In my triumphalism and then sudden humiliation I am chastened by a lady bearing a Welsh name.....I have now translated it!

Will some one now tell me , if they think my assesment of English and Australian Anglicanism is accurate. ...for that is the question asked on the posting.

Duncan,

The main reason for posting was that I have just re read Joshua Bovis’s article in the Briefing from December 2005 entitled ‘Scotland the Brave’.  In the article he emphasises how spritually barren Scotland is compared to Sydney.  I choked at that, I have not lived or ministred in Scotland, but I can say that there are faithful evangelical churches in most (if not all) the big towns of Scotland, some very famous gospel centred churches like St Georges Tron and Sandyford Henderson in Glasgow, Charlotte Chapel, Carubbers and Holyrood in Edinburgh and a whole reformed presbyterian (fully evangelical) denomination called the Free Church of Scotland.  Scotland is not so dark as he paints.

Just a few things. I agree with you about the Tron, Charlotte Chapel. In my article I was coming from the context of a Sydney Anglican serving within the Church of Scotland denomination. In this denomination it is very difficult for Evangelicals, and there were many towns that I was aware of where there appeared to be no evangelical witness. In fact in the Presbytery that I was in I could count the evangelicals on one hand. I think there is a difference between a city that has one, two or three Bible teaching churches and a city that has dozens of them.

The persecution that I faced from Liberals during my time there was quite painful. Evangelicals are not the dominant force within the Church of Scotland, though since I have left things have been improving, with Highland Theological College being given approval to train candidates for ordination and guys like Gordon Kennedy, Ian Watson, David Randall and Scott Kirkland were doing a very good work in Scotland. But they were not the majority. It is only in very recent times that the Evangelicals within the Church of Scotland have been able to organise themselves together in order to respond to issues that could damage the church. They formed a group called Forward Together and Evangelicals under its auspices acquittted themselves very well at General Assembly at 121 in 2006 when the issue of same sex partnerships came up.

Perhaps my view is rather subjective, but I found the context of Evangelicals in Sydney to be very different to that of where I was in Scotland. Yes, there are some good gems, and the Free are doing a good work, though they need to work at contextualising the gospel; and the independant church scene is also gaining ground. But my stance that Sydney Christians are spoiled compared to Evangelicals in Scotland remains.

Robert, I am sorry to say I could not work out what your “analysis” had to do with the actual question asked in the orgiginal post in this thread.  So I could neither agree nor disagree with it, cause I couldn’t see the connection. 
regards
Gill.

My post contained two strands: a) a response to Joshua Bovis’s Briefing article, in which he has graciously responded to, - thanks Joshua, and b) a comment about the British evangelical scene vis a vis charismatics and non-charismatics.  The discussion went off on a tangent about Anglican evangelicalism and the various groups in the UK evangelical Anglican scene - my post was not about that!

Sorry , I misunderstood the nature of the post. and the question raised...what a good Scots name.
The Welsh were the original Britons...and the Scots, immigrants from Ireland!

Robert ian Williams - 15 October 2008 08:12 AM

Sorry , I misunderstood the nature of the post. and the question raised...what a good Scots name.
The Welsh were the original Britons...and the Scots, immigrants from Ireland!

Were there pre-Celtic Britons?

There were pre-Celtic Britons, but that’s BC and before the Romans and I’m not an expert. 

Genetically, most Brits are a mixture of Germanic and Celtic, with parts of eastern Britain very Germanic (Scandinavian influenced), and the further west you go (ie into Wales) the most Celtic it gets - as the Germanic tribes (in which the Angles and Saxons from modern day Germany were only two, the other tribes coming from what is now Denmark and Norway) drove the Celts to the west.  So ‘England’ (Angle-land) was born, and was and is a ‘Germanic’ nation, not a Celtic one.  But that is repeated all over Europe after Rome collapsed.

But Duncan, that’s not what this thread is about . . . :-)
Bob

Bob Cameron - 15 October 2008 11:40 PM

But Duncan, that’s not what this thread is about . . . :-)
Bob

It is his thread, so we should let him hijack it if he wants, I suppose!

Andrew

Oh well, if you insist :-)

I was just trying to reply to a question about history and answering it to the best of my knowledge! I had no intention of hijacking it!

This is a SydAng forum, but it would be good to hear people’s views on my last point in my original thread…

Duncan W MacInnes - 16 October 2008 06:13 PM

I was just trying to reply to a question about history and answering it to the best of my knowledge! I had no intention of hijacking it!

This is a SydAng forum, but it would be good to hear people’s views on my last point in my original thread…

Hi Duncan
Rest assured it was just a bit of friendly Aussie teasing.  Being of Celtic descent I actually was quite interested in what you had to say.

As to your last point in the original post, I think you’re right that the Australian scene is quite different to the British scene.  Nevertheless there does appear to be a movement among some of the Pentecostal churches here towards a stronger Biblical foundation.  For example, there seems to be something of a split happening amongst the Assemblies of God churches (now called the Australian Christian Churches) over the Word of Faith / Prosperity Gospel teaching, with some AOG churches explicitly rejecting prosperity teaching and some of the more extreme views on healing associated with it.  Others may be able to tell us more about this.

Bob

Bob Cameron - 16 October 2008 06:21 PM

the Australian scene is quite different to the Australian scene.

How?

;)

Cheers,
Andrew

Andrew Kroiter - 16 October 2008 08:09 PM

Bob Cameron - 16 October 2008 06:21 PM

the Australian scene is quite different to the Australian scene.

How?

;)

Cheers,
Andrew

I don’t know—but I’m sure it is!  [Thanks, I’ve fixed that now!]
Bob