By Gabriel de Arruda Castro
From the altar, priest Aldo Quintão tries to persuade the trustworthy that the Bible must be up to date: “There are passages in the Bible where the man goes there, he can have sex with all his maids.”
“The woman has to put up with it, keep quiet, and stay with him. David, who wrote the Psalms, they say he had a thousand.”
He is corrected by one other priest, who attends the celebration. The priest apologizes. It is Solomon, not David.
But the first error doesn’t appear to embarrass Quintão, who continues making an attempt to exhibit that homosexuality shouldn’t be incompatible with the Bible, regardless of the passages that forbid the follow.
“We have to reread it. Bring it to the present day,” he provides.
A much less attentive listener would have problem understanding whether or not the priest implies that each (gay relations and polygamy) are correct or each are unsuitable.
In a couple of minutes, the trustworthy will kind a line for communion. One of them is carrying shorts and a Nirvana T-shirt.
While the priest serves the bread and wine, a few tuned singers sing “Trem Bala” by Ana Vilela.
It is that track that repeats an Anglicism a dozen occasions (“It’s not about”/”It’s about” within the sense of “What doesn’t matter/What matters”).
The track makes no point out of God or the Bible. The closing piece of the spiritual celebration is Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly With Me,” during which the lyrical self speaks of happening a honeymoon together with his beloved.
It is Feb. 12, 2023. Just one other Sunday at St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral.
GROWING LIBERALISM
Father Quintão’s eccentricity has grow to be commonplace within the Anglican Church, which has undergone a marked means of politicization (to the left) because the mid-Twentieth century.
It is troublesome to separate trigger from consequence, however the truth is that the Church has additionally misplaced most of its trustworthy since then.
Between 1983 and 2011, the variety of Englishmen who recognized as Anglicans went from 40% to twenty%. The decline has grow to be extra pronounced within the final decade.
The Church of William Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis, and Winston Churchill – and England’s monarchs – is unrecognizable.
The newest blow to custom was the acceptance of gay {couples}.
On Feb. 9, the Church accredited a proposal permitting same-sex unions to be celebrated – though it averted calling the blessing a wedding, which might contradict one of many Church’s 39 total articles.
Modifying these articles would contain an extended and extra painful course of.
In the Seventies, the Church started ordaining ladies as monks. Now it’s debated whether or not to make use of impartial language to consult with God as an alternative of the masculine pronouns employed by the Bible.
It is troublesome to know when Anglican theology turned so liberal. It is a incontrovertible fact that within the late nineteenth century, Darwinism got here to have a major affect on British society (Charles Darwin was himself a member of the Church earlier than he misplaced his religion).
Other students attribute the decline to the deep trauma of the Second World War, which took a heavy toll on the British regardless of the Allied victory.
The two processes (liberalization and lack of believers) present no indicators of abating.
GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN
But some are nonetheless combating to revive the Anglican religion to its historic place. One of probably the most seen advocates is Calvin Robinson, a conservative political scientist ordained an Anglican deacon in 2020 when he was over 30.
Robinson has already been interviewed by figures corresponding to Tucker Carlson, a number one viewer on the Fox News channel, and just lately participated in a debate at Oxford University.
After graduating from an Anglican seminary in Oxford, he utilized to take over a parish within the London space however was rejected for his conservative stance.
So he joined the Free Church of England, a type of dissent that follows Anglican ideas however doesn’t reply to the church hierarchy, whose distinguished chief is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Anglican Church got here into being in 1534 when King Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church and “nationalized” the temples in England after being denied the suitable to divorce to remarry.
Still, the establishment had at all times adopted orthodox stances on theology and biblical morality (and even divorce).
But then got here the Twentieth century.
To the Gazeta do Povo, Robinson says that the disfigurement of the Anglican Church turned seen in 1958 when the Anglican Church accepted the usage of contraceptive strategies.
The state of affairs was made worse, he says, with the ordination of girls.
“This was a departure from the Bible and resulted in many liberals infiltrating the Church as it tried to achieve a 50-50 ratio in terms of male and female priests,” he explains.
In his opinion, the Church should return to its custom to cease shrinking. “If the Church of England wants to stop losing members, it must return to the doctrine A church without authority is a church without discipline,” he says.
Robinson is satisfied that the Anglican Church shouldn’t attempt to adapt to the tradition of the second: “Christ’s Church is countercultural because Christ was counter-cultural. He told us to be in the world but not of the world. ”
DISSATISFIED DISSIDENTS
Although it was born in England and carries that heritage in its very identify, the Anglican Church in the present day is extra worldwide than ever.
In 1900, 82 % of Anglicans had been within the United Kingdom. As early as 2005, Africa had grow to be a lot of the Church’s members.
Only 33% of them had been British. And not all bishops across the globe are glad with the liberal stance of the “English Vatican” based mostly in Canterbury.
This month, leaders from nations corresponding to Kenya, Uganda, Chile, and Bangladesh got here out publicly to reject the approval of same-sex unions and are threatening to interrupt with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Reverend Justin Welby.
Like the Church within the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, the Anglican Episcopal Church in Brazil has adopted the extra progressive facet of the dispute.
The liberalism of the Church had already brought about a schism within the final decade.
SECESSION IN BRAZIL
Brazilian Anglicans had their schism in 2005. Some bishops left the Church linked to Canterbury for not agreeing with the flexibilization of the doctrine within the discipline of sexuality – amongst different issues.
Today, they’re a part of the Anglican Church in Brazil (with out the “Episcopal” within the identify), which adopts a agency stance in opposition to abortion and gender ideology.
In an interview with Gazeta do Povo, Bishop Márcio Simões, liable for the Curitiba area, stated that the difficulty of homosexuality is simply the “top of the iceberg”.
He explains, “The issue is theological liberalism and biblical revisionism as one of its children.”
While he admits it could be simpler to create a brand new denomination that was not Anglican, he says, “it makes no sense for the majority to leave and let a minority deny the Holy Scriptures.”
Simoes, who just lately baptized a gaggle of refugees from Islamic nations, says his denomination has grown mainly amongst younger individuals whereas the extra liberal branches of Anglicanism decline.
“Communion is unlikely to return to what it once was. The breakdown of communion is inevitable due to theological liberalism, especially in the United States, Canada, England, and Brazil,” he analyzes.
Father Aldo Quintão doesn’t appear fearful in regards to the world disaster of the Anglican Church. Vain shows photographs and movies with well-known individuals like Silvio Santos, actress Paloma Duarte, and singer Paulo Ricardo on the Anglican Cathedral of São Paulo’s web site.
For having a extra versatile perspective in direction of divorced individuals (and, extra just lately, homosexuals), the Brazilian Anglicans have at all times been sought out by well-known individuals trying to get married for the second (or third) time.
Among them was Pelé, who married Assíria Nascimento in an Anglican temple.
In the UK, regardless of being conscious that the prognosis for the Anglicans shouldn’t be the most effective, Robinson shouldn’t be considering of becoming a member of the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, or some other Protestant church.
Why?
Because he’s English. “Anglicanism is the English expression of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith. I love my Orthodox and Catholic brethren, but I don’t see the need to move away from the tradition I was born into.”
WHAT IS ANGLICANISM?
Anglicanism is a denomination inside Christianity that originated in England through the sixteenth century.
It is also referred to as the Episcopal Church in some nations. The Anglican Communion contains church buildings in numerous nations with the identical historic roots and beliefs.
The origins of Anglicanism may be traced again to the English Reformation, which started within the sixteenth century when King Henry VIII of England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church.
The Church of England was established as a separate entity with the monarch as the top of the church as an alternative of the pope.
Anglicanism is characterised by numerous beliefs and practices starting from excessive church (extra conventional and ceremonial) to low church (extra casual and evangelical). Anglican worship typically contains the Book of Common Prayer, a set of liturgies and prayers utilized in church buildings.
Anglicans consider within the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), the authority of the Bible, the significance of sacraments (particularly baptism and the Eucharist), and the historic creeds of the Christian religion (such because the Nicene Creed).
Today, Anglicanism is a world denomination with members in lots of nations worldwide. The Anglican Communion contains over 85 million members in 165 nations.
With info from Gazeta do Povo