We all know what a jumbo-jet is. But can we be as confident about, say, a JCB or a bull-dozer? Naming is a tricky business. Sometimes we get it right straightaway. Sometimes we have a re-think. That’s true of aviation. There were flying-machines, then aeroplanes, then airplanes, then just planes, then jets. Cars are a class of machine where imagination, not to say, fantasy, can have free play. Rolls-Royce, Ford and Morris are penny-plain. Jaguar, Mustang and Beetle are tuppenny-coloured. They show the market probing deeper into the motivation of likely customers.
And naming comes into a religious vocabulary. Particular words become the possession of particular Christians. The word ‘breviary’ is never heard outside the Roman obedience. To Roman Catholics ‘presbytery’ is a house where a priest or priests live. To members of the Church of Scotland it is a body of ministers. ‘Angelus’ is a form of prayer familiar to Catholics. ‘Monsignor’ is distinctively Roman. But ‘curé’ or ‘curate’ is a word to play with. It is subject to fashion in a way few other religious terms are. Anglicans can lay claim to ‘glebe’.
And then we come to matters of consequence. Few English Christians have much knowledge of Anglicanism. It may surprise people to know that to belong to the Church of England is to be an Anglican – and indeed to a worldwide organisation known as the Anglican Communion. In the USA it would not do to speak of the Church of America. The term ‘Episcopal Church of the USA’ is favoured. There is similar nomenclature in Scotland where we have the Scottish Episcopal Church. It has to be asked whether in the 21st century a more modest label than ‘Church of England’ might be in order. Perhaps we should style ourselves the English Episcopal Church.
Does it matter? We use the word ‘Christian’ in all manner of contexts. There is little Scriptural warrant for such usage and it can result in confusion. The days of the national churches may well be numbered and the presumption behind the term ‘Church of England’ may be ill-founded. But we who were once Britannia and not far short of being the Ultima Thule should beware of thinking that labels are for ever.
SAME NAME, NEW STYLE
When a church website splashes ‘We are living’ as its intro, we may wonder what is coming next. And that is ‘We are loving’ followed by ‘We are led’. This reflects a change that came over St Paul’s, Stockton-on-Tees in 2018 when a team from All Saints’, Preston-on-Tees came in under the leadership of Paul Arnold, formerly a barrister, who is now leading the ministry team at St Paul’s. The present St Paul’s church building took shape over 40 years from 1925 and has had a recent refurbishment. In 2004 Newtown Methodists church joined St Paul’s.
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