The Word From Seals Island

Piltdown Theological Institute

2011-01-26T13:01:00.002Z

Schism! Nonjurors of old

2008-10-16T22:26:00.004+01:00

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.

George Herbert: The British Church

2008-07-19T16:53:00.008+01:00

Here is a Podcast for Lambeth. A reading of George Herbert's The British Church. I suspect it was made some time in the fifties or sixties for religious broadcasting either in England or for the colonies. I am not sure it was ever actually aired. There is no video after the station ident. I have only managed to get this much scanned in. There is a brief introduction to the poem followed by a reading of it. Missing from this scan is his interpretation and (would you believe it?) another reading of the same poem. All this is accompanied by stills of churches in glorious black and white. This is the kind of crap telly I grew up with!

Hopefully I can get the full thing scanned in soon. Sorry about the limitations but I wanted it up for Lambeth.

The Non-Jurors' Cypher

2007-02-19T17:04:00.000Z

I am reading the brand new book by Paul Deacon. It's a glorious page-turner! Literally begging for a high-court injunction against it.

The Non-Jurors' Cypher
by Paul Deacon
http://uk.geocities.com/seals_island/siup/cypher.html
A thousand eyes seem to be watching when the chaplain of a small, renowned church library in North Wales is found murdered in the creaking wooden upper balcony of the stacks, mysteriously holding a copy of Burgon's nineteenth-century Lives of Ten Good Men. What does the young investigating local Constable Rhys Campbell know of the connections between this library and the secret non-jurors, a society of underground bishops who hold the line of apostolic succession going back to the time of the exiled King James III? Will the theological mysteries of this secretive continuing Anglican sect be revealed? Are these men and women willing to kill for their beliefs regarding the hypostatic union? How have their mysterious consecrations been continued to this day? Who in the present Anglican hierarchy ranks amongst their number? PC Campbell teams up with the Rev. Dr. Daniel Lastrada, lecturer in Secret Church History at Piltdown Theological Institute as they race across the country-side on Connect Trains and a trusty Hillman Imp to unearth the challenging secrets left behind by one of the sect's secret bishops, the Co. Offaly postmaster and author, Anthony Trollope. Can this couple defeat the forces of evil ranged against them in the form of the conservative and rigid sect Forward in Faith that commands frighteningly unflinching allegiance from its adherents?
"Literally begging for a court case"
Jack Stortford, Former Bishop of Calais in Europe

Simon Magus Campaign

2007-01-10T15:09:00.000Z

Bishop Beaver College is pleased to announce the beginning of its profile enhancing public campaign named after St. Simon the Great, Bishop of Gitta. An early follower of Philip, there is an account of his baptism in Acts 8.

Simon Magus recognised the pressing need for funding in the early church, and having a good sense of viable marketing strategies, he suggested immediately upon his baptism that the Apostles put their minds to fund-raising activities. Since that early time internal fund-raising strategies associated with the granting of particular ecclesiastic positions have been unfailingly associated with Simon Magus. It is believed that Simon Magus was influential on the early theologians St. Valentinus and St. Marcion.

We at Bishop Beaver College and the nascent Diocese of Seals Island and the Goodwin Sands embrace the zeal for the spirit combined with financial acumen expressed by this early convert and launch our 2007 Campaign under the watchful eye of Simon Magus. We hope that the Simon Magus Campaign will prove a model for church groups around the world to raise Christian awareness and funds without the stifling apprehensions about money that Christian groups have characteristically expressed.

Archdeacon Dr. Edwin Puney has agreed to head this campaign, and he will shortly be announcing extensive plans to expand the number of Canons Peculiar at St. Marcion, the Chapel Royal in Diddlinghoe on Seals Island. By including our ecclesiastical friends from around the world as Honorary Canons Peculiar we hope that the Simon Magus Campaign will snowball into an ecclesiastical pyramid scheme unlike the penny-pinching Cathedral entrance fee schemes floated so far. I am sure that the Simon Magus Campaign will become a veritable paradigm of fund- and spirit-raising in an exchange worthy of its patron.

Prof. Rev. Vera Calico
Vice Chancellor of Bishop Beaver College and
Chair of the British Institute for Life Enhancement

Acts: 8:20. Pecunia tua tecum sit in perditionem quoniam donum Dei existimasti pecunia possideri

Dr. Michael Walsh Appointed Lawn Chair in Outdoor Musical Performance

2007-01-07T15:57:00.000Z

Bishop Beaver College is pleased to announce that Michael Walsh, DMus, (Prune) DLitt (Knightsbridge), ThD (Geneva Theological College), GTCL, FTCL, FCCM and Registrar of the Metropolitan College of Music has generously accepted appointment to the Lawn Chair in Outdoor Musical Performance. The announcement of this appointment has been delayed while the governing Abdominal Board of the College was overcome by the spirit of the Season. Now that we are able to write feria once again and that our minds once overwhelmed by the spirit, are now clear again we are happy to welcome our new colleague on board. This Professorship is one of the most prestigious musical chairs in the south of England and we are honoured that our distinguished colleague has accepted the appointment.

A Conference?

2006-12-09T18:30:00.000Z

The British Institute for Life Enhancement held a very animated meeting last week in which we all awarded ourselves fabulous awards. We did however decide to explore a much more beneficial scheme to co-sponsor a conference on Christian Mission and the Internet. It was actually my good idea to do that and it will help me enhance my profile as an academic to bring this conference together under the auspices of the two bodies I run: the British Institute for Life Enhancement and Bishop Beaver College. Oh, I am so fabulous and I have such fabulous ideas!

Global Warming: Rita, Katrina and the College Cactus Garden

2005-09-23T18:56:00.000+01:00

Bishop Albert Heeman of Ashdown Forest came to Seals Island in the summer to open the new cactus garden at the College. We had a hell of a time growing anything on the land: it's reclaimed from the Chanel and has been under salt water for about 300 years off and on. We were able to restore the house behind which must have been new at the time of Seals Island's innundation. The severe drought in the south of England has meant that Seals Island has dried out and a lot more ground has been reclaimed. I'm the one on the far right carrying the holy water (see yesterday's blog).
It was really hot this summer, but thankfully we have the sea. Clearly it's global warming that causes all these changes, but I hear hardly anything about that from America.

A Call to Spritual Orthodoxy

2005-09-22T20:12:00.000+01:00

Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life. Jn 8:13-14

The powerful scriptural message of embracing the completely fulfilling spirit of Christ was delivered by Jesus to a Samaritan woman. The Samaritans were the descendants of the remnant Jews who had stayed behind during the Babylonian captivity of the upper class Jews. The Samaritans had built their own temple and had developed traditions and practices no longer entirely like those the upper class Jews had maintained while detained in Babylon. When the descendants of the well-to-do Jews returned they came to Jerusalem to build a new temple and they found peoples in Israel whom they rejected as being insufficiently observant and unscriptural in their Judaism and they labelled them unclean people with whom one should avoid communication.

Peter Akinola the Archbishop of Nigeria has similarly withdrawn communion with Canterbury and the Episcopal Church in the United States. He regards the failure of the House of Bishops of the Church of England and of ECUSA to condemn homosexuality outright to be sufficient grounds to call them unclean and consequently he has cut off connection. Akinola has recently even gone so far as to have all mention of the See of Canterbury eliminated in the Anglican Church in Nigeria.

Akinola has missed Christ's message to the Samaritian woman. It's appropriate in our daily lives to concern ourselves bout material and immediate issues such as the ills of society. We must drink from the well and it will quench our thirst. But Christ has come to us to offer a deeper, more heady draught that will reach out and quench us and others for ever...to eternal life. Christ chooses one of the unclean ones to give this message to. He did not say: "Arise Samaritan woman, I have made you a proper Jew; go forth and be happy." No, instead she remained who she was, and yet she was given the spiritual water that equipped her to reach out to others. So by Jewish laws (the Jewish scriptures we know as the Old Testament) this woman was not regarded as clean, but for Christ she was good enough to receive the living water and to take that out into the community as a proclaimer of Christ. The Samaritan woman calls all the people of the town together; she is Christ's follower and she is a minister calling a people together in his name to learn of the spirit. All this happened before the Pentecost and yet it prefigured that descending of the Holy Spirit. This Samaritan woman accepted the Spirit as did the men and women gathered at that Pentecost and she is truly apostolic in her witness and in her reaching out to others.

The Christian's goal should be to emulate Christ. Christ's message is spiritual and he does not want any mistakes to be made about that. He calls all sorts of people to gather others together in his name. The disciples were horrified that Jesus spoke to a Samaritan and a woman at that. She was a powerful and faithful servant, just as she was. We need to make sure we can hear Christ's spiritual message clearly. If we try to block out voices because they do not conform to our preconceived ideas about what kinds of things are right and wrong, then we will be behaving like those who rejected Christ's message. Faithfulness to the spiritual message is an absolute and not a relative demand. We can't just say 'I will not listen to Christ's message here because this man or woman is unclean in my eyes.' The message of Christ is strong spiritual water and like the Samaritan woman it can be magnified through voices we might not be expecting. Do not bother with the water that will leave you thirsty again. Drink of that deeper spiritual well that will quench you unto everlasting life. If the spirit is there, it will well up and be available to others. It's a travesty of Christianity to relativise the spirit and to reject the spirit when Christ offers. We need to be radical in our spiritual orthodoxy, and we must resist the temptation to label and reject others for our personal comfort.

Radical moral condemnation runs entirely counter to the radical spiritual orthodoxy to which Christ calls us.

Vera

"A generation of bastards"

2005-09-19T18:56:00.000+01:00

With logic that can only be described as bizarre, the Archbishop of Nigeria, the Most Revd Peter Akinola has blamed the supposed generational malaise of illegitimacy on lesbianism, divorce and homosexuality. It seems to me that people who have divorced have usually had their children, or at least they are the marrying types, and thus can rarely be blamed for illegitimate children. The biblical argument with homosexuality lies in the condemnation of particular sexual acts, and logic commands that those don't produce children either. I quote Archbishop Akinola from this week's Church Times: "Homosexuality and lesbianism, like divorce, breed a society of single parents which gives rise to a generation of bastards."
Of course, reason and logic are abandoned in arguments designed for emotive effect. Vituperative statements such as these are designed to shore up a bankrupt value system fraught with contradictions and characterised by self-satisfied conceit. The good Archbishop has abandoned Christian humility and love of neighbour in favour of invective. The Most Revd Peter Akinola, prophesies "much terror to the peace and stability of the society" from these modern sexual ills, but he is no Cassandra and is much more like Prokofiev's Peter. Why give such ill service to the church?
Let the title speak for the image. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

(PS: The caption competition was won by Canon Leni)

2005-09-19T18:40:00.000+01:00

Prof. Revd. Vera Calico