Gentle Reader, you might recall the series I published here in January, eight essays titled Brood Of Vipers: How I Survived The Anglican Church. Here is one facet I have failed to mention and I would like to give it due justice today. This came up today during a conversation with a staunch monarchist who tends to get rather defensive about Her Heiny, also known as Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.
Now I really have nothing against the Queen. I have actually always liked her and she is the only monarch I have ever known, though only in the vaguest public sense. When I was born she had already been on the throne for four years. Now, sixty years later, she is still on the throne and this weekend they are celebrating her ninetieth birthday for the third time. I really do not care enough about the monarchy as an institution to want to make a statement about it. I don't think we would be any better or worse off without it. I guess that makes me a constitutional agnostic even if I do believe rather strongly in God: Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.
Where I do draw the line is at the British monarchs position as the titular head of the Church of England and, by extension, the Anglican Church of Canada. Or should I say instead that I am quite dissatisfied that I wasted so many years participating in a sacred institution such as the Anglican Church given that it is headed by a monarch, constitutional or otherwise. As much as I disagree with kings, queens and monarchs influencing or in any way controlling or heading a sacred institution, that is the nature of the Anglican Beast. That wretched lecher, or lecherous wretch, King Henry VIII wanted his divorce, remarriage and male heir and he defied the Bishop of Rome, who then excommunicated him, and who consequently declared himself head of the sacred province of England. No self-respecting bishop or archbishop would even think of questioning the primacy of the king, even if he did not risk losing his head.
This does not in any way resemble even in the remotest sense the beautiful work that Jesus undertook, and it certainly bears no resemblance to the church of the first three centuries. It was common knowledge among Christians, almost all of whom were the most devout disciples knowing that they might be killed and martyred for their faith that earthly rulers and the life of the church had nothing in common with each other. That the wealth and pomp and power and violence and cruelty of the nations and their rulers were absolutely inimical to the poverty, humility, love, mercy and peacemaking of the early church. But Christianity gradually gained legitimacy and then came Emperor Constantine making it the state religion and it was downhill from there. The church basically bartered away her legitimacy for secular power and acceptance. This makes the Anglican Church something of a perversion of the Gospel. And I say this knowing many fine and faithful Christians who are also Anglicans. I also say this with a lingering reverence for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist which seems to be the only good thing that the Anglican Church has going for itself.
I think that at least some of my trouble with the Anglican Church can be easily sourced to this conflict. Understanding that God calls us to simplicity and humility I have never been able to reconcile the presence, however symbolic or titular, of the British Monarchy over an institution founded by the One who became very poor for us and is crucified over and over again by his alleged followers and adherents. Unable to reconcile this sense of conflict and compromise my time in the Anglican Church was always filled with conflict and angst. I was worshipping God with others in a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance.
No wonder I have had to leave.
Come ye out from among them and be ye separate saith the Lord your God and I will receive you.
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