here seems to be ‘shocked’ but I am just appalled by these sermons, especially Tyack’s one with its occultish, spiritualist elements, as well as those that indermine the 10 C.’s and the Resurrection. These Anglicans are on a wide path straight to hell, I fear.
There is also this arrogant article from Gregory Jenks: https://www.progressivechristians.org.au/articles/the-myth-of-an-infallible-bible
‘All the same, and without wishing to offend colleagues and co-religionists who insist on believing the incredible and the ridiculous, this is a nonsensical claim for anyone to make about any historical text.’
He claims he doesn’t want to offend immediately before using deliberately offensive language in the next breath…
“Which Bible are we talking about and which set of books do we consider to constitute this collection of supposedly infallible texts? Already the heads of our fundamentalist friends will be hurting.”
Again, very arrogant. He seems to dismiss the idea that evangelicals can be intellectuals too.
“Leaving aside for now the rather important fact that Christians do not even agree on which books comprise the Bible…”
He doesn’t seem to realise that Evangelicals follow the same canon for the OT as the Jews…
“Fortunately for me as an Anglican, the community of spiritual practice of which I am both a member and a cultic official has a more nuanced understanding of the Bible”
Arrogant and what kind of Anglican? He doesn’t seem to accelt evangelical Anglicans who make up the vast global south as well as important dioceses in his own country of Australia….
” It may not be sold in your local “Christian” (sic) bookstore, but that is another essay for another day.”
Another arrogant little sic there from a man who us borderline Christian at best, if not a closet atheist, given his denial thst the crucifixion was part of God’s plan and belief in a bodily resurrection of Christ.
It is interesting that these Progressive Christian anti-intellectuals feel superior to evangelical Christians. He seems to have no understanding of how the doctrine of Sola Scriptura arose or the intellectual arguments backing it. He doesn’t engage with them at all. Instead he takes a hodge podge of post-modern ideas, mixes them with arrogant insults and accusations and hurls them, hoping some mud will stick. This makes me suspect Jenks is bitter at mainstream evangelical Christians because of his childhood experiences or envious of their faith while he is stuck wasting what time he has left in his intellectual dead-end of Progressive Christianity/closet atheism.
All the questions he raises have been answered again and again many times ovr the last 500 years but all he can do is rant and launch butter, arrogany and downright rude attacks without honestly engagjng with evangelical scholars and their arguments.
If this is the quality if A Progressive Christian Voice Australua scholars, it is no wonder Catt and Barraclough’s movement has been an abject failure. From arrogance, to anti-intellectualism to hypocrisy, APCVA seems to represent the very worst in Australian Christianity.
Besides the false teaching in the cathedral sermons, especially that spiritualist one, I just don’t think the cathedral is an appropriate environment for children anymore. They are encouraging homosexuals to attend but they are of course not calling them to repentance. Rather they are being a welcoming church and celebrating the gay lifestyle and gay pride. The cost of inviting this segment of the community and seeking to normalise this behaviour is to mean the cathedral is no longer an appropriate place for children, especially if they are presenting frank discussions of this kind of lifestyle, let alone presenting it as a normal and acceptable alternative for Christian folk. It is a shame the cathedral has been taken away from children. I am deeply saddened by these decisions by cathedral staff and how they’ve driven kids and families sway.
It is very disturbing that this form of liberal Christianity is now being preached from Ashgrove and Milton to the far reaches of Kilcoy and Buderim, having spread its tentacles from the Saint Francis Seminary and the gay cultures of the Cathedral and Holt Trinity Fortitude Valley. The priests and priestesses coming out of the seminary are leading their congregations down the progressive garden path and throwing away all traditional doctrines as they do so, while orthodox Christians abandon the Anglican Church for other drnominations.
The spiritualist service at the cathedral is a low point that hasn’t been releated elsewhere as far as I am aware apart from maybe Buderim. Generally, a mood of theological liberalism very much dominates though. People wouldn’t know good doctrine or what Christians are actually supposed to believe if it came up and bit them because the level of theological literacy in Anglican Church Southern Queensland has been appalling liw for many, many decades and there is a mood of apathy. The culture of Anglo-Catholicism has brainwashed them into just following whatever the minister says and, if they disagree, to go and complain about hom to thebishop. There is no dialogue, no theological debates, no real Bibke reading among congregants (even Aspinall has complained about this) and no real engagement with or living out of the faith among congregants. It is just a deadenimg, conformist ritualism, blind obefirnce to the bishops, amazing kow levels of theological literacy and now an ever growing liberalism from the inner cities to the rural Sunshine Coast parishes and peolle just don’t care, even when their personal salvation and that of their peers is at peril from certain huckster false preachers,, male and female.
Please pray for the 2 R’s: revival and reformation in Anglican Church Southern Queensland. The deadening Anglo-Catholic culture that has killed this Diocese must be replaced with vibrant, lifegiving evangelicalism before it is too late after these 150 years of spiritual deadness. The Holy Spirit needs to come and bring the dead bones of this Diocese to life.
Peter Catt and his friends like Jenks and Jeremy Greaves are very Americanized in their approach. Look at their influences. You have Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong and the Jesus Seminar. These Brisbane Anglicans are just trying to be fashionable by following the trends in American liberalism. I can hear the influence of Katherine Jefferts Schori in their preaching too. No independence, no thoughts of their own. Where America goes, Australia blindly follows.
Thank you for your article today, Pastor,
“Is the Church Now The Green Party At Prayer?”
https://theweeflea.com/2021/06/08/is-the-church-now-the-green-party-at-prayer-ct/
It is very relevant to what Peter Catt and A Progressive Christian Voice Australia, along with their associates in AngliGreen, are doing to Anglican Church Southern Queensland.
Thank you for this important discussion. I just want to add that one of the most troubling things for me and another person I know is that not a single sermon on the cathedral’s website instructs people on how to be saved.
There is no talk of justification, faith, repentance, nothing, in any of their sermons. Thete is just constant radical left social justice preaching and deconstruction of the Bible and vague, wishy-washy mysticism. What a wasted opportunity to save people’s souls, given how many visitors and tourists the cathedral has.
I am appalled at many of the things being preached in the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist, especially Kate Ross’ attack on the Ten Commandments, the Prayer to the Erotic Christ in the gay pride evensong and the relentless assaults on the Bible and Biblically-based doctrine. I agree with the comments above though that Tyack’s sermon, drawing on Jungian occultic spiritualism is the most shocking of all and totally offensive to Christians. The church has strayed a long, long way from the path set by Jesus when it reaches that point.
I think a lot of what they are doing is deliberately designed to shock and also stems from a desire to undermine and attack the evangelical doctrine of the Diocese of Sydney. Parishioners are just the collateral damage caught in the middle of these insular attacks on Sydney by the radical far-left preachers that Aspinall has appointed in Brisbane that he uses as tools in his fanatical liberal assaults on evangelical Anglicanism.
The fact we have reached the stage where alternative spiritual practices, including Jungianism, are thought to be suitable for a Cathedral service, shows how complety lost ACSQ has become.
Like other false religions, it is also using spiritual practices like labyrinth walks, yoga, meditation and singing bowls in an attempt to reach up to God instead of focusing on the Christ who has come down to us. It is works-based new age spiritualism, instead of faith-based Christianity. They’ve fallen into the oldest trap in the book. Their liberalism is a failed route and will undoubtedly fall out of fashion once they realise this and Catt and co pretend will undoubtedly pretend it never happened as they latch onto the next fad instead. I just hope and pray no parishioners’ souls are lost in the interim.
I cannot serve in conscience in a church that preaches Jungian occultism from the pulpit or seeks to normalise transgenderism or homosexual activity and altrrnative spiritual practices though no matter what happens in the future.
This was from a German news article published today. It very much applies to Anglican Church Southern Queensland too though.
Quote:
“The West German C-parties, like the churches, have largely and to a large extent razed their convictions and neglected principles. You have given up the power of your own thinking for devotion to the spirit of the times. They have ceased to be involved in creating intellectual history and are eagerly following the fashions without asking what they entail. They follow ideologies that they ought to know are harmful to them if they were still thinking about their own ideas.
They let themselves be driven through the arena by social minorities. They have left their former brand core to a minority in their own ranks and are now called this minority deviants and accuse it of harming the whole. They disappointed the most loyal of their followers, offended them and put the ax to their own roots. Now they watch as they lose headcount and influence more and more.”
/End quote
Quote
“On the other hand, the Church is strengthened in the Third World, where one is far from passing the time with luxury problems. Where the church is forced by hard or at least sparse circumstances to adhere to the real and possible, the Bible word that warns of false prophets should also be remembered. It seems to have been forgotten in Germany.”
/End quote
The spiritualist’s vision sermon from the Cathedral is disgusting and downright evil.
The fact that an occult astral-plane vision was discussed in a sermon at the Brisbane Anglican Cathedral is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever read. This is pure evil from the Anglican Church.
I am horrified by the way they promote homosexuality in the Cathedral. It is so blatantly against God’s will. They even advertise gay sermons on their electronic billboard. Jesus must be weeping tears in heaven.
Yeah, the Anglican Church in Brisbane has a really dodgy reputation.
Yes, Thyatira in the Book of Revelation seems analogous to Anglican Church Southern Queensland… There are loving, faithful and enduring people there but false prophets and prophetesses too… The same triumvirate exists… False teaching promoting sexual immorality (homosexuality and transgenderisms), leading to Satan’s deep secrets… The more things change the more they stay the same down the ages…
By the way you mightn’t know this but Anglo-Catholicism has always had links to occultism…
“IN 1978, A. N. Wilson published Unguarded Hours, a satire of life in an Anglo-Catholic seminary. The book broke new ground in drawing attention to the strong current of homosexuality among the ranks of the Anglo-Catholic clergy. But it also commented on another feature of that particular Anglican sub-culture. At the book’s climax, a liberal dean visiting the seminary walks in on a few ordinands engaged in ritual magic.
Wilson knew what he was writing about. While scholars have since devoted important studies to the dynamics of gender and sexuality among Anglo-Catholics — most notably David Hilliard in his article “Unenglish and Unmanly” (1982) — the tendency towards occultism in certain Anglo-Catholic circles since the 19th century has gone almost unnoticed in scholarly literature. Only one study has attempted anything close to an overview of the phenomenon: Anthony Fuller’s dissertation on “Anglo-Catholic Clergy and the Golden Dawn” (2009). More research is needed…
IN TRUTH, Anglo-Catholic involvement in the occult is much broader and deeper than most would suspect. Take, for instance, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, established in 1887. Devoted to the Western esoteric tradition, and practising various forms of initiatory ritual magic, the Golden Dawn recruited heavily from the clergy. Some of these men were, indeed, simple eccentrics…
As Anthony Fuller has shown, however, clergy who would otherwise belong to the more respectable mainstream of Anglo-Catholicism were strongly involved in the Golden Dawn and its various successor bodies. The Revd A. H. Baverstock, twice Master of the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC) in the 1920s, was a member, as was the Very Revd Frank Selwyn Bennett, the Dean of Chester Cathedral, a formative influence on the culture of Anglican cathedrals in the 20th century…” https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/14-december/features/features/on-the-wings-of-the-dawn-the-lure-of-the-occult
In that sense there is nothing abnormal about Anglican Church Southern Queensland and its cathedral culture… This kind of thing has a long history and has been part of Anglo-Catholicism since day 1… It is still evil and inexcusable of course though… Like Thyatira I hope the handful of genuine Christians in Anglican Church Southern Queensland keep their faith and fidelity to Christ and are not led astray by all the false prophets and prophetesses running rampant in the clergy there… God bless…
Another year, another sordid Pride Evensong in the Brisbane Anglican Cathedral…
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y88LC4n_jHtxQ27jmhUWMgTwwiJh1SX-/view?usp=sharing
It is interesting to see that tge Dean instructs preachers they don’t necessarily have to preach on the readings…
Good discussion above about the occult and anglo-catholicism. I didn’t know about those long standing links between the two. It was a real eyeopener. I found some more on that leading star of anglo-catholivism, Evelyn Underhill, and her links with the occult here –
http://evelynunderhill.org/evelyn-underhill-on-magic-sacrament-and-spiritual-transformation-by-michael-stoeber/
I’ve dealt with Peter Catt in the past. He cares more about church buildings then about child abuse victims.
I am just looking at that link provided above.
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/14-december/features/features/on-the-wings-of-the-dawn-the-lure-of-the-occult
“IN 1978, A. N. Wilson published Unguarded Hours, a satire of life in an Anglo-Catholic seminary. The book broke new ground in drawing attention to the strong current of homosexuality among the ranks of the Anglo-Catholic clergy. But it also commented on another feature of that particular Anglican sub-culture. At the book’s climax, a liberal dean visiting the seminary walks in on a few ordinands engaged in ritual magic… In fact, Rees, and a fellow monk of Mirfield, Fr Charles Fitzgerald CR, helped to found a Golden Dawn temple in New Zealand while on mission there in the 1910s. The chapter that they started eventually came to include several Anglican bishops from that country. Such Anglo-Catholic lay luminaries as Evelyn Underhill, Arthur Machen, and Charles Williams all dabbled in the Golden Dawn’s initiatory “mysticism”, forming their own ideas on the relationship between hermeticism and Christianity in conversation with their mutual friend A. E. Waite (1857-1942).”
I am horrified.
There are a lot of scholarly works on her links with the occult, too. Here is just one example out of hundreds I found when I googled.
https://www.proquest.com/openview/9b4833e9fd64c005c6c9090928c3554a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=41101
I had no idea.
The Brisbane Anglicans sound terrible. I was just looking at some of their sermons myself and it seems like Peter Catt is wrapped up in Jesuit/Ignatian spirituality too:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zw0bxq7KIk75Xpf2vxXBRNPuy0QU08tf/view
Anything that encourages Jesuitism, given its past history, is worrying from my point of view. These Brisbane guys are obviously very far removed from the kind of Anglicanism I know and respect. Very, very troubling.
I’ve been thinking about this. It seems to me that the Brisbane Anglicans are so adverse to ‘fundamentalism’ that they reject not one, not two but all five of the ‘Five Fundamentals’:
Biblical inspiration and the infallibility of scripture as a result of this
Virgin birth of Jesus
Belief that Christ’s death was the atonement for sin
Bodily resurrection of Jesus
Historical reality of the miracles of Jesus
To wit,
* they have a low view of Scripture and believe it is a set of fallible texts produced by human communities. There is no room for Divine inspiration in their view.
*The Christmas stories are metaphorical ‘preludes’ not records of historical events, even as mainstream theologians move back to an acceptance thatthe Christmas story is historical.
*They reject the atonement view of Christ’s death -see discussion of Gregory Jenks earlier in this thread.
*They believe the Resurrection is a metaphor. See earlier discussion on Peter Catt’s views.
*They subsequently believe the other miracles are metaphors except maybe the faith healing and the exorcisms. Here we can see the influence of dubious figures from the Jesus Seminar like Borg and Crossan on Catt and Jenks.
No wonder they decry anyone who isn’t one of their Progressive Christian crowd with their ‘fundamentalist’ slur.
Further to my last post, without Scripture on which to base their thoughts, no wonder they are subject to moral relativism. The theology of the Brisbane Anglicans is based on a high view of human intellect; that we know better than God.
They therefore base their ‘morality’ on the latest scientific research, even though the conclusions of such research are constantly changing. Hence, they happen to think, for instance, that homosexual activity is fine, because science currently says so. There is no way that Peter Catt would thought of this by himself had he lived one hundred years ago – he lacks the intellectual horsepower. Because science and our resulting current social mores says homosexuality is okay, Catt and the Brisbane Anglicans, with their worldly, rationality-based ‘morality’ think it is okay too. Of course, this means their Church’s morality finds itself utterly tied to that of the world, rendering Biblical warnings against worldliness meaningless and meaning that the Brisbane Anglicans’ morality is simply the same as political correctness.
It also means morality is constantly shifting and is unstable, hence their relativism. Gay marriage maybe okay at the moment but if/when science debunks the idea that homosexual activity is ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’ or when it finds itself out of fashion, they %will find themselves in a quandary and forced to do backflips. Likewise, parishioners will be forced to currently keep up with the shifting morals or find themselves coldshouldered if they commit a faux pas if they find themselves caught off-guard with suddenly outdated morals, leading to them being ostracised by their peers.
This constantly changing politically correct form of new morality the Brisbane Anglicans are espousing puts me in mind of Judges 21:25: without the fixed moral absolutes of Scripture that has been Divinely inspired by an unchanging God,
‘Every man did whatever seemed right in his own eyes.’
Hence the unmitigated failure of the Brisbane Anglican liberal project.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-qPPCN2Chrl_ql9xK-2WNrtGf9M-WSMs/view
This latest sermon by Peter Catt is very interesting.
He of course does not believe Jesus has prophetic powers and with his very low view of the Bible he contrives his sermon to say the writer, Mark, is putting words into Jesus’ mouth when he was writing his Gospel at the time of the temple’s destruction, thereby negating the belief that Jesus foretold the temple’s destruction. Catt does this without outright denying Jesus’ prophecy, giving him wriggle-room to deny it if necessary.
It is also interesting to note what he does not say in this sermon. He talks about the end of the sacrificial system but he makes no attempt to link it to Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. This is because Progressive Christians like Catt and Gregory Jenks do not believe in Jesus’ death is an atonement gir sin. They just see it as an accident of history and an outcome of the social injustice of the oppressive Roman legal-political system. 🙁
Bravo for speaking out. I have met Peter
Catt. When the cameras are on him, he is full of sympathy for the poor, those facing injustice, the mentally ill and the sexually abused. Behind closed doors, though, I have found him to be a bad tempered little man with a heart of stone.
A [straight] colleague of mine was sexually harassed by a gay Brisbane priest who was trying to seduce him. That is the reality of the culture of sleaze and immorality that Peter Catt and staff have created around the Cathedral.
They are a brood of vipers.
That is shocking, Prose. Jesus needs to come back and go through the temple with a whip again.
https://mobile.twitter.com/revdeborahbird/status/1463651099408146432
In this link ^, the Brisbane Anglican lobby, “APCVA”, (affiliated with Peter Catt), is lobbying AGAINST the religious freedom bill tonight, on behalf of the sodomites. I think that says it all about where their priorities lie and their twisted sense of morality.
“Therefore, come out from among unbelievers, and separate yourselves from them, says the LORD.” – 2 Cor 6:17.
“This is because Progressive Christians like Catt and Gregory Jenks do not believe in Jesus’ death is an atonement gir sin. They just see it as an accident of history and an outcome of the social injustice of the oppressive Roman legal-political system. 🙁”
Yes, I was just reading this controversial sermon by Jenks – https://gregoryjenks.com/2018/03/29/rethinking-the-cross-of-jesus/
It is unclear to me from this how he sees Christ’s death as any different from that of any other social justice activist who ends up the victim of the State (for instance, Steve Biko). What, if anything, makes Christ’s death particularly unique to Jenks?
It also seems one-sided in its presentation when we know the Anglican Church will use the repressive powers of the State itselg ehen it suits them. Even Peter Catt has called the police on protesters at his Brisbane Cathedral, making him a supreme hypocrite, I guess.
Now I am looking at Jesus’ trial in Jenks’ latest post. It seems he considers the whole thing to be fiction:
https://gregoryjenks.com/2021/11/20/truth-that-matters/
Are Peter Catt and the Brisbane Anglicans/Progressive Christians Socinians? Their beliefs seem to be similar.
Progressive Christianity is passé. The world has already passed Peter Catt and the Brisbane Anglican crowd by.
The new heresy for the 2020s called “weak theology”. Here is a discussion about it:
“Indeed, these expressions have appeared in recent years among the defenders of a “weak theology”, that is to say of a discourse which renounces a “strong theology”, which conceives of God as all-powerful. God cannot do everything, since he cannot prevent evil, suffering, death. It would even be necessary, according to an American theologian recently translated into French, John Caputo, to give up speaking of God as a personal being, which would, according to him, be a matter of mythology. God would only be the weak but insistent force of a word that invites us to change, to forgive, in short, God will only exist in our response to the call to dare, to risk, to love, etc.
Although this “weak theology” claims to be based on the cross of Jesus Christ (conceived as the very place of absolute weakness, which is highly questionable), it does not seem to me to be in conformity with what the Bible tells us: its more big mistake is to be human-centered; everything now depends on his response, his ability to love, share, etc. There is nothing to be expected from heaven.
This theology also seems to succumb to the temptation to somehow want to excuse God from evil. If God is not almighty, it is not his fault! Now God does not need defenders but witnesses of his Salvation, of his love, and of the hope that he offers us of a new creation, unveiled by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Hope is fundamentally absent from this decidedly… very weak theology. Rather, let us receive the Lord’s promise: “I make all things new” (Revelation 21,5).”
Things are not happy for the Angkican Church on the Sunshine Coast. I can tell you a number of people have left Buderim because of the lesbian priestess, Moira Evers, and are looking fir another denomination. Nambour is shedding members, too.
Another eccentric minister is currently working at Palmwoods. He refuses to preach at the nursing home anymore because it is too much work. Apparently he carries his dog everywhere and refuses to wash his hand before giving out communion after handling it.
Where do they find all these strange people to be their priests?
“… it seems like Peter Catt is wrapped up in Jesuit/Ignatian spirituality…”
@DL, it is bizarre that a self-professed pacifist like Peter Catt would be drawn to Jesuit theology when we consider the crimes of that Order down the centuries…
There actually was *one* Jesuit who was a pacifist!!! He was an American activist named John Dear. Predictably, though, his superiors curtailed his activist protests though and he left or was asked to leave the Order some years ago.
This indulgence in Jesuism just confirms what someone said upthread though, that the Brisbane Anglicans and by extension the Progressive Christian heresy are nothing but expressions of a counter-reformation mindset and a pathological hatred of Biblical Protestantism that we see expressed in the writings of Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong, Gregory Jenks, Peter Catt, Tiffany Sparks, Jeanette Jamieson-Forde and their cronies.
I should add the thing that surprises me the most is that liberal or Progressive Christianity should prove popular on the Sunshine Coast, the apparent backlash at Buderim and Nambour not withstanding. I’ve been in those places pre-COVID and they are mostly small rural towns. I imagine the church congregations at Kilcoy, Maleny, Buderim, and Palmwoods are mainly elderly rural folk, not the types of inner city suburbanites who’d typically be drawn to liberal forms of Christianity and progressive social causes. However this is what Wikipedia says for the Anglican Parish of Kilcoy for instance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilcoy,_Queensland
“There is an Anglican church in Kilcoy, St Mary’s. It has a liberal, gay-friendly Anglo-Catholic churchmanship and maintains a close relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. The parish’s last two priests have been females. Under one of them, Rev. Jeanette Jamieson, the church has adopted Progressive Christianity and Jesuit spirituality.”
I can only imagine it is because of their Anglo-Catholicism that they find sympathy for gays and hence liberalism. Perhaps it is also because Anglo-Catholics tend to place weight on the authority of the hierarchy and are hence more likely to follow their leadership into liberal heresies. That is just speculation though.
When my friend Ben moved from Adelaide to Brisbane, his Anglican minister in Adelaide warned him about the Brisbane Anglicans and advised him to find a Presbyterian church up here instead. True story.
You’d think that, as Anglo-Catholics, the Brisbane Anglicans would put a lot of stock on the teachings of the Church Fathers and “tradition”. Instead they readily embrace liberalism that the Early Church would undoubtedly have considered heretical.
@Anders – “There is an Anglican church in Kilcoy, St Mary’s. It has a liberal, gay-friendly Anglo-Catholic churchmanship and maintains a close relationship with the Roman Catholic Church.”
I wonder what the Catholics really think about their liberal neighbours with their women priests, adoption of Progressive Christianity et al?
Remember when Catt supported the Adani protesters? It turns out they are involved in disgraceful behaviour:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/adani-miners-face-sex-slurs-abuse-from-cashedup-activists/news-story/13aa402d18265a7494659829c8d41965%3famp
Yet another error of judgement from the eccentric Dean.
“Robert
December 19, 2021 at 11:09 am
Remember when Catt supported the Adani protesters? It turns out they are involved in disgraceful behaviour:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/adani-miners-face-sex-slurs-abuse-from-cashedup-activists/news-story/13aa402d18265a7494659829c8d41965%3famp
Yet another error of judgement from the eccentric Dean.”
That would be the same Peter Catt who thinks same-sex marriage isn’t a sin and denies the corporeal resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Many errors of judgement there. If he was a politucal leader, he’d face a vote of no confidence.
The Brisbane anglican church is in a huge mess….. The buck has to stop with Aspinall….. Hes archbishop…..
Rod Bower is arguing “God doesn’t judge us”:
https://mobile.twitter.com/FrBower/status/1469983368666251266
I guess he would say that, since, as Rev Ould documented, he doesn’t believe in God!
In fact, here is a new Tweet, somewhat joking, in which he affirms his lack of belief:
https://mobile.twitter.com/FrBower/status/1468470780363042819
He is also blaming Omicron on the evils of western capitalism, even though COVID itself, as far as we know, originated in a traditional Chinese wet market and was covered up for a while by the Chinese Communist Party, exacerbating the problem and preventing early containment…
https://mobile.twitter.com/FrBower/status/1464523367243943940
Meanwhile, Gregory Jenks s no longer dean of the cathedral. His new role is that of parish priest in the town of Casino, near Lismore, in northern NSW.
Dear God, please lead our Christian brothers and sisters in the Casino Anglican Parish congregation to safety away from the forked tongue of this false preacher. May they not be deceived by his Prigressive Christian teachings. Call their minds to the Epistle to Jude which warned of such men coming amongst us. May they study that Epistle earnestly and open their eyes and fill them with Your Spirit of Truth, so they see how it applies to their situation. In the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Also, APCVA member and ultra-liberal Progressive Christian Rev Deborah Bird has taken over from the like-minded Jeanette Jamieson-Foarde at Maleny.
https://mobile.twitter.com/revdeborahbird/with_replies
As @Anders noted above, it is strange that these small rural Sunshine Coast parishes are assigned all of these Liberal Catholic pastors without a mahor rural conservative backlash.
One thing I’ve heard is that Anglo-Catholics are actually frightened of GAFCON and the Evangelical Anglican Global South, so they are closely tied to Canterbury, even through the Liberal Catholic years if Rowan Williams. Since Abp Aspinall was very much part of Rowan Williams’ faction, that may be a factor. Obedience to authority without any discernment (“if the bishop says it is good it must be so”) lack of a sense of personal responsibility (“we just go with the flow”), lack of a culture of independent, private Bible reading, and the traditional tolerance of homosexuality that are all parts of Anglo-Catholic culture probably all play their parts as well.
Deb Bird and Rod Bower are both signatories to this:
https://www.pmc.gov.au/domestic-policy/religious-freedom-review/submission-group-7
That’d be the same Rev Deb Bird who is an advocate for VAD (voluntary assisted dying, i. e., euthanasia) laws and who also promotes a Lenten study course based on Elton John’s Rocketman film.
https://mobile.twitter.com/revdeborahbird/status/1356502099048103938
The Rocketman Lenten study was written by U. K. transgender priest Rev. Rachel Mann. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
It isn’t just the S/shine Coast. The issues are everywhere. I think one of the problems is parishioners only start to care once their own parish is affected by which time it is too late. They ignore the fact that blatant heresies and Pride Evensongs are being preached at St. John’s Cathedral, that Inkpin is a transgender, that Moira Evers is a lesbian that Jeanette Jamieson-Foarde is a bully, that the religious orders have a lot of sexually-active gays and so on until one of these gay, female or Progressive Christianity priests is assigned to their parish. At that point Aspinall and the bishops ignore the complaints, so the faithful minority of real Christians in these parishes feel like they have no option but to leave and find another denomination, even if they’ve worshipped there their entire lives. The orthodox Christians having been driven away, the liberals, yes-men, cafeteria Anglicans, those blindly obedient to the bishops and lukewarm Christians are generally all that remain, so they just do as their told and the liberal priest is free to pursue his or her agenda. This is what happened not just at places like Kilcoy, Maleny and Buderim but Milton, Ashgrove and some of the parishes out Toowoomba and Ipswich way. It is a tragedy but it is very knowingly orchestrate to drive orthodox Christians out of the Anglican parishes so that Aspinall, Greaves, Jenks and their friends can continue to liberalise the church and promote their Progressive Christianity agenda.
Yeah, I heard Jeanette Jamieson-Foarde set up a clique with a woman named Margaret Pearson at Kilcoy and bullied out the Calvinist, Biblical Christians.
Here is more on the mindset of the Progressives and their rejection of doctrine (in defiance of the Apostle Paul’s teachings) by Rev Suzanne Grimmett of Indooroopilly:
https://www.progressivechristians.org.au/reviews/book-reviews-who-do-we-say-we-are
Peter Catt is Aspinall’s fall guy. He is using the eccentric dean to push the liberal Catholic agenda as far as possible. If anything ever gets too hot, Aspinall will just blame it all on Catt and dismiss him. Aspinall’s a brilliant popitivian and I don’t say that as a compliment.
One things for sure-the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane proves the Anglo-Catholic belief in Apostolic Succession is bunk. These bishops and priests are definitely not maintaining and passing on the faith once and for all received.
Regarding Deborah Bird taking on Maleny, why would one of their prize APCVA progressive priestesses be assigned to a small rural parish that is said to be extremely bad financial straits? I speculate that they are preparing for more almagamations. You have two very liberal rural parishes (the Anglican Parish of Kilcoy, which is financially svent due to its Woodford opp shop and the patronage of very wealthy local beef farmers and Maleny which, as I mentionedis in a perilous position) and two tiny, somewhat more conservative, parishes (Toogalawah and Glasshouse, the latter of which I know is also struggling financially). I can see Kilcoy and Toogalawah and Maleny and Glasshouse merging in the near future or maybe even all four of them to create a rural super-parish with itinerant ministers celebrating communion at different centres each week, following the model followed in other places. Deb Bird could be there to ensure that Liberal Catholicism/Progressive Christianity remains the dominant strain of churchmanship in any hypothetical almagamated parish. 😞
Anyway, merry Christmas. God bless all readers of TheWeeFlea.
Peter Catt says he is “agnostic” on the issue of euthanasia:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au%2Fnation%2Fpolitics%2Fanglican-church-elder-agnostic-on-voluntary-dying-law%2Fnews-story%2Fa243fecd9d1056597c360e4828584395
I found this reader comment on another site. It is worth quoting from it here:
” Debra Mieth
October 13, 2018
Thank you Bernard for this enlightening article, I’ll be praying for you.
Referring to Phil’s comment regarding the Catholic Archbishop not being a Christian,it is the same with the Dean, Peter Catt, at Brisbane’s Anglican St John’s Cathedral which I used to attend. Peter and his homosexual cronies, who, in the words of one “are everywhere in the cathedral” believe the Bible is a collection of myths. Peter actively preached this from the pulpit, which shocked me when first I heard it. Last time I was there I was accosted by two amorous homosexuals asking what I thought about Peter’s vision to marry homosexuals there. When I said it was un-Scriptural, they used the law about not mixing two different cloths together as their reason to believe the Bible is a bunch of fables. After explaining the meaning of this law, one of them became offended that there was actually a good reason for it and that I called them homosexuals rather than gays.
He literally ran away in fear…”
https://www.bernardgaynor.com.au/2018/10/11/ruddock-religious-freedom-review-sham/
This is also worth reading:
https://master1844-dc.blogspot.com/2018/10/on-streets-of-babylon-queering-city-of.html?m=1
Here is the interview Catt gave with ABC Radio where he refused to support Israel Folau:
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/brisbane/programs/mornings/focus/9624910
An interesting description of the Cathedral and a very accurate one in my opinion:
“I haven’t been in Brisbane long, but I’ve checked out a couple places – St John’s Cathedral in the city is a ‘high church’ Anglican service with a very traditional liturgy, and has really great choral music. They seem very educated and liberal (interested in social justice, ambivalent about a literal reading of the Bible or the idea of an afterlife, more focused on doing good work in this life). The building is beautiful too, but I felt a bit disconnected there maybe because it’s so big, and a bit like a museum (there’s a gift shop, visitors info, etc in the main space).”
https://www.reddit.com/r/brisbane/comments/6jj4oe/tell_me_about_your_experiences_with_churches_in/
Catt’s master, Jenks, too, flies in the face of mainstream scholarship with his Jesus Seminar arguments that the infancy narratives are non-historical:
“Even if we consider the canonical stories to be symbolic narratives that disseminate theology more than history, there is little doubt that Jesus was born. Anyone whose death is well attested can be assumed to have been born.”
“This story has been crafted by Matthew somewhere during the last quarter of the first century. Its original intention was not to chronicle the events of Jesus’ conception and childhood, but to celebrate the prophetic significance of Jesus and to place him securely within the Jewish tradition.”
https://gregoryjenks.com/?s=christmas+myth
He backs up his claims by citing a book published by Westar by one of his felliw Jesus Seminar quacks, Robert Miller.
This is such a contrast from your colleague Steve McAlpine’s blog post today, discussing the renewed interest in the historicity of the miracle stories by formerly-atheist intellectuals.
Another quote from Jenks for which, as usual, he provides zero evidence:
“… there were occasional state visits to the Roman emperor by oriental rulers from beyond the empire seeming to establish cordial diplomatic relationships. Details of these and other parallels to Matthew’s birth narrative have been blended together by Matthew to create the spectacular scene of a visit to Bethlehem by an entourage of unspecified size (but certainly more than three individuals), bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Matthew is not recording history here, but appealing to his non-Jewish audience.”
So Matthew is “commercialising” his Gospel to win over a larger audience, according to Jenks’ speculation, by adding mythological information. Would a follower of Christ really be that willing to “bear false witness”? Doesn’t say much about the morals of Christ’s followers if true.
Strange how right through church history this stiry was considered historical until Spong, Jenks, Borg, Catt and the Jesus Seminar came along to enlighten us. Even the Akexandrian School took the story both allegorically and literally and literalism was one of the four modes of interpretation of the Roman Catholic Church and a formidable modern Catholic Bible scholar like Joseph Ratzinger also treats it as literal, historical fact, as do, of course mainstream Calvinist, Lutheran and evangelical thinkers.
It grates when people lke Jenks misleadingky present their fringe thinker pet theories as fact, especially when they have zero evidence fir their suppositions.
I went to Sandgate years ago. I had to get out. They had the late Fr Nigel Leaves and his wife “Mother” Julie Leaves there. They were very pro-gay and liberal. Nigel Leaves was a part of Westar too and mates with Jenks and Catt. Enough said.