Thursday, October 16, 2008
Schism! Nonjurors of old
The Church has been here before. I am caused to read many texts by the so called nonjuring bishops who ran a perfectly respectable church of their own throughout the eighteenth century. In fact the Church on Seals Island is directly descended from these bishops, as is the Episcopal Church of Scotland. All the literature claims that they died out by the early nineteenth century. Scotland seems to prove otherwise.
The solace we should take from this is that the parallel church in England did indeed wither away (as my friend Karl would say). Actually it was at least three parallel churches eventually: Hard Usagers, Extreme Non-Usagers and the united Faithful Remnant of The Ancient Orthodox Britannic Church. So friends if all this hopping and bobbing about leads to schism watch them tear into each other about which side of the altar to hold communion on, which hymnal to authorise and the correct way to roll your trouser leg up!
Now it's back to the texts.
The solace we should take from this is that the parallel church in England did indeed wither away (as my friend Karl would say). Actually it was at least three parallel churches eventually: Hard Usagers, Extreme Non-Usagers and the united Faithful Remnant of The Ancient Orthodox Britannic Church. So friends if all this hopping and bobbing about leads to schism watch them tear into each other about which side of the altar to hold communion on, which hymnal to authorise and the correct way to roll your trouser leg up!
Now it's back to the texts.
Labels: schism
