Saturday 14 May 2016
Exclusive Brethren
'I've just done a lecture tour in Greece', S.D. told me yesterday. 'The group included some Southern Baptists, Pennsylvania Methodists, a set of Roman Catholic nuns from Australia, and some Canadian Anglicans. Then there was a group from the Anglican Archdiocese of Sydney who brought their own bishop. We all met for Morning Prayer at the start of each day, but they had Fellowship on their own. I thought this was a shame so I suggested the Sydney bishop might like to preside at communion on Ascension Day. "What's Ascension Day?", he said. Well, it commemorates Our Lord ascending to heaven. It's very Bible-based ... "When is it?" he asked. It's Thursday. It's always a Thursday. "No thank you", he said, "We'll keep our own fellowship". So I suggested he might like to preside on Sunday for our closing worship. "No, we prefer to keep our own fellowship." That is, of course, because they are Right and the rest of us are all, in our various ways and fashions, Wrong.'
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Tragic.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't attend any of SD's lectures, either, so they wouldn't have to be exposed to unsound teaching. It makes you wonder why they went on that tour rather than organise their own. A couple of years ago on another such jaunt he met an Ulsterman whose church, this man said, 'regarded Dr Paisley as a dangerous liberal' and who vocally disapproved of music and art in worship when that was *the entire point* of the tour. Perhaps he just went along to be upset. I'm not sure whether I'm more disappointed by that or by a bishop not knowing what Ascension Day is.
DeleteCoda: "I told the nuns they'd all go to Hell for taking communion from me. They laughed"
DeleteHow in hell (as it were) can someone be a bishop and not know what Ascension Day is? Not when - fair play, time rolls by - but what? Even I know that, and I'm almost as far as one could get from being a Bishop.
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