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Post by gwynthegriff on Sept 4, 2021 17:38:54 GMT
So reminiscent of my childhood in nonconformist North Wales. 40 regular worshippers split between Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist (Calvinist), Methodist (Wesleyan) - four congregations and four buildings. Dafydd Iwan (former Plaid Cymru bigwig) even had a song lyric for any suggestion of amalgamating: "Pawb o'r capel nesa' yn dod i capel ni" = Everybody from the next chapel coming to our chapel (Oh, and some denominations would have two chapels, one for each language) Were the Baptists primitive? Yes, they dunked people in water! (The distinctions between denominations seemed to be based on habit rather than theology. When I asked, as a child, what was the difference between us (Congregationalists) and Methodists I was told that we sang "Nazareth to the Cross" whereas they sang "Bethlehem to the Cross" (it may have been the other way round). And they sang their hymns to a slower tempo.) |
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Post by yellowperil on Sept 4, 2021 17:46:37 GMT
So reminiscent of my childhood in nonconformist North Wales. 40 regular worshippers split between Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist (Calvinist), Methodist (Wesleyan) - four congregations and four buildings. Dafydd Iwan (former Plaid Cymru bigwig) even had a song lyric for any suggestion of amalgamating: "Pawb o'r capel nesa' yn dod i capel ni" = Everybody from the next chapel coming to our chapel (Oh, and some denominations would have two chapels, one for each language) Were the Baptists primitive? I thought it was Methodists who were Primitive and Baptists who were Strict ( and peculiar , as in the boast "We are a Peculiar People")? Eileen in her early years was a Strict Baptist so that's how I remember it. Or is this a Welsh thing? (Eileen's religious progression was from Strict Baptist>mainstream Baptist>Congregationalist> mainstream Anglican, becoming the lay representative on the Committee on Liturgy at Canterbury diocese. I always thought she might end up with the Romans.) |
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Post by John Chanin on Sept 4, 2021 17:48:10 GMT
Ebbsfleet is a very strange place to have a bishop It's a suffragan bishop with a nominal see to title a flying bishop rather than an area bishop and the post was specifically created to handle parishes opposed to ordinating women. The Bishop of Richborough was created the following year for the same reason and has also seen one incumbent resign to convert to Roman Catholicism. I suppose they wanted places in the Diocese of Canterbury (east Kent) that were not otherwise in use and neither of these is exactly a bustling metropolis. Surely a flying bishop in Kent should be named after Manston |
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Post by finsobruce on Sept 4, 2021 17:49:36 GMT
Were the Baptists primitive? I thought it was Methodists who were Primitive and Baptists who were Strict ( and peculiar , as in the boast "We are a Peculiar People")? Eileen in her early years was a Strict Baptist so that's how I remember it. Or is this a Welsh thing? (Eileen's religious progression was from Strict Baptist>mainstream Baptist>Congregationalist> mainstream Anglican, becoming the lay representative on the Committee on Liturgy at Canterbury diocese. I always thought she might end up with the Romans.) i think there were primitive Baptists as well... some split over something.. And don't forget Ebenezer! |
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Post by finsobruce on Sept 4, 2021 17:51:22 GMT
It's a suffragan bishop with a nominal see to title a flying bishop rather than an area bishop and the post was specifically created to handle parishes opposed to ordinating women. The Bishop of Richborough was created the following year for the same reason and has also seen one incumbent resign to convert to Roman Catholicism. I suppose they wanted places in the Diocese of Canterbury (east Kent) that were not otherwise in use and neither of these is exactly a bustling metropolis. Surely a flying bishop in Kent should be named after Manston Maybe they wanted to keep a Lydd on it? |
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Post by yellowperil on Sept 4, 2021 17:55:34 GMT
Ebbsfleet is a very strange place to have a bishop Ebbsfleet is where Augustine first landed in England- the Thanet one, not the one with the international station. I'm not sure which Ebbsfleet the Bishop was supposedly of, but it was a purely titular name for the flying bishop ministering to the discontents. |
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Post by gwynthegriff on Sept 4, 2021 18:09:49 GMT
I thought it was Methodists who were Primitive and Baptists who were Strict ( and peculiar , as in the boast "We are a Peculiar People")? Eileen in her early years was a Strict Baptist so that's how I remember it. Or is this a Welsh thing? (Eileen's religious progression was from Strict Baptist>mainstream Baptist>Congregationalist> mainstream Anglican, becoming the lay representative on the Committee on Liturgy at Canterbury diocese. I always thought she might end up with the Romans.) i think there were primitive Baptists as well... some split over something.. And don't forget Ebenezer! Primitive Baptists seem a largely US thing. They split from mainstream Baptistry because they considered such things as seminaries, bible societies, missionary societies, Sunday schools and musical instruments in services to have no basis in New Testament teachings. So they don't have them, or support them. They don't sound a bundle of laughs to be honest. But, each to their own. |
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andrea
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Post by andrea on Sept 4, 2021 18:46:23 GMT
How is the system organised? Territory divided in parish and nothing more? How large are parishes on average? Does it vary significantly between areas? Have there been attempts to put together parishes? Can more churches depend from a single parish? Quite common for several churches to have a team ministry with one or two priests handling several church buildings and alternating services, especially in rural areas. The problem is partly that many buildings are old, listed and therefore difficult to close as the building will be harder to sell, and partially that differences in worship styles mean that churches are not interchangable - close an Anglo-Catholic parish and the congregation will not be happy to go to the evangelical parish down the road. Thanks. Is there also a lack of available priests other than diminishing churchgoers? As I live in a Catholic Church dominated country, we have also attempts to create "teams". One of the main reasons of creating "pastoral units" combining more parishes has been the lack of priests. Well, I guess the chastity vow contribute to that while it is not an issues for Anglicans priests. With the "pastoral units" system, the old parishes would continue to exist but there is only one priest formally holding all the communities within. He has some other priests (who don't hold the position of parish priests) helping him. How much tied these units are varies a lot. In some the priests assigned rotate between the parishes within the pastoral unit; in others they all live in different parishes (which are often in different municipalities) and they don't interact so much with the churchgoers outside the specific parishes where they live or serve regularly. However, thanks to this system, they avoided to redesign boundaries of the parish. However, some effectively exist only on paper without any resident priest. In RC Church, bishops often move priests around. Sometimes local communities lead some resistance to these changes. But that's usually why bishops do it, to avoid the risk of creating local fiefdoms. There has been some nasty fights in some occasions over appointments. One in Venice took much media attention. It run for years and ended with a dismissal from the priesthood. |
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Post by Defenestrated Fipplebox on Sept 4, 2021 18:55:46 GMT
Diminishing churchgoers. For some reason this reminded me of the Mrs Pepperpot books. Now I'm imaging all the congregation shrunk down to that size. 😀
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CatholicLeft
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2032 posts until I was "accidentally" deleted.
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Post by CatholicLeft on Sept 4, 2021 19:08:12 GMT
Were the Baptists primitive? I thought it was Methodists who were Primitive and Baptists who were Strict ( and peculiar , as in the boast "We are a Peculiar People")? Eileen in her early years was a Strict Baptist so that's how I remember it. Or is this a Welsh thing? (Eileen's religious progression was from Strict Baptist>mainstream Baptist>Congregationalist> mainstream Anglican, becoming the lay representative on the Committee on Liturgy at Canterbury diocese. I always thought she might end up with the Romans.) Strict and Particular, not Peculiar. As I have mentioned elsewhere, when I was in Accrington the Strict and Particular Baptist Chapel had a sign saying "not associated with the Strict and Particlar Baptist Chapel Boot Way, Burnley". We used to call them the Strict and Very Particular Baptists. |
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andrea
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Post by andrea on Sept 4, 2021 19:17:26 GMT
Diminishing churchgoers. For some reason this reminded me of the Mrs Pepperpot books. Now I'm imaging all the congregation shrunk down to that size. 😀 And now I have childhood memories of the opening song of the Japanese anime on Mrs Pepperpot |
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Post by yellowperil on Sept 4, 2021 19:20:22 GMT
How is the system organised? Territory divided in parish and nothing more? How large are parishes on average? Does it vary significantly between areas? Have there been attempts to put together parishes? Can more churches depend from a single parish? Quite common for several churches to have a team ministry with one or two priests handling several church buildings and alternating services, especially in rural areas. The problem is partly that many buildings are old, listed and therefore difficult to close as the building will be harder to sell, and partially that differences in worship styles mean that churches are not interchangable - close an Anglo-Catholic parish and the congregation will not be happy to go to the evangelical parish down the road. I can give a rural example from my own parish. When I came to Pluckley it was a parish in its own right, a village of about 1000 total population, with two churches, the parish church and a Victorian mission church near the station and brickworks. There was a full time Rector, but the parish church was quite woeful - our family arriving doubled the congregation at a stroke. Actually the Victorian mission church did rather better, and there was also a Methodist chapel, but even so the total weekly congregation from 3 buildings was certainly less than 30,or 3% of the population. Now only the parish church survives, but it gets more than the three got in the 1970s, to put that in perspective. We no longer have a rector of our own, and there have been a series of mergers so that first we became a joint parish with Egerton, then a group of 7 parishes in one benefice, officially named the G7, istaking in Charing, Charing Heath, Little Chart, Hothfield and Westwell, and a couple of years ago six of the seven became the Parish of Calehill, and the benefice is now Calehill with Westwell. Officinados of local government reorganisation will spot familiar things in all this. The compromise name for the new parish is the old name for the Hundred, and the important point is that it was Not Charing , the name of the largest village. The benefice continues to run 7 churches, one in each village, for a total population of about 8000, though not every village quite manages a service every week, and on 5th Sundays in the month we have one benefice service which rotates, so that just about means once a year each church hosts a benefice service. I have seen the recently published average weekly attendance figures for the benefice which were a bit frightening - only about 150 for the whole benefice,so only an average of a bit over 20 per church, with Pluckley actually still the best at mid-30s. That doesn't count children, and avoids the main festivals and special services , so that is the basic minimum.It being the C of E the church is ministering, or at least attempting to minister, to the whole population of 8000, not just the core weekly attendance of 150 or whatever. There is of course an intermediate count of those on the electoral rolls, the actual membership- I haven't seen a recent figure but I guess that's about 400 for the benefice or about 5% of the population. We now have one full time Rector (F), recently appointed, a few ( I think now 4) retired clergy (2M,2F)helping out with odd services, 2 Lay Readers (2M),one level below ordination, and I lose count of how many lay ministers of various sorts, with specified limited roles and one level below Readership. I think it might be currently 7 (1M,6F). We currently have no curate, i. e, ordained minister in training- we did for many years and that may resume once the new Rector has settled into her post. Higher up the chain we have the Archdeacon (Darren,of Ashford)-we saw a lot of him while we were without our own incumbent, the Bishop (Rose, of Dover), and then of course the Archbishop (Justin. of Canterbury). All of whom have popped by at some stage. It is worth pointing out that in rural areas like this the C of E is the Church . There is one small Methodist chapel in Charing and an even smaller Free Church in Egerton, each with total attendances in single figures, and there are no other congregations- no Catholics for instance, any RCs will have to migrate out of the area to Ashford or Maidstone or Tenterden. |
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Post by yellowperil on Sept 4, 2021 19:30:42 GMT
I thought it was Methodists who were Primitive and Baptists who were Strict ( and peculiar , as in the boast "We are a Peculiar People")? Eileen in her early years was a Strict Baptist so that's how I remember it. Or is this a Welsh thing? (Eileen's religious progression was from Strict Baptist>mainstream Baptist>Congregationalist> mainstream Anglican, becoming the lay representative on the Committee on Liturgy at Canterbury diocese. I always thought she might end up with the Romans.) Strict and Particular, not Peculiar. As I have mentioned elsewhere, when I was in Accrington the Strict and Particular Baptist Chapel had a sign saying "not associated with the Strict and Particlar Baptist Chapel Boot Way, Burnley". We used to call them the Strict and Very Particular Baptists. I have come across Strict and Particular as well, but I can assure you some also proudly announced they were Peculiar. |
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iang
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Post by iang on Sept 4, 2021 20:29:53 GMT
I think Strict and Particular refer to Calvinist and Arminian theology, ie predestination versus free will.
Isn't there a joke about the Welsh man stranded on a desert island who when rescued, has built two chapels. One that he goes to and one that he doesn't.
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Post by gwynthegriff on Sept 4, 2021 20:44:29 GMT
Quite common for several churches to have a team ministry with one or two priests handling several church buildings and alternating services, especially in rural areas. The problem is partly that many buildings are old, listed and therefore difficult to close as the building will be harder to sell, and partially that differences in worship styles mean that churches are not interchangable - close an Anglo-Catholic parish and the congregation will not be happy to go to the evangelical parish down the road. I can give a rural example from my own parish. When I came to Pluckley it was a parish in its own right, a village of about 1000 total population, with two churches, the parish church and a Victorian mission church near the station and brickworks. There was a full time Rector, but the parish church was quite woeful - our family arriving doubled the congregation at a stroke. Actually the Victorian mission church did rather better, and there was also a Methodist chapel, but even so the total weekly congregation from 3 buildings was certainly less than 30,or 3% of the population. Now only the parish church survives, but it gets more than the three got in the 1970s, to put that in perspective. We no longer have a rector of our own, and there have been a series of mergers so that first we became a joint parish with Egerton, then a group of 7 parishes in one benefice, officially named the G7, istaking in Charing, Charing Heath, Little Chart, Hothfield and Westwell, and a couple of years ago six of the seven became the Parish of Calehill, and the benefice is now Calehill with Westwell. Officinados of local government reorganisation will spot familiar things in all this. The compromise name for the new parish is the old name for the Hundred, and the important point is that it was Not Charing , the name of the largest village. The benefice continues to run 7 churches, one in each village, for a total population of about 8000, though not every village quite manages a service every week, and on 5th Sundays in the month we have one benefice service which rotates, so that just about means once a year each church hosts a benefice service. I have seen the recently published average weekly attendance figures for the benefice which were a bit frightening - only about 150 for the whole benefice,so only an average of a bit over 20 per church, with Pluckley actually still the best at mid-30s. That doesn't count children, and avoids the main festivals and special services , so that is the basic minimum.It being the C of E the church is ministering, or at least attempting to minister, to the whole population of 8000, not just the core weekly attendance of 150 or whatever. There is of course an intermediate count of those on the electoral rolls, the actual membership- I haven't seen a recent figure but I guess that's about 400 for the benefice or about 5% of the population. We now have one full time Rector (F), recently appointed, a few ( I think now 4) retired clergy (2M,2F)helping out with odd services, 2 Lay Readers (2M),one level below ordination, and I lose count of how many lay ministers of various sorts, with specified limited roles and one level below Readership. I think it might be currently 7 (1M,6F). We currently have no curate, i. e, ordained minister in training- we did for many years and that may resume once the new Rector has settled into her post. Higher up the chain we have the Archdeacon (Darren,of Ashford)-we saw a lot of him while we were without our own incumbent, the Bishop (Rose, of Dover), and then of course the Archbishop (Justin. of Canterbury). All of whom have popped by at some stage. It is worth pointing out that in rural areas like this the C of E is the Church . There is one small Methodist chapel in Charing and an even smaller Free Church in Egerton, each with total attendances in single figures, and there are no other congregations- no Catholics for instance, any RCs will have to migrate out of the area to Ashford or Maidstone or Tenterden. Of course combining parishes, their buildings and their congregations can cause further problems. One of my former (civil) parishes combined with three other (Anglican) parishes to create what was called the Cross Country Team Parish (IIRC). There was a huge row over . . . well, something, which led to a fissure not in the administration of the Parish itself, but in the production of the Parish magazine! Which for several months appeared in two forms, each representing two of the four parishes. Which, given the difficulties in recruiting a single editor for the thing seemed bizarre even for rural village discord. |
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Post by yellowperil on Sept 4, 2021 21:01:12 GMT
I can give a rural example from my own parish. When I came to Pluckley it was a parish in its own right, a village of about 1000 total population, with two churches, the parish church and a Victorian mission church near the station and brickworks. There was a full time Rector, but the parish church was quite woeful - our family arriving doubled the congregation at a stroke. Actually the Victorian mission church did rather better, and there was also a Methodist chapel, but even so the total weekly congregation from 3 buildings was certainly less than 30,or 3% of the population. Now only the parish church survives, but it gets more than the three got in the 1970s, to put that in perspective. We no longer have a rector of our own, and there have been a series of mergers so that first we became a joint parish with Egerton, then a group of 7 parishes in one benefice, officially named the G7, istaking in Charing, Charing Heath, Little Chart, Hothfield and Westwell, and a couple of years ago six of the seven became the Parish of Calehill, and the benefice is now Calehill with Westwell. Officinados of local government reorganisation will spot familiar things in all this. The compromise name for the new parish is the old name for the Hundred, and the important point is that it was Not Charing , the name of the largest village. The benefice continues to run 7 churches, one in each village, for a total population of about 8000, though not every village quite manages a service every week, and on 5th Sundays in the month we have one benefice service which rotates, so that just about means once a year each church hosts a benefice service. I have seen the recently published average weekly attendance figures for the benefice which were a bit frightening - only about 150 for the whole benefice,so only an average of a bit over 20 per church, with Pluckley actually still the best at mid-30s. That doesn't count children, and avoids the main festivals and special services , so that is the basic minimum.It being the C of E the church is ministering, or at least attempting to minister, to the whole population of 8000, not just the core weekly attendance of 150 or whatever. There is of course an intermediate count of those on the electoral rolls, the actual membership- I haven't seen a recent figure but I guess that's about 400 for the benefice or about 5% of the population. We now have one full time Rector (F), recently appointed, a few ( I think now 4) retired clergy (2M,2F)helping out with odd services, 2 Lay Readers (2M),one level below ordination, and I lose count of how many lay ministers of various sorts, with specified limited roles and one level below Readership. I think it might be currently 7 (1M,6F). We currently have no curate, i. e, ordained minister in training- we did for many years and that may resume once the new Rector has settled into her post. Higher up the chain we have the Archdeacon (Darren,of Ashford)-we saw a lot of him while we were without our own incumbent, the Bishop (Rose, of Dover), and then of course the Archbishop (Justin. of Canterbury). All of whom have popped by at some stage. It is worth pointing out that in rural areas like this the C of E is the Church . There is one small Methodist chapel in Charing and an even smaller Free Church in Egerton, each with total attendances in single figures, and there are no other congregations- no Catholics for instance, any RCs will have to migrate out of the area to Ashford or Maidstone or Tenterden. Of course combining parishes, their buildings and their congregations can cause further problems. One of my former (civil) parishes combined with three other (Anglican) parishes to create what was called the Cross Country Team Parish (IIRC). There was a huge row over . . . well, something, which led to a fissure not in the administration of the Parish itself, but in the production of the Parish magazine! Which for several months appeared in two forms, each representing two of the four parishes. Which, given the difficulties in recruiting a single editor for the thing seemed bizarre even for rural village discord. Parish Magazines are another thing altogether! I have to say we have totally failed to even get started on a single parish magazine for the ecclesiastical parish of Calehill - we are producing a single church newssheet for the parish , available at each church or online, but the village magazines ( I think there are 4 of those) are community journals- ours now covers Pluckley and Little Chart and is edited from Little Chart and has minimal church involvement, I would say its focus was on local history, and is available on subscription or through the village shops. The old parish magazine which used to cover Pluckley and Egerton from the days when they were a combined parish and used to be delivered ( we used to have a round delivering about 40 of those) is sadly now defunct. |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Sept 4, 2021 21:27:15 GMT
I studied with the writer of this tweet. I am surprised to see him emerge as a religion correspondent! |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Sept 4, 2021 21:38:11 GMT
How many more ecclesiastical defections of this type are we likely to see this decade? The Church of England is falling apart at the seams; whilst the Roman Catholic Church is not that prominent in Britain at least its worshipper base is more stable than the CofE's, which has been in freefall the past 3 decades. Probably even longer than that. CofE attendance was pretty poor even before the 1970s. I remember my dad saying that you'd basically bin it off once your kids were all confirmed and that was the late 60s. Wasn't there a large drop in attendance after the Great War? |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Sept 4, 2021 21:39:48 GMT
Wasn't Anna of the Five Towns a Primitive Baptist? Or a Primitive Methodist?
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Sept 4, 2021 21:54:23 GMT
Do the Catholics still take defectors at the same rank, so a defecting bishop becomes an RC bishop? Something to do with the descent of hands from St. Peter.
No, as there was a Bull called Apostolicae Curiae issued in 1896 that declared Anglican Orders "absolutely null and utterly void" , this was due to the Elizabethan liturgical reforms. Reordination is required but, since there are many bishops and priests of the Anglican Church who have been consecrated by members of the Church of Utrecht, whose orders are recognised, the church sometimes "conditionally" ordained (see the exam of Graham Leonard, former Bishop of London, who became a Catholic Priest in 1994). All married former C of E bishops cannot serve as bishops in the RC Church due to the tradition of the Eastern and Western Churches that Bishops should always be celibate. This is a very brief précis. Somewhat ironic, seeing as the Bible records that St Peter had a mother-in-law. |
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