Peter Jensen, the Sydney Anglicans in their bunker, and bring on the intercession of the saints ...

(Above: Archbishop Jensen getting upset about the secularists, with his full rant available as a pdf here).

The long absent lord moves in truly strange ways, and it seems lately she's taken a decided set against the Anglican Church, and the nepotic Jensenist regime running the Sydney branch thereof.

Anglicans warned church is on it knees tolls the solemn financial bell in David Marr's report, and the Jensenists aren't on their knees for just for prayer ...

Actually it's just Marr given the Anglicans his standard clobbering, and it's a tad naughty of him not to provide links because a visit to the Anglican bunker will give you the entire Anglican Presidential Address in pdf form, here.

There you can read from the horse's mouth, so to speak, the predicament of church as landlord, especially in relation to St Andrews House, where a key tenant is now on the move. After the church had done a fit out, which happened just before the GFC downturn! The fickle finger of fate has worked its fiendish tricks:

... Given that something like $20 million was still owing on the earlier re-fit of the lower floors of the building, this additional borrowing would mean that nothing would now be available for distribution.

In round terms, it seems possible that the amount of money available from these sources to support of Diocesan works in the next few years is going to be reduced from the $7.5m of 2010 to something like $4 million. Our major rethink of last year was only the beginning. We are, as I have said, asset rich but cash poor.

Could it be that it's the Commonwealth Australian Bureau of Statistics which has caused the heartburn? There's been talk of the Bureau moving from St Andrews House in search of 5000sq m elsewhere in the city .... (CBDs could be in for a renting boost by businesses).

Canberra ruins things again.

Meanwhile, adversity and even defeat are friends, if used well, and indispensable, proving that while god might move in mysterious ways, there's always a point to her movement. Perhaps there should be recrimination?

... I counsel against recrimination. Last year we were given and we received an apology. The game of imagining, finding and pursuing responsible parties is not going to work here. At best it results in delay and diversion of energy. At worst it will see us tear one another up in an unseemly and ungodly way.

Or perhaps even wonder at the mysterious ways of the leader of the flock?

Like you, looking back I can now see many of the things I should have done, things I should not have done and even clear moments when I should have spoken up or insisted on different behaviour. As I look now, I can see structures and committees where I have been in the chair and where reform would have made a lot of sense and may have saved some of our money. At one level, I guess, you could say that the Synod itself is responsible. By all means blame me; but if you are going to spread the blame beyond me, ask yourself whether you would have done better; ask yourself whether you are prepared to yield up the good elements of what we do, such as our ethos, or synodical government, in favour of more power in fewer hands and fewer of those frustrating checks and balances which long wisdom has shown to be important in a sinful world.

Ah yes, the dangers of doing business in a sinful world, and so the need for mea culpas. How to move forward in a business-like way? Well you could re-think your present structures, perhaps rebalance your portfolio of assets, some of which are 'lazy and relatively unproductive', because we know how the lord disapproves of laziness. Or you could get down to the power of prayer:

I gave them (a group of experts) twelve months to advise on our structures, to help us see what changes we need to make in the way we do business. At the same time, I asked a parallel group of mature Christians to pray for the work of the Commission and at every point their work has been bathed in the intercessory prayer of these saints.

Which does rather raise the question as to where the intercessory prayer of the saints was when the GFC hit?

Perhaps you need to pay intercessory saints double time during a real crisis where real intercession is required?

Marr contents himself with reporting the fiscal crisis detailed within the presidential address, but there are many juicy moments, not least the constant need for intercessory saints to confront the evil ways of humanists and secularists.

After brooding about abortion - how Jenkins must be cheered by the current trial in Queensland - he savages the idle secularists:

The philosophical point in favour could not have been expressed more clearly than by the ethicist Dr Leslie Cannold writing in the Sun-Herald. ‘Opponents of dying with dignity will tell you that the core moral principle in a civilized society is respect for life. This is outdated tosh. The central moral value in a modern multicultural society is autonomy, the right of individuals to determine the course of their own lives and deaths according to their own needs and values.’ This chilling statement has so much tendentious about it that it is hard to know where to begin dissecting it. But note this. Its basic expression, that the central moral value in a modern multicultural society is autonomy, is a boldly sectarian and secularist assertion. It is based on the denial of original sin and it leads to a denial of the full humanity of others, since it asks us to be self-centred.

Happily the Anglican church is far from self-centred in its business practices, sending its money into others' pockets, so they can be fruitful and multiply, or piss it against the wall, as the case may be ...

The secularists are also at work in the matter of choice between a weekly indoctrination class (given the splendid name Special Religious Education) and a class where students might actually learn things ....

The issue this year has been about the provision of Special Religious Education in our schools. One senior political leader said to me that he had begun by thinking that this was simply a discussion about the management of children. I do not doubt that a number of those pressing for this believe that sincerely. But as this person listened to the debate, he came to see that the bulk of support came from those who wanted to see SRE abolished all together that is from secularists. We must not be naïve. This is indeed another round in the cultural struggle between the gospel and secularist thought and it involves very different views of human nature and of human freedom.

Yes indeed. Here's the Jenkins' notion of human freedom. Sit around in a classroom and be badgered by SRE teachers (often volunteers) into a special belief in their special version of religion. Or study all kinds of ethical issues, and learn to develop your own ideas ...

Talk about a narrow, cribb'd and confined secularist definition of freedom!

The result? It's war, war I tells ya:

From the very beginning of the colony, Christians have been in the forefront in the provision of education especially education in God’s word the Bible. Those 300 hundred healthy new Australians required holistic instruction. It was very clear when the Protestant churches gave over their schools to the state that there would be access to teach their religious doctrines during the normal course of the school week and that parents and children would never be put into the unfortunate situation of having to choose between SRE and some other subject.

Say what? They got dudded? They always expected to be able to indoctrinate students, while those outside sat around and twiddled their thumbs (as I once did).

Well here you have to head off to another part of the bunker - yes we use the notion of bunker, with a whiff of grapeshot and paranoia aimed at the secularists, advisedly - to read in Jeremy Halcrow's Laity beef up opposition to ethics lessons, this little insight:

To loud applause a north shore public school principal who said he “believed strongly in SRE” challenged the Synod and Anglican churches “to put some money behind SRE”.

“The school I am currently principal at is in an area where most people would nominate themselves as Christians, even Anglican,” he said, “and yet the number going to non-Scripture has gone up fourfold.”

“Scripture is largely taught by well-meaning people… who find it very difficult to teach children in 2010,” he said.

Put some money behind SRE? Off to pray to the intercessory saints my lad, and quick smart about it because the cupboard is a tad bare ...

But note that other bit ... fourfold to the secularists! Seems like the rival product has all the appeal that rival juicy inner city properties has to one time reliable tenants:

That is the point at issue: the existing guidelines say that parents and children should not have to make this choice. Secular schools are not secularized schools. Anyone familiar with how schools work knows what a sensible arrangement this is. You cannot pit language and sport against each other for example, or say the student must choose either or maths or English.

But it seems you can herd students into religious classes, and if there are hold outs - perhaps deviant, loll about spawn of swinish secularists and humanists - you can make them loll about and learn nothing and do nothing for half an hour as a result of their deviant upbringing. That'll learn 'em. Get with the intercessory saints or get lost for half an hour ...

The attempt by the NSW government to vary long-standing wisdom has been both unwarranted and inept. There are two issues. First, should this be done? There has been virtually no debate about this fundamental question. The only reason given for the innovation is the number of children not attending SRE and what can be done for them. This is a school management question - the classes are characteristically only 30 minutes in length and any well regulated school can find a useful individual activity for children in this time.

Yes, the child to lodge the most spitballs on the ceiling in a half hour can win a free session behind the dunny to learn the art of smoking. Or perhaps there could be a course in twiddling thumbs, since twiddling thumbs while the finances of the house burn down is an important skill useful later in life. Whatever, we expressly forbid only one activity. Prayers to the intercessory saints by students pleading to get them the hell out of there ...

But meanwhile, hell's bells, let's indulge in some nattering negativity:

In any case, the provision of ethics classes will not solve the alleged problem. The classes will be voluntary and so there will continue to be children needing supervision. Furthermore it is difficult to conceive that ethics will be taught throughout the school program from kindergarten to upper primary.

The second issue is whether this can be done.

Well of course it has been done, and can be done, and it seems in some areas, copped a fourfold increase in attendance up against the feeble competition, but I'm afraid if you want to read any more of Jenkins' self-interested blather on the matter, you'll have to revert to the pdf of his remarks.

In the meantime, let's just continue to cultivate a little paranoia:

The contest between the gospel and the secularist and other religions is a doctrinal one. Failure to apply the gospel to the modes of thought represented in the academic disciplines as they are taught in schools and universities is a significant lapse. It hardly matters that we teach Christian studies if the teaching of other subjects proceeds with unchallenged assumptions about what it is to be human. It is this vacuum of thought which has led to the present spate of well-known scientists engaging in dubious theology, untutored philosophy and strange metaphysics. Not surprisingly, some of their colleagues have become worried about the reputation of science as a result.

Yes indeed, and it would be wrong for Anglicans to become worried about the reputation of the church as a result of it confusing business with the a bunch of prayers by intercessory saints. Personally we blame Stephen Hawking and his outrageous assertions:

Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. (and go off to see hapless Alister McGrath get upset here in Stephen Hawking, God and the role of science).

But back to Jenkins and his war footing, as he fights the evil secularists:

Please do not misunderstand this. I am not saying that we can construct or should want to construct a Christian version of economics or biology or history. I am not suggesting that they are all branches of theology. Indeed, I would argue that the Bible frees these disciplines to be themselves. But I am saying that a two-way conversation needs to occur between a thoughtful biblical Christianity and the various disciplines and crafts by which we exercise our dominion in the world, and that a key point of contact is our concept of the human. Our Mission in contemporary Australia has many facets. It was said of the Christians in the ancient world that they won their world for Christ because they out-lived and out-loved the unbelievers. But it was also said that they out-thought them, and it is in the intellectual sphere that we have the most work to do.

Dominion of the earth? Oh yes, that old Adam and Eve rag.

Christians out living and out loving and out thinking the evil secularists? Strange. I guess that's what explains China's economic boom.

What the Anglicans need perhaps is a new out-thinking way forward. Yes indeed, getting the books working would be a good start ... but if it's left to the intercessory saints, and that feminist deity, the vengeful She who ruins the lives of the patriarchy, and maliciously motivates tenants to leave, there's still much out-thoughting and much work to do ...

Meanwhile, it was touching to read how others were touched by Jensen's address, as explained by Michael Kellahan in Five lessons from the Archbishop:

Here are five quick reflections on the Presidential Address:

1. Who knew that anthropology (what it means to be human) could be so interesting, relevant, and vital for mission? This was a model of real theology - moving from the content of scripture to the context of ministry. It showed again that we musn’t believe the lie that holding onto right doctrine is somehow at odds with being being missional. In our day we need more theology, not less, if we are to connect with our city.

Actually who know that anthropology (the scientific study of the origin, the behaviour and the physical, social and cultural development of humans) could be so wilfully conflated with that part of Christian theology concerned with the genesis, nature and future of humans, especially as contrasted with the nature of god.

Still the call for even more theology is touching, when it seems clear that's what needed is either a healthy swag of intercessory saints, or a damned good business model and re-structuring of structures and assets, or those bloody secularists will do over SRE with their clever appealing ethical studies tricks ...

Never mind, we'll leave you to explore Kellahan's four other quick reflections on the Presidential address, but rest assured, no cliche is left unturned in support of Jenkins, SRE, and Youthworks, and while much as been done, much remains to be done ...

But since lobbying is all the go, why not let your local MP know that you're mad as hell about the Anglican church and its lobbying in relation to ethics classes for children of parents who see no need for intercessory saints.

Seeing as how they've done such a wretched job with the finances of the Sydney diocese ...

(Below: for more on the intercession of saints, the wiki as usual has a wiki entry here so you can while away the hours, or perhaps an SRE class on theological niceties, but here at the pond, in the matter of St Jerome v Vigilantius, we're with Vigilantius and his hostility to the veneration of saints, more here).