Wednesday 6 February 2013

Rebranding-When changing the name hides something else

I don't know if you have ever looked at Anglicans Online...it is quite fascinating to us Anglicans of course (see here)...and it is very extensive for a work which is ostensibly run on a shoestring .
It updates list of parishes and websites from time to time, from all over the world...the UK, North America, South America, Africa , even Australia...Asia and beyond
It carries some interesting news stories which you may not always come across, always nice to have someone distilling news for you as a starting point.
One of the things I have been noting over a couple of years now is the periodic "Rebranding" or name-changing that is going on. We might think this is sensible...St Christopher's, St Mary's, Christ Church, Holy Trinity. St Luke's, St Paul's, All Hallows' and St John's...all seem faintly old fashioned.

So some Churches have become Smith's Hill Anglican Church, or Truner's Hill New Life Church (sometimes attesting to Anglican heritage...but often not.

Last week I did look at three of these (here, here and here) . They often have a similar look about them...and are clearly targeted at a demographic which is noticeably absent from our parish, and most of those with which I am familiar.  So good luck to them.
They are often conservatively evangelical, with a fairly puritanical sexual morality, quite often openly anti-gay. People are of course allowed to believe what they like.
The worship often seems quite different from what most of us who have been Anglicans all of our lives are familiar with.
This is not necessarily a bad thing!

But, it begs the question about whether or not it is Anglican.
Only one of the three sites I looked at made any reference to Holy Communion or The Lord's Supper...describing as a service we partake in from "time to time".
The other two sites, when you typed it into their search engine, came up with "No results"

I would contend there is more than rebranding going on here, when Holy Communion either doesn't warrant a mention or is something we do every now and then.

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