Membership

Hi, I just observed that the last new member joined the site on the 18th of September 2019, some nine months ago. Prior to that I had a feeling we were gaining a couple or a few new members each month. Whilst some walked with us for a while, and some hardly at all, and some have battled on regardless.

I guess there are a number of questions:

1. Primarily do we understand why?
2. Do we think that this is a problem?
3. Has there been some sort of change that has had this as an unintended consequence?

In all honesty I don't know that I want to see all sorts and sods joining the site promoting all manner of novelle opinions, but neither do I want to see it become a holy huddle of the elect where every other person is disenfranchised and unvoiced.

I wondered if it was the advent of https, but I think that was about a year before, and I wondered if it was about the High Commision debate over an Anglican Badge, but that too was about a year before. Is it because our discussions have ceased generating interest of those outside? Is it because some of our discussions have become less charitable? I really don't know the answer to this, and I know if I was a lawyer I would never ask a question I didn't know the answer to, but I am going to ask anyway.

 

I of course have my opinions on the matter, but another thing to consider is to look at the list of people who come up when you press the "members" button next to the forum one on the home page. How many of them are still writing? I know at least one has died.

In my opinion the short answer is; the Anglican church is considered a broad church but this forum possibly isn't.

 

Odd.I wonder why that is. I know in reading past threads we had more people from other denominations here.

 

I attribute it to the decline of the forum format. Facebook groups and other platforms have siphoned off much of the activity that was on forums 10-15 years ago. The small continuing Anglican forum totally collapsed about 18 months ago and the owner shut it down. For a year or more before he pulled the plug it had been an echo chamber of 5 or 6 voices. Additionally, the youngest adults don't write in carefully considered paragraphs - Twitter conditioned them to shoot out fragments of mental diarrhea in 60 words or less.

I think the forum format reaches a critical point where most questions have been asked and discussed and people weary of the same questions coming back around. I know that has happened to me in some contexts. We should be glad, I suppose, that this little forum has never degenerated into a TEC/ACoC bashing platform. That will kill off a discussion quickly.

 

What could be done to revitalize this place then?

 

As you are asking.

I am one of those members who joined very eagerly but found it all very disappointing. I was expecting contributions written about "classical" old style Anglicanism ; high,low and middle. I have found that many people spend a lot of time criticising other forms of non-Anglican Christianity. It also seems that many people who claim to be Anglican on the Forum are either more "modern" in a Modern Anglican way or they are very Protestant with very little Anglican flavour.

I am,of course, a Roman Catholic and have always regarded myself as an interested and sympathetic guest. However, to be honest, it doesn't seem to remind me of the Prayer Book High Church group that I knew and loved. There is nothing that links with T.S.Eliot,Rose Macaulay, Austin Farrer,Dorothy Sayers,Barbara Pym, Archbishop Michael Ramsey,C.S.Lewis.

These are just a few random thought thrown together............please don't take it too hard.

 

To me it feels like this place is booming, when three years ago I would check here and find no new posts for the entire day, and sometimes even for several days.

These days I check back several times a day, always with something or someone new.

 

Could you elaborate more? I am a convert to Anglicanism from Methodism. Almost went Catholic but there was so much I just disagree with and find to be not true but I have great respects for Catholics and think heaven will be full of them. For me it was either Anglicanism, Catholicism or the EO.

 

JonahAF: there is no "issue" as you ask. There were some posts asking why there was not more going on.I replied that I felt - and I was careful what I said - that a lot of it wasn't following in the steps and spirit of traditional Anglicanism and Anglicans. Of course, the books are available new and second hand, but I just don't detect that classic Anglican ethos and spirit. There was a thread about Fasting Communion - I thought this was something that Anglicans all believed (recommended in the English 1928 Prayer Book and evidenced by the number of Anglican Churches where they have 8 a.m. early Communion Service) but that seemed have little resonance.

bwallac2335
I am sorry, I don't know what you want me to elaborate. I would say that in practice Anglicanism has never been a precise,dogmatic,doctrinal religion, there are the Three Creeds and there are High,Low and Middle, but there is an Anglican Spirit and Culture, which is often found in writings (see the tremendous "Bible" by More and Cross: ANGLICANISM, as an example of classic Anglican writing) ,public worship, music,hymns and poetry and literature. This all seems to be vanishing....................maybe I am a pessimist and not looking in the right places.

 

I want the forum to strive. I would love to see your input. What do you think traditional Anglicanism and Catholicism have in common

 

I am interested in what people think is the reason why we have no new members for nine months.

 

Thank you bwallac2335 for asking; it's early Monday morning so this may not be very rigorous.

I am a passionate ecumenist and prefer to stress what we have in common. This is largely the High Church view which emphasises the lineal descent of Anglicanism and that there is a continuation. The Low Church view stresses the view that we have less in common !

I believe that traditional Anglicanism and traditional Catholicism have a huge amount in common. Anglicanism is, I believe, derived from catholicism.It has:

1. a Liturgical year with "propers" which are nearly all translations from the old Roman Missal and Breviary,except the Second Sunday of Advent collect which is a new creation first used in the 1549 edition of BCP.

2. The Communion Service and Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer are all adaptations of the old Roman Mass and Offices of the Breviary; like wise the daily liturgical round - the requirement for clergy to say the Offices daily,in church.

3. The Prayer Book catechism asserts that "the body and blood of Christ are verily taken and received by the faithful"

4. The Orders of Bishop,Priest and Deacon and the sacramental & episcopal ordination of each.

5. the sacraments retained after the reformation and in the rite Baptism it states (after the act of Bsptism) "seeing that this child is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ's Church" , which shows that Anglicanism maintains the doctrine of Baptismal regeneration and justification [see the other prayers which follow this one]

6. The public liturgical worship "out of a book" is something which we have in common and that priests should not - vulgarly speaking - mess around and change the services at their whim or to put over their own points of view.

7. Objective doctrine taken from Scripture and Ecclesiastical Tradition - we don't start with our little human brains and needs and work out what makes us feel nice. Man is very,very tiny and God is very great and we need to take "off our shoes" as we approach the Burning Bush.

The 39 Articles are patent of different interpretations; there are a number of commentaries and explanations; E.J. Bicknell, C.B.Moss and F.J.Hall to name a few, explain official Anglican teaching as being a "reformed" Catholicism. Anything be these three authors is worth reading. I like C.B. Moss's little "catechism" only published in USA [online and available] ANSWER ME THIS - I like to imagine him in his study in his cassock getting more and more irritated by the questioner !

 

Oh, what a relief! For a bit there I was worried that no one wanted to join because I was here!

 

I have soured very much on most iterations of Protestantism. Really to me the only viable options were the Anglican Church, OO Church,EO Church, or the Catholic Church. There are some things in Catholicism I just could not get my head around. I am and was still enamored with the EO church but felt led to the Anglican Church as it really was the only option around but I finally feel at home.

 

Well, heck.

 

Thankyou, I guess the work is at you end, and I am glad I raised the issue. I wondered some time back and thought I should not speak about things outside of my control. Note to self, be less cautious in these things.

 

Quick - Fix it. There must be a queue our there of thousands wanting to join us.

The main reason I decided to remain in the Church of England after a harrowing conversion experience many years ago in which I three times nearly lost my life, was because I asked God which denomination I should join and discovered I should stay right where I was and had grown up. It needed me and I needed it.

I think the most valuable, precious aspect of the Anglican Church is its tolerance of differences of opinion within an agreed set of Articles of faith. It is a broad church, in which though we may often hold quite different opinions on how God should be worshipped, we are agreed on the fact that we should love one another in spite of the differences. Hence High and Low church. Priests, Pastors, Vicars, Bishops, Deacons and Lay Ministers, incense, Eucharist's, Masses, Communions, Lords Suppers, vestments, candles, guitars, drums, coffee and biscuits. We have them all in some church or other, but still remain united in our service to Christ.

Any truly Spirit Filled Anglican Church would have Billy Graham Altar calls with incense and singing in tongues.

We are not fussy.
.

 

The precedence is all we have to go on, and prior to the cessation of new memberships,

Jun 2019 - 2 New Members
Jul 2019 - 6 New Members
Aug 2019 - 3 New Members
Sep 2019 - 1 New Member​

So that is an average of 3 new members a month, and for the nine months that may suggest perhaps 27. It is of course possible that during the Covid 19 shutdown there may well have been a few more I might guess. The sad truth is perhaps some of them may have been helped by joining, and yes perhaps also we might have been helped by what they had to contribute.

A priest is Sydney tells me, with some assurance, that heaven is the place where they don't sing Shine Jesus Shine! (In reality I don't really mind it, but like vegemite, you can have too much of it!)