Introduction
A few days ago, Mark posted this - thank you - in a comment which is worth posting as introduction to this week's post, assisting us in keeping perspective on the importance of the church ... the kingdom may be more important ... and also, brilliantly, connecting the Jesus of history with the Christ of faith:
"One of the great works of the Spirit has been not allowing Jesus’ dream of the reign of God to die. It was the Spirit who enlivened the apostles desolated by the failure of Jesus…[pouring] into them an unexpected and surprising energy for continuing to proclaim what Jesus proclaimed and did. The church as community of the faithful as we have it today is as much fruit of the Spirit as of Jesus. Jesus was seeking the reign and did not intend the church, but with his death a vacuum was created…It is the Spirit who comes to fill this vacuum, generating communities that propose to follow Jesus and attempt to make real his dream of the reign…
Without the Spirit there would be no way to understand the resonance achieved by Jesus in subsequent history. It was the Spirit who led communities to discover that beneath that weak man of working-class stock, itinerant prophet, was indeed hidden the incarnate Son of God. This discovery is still being made today by each generation.
- Leonardo Boff, Christianity in a Nutshell (2013)"
Once again into the NCP foray
Continuing to think about Anglican Communion present and future, with particular reference to the "NCPs", I see that Andrew Goddard's article titled, "The Wisdom of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals: A Response to Paul Avis" has been re-published on Psephizo. A couple of further reflections by me:
First, I note that a commenter there offers these figures re attendance at ++Sarah's installation as Archbishop of Canterbury: 26 of the 42 global Anglican primates did attend Mullally’s enthronement and a further 6 sent representatives and indeed five African female Anglican bishops were there supporting our new Archbishop of Canterbury. This underscores at least a question if not a rejoinder to the NCPs, do they give too much credence to minority views about the future of global Anglicanism?
Secondly, while I appreciate both Avis (in sum: the proposals are seriously deficient) and Goddard (in sum: the NCPs make the best of a bad situation), I continue to be concerned that the NCPs do give way too much - far too much - by allowing for "historic connection" to the See of Canterbury to have priority ahead of "communion with the See of Canterbury", and prioritzing "baptism" ahead of "communion" as bedrock to being our label on our tin "Anglican COMMUNION" (caps mine!). Ultimately my views do not matter much, but it will be for the forthcoming Belfast meeting of the ACC to carefully consider where we head on this critical issue of communion for the Communion.
Again, into the True Church foray
Then thinking more generally about church life on this planet, not solely about Anglicanism ... the question of 'true church' figures on X again which draws attention to the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer (a Catholic order with presence in the Canterbury region in which I live). According to this article, these Redemptorists "have issued a strident statement condemning the teaching of Vatican II, and rejecting the legitimacy of the popes since the council." (This "strident statement" is a 21 page letter issued on 2 May 2026 which may be found here.)
Within the 2 May 2026 letter is this stirring paragraph:
"The problem is, as St Pius X warned, that the structures of the Catholic Church have been infiltrated by men of a different non-Catholic religion. They use the Catholic name, they occupy the Catholic buildings, they know the Catholic culture. From the outside they look to be Catholics, but they do not profess the Catholic Faith as taught through the centuries. In reality, they have been formed as revolutionaries committed to the condemned Freemasonic heresies of Religious Liberty, Religious Indifference and False Ecumenism. Their infiltration has struck a lethal wound to the Catholic religion; they have brought about a major schism from the Mystical Body. We must stand firmly with the Catholic Church and move well away from the camouflage of its counterfeit."
I leave to the Catholic Church their engagement - if they choose - with this particular critique (save for one observation I make below). But what is of Anglican interest is that the above paragraph could be re-written for a certain kind of Anglican perspective (and no doubt, turn and turn about, Baptist ... Lutheran ... Presbyterian ... perspectives), thus:
"The problem is, as St Someone warned, that the structures of the Anglican world have been infiltrated by men and women of a different non-Anglican religion. They use the Anglican name, they occupy the Anglican buildings, they know the Anglican culture. From the outside they look to be Anglicans, but they do not profess the Anglican Faith as taught through the centuries. In reality, they have been formed as revolutionaries committed to the the following heresies ...* Their infiltration has struck a lethal wound to the Anglican religion; they have brought about a major schism from the Mystical Body. We must stand firmly with the authentic form of the global Anglican Church and move well away from the camouflage of its counterfeit."
*From one Anglican perspective, the warmly inclusive, broad Anglicanism of the accommodating Church of England-spread-unto-the-world has been infiltrated by a calculating exclusive, narrow Anglicanism reminiscent of the Puritanism that Richard Hooker so adroitly steered Elizabethan Anglicanism away from. From another Anglican perspective, the doctrinally sound Church of England spread large upon the world, disseminating the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles around the globe has been infiltrated by a cadre of theologians, clever lay synodspersons and errant epsicopoi preaching a message of liberal progressivism which would have Cranmer turning in his grave.
I am reminded, as I write, of an astute observation of St. Augustine (incidentally, formationally significant for Pope Leo XIV) which is noted on the side column of this blog:
"“The clouds of heaven thunder forth throughout the world that God’s house is being built. But these frogs sit in their pond and croak: ‘We’re the only Christians’!”"
Somehow I think Leonardo Boff would heartily endorse St. Augustine on this observation.
I was struck with the Augustine quote you shared at the end, +Peter, which I've not previously come across.
ReplyDeleteAnd also just this morning, I stumbled across an image in my Substack feed that has this quote, which goes even further, and I leave it for folk to ponder when thinking about (i) the Christian church, and (ii) about "the world", because the worms in both instances have insatiable appetites and spoil much of what should be good and beautiful.
TIRED
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two -
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
~Langston Hughes
Thank you - a very witty and engaging post!
ReplyDeleteThe croaking frogs are everywhere! I watched a seminar on "What is Anglo-Catholicism?" where the majority view was, and I quote: "it is the [true] Christian faith".
And in tiny Quaker ponds I also swim in, one *occasionally* still hears the view, feels the conviction, that we are the true ones worshipping "in spirit and in truth" rather than the the institutional church agog with outward distractions and windy doctrines.
I'm sure Boff would heartily endorse St Augustine's wonderful words, having been silenced (when he was a Catholic priest and Franciscan brother) twice by the Curia (under Cardinal Ratzinger) and now living life as a retired theology professor and "lay priest" working, from time to time, with poor Brazilian communities.
As for the Transalpine Redemptorists, what on earth happened to the young (Christchurch) man in their care who is presumed dead (I'm not sure if they've even found his body) and was presumed, by the order itself, to be suffering from "long term hypothermia"?
ReplyDelete"do they give too much credence to minority views about the future of global Anglicanism?" Good question. If we look at the 12 Anglican provinces who did not send their Primate or a representative to the installation of the Archbishop of Canterbury earlier this year, they include at least half the credible Anglican population, with Nigeria at 20 million, Uganda at 13 million, South Sudan at 5 million. The growing church in the Congo (400,000) outnumbers Australia, A-NZ combined. Remembering that provinces like Canada and England mostly count as Anglican people who never go to church, and it is likely that the GSFA and Gafcon refusniks represent a clear majority.
ReplyDeleteSo wrt to the Boff quotes, one might ask who has infiltrated whom?
It is at least an open question.
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteI think that when it comes to the Anglican Communion as a collective of Anglican churches, no matter how many adherents each has, each with their own general synodical processes for considering matters of the day, doing so directly responsive to local contexts, the votes of the provinces count when the Communion is sorting itself out. That the majority of Anglicans are present in Africa is not to be counted out of reckoning but that majority may not be attuned to social realities in Anglican provinces in the Western hemisphere. If African Anglicans pressed (say) Australian and NZ Anglicans to promote criminalization of homosexuals, would we feel bound to go along with that because a majority of fellow Anglicans wanted this to be so? That is, our global situation is not binary (who might have inflltrated whom) but contextual ( as well as theological, ecclesiastical) - messy and complex!
I am not sure, but I rather suspect you are conceding my point about majority opinion in the Anglican communion(s). But let's move on to the question of the gerrymander that is in effect when considering each province of equal weight, or how the regions work in the Primates Council regions. White people get better representation! Your church's three Tikanga model seems to me to be an honest attempt to give all people a voice.
ReplyDeleteAs to wrong views - that seems to be a good reason to support the Global Anglican Communion committee idea rather than the trad Anglican Communion of having the British basically choose one head - so that we are not at the mercy of one provinces viewpoint.
Mark I can enter in to parts of that quote but I struggle with the in a sense exclusion of the church when it references a kingdom perspective from a Holy Spirit, I guess because I mentally associate them together eg. Jesus and His church and bringing in the reign and rule of the Kingdom of God.
ReplyDeleteAn apt summing up of two different takes within the Anglican worldview : ) .. Broad Anglicanism and Doctrinally Sound Anglicanism …. I struggle to think of Anglicanism as being broad in acceptance of viewpoints because it doesn’t seem to me historically it has been (e.g. the Methodists got a severe telling off for preaching outside and of all things to blue collar workers). I am not sure I see it as having been always historically doctrinally sound either - in many ways yes, but like endorsing the renting of pews to the wealthy hardly equates with biblical teachings. So I am not sure where that leaves me lol, likely in the New Testament camp again I suspect, in amongst it all the ‘two loudest viewpoints on each end of the spectrum’ likely both include people genuine in their faith and desire to live it out and perhaps the pruning of branches is needed on both sides.
St Augustine it appears had a good sense of humour!
Peter,
ReplyDeleteYour last comment has been upticked by Bishop E. Gerry (Massachusetts) who told me, 'We've got to redraw the boundaries of the provinces so that the smart and moneyed people are properly represented in the decision-making processes', and he is supported in this by Bishop J. Crow (Selma), who has called for a (cultural) literacy and property (old cathedrals) test before voting rights can be granted to new Anglicans. As Bishop Crow told me, 'Those folks have a wonderful sense of rhythm but no pipe organs and they've never heard of Le Corbusier. They don't even read The New York Times! You gotta be messy and complex to have a Messiaen complex - or a messianic complex.'
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Hi John and William
ReplyDeleteTension between "majority views" and good representation of "minority views" is a feature not a bug in the Three Tikanga church - we intend to allow a strict minority view (if we count numbers of worshippers) to have the power of veto in General Synod, pressing us towards consensus decision making which takes genuine account of the three cultural streams of our church. (That is not something I see in the Australian Anglican church, the Church of England, or the Roman Catholic church!)
Within Anglicanism there has always been (once synods have been established) a tension between "episcopally-led" and "synodically-governed". But the Anglican Communion [trad] is a curious amalgam which is not fully synodical (neither the ACC nor the Lambeth Conference are properly synodical, the former lacking breadth of representation of the provinces, only partially doing so, and the latter, of course, only being a "house of bishops." Might we agree that the Anglican Communion [trad] could be helpfully re-organised, even if we do not agree that the ABC should be the primus inter pares who calls a revised synodical Communion together?
Off-topic, but...
ReplyDeletestunned to read this, yesterday's date, ODT:
A Dunedin man pulled over after swerving all over the road claimed the alcohol he consumed shouldn’t count because it was the "the blood of Christ".
He underwent breath testing procedures and recorded a breath alcohol level three times over the legal limit before electing for a blood test to be taken.
He told police the alcohol he consumed was altar wine he consumed at mass and should not count because it was "the blood of Christ".
Police are now awaiting results from the man's blood.
~that's most of (the small) news item. Source:
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/driver-claims-alcohol-system-was-blood-christ
Peter,
ReplyDeleteI know the NZ Anglican Church has a great aversion to publishing statistics (a fact that Bosco Peters has often pointed out) but what exactly (or inexactly) is the usual Sunday attendance and how many congregations are there in the five Maori bishoprics and the one Pasifika bishopric? Is the Maori division really a church or is it effectively a kind of chaplaincy?
I used to know a little about the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and its different racial sections and often wondered about the NZ Anglican parallel structures. Five Maori dioceses seems quite large. How many Maori parishes are there?
Pet bonum
William Greenhalgh
"But what is of Anglican interest is that the above paragraph could be re-written for a certain kind of Anglican perspective (and no doubt, turn and turn about, Baptist ... Lutheran ... Presbyterian ... perspectives)" +Peter/main post
ReplyDeleteThe pattern's plain to see and folk should take note of stories already documented and be alert. A remarkable article has just been published (May 2026) about the SBC fundamentalist takeover and Paul Pressler - in the Texas Monthly. It's by the same journalist who with his Houston Chronicle colleagues broke the story of the massive abuse problem in the SBC. It draws together so many threads - status, pursuit of power, networks, politics, manipulative behaviour, ugly aggression, abuse - and weaves them into a most readable and compelling narrative. I highly recommend - valuable to have this history which also includes the latest developments right up until Pressler's death - all in the one article.
The link I followed appears to be a gift link so I'll leave the whole url to ensure access:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/quiet-collapse-southern-baptist-convention/?utm_source=texasmonthly&utm_medium=webcta&utm_campaign=giftstory&gift_code=OTc5MzMwOzF6VG5UVjR6RWJWUTZha2tIU2hGUDk2Q1ROVDI7MjAyNjA1MDQ=
Dear William,
ReplyDeleteThe Anglican Church [just one church] in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia consists of Three Tikanga i.e. three cultural streams, one of which Tikanga Maori is synonymous with Te Pihopatanga o Aotearoa (The Diocese of Aotearoa) which includes five Hui Amorangi (regions) each with a bishop, one of whom is Te Pihopa o Aotearoa (The Bishop of Aotearoa). Te Pihopatanga o Aotearoa is best placed to describe the numerics of its own life, as it chooses to see fit to do so. Different cultural streams count numbers in different ways.
I cannot think of any part of any of the regions of Te Pihopatanga which would see itself solely as a form of chaplaincy, though each part of our church, across our Three Tikanga, provides forms of chaplaincy to our post-Christian societies (in Aotearoa New Zealand) and to the Christian societies of Polynesia.
Well, you kicked that one into the long grass, Peter! The best guesstimate I have come up with is about 20 congregations in the whole country (6 or 7 in Auckland and Northland), but maybe somebody here knows. Still seems a lot of bishops for such numbers.
ReplyDeletePax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Good on you for playing a straight bat to that last ball, Peter, coming as it does from the nineteenth century.
ReplyDeleteJames Joyce (see comment in the sidebar) would approve: pock!
Shout-out to Anglican Taonga website for including a *fantastic* weblink - to a podcast conversation between John Dear and his guest Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. This is phenomenal! First link below is the Taonga weblink - briefly summarising the conversation. My second link, links directly to the Podcast itself.
ReplyDeletesummary article: https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/podcast-trust-there-more-work-world-says-bishop-mariann-edgar-budde
direct link to podcast: https://rss.com/podcasts/the-nonviolent-jesus-podcast/
My quick summary: Bishop Budde engages very thoughtfully with questions about her famous sermon and the aftermath, her visit to Minneapolis when clergy congregated there in protest re ICE, the challenge in speaking truth and respecting the inherent dignity of fellow humans, support for Pope Leo, and thoughts on staying spiritually grounded - my words, can't remember theirs. Another interesting moment was John Dear recalling him and other protestors years ago having been released after a horrid time in prison (days in a really yuck cell) and turning up to Bishop Budde's home and being looked after with a memorable meal that she made for them, so heartwarming!
Actually, Mark, Potemkin villages come ftom the 18th century (Catherine the Great, 1787), and Potemkin churches from the 20th. It is Bosco Peters who repeatedly asks New Zealand Anglicans to publish true statistics of attendance and membership, which would very easy to do through quarterly diocesan returns. English and Australian Anglican dioceses do this all the time. My guesstimate of 20 congregations (it could be fewer) is based on the NZ Anglican Church website, but it is still very short of information. Why the obfuscation? I don't know how much James Joyce knew about cricket, but I'm sure he understood it was all about keeping accurate statistics. Does the Maori Anglican Church of five dioceses actually exist other than on paper? What are the true statistics? (This is a question I ask of all churches, Catholics included.)
ReplyDeletePax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Hi William
ReplyDeleteIn a sense I am intentionally obfuscating because I do not believe it is my role as Pakeha to hazard speculations about Tikanga Maori church life. Let Maori either bring forth good statistics or educated but speculative guesstimates, etc.
I honestly do not know how many congregations there are because I have a hazy idea about what is happening in the North Island.
The key thing about five Maori bishops is not the number of Maori under their shepherding care but the territory they are asked to cover, not only to support regular worshipping congregations, but also meetings, events, hui, etc that it is good for the church via their pihopa to be present at. Four bishops cover the North Island which is geographically smaller than the South Island but has more Maori in general and more Maori Anglicans in particular. In the South Island, Te Pihopa o Te Waipounamu covers the whole territory of the South Island, with congregations meeting from Nelson through to Invercargill.
Dear William,
ReplyDeleteOn Christian paternalism and assimilationist policies towards "uncivilized aborigines", especially Māori, see the promising, if somewhat dated, M.A. thesis:
Mark Murphy, "The Peaceable Kingdom of Nineteenth Century Humanitarianism: the Aborigines Protection Society and New Zealand" (2002)
So it's about 15, as I thought. Bosco is right about the need for openness about statistics. If I ran a public enterprise with staff, wages and expenses to worry about (and I was soliciting the public for donations), I would certainly want to know the numbers and not engage in Potemkin church exercises. (I'm sure the accountants do know the figures!) Now what do I recall from 4th Form Social Studies and learning about the parliamentary constituency of Old Sarum? ....
ReplyDeleteAfraid I don't have access to your doubtless excellent dissertation, Mark, so I'm not sure what it is has to do with my question about New Zealand in 2026. All churches change as the population changes; NZ Catholicism, for example, is taking on more of a Filipino (and Vietnamese) complexion, and concerns that once loomed large tend to be left behind. That happens in politics as well as the population changes. In general I've never been much in favour of ethno-centric churches (as you had in South Africa), except as a transitional move of helping immigrants adjust to a new culture where they are not yet at home, linguistically or culturally. The Letter to the Ephesians is big on the one, new society that the Gospel has created, uniting Jews and Gentiles.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Hi William
ReplyDeleteI have no idea re the statistic publishing of any of the Anglican Tikanga but Māori Anglican Churches are a ‘real’ thing. We have one locally, the church land was originally gifted by Māori and several years ago our Parish unable to sustain maintenance and ministry gifted it to the Māori Tikanga arm of the church, they came down from Christchurch and organised the refurbishment of the church and now Rev’d Wendy travels from a nearby township twice a month to hold services there. I last saw her when she did a talk for the local branch of the Bible Society. She balances ministry in two townships and has also filled in for local Tikanga Pakeha Churches when we have been in need over the last year.
Side note: Statistics have their place but what they don’t convey is value and worth. You can have thousands upon thousands of people going to a sports game and 10 at a church service and which has more value? I know a loaded question with multiple answers.
All the best
Hello, Jean,
ReplyDeleteYes, I know they exist; I've been trying to get a picture of their actual size. As far as I can tell, the Anglican Church in NZ has about 540 parishes, with seven regional dioceses and five Maori dioceses and one Polynesian, and the Maori dioceses have up to 20 congregations in total. How many folk in this tikanga? 1000? Five bishops looks a tad generous here. Some openness and transparency about numbers would help would help. Does the tail wag the dog? I recall it used to be an issue when the African Anglican bishops were still going to Lambeth that the rich Americans had 140 bishops and about 600k in church on a Sunday, while the Africans had many more members but proportionately far fewer bishops. So the Lambeth Conference of bishops had a disproportionate presence of rich North Americans and Britons. It's no surprise that the Global South Anglicans have decided to break away from the cultural control of Britons and Americans.
Since 1978, the popes have all been non-Italians - and most recently they have come from South America. Maybe Anglicans could learn from Catholics if they want to restore their communion. But it will take more than just headship.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Dear William
ReplyDeleteThe tone if not the substance of your arithmetical concerns takes no account of the role of the Treaty in the life of our church. from that perspective it matters not what Tikanga Maori numbers are in relation to Pakeha numbers, and it is also not for Tikanga Pakeha to tell Tikanga Maori how many bishops they should have (and vice versa).
In Acts 6, the Jews and Hellenists met the challenge of different people groups in the Christian movement, as ACANZP seeks to do in the Blessed Isles!
Oh it's about the tone and implied direction of your comments, William: belittling Māori for being small ("chaplancies" instead of "churches"), for having resources wasted on them (too many bishops), the implication of facade ("Potemkin villages") and apartheid ("Dutch reformed church...") for a three tikanga structure that is about opposing the colonial assimilationist Christianity of the nineteenth century, an assimilationism that Māori Anglicans have whole-heartedly rejected as racist and harmful.
ReplyDeleteRacist discourse, power, is more effective when it is implied, hidden, unconscious: i.e. you're innocently inquiring into church statistics when otherwise your posts are dripping with racist assumptions and images. But you know this because you know your Foucault, which makes the sin so much graver because it is conscious.
How sad...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/police-recover-body-near-remote-scottish-monastery-where-missing-kiwi-monk-justin-evans-disappeared/E766DGL3JJGPVGTYRTISHZEOO4/
Mark, I know a (very) little Foucault but (as you might guess) rather more Aristotle, specifically here his 'Sophistical Refutations', from which the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem is derived, and its more recent sub-set, Bulverism ('you only say that because ...'). Calling me a 'racist' because I enquire into the empirical reality and outcomes of how NZ's largest Protestant church has organised itself along racial lines might give some emotional satisfaction but it doesn't take away the validity of the questions I asked. And as one who has studied religion in 19th century New Zealand, you yourself might ask how it was that "the colonialist assimilationist Christianity of the nineteenth century" came to be embraced by well over 90% of the Maori tribes (as Anglicans, Catholics and Methodists), but today Maori are the least churched and the least self-described religious ethnicity in NZ today. (I am aware that 'Maori' is a very elastic self-description today.) How did this happen?
ReplyDeleteMy own view is that it is largely a post-1950 phenomenon of urbanisation and the post-1960 sexual revolution that led to an enormous growth in the number of extra-marital births and the terrible impact this had on working class family life. There were always births out of wedlock in the pre-contraception and pre-sexual revolution society but they were much fewer. Today, despite the universal availability of contraception and abortion (one in three pregnancies), about 49% of births in NZ are ex-nuptial; and among Maori children that figure was 80% in 2022 (compared to 28% in 1968). I will not discourse here on the well-known evils of poverty, dependency and fatherlessness on family life (although I grew up under precisely such conditions). I will simply note that the dissociation of marriage from child-rearing is an enormous cause of alienation from organised religion, especially among the working class and the poor. Precisely the same phenomena have been noted in the United States, where marriage is no longer considered a real option for the poor, including many black Americans. The devastating impact on family life and child development hardly needs to underlined - or maybe it does. How did we get to this strange cultural pass? This is where sociologists should have been looking - as well as churches concerned to spread their message of salvation. Time to take off the neo-Marxist glasses.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
With reference to things shared by +Peter and Jean, Mark Clavier's posted an interesting essay today.
ReplyDelete+Peter : "warmly inclusive, broad Anglicanism of the accommodating Church of England" vs "doctrinally sound Church of England spread large upon the world"
Jean : ‘two loudest viewpoints on each end of the spectrum’ likely both include people genuine in their faith and desire to live it out and perhaps the pruning of branches is needed on both sides
Mark Clavier's final two sentences: "We’ve been arguing, with great energy and real pain, about what kind of cross some might have to carry. What we’ve been slower to ask is whether any of us are carrying it — and what it would look like if we were."
at: https://markclavier.substack.com/p/who-carries-the-cross
Hi Elizabeth that was an interesting read both balanced and challenging in so far as to what degree have any of us been focused on lets say the politics of the church but conveniently overlooked the demands, in the grace filled sense, the gospel places on our own lives.
DeleteOh yes!!!! Mark Clavier has uncovered an assumption about Church that is very telling and issues a strong challenge for each of us to consider what sort of gospel I am living. Thanks Elizabeth.
DeleteI will add that the observations and questions I have made about marriage and family life are exactly the same as those made by the distinguished black American historian Thomas Sowell and the Democratic U. S. Senator and former professor of sociology, Daniel Moynihan. If these men are 'racist', that's not such bad company.
ReplyDeleteMight it not also be helpful if people learned to distinguish between biology and culture when using that much abused word 'race'? The two are always being conflated and misunderstood. Biology is natural and morally indifferent, whereas culture is a matter of shared and transmitted practices, beliefs and values, and therefore subject to all kinds of evaluation - and correction. I would be the last person to defend all the cultural practices and beliefs of my ancestors. The Gospel does change people.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
William, you've had your particular childhood experience and it's clearly had much impact on your thinking, understandably so. I don't doubt it's best for children if they're blessed with both parents committed to family life of course, which is wonderful when it works. But if one parent's problematic, the other parent may have to remove themself and their kids from the negative home situation for the health and safety of all concerned. With respect to Black Americans the war on drugs had a big effect on Black males - like over-policing compared to Whites, high incarceration rates, harsher sentencing, etc. There's a lot of systemic issues that need addressing like work and pay, healthcare, education and living environment. Clobbering a particular group of people with criticisms about marriage status doesn't do much to address actual issues of inequity. A positive role model in advocating for poor people is Rev. William Barber II and his moral movement which addresses issues in a more comprehensive way.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, you are missing the elephant in the living room.
ReplyDelete1. The economic and social situation of American blacks was actually steadily improving throughout the 20th century and they were catching up on whites on just about every social indicator you could think of. Thomas Sowell is very clear on this. Segregation and Jim Crow laws were also being dismantled throughout America in the 1950s and the early 1960s, and black Americans were becoming very prominent in politics, almost exclusively in the Democratic Party,. We all remember the soaring rhetoric of Martin Luther King. And then all this progress went into reverse as the births out of wedlock rate - disturbingly high at about 25% circa 1964 - rocketed to over 70% today and the numbers of families on welfare vastly increased as well. All this, even though about half of all black pregnancies end in abortion - a subject on which the black church has nothing to say. And racial disputes broke out in places far from the segregationist South, in Los Angeles, Chicago
2. The connection between fatherlessness and school failure and teen pregnancy is extremely well documented. It is the same across the world.
3. On "over-policing", I don't imagine you would care to live in inner Chicago or St. Louis. It is a simple statistical fact that black males constitute 6% of the US population but are involved in 50% of interactions with the police, frequently violent. Why do you think other minorities, like Jews and Chinese Americans very rarely have interactions with the police? They are not poor - but their great-grandparents were very poor and generally despised immigrants. Family integrity and a huge emphasis on educationalsuccess were the keys to escaping poverty. Now they are among the wealthiest demographics in the US; interestingly, Indians are the richest American demographic today.
4.Crimes of violence, drug dealing, burglary,, robbery and theft are principally a phenomenon of younger men. Teenage males drift into such world after school failure and the absence of a decent father figure who can direct male energies into constructive avenues. Gangs take over the role that fathers should have and An 'entertainment' culture which glamourises 'gangsta'
Hi William
ReplyDeleteIs it possible that you have a notcieably simplistic view of why some people groups in some countries feature more in certain statistics than others?
My own visits to the States have impressed on me the awkward status of African-Americans in US society: not indigenous to the States, not recent migrants, a heritage in slavery, a history in racist laws in some states, only relatively recently repealed, a continuing experience of racism (noting various news items out of the polarised political situation in the USA). Might there just be the teeny tiniest bit of structural challenge for African Americans which other people groups are not facing?
Ditto, for Maori in NZ?
Hi, Peter
ReplyDeleteIs it possible that you have a noticeably simplistic trndency to ignore historical facts and basic social truths about humanity that conflict with a modern liberal narrative? In a secular person that would be understandable but a Christian should have more balance and realism about sinful human nature and a more critical view of culture in all its variety, good and bad.
You don't seem to have grasped the central point I was making, that black Americans (a descriptor almost as elastic as 'Maori', as Maori politicians Shane Jones and David Seymour would doubtless say) were making great progress socially, politically and economically through the 1940s to the mid 1960s when things seemed to go in reverse for them. Why did this happen? Racism is now not only illegal but is considered the No. 1 sin by millions, Jim Crow ended over 60 years ago, Barack Obama was president for 8 years, DEI became the norm with quotas in university admission and employment etc etc. Every liberal structure was tried.
But at the same time, c. 1962 the black American family began to collapse as ex-nuptial births became the overwhelming norm with all the attendant features of this crisis: school failure, intergenerational poverty, gangs, a drug culture. All of this was forseen by Professor, then Senator Daniel Moynihan, who wrote then that the black American family was in grave danger. His prophecy proved correct. Thomas Sowell has also drawn attention to the kind of education he received in an elite black high school in Washington DC in the 1940s compared to the state of education in America today. This is not just a black American thing: overall in the western world, literacy and numeracy standards are poorer than they were 40 years ago, as a simple look at school and university exam papers will show. Admission tests recently given to applicants to elite Californian universities showed the majority couldn't do Year 9 algebra.
I have made all these points before but there is a stubborn refusal to accept that the sexual revolution of the 1960s has encouraged male irresponsibility and abortion, while disastrously disassociating child rearing from marriage and family stability. Pace Elizabeth, It is not "clobbering" people to point out these perennial facts of human nature (read the Book of Proverbs!), anymore than a doctor is "clobbering" her patients by telling them they must stop smoking and lose weight. As someone said, Ditto for Maori in NZ.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Hi William
DeleteLots of things changed for the human race circa 1962/63. But you seem really intent on picking on how African Americans changed then. You seem to have it in for them. And for Maori. Commenters here are noticing you pick on two races. Keep going but do not expect sympathy!
*Richard Shaw's books on his journey to understand colonisation*
ReplyDelete"For the last five years, Massey University academic, Richard Shaw has been writing about the role his family, and the families of others, played in the colonisation of New Zealand.
For Shaw, that includes a great- great-grandfather who was part of the armed constabulary that invaded Parihaka in 1881.
Now he has completed a trilogy with The Good Settler - Essays from other people's lands.
He says many New Zealanders now find themselves standing on what he calls "restless ground," aware of their own ancestor's role in confiscating land.
In these essays he explores how New Zealanders describe themselves and Aotearoa's history."
Interview here:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2019034186/richard-shaw-s-books-on-his-journey-to-understand-colonisation
Great to have that RNZ interview link, Mark. Thanks
DeleteHi William
ReplyDeleteIs your contention that you think the number of Maori Bishops are too many for the number of Maori currently attending an Anglican Church and that the Maori ‘say’ or ‘voice’ therefore in the three Tikanga model is ‘more’ than it proportionally should be? Or that because the Maori Tikanga branch has more Bishops they therefore get a disproportionate amount of the monetary resources allocated to leadership roles?
I am not greatly aware of how General Synod works, however, in regards to representation in many areas I perceive there are more aspects than total numbers alone that influence what is ‘fair’ - for example geographical representation is also important, taking into account that different geographical areas within NZ have different ‘cultures’ and ‘needs’ as do say rural or urban populations.
In respect to Maori at first responding well to the Gospel and then numbers falling away so to speak, from what I can garner the percentage of Maori now associating with Christianity in NZ is pretty much equivalent to the percentage of Pakeha now associating with Christianity in NZ and that both percentages have dropped roughly equally between the 2006 and 2023 census. I say pretty much and roughly because there is approx a 7% differentiation between Maori and Pakeha on this matter. Where did you get the information that Maori are the ‘least churched’ of every ethnicity in NZ from William? It is possible but if so it doesn’t look like by much.
ReplyDeleteHmmm the ‘colonial assimilationist Christianity of the nineteenth century’ existed albeit from my understanding the original COE Anglican missionaries were not of that ‘ilk’ and perhaps that goes a way to explaining the initial uptake of Christianity by the NZ Maori population. I also read once that the Three Tikanga (originally two Tikanga) model has its roots in the CMS that was keen to avoid the conflation of colonialism with Christianity that had happened in other countries. Once more settlers came there is no doubt the dynamics within Christianity as a whole in New Zealand changed, and I would be loathe to call it “colonial assimilationist Christianity” Mark but more that the countries keen to colonise NZ e.g. France or those from where settlers were coming Britain, Scotland had as you would define it William a culture of colonisation at that period in history. And as Christians are not free of being influenced by their surrounding culture this also played out within church bodies.
ReplyDeleteWilliam I think it gets too complicated when you start comparing African Americans with NZ Maori as they are quite distinct ethnic groups influenced by varying historical social factors. The 1960’s social changes the sexual revolution etc influenced all ethnic groups in New Zealand. At this time urbanisation had a distinct influence on the Maori population because they had prior to this time had strong land based family and social structures - so they were facing rapid change in terms of family and tribal connection, language loss (due to government policies), all at the same time as society at large was encountering the sexual revolution and anti-authoritarian attitudes by young people at the time. You could say they got a double whammy in terms of upheaval.
ReplyDeleteThe 1960’s youth it appears were reacting to the contradiction of the 1950’s - a strong emphasis on keeping up appearances in regards to conforming to what was expected of a nuclear family with strong morals alongside what appears to be actions that didn’t always match the appearances such as ignoring social inequality (this especially in the US re slavery) or in Britain class inequality. Apparently this need to keep up appearances (even if not necessarily ) was both a desire for unity after the two world wars and also the perceived threat of communism which was seen to undermine what was understood as western values. I say appearances as there was no less sexual unfaithfulness then than there has been in other times in history and it likely why many people we know now who are older say it was always known which fathers drunk too much or abused their wives or that sexual abuse happened you just looked the other way or it was not considered your business - an attitude I am supposing that likely came from the societal pressure of protecting the family structure no matter what.
It is indeed sad that such times led to the situation we have now in regards to family disintegration and sadder still that society didn’t manage to address the harm of unfaithfulness and abuse while maintaining the importance of family. Also sad that the youth of the 1960’s included the church as one of the institutions in their anti-establishment sentiment although not surprising as the church was (unlike today) very much integrated with society at large.
The good news in this is the church despite of course of multiple failings has for many centuries when adhering to the Gospel had a positive influence on values and morals that enhances the well-being of families and all people and cultures. Patriarchy for example did not stem from Christianity or the Church although it is often associated with it, just as slavery did not stem from Christianity but was a common in most societies; many cultures were patriarchal and some matriarchal, and unfortunately some like the Normans who were very patriarchal continued to be so after they became Christian’s.
ReplyDeleteIn my mind it all goes back to what Elizabeth pointed out earlier - best our efforts are put to each of us individually and as church communities conforming not to this world or our particular cultural backdrops but to the teachings of Christ and with the help of the Holy Spirit working that out in our lives and the world we live. Not ignoring the society we exist in, Christians too as we know from the Bible needed to navigate living in a society where slavery was an engrained institution, however, working always towards ‘the better way’
I don't 'have it in' for anyone, Peter - that is an unworthy ad hominem comment that attacks a supposed (but non-existent) attitude in me while ignoring the very real points I make. Your argument is not with me but with the black American historian Thomas Sowell and the Democratic Senator Daniel Moynihan, who have expressed these ideas far more eloquently and with greater evidence than I could muster. As for the progress (of lack thereof) of Maori in the 1960s compared to steady social, economic, educational and health improvement through the 20th century (when people were often openly racist in speech), this information is from Michael King and more recent data, all it from NZ Government statistics. I don't consider the phenomenon of TPM to be 'progress' for Maori at all. Please point out the errors in my stats or claims about the horrific impact of the sexual revolution on the poor. Play the ball, not the man, Peter!
ReplyDeletePax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Hi William
ReplyDeleteI am referring to the observable fact that not only in this thread but in previous comments through the years, you have focused on the failings within African-American and Maori culture to live well in the modern times of post-war, post 1962/63 times. The impression created is that they are special sinners relative to other people groups around them because somehow in their culture they have made mistakes in either not adjusting or in poor adjustment to changing circumstances in the modern/post modern world. No one is disputing the statistics relevant to the matter, as advanced by learned people. What is being disputed is whether you are being fair to two people groups, and whether you are allowing for structural challenges in society which may mean that the wider societies in the USA and NZ have responsibilities you are not allowing for. Reference to TPM is a distraction - they are not serving Maori well in the present (their history was much better) - and I expect them to be soundly beaten in the next election by Labour candidates.
Then you have misunderstood and misread me. The social outcomes for black Americans and NZ Maoris (overall - but interestingly, NOT Australian-born Maoris, who are pretty prosperous as a community) in recent years are not very different from the poor white working class and underclass (a term I have been criticised for using but it is factual and not a euphemism) - and you can see similar traits in Britain's Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim population when you look at health, school underachievement, dependency on welfare, non-participation in the workforce, income, prison population etc. In fact, there are stark health, wealth and educational differences between Britain's wealthy Indian population and its poor Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations. What further distinguishes the working class British Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim communities from the British mainstream is their ethno-religious identity which imposes very severe sanctions on women who stray sexually - which is why you almost never hear of ex-nuptial births in those communities. There is also a very high level of first cousin marriage among them - 55% of British Pakistanis!!- which reinforces community identity (and a distressingly high level of birth defects). Single parent families exist among them but you pay a very high price for falling foul of an honour/shame culture. It is a very hierarchical world in which the mosque community and endogamy exert strong control.
ReplyDeleteWhat I am saying is that very many NZ Maori and American blacks are very badly served by their prevailing "community leaders" as well as the comparatively recent dissociation of childbirth from marriage. The same problems - poverty, school failure, drug and alcohol abuse, single parent families - afflict poor white people as well, but without religious sanctions against single parent families. Escaping from such a world is not easy - I am glad that we are agreed that TPM have been a dreadful example to Maori and I too hope they are sent packing in the next election.
Maybe you have ideas why NZ and Australian Maoris are doing better across the ditch? Greater freedom to prosper, perhaps- just as Jamaican immigrants to the US do pretty well there, too.
I don't think anyone is "destined to fail". But I do think many prevailing cultures make it hard to succeed and you need to be strong or lucky - or endowed with divine grace - to break free. Culture isn't race. It's a set of practices, not genes,
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
To amplify my last point: there are over 170 000 Maori Australians, both immigrant and native born, and their median income is very close to the national median. This is pretty good, when you consider that Maori employment is concentrated in unskilled or semi-skilled areas (construction, driving, correctional officers etc) - and you can make a good living as a truck driver in SA or WA. Maori Australians also seem to have a higher level of university enrolment than their NZ brethren, so are more likely to enter middle class professions. Of course, migrants are a self-selecting group, often with distinct personal characteristics and ambitions. Breaking out of the herd may be one of these.
ReplyDeleteOne of the dilemmas of New Zealand is that it is a low wage economy with expensive food and electricity and increasingly expensive housing, None of this helps establishing a stable family unit, especially when so many are living on welfare (about 13% of the working age population).
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh