Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

I can only imagine what it’s like for someone who actually cares, but I for one am fed up with reading about the Anglican Church imploding over the vexed questions of women and/or gay bishops. So far the knotty problem of the first lesbian bishop has yet to be addressed.

It is my understanding, and I am quite willing to ignore corrections or facts to the contrary, that the Anglican Communion is an inclusive communion. Apparently it is, provided you are male and straight. The debate seems to rage whenever a few bishops come together in the same place. Instead of arguing over the best way to bring their message to their flocks¹, they are far more concerned with the sexuality and sex of the least necessary tier of the entire church.

As unrepentantly ungodly as I am, I have by tradition and culture, if not by faith, a streak of the puritan in my make up. I try to stand on it to be sure and I think that most of the time I am reasonably successful. Anyway, the point is who actually needs bishops? Apart from kicking up unwarranted fuss in a very un-Anglican manner, or at least a very un-Church of England manner and maybe there’s the problem: the bulk of Anglicans are no longer Church of England, where acceptance is so broad that it can cope with atheist vicars at one end and non-papal catholic priests at the other.

The English are by nature a very unobservant (in religious terms) lot and like their vicars to be seen gently dozing at village cricket matches, officiating over village fetes and getting into muddles with the church roof fund. Pretty much anything, in fact provided the refrain from bothering us with religion outside the formidable trinity of rituals concerning hatchings, matchings and despatchings. Anyone who actually cares about Christianity adopts any one of a number of reformed churches, chapels or Catholicism, depending on their relative preferences for comfort, terror, guilt, singing, beady-eyed fanaticism and/or incense.

In today’s Times there is an interesting article: in 1850, the weekly congregation for the Church of England was about three million. Eighty percent of babies were baptised into the CofE and the entire structure got by with 26 bishops. In 1945, the congregation had fallen to two million, baptisms into the CofE were down to 70% and the number of bishops had risen to Ninety. Sixty-three years further along, the relevant figures are 900,000, 15% and One hundred and fourteen. At this rate, by the end of the 21st century, the Church of England communion will be on first name terms with their own personal bishop.

My taxes are paying for this unrepresentative bunch of out of touch idiots. It galls me that church and state are so intermingled. Disestablish the buggers and let them get on with it.

Think of the money we can save and they will still be there for the odd times when they are actually useful.

¹Actually, now I think about it, this is the accidental benefit emerging from the issue: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons are quite pesky enough, without Anglican clergy turning up on the doorstep uninvited with a flask of tea and a slice of Madeira cake, “Let’s talk ‘God’ and will you have a tombola ticket?”

I wandered downstairs this morning to find the place lit up like Christmas tree. I know that it’s dark in a morning now, but really. The lights on both landings, in the kitchen and the living room were all blazing merrily, though the rooms were empty.

Virtuously, I wandered around turning them off, but I think we might have moved past the concept of a carbon footprint. I think we need something more impressive to define it.

Door security continues to trouble the Athenaeum Club. I have lost track of the timeline; but this has been dragging on unresolved for months and I am running out of inspiration. We can now only close the entrance door by slamming it hard. That closes it and we can lock it securely, but it is hanging at an angle on the hinges and I suspect that continued rough treatment merely to open and close the door will see it degrade over a period that I cannot estimate, but I would expect it to be shorter rather than longer.

I don’t know if any of you good people has any ideas what exactly our rights are as tenants? I am reluctant at the moment to withhold rent as that will put us in breach of contract, though a part of me whispers in the dark that hitting the landlord in the pocket is a sure fire way of getting his attention. That said, we would like to retain a modicum of goodwill. The lease has until the end of June 2008 (or July, I can’t quite recall) to run and we will probably seek to renew it provided the door situation is sorted out.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what I can profitably do next? Can anyone point me in the direction of (free) legal advice for private tenants? Can we pay for the repairs and deduct it from the rent? Help me, Lazyweb: you’re my only hope.