“Denying the devil is a clear sign of being possessed for he who denies its existence, will inevitably weaken the existence of Hell for himself.”
The proposal to remove the devil ritual received initial approval by the House of Bishops and will be discussed by the Anglican General Synod in York this July. If approved, these changes may reveal that the Church of England lost its sense of sin and need for salvation.
SEEING IS COMING
60 years ago, TS Eliot wrote about the sense of alienation that occurred when the social-church-as regulators began to crack and the moral authority of control of a company was no longer effective. He suggested that the “sense of sin” was beginning to disappear.
In his book “The Cocktail Party,” a troubled young woman confesses to her psychiatrist that “sinful” feels because of her relationship with a married man. She is distressed, not by the illicit relationship, but by the strange sense of sin. Eliot writes that “having a sense of sin seems abnormal, she thought she was sick.”
Written in 1950, Eliot knew the language of sin was declining even then. However, most of us would assume that the concept of sin was still strong because churches, like the Church of England seemed very strong.
Looking back, however, it seems that the sense of sin was already beginning to be replaced by an emerging therapeutic culture.
SIN A THERAPY
Within a growing culture of liberation, people no longer saw themselves as sinners when they drank too much, taking drugs,or were engaged in violent or abusive behavior. Rather, such actions are increasingly regarded as indicating that these people were victims of a disease that had little control.
The sociologist Philip Rieff warned in his classic book from 1960, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, “the psychological manbegan to replace the Christian man” as the type of dominant in our society.
Unlike traditional Christianity which made moral demands believers, secular world of “psychological man” rejects both the idea of sin and the need for salvation. The transformation is now complete in the Church of England.
SUCCESS OF SATAN
Satan has been called an “evil genius” because it has been able to convince many that he does not exist. In his satirical Screwtape Letters (Screwtape Letters), CS Lewis created a senior demon named Screwtape who is instructing his nephew Wormwood, his young protege demon, on the best way to capture a soul to hell. He tells her that the most effective thing you can do to bring souls to hell is to convince people that Satan does not exist.
“The fact that demons are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest a picture of something in red tights, and convince him that he can no longer believe in it, therefore, you can not believe in you. ”
One wonders why the Church of England bother to make baptismal ceremonies when you have lost the true purpose of this type of service. Rituals are important, however, as the author, PD James writes in his thriller Children of Men.
Set in a dystopian world in 2021 in which the whole human race has become infertile, the author describes a society in which the last child was born two decades earlier, and where the “new trend” in cities like London is maintain elaborate naming ceremonies for kittens, with lace caps for newborn cats. In such a society, the clergy have the pleasure of chairing the ritual because it gives much joy to the “fathers”- childless kittens.
The Revised Church of England baptismal rite will be voted on next month in Kent in General Synod. Is likely to happen, because it is driven by a powerful division within the clergy, who is determined to prove that the Church of England is a progressive church that no longer has the need to recognize the necessity of Satan, to to live in the “freedom of the children of God.”
Seen: Miles Christi
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Ecumenism ABOMINABLE CONCILIAR
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