[Magdalen] A Note Re CofE and TEC History

[Molly Wolf]

I've just left the parish that is a five-minute walk from my home to go back to the parish I attended when I lived in Kingston, a half-hour drive from here.  I left for two fundamental reasons: First, the local church is determined to stay comfortably where it has been, as the respectable social club (with nice services and a bit of uplift) of the 1950s, complete with annual tea and bazaar.  And two, the current rector and senior warden hate my guts, although only the warden would admit it.  There are some highly toxic patterns arising from the combination of insecurity and the need to control.  I've circled this particular spiritual black hole before, and I won't do it twice.

Molly

The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain

> On Jul 1, 2015, at 9:25 AM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> When we first moved to this area, we began attending a church which we
> chose because of the prophetic way it did church. It was not the closest
> church. We visited that parish and the rector almost instantly turned us
> off to it, as he so often did to so many, we were to learn.
> The parish we attended had folks coming there from all over the area
> because of the rather unusual way it did church.  Most of us, if we went to
> a local parish, we would not have been getting fed. I think that's the main
> reason most folks go where they go; they need to get fed.
> A new group of people began to slowly arrive at that parish. They knew
> nothing of the parish's tradition, didn't want to know.  And so today, it
> is a very fine parish, but it's uniqueness ceased many years ago.  The new
> group has returned it to the standard model, and it's a very nice parish,
> but I would not go by another church to get there -- and I don't.
> 
> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
> 
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 5:43 AM, Roger Stokes <roger.stokes65 at btinternet.com>
> wrote:
> 
>>> On 30/06/2015 23:24, Jim Guthrie wrote:
>>> 
>>> From: Roger Stokes
>>> 
>>> I agree that Jon's post was informative and helpful.  One particular
>>>> difference is the matter of parish boundaries.  There is a website
>>> 
>>> One of the concerns in some places in the U.S. is the notion of "How many
>>> Episcopal Churches do people drive by to get to **their** pariah."
>> 
>> I had heard about that.  Here in Bedford most of not all C/E parishes have
>> a proportion of their regular congregation who are "non-resident" but come
>> to that church either because of its tradition or because they started when
>> they lived in the parish and have moved out.  In the case of the parish
>> where I now live people commute in because it is the church in the centre
>> which is regarded as the civic church.
>> 
>> Roger
>>