Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Ecclesiology doesn't get more messed up than this...


The African bishops- laying down the smack on heresy in the Anglican Communion!

"For the Sake of Unity" by Austin Ivereigh


From the ultra-liberal (click for whole article) America Catholic magazine...
Being a member of the clergy in the C of E sounds like working in Washinton D.C.; lots of personalities, but no substance and little accomplished.

Here are some choice quotes from the article (I saved the best for last...)

During a recent debate at the Church of England’s General Synod, N. T. Wright, the Scripture scholar and bishop of Durham, summed up the crisis facing the Anglican Communion rather graphically. “We are living through, on many levels, a massive outworking of the law of unintended consequences,” he said. “Or, in plain English, a slow-moving train wreck.”

[snip]

As the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Primates, which is held every 10 years, meets in Canterbury (July 16-Aug. 3) against a backdrop of what journalists are calling the “summer of schism,” it is worth noting that the cause of the current Anglican crisis is not disagreement over homosexuality. Most Catholics as well as nonbelievers I know have strongly diverse views about same-sex blessings, civil partnerships and gay adoptions; homosexuality is one of the great divisive issues of our age.

But disagreements do not necessarily lead to divisions or crises. The real question is why the Anglican Church has not been able to contain the disagreements, and why they are causing the church to tear itself apart.

The current crisis is not, in other words, doctrinal; it is ecclesiological. As the center of Anglicanism has moved away from the Church of England to the global communion, the glue that has held the Church of England together has been exposed as inadequate for binding the Anglican Churches worldwide.

[snip]

He [describing Rowan Williams] exemplified this when—although personally he is convinced that the church will come to accept homosexual partnerships—he vetoed in 2004 the appointment of a gay friend, Jeffrey John, as Bishop of Reading, because he knew it would inflame disunity. The “pro-gay” lobby accused him of surrendering to evangelical pressure, but they misread the decision. Archbishop Williams was demonstrating that a move too soon—however principled—can destroy unity. [what 'principle' is being referred to here????]He has more than once quoted to both the Episcopal Church and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians (1 Cor 11:33) to “wait for one another.” [what the hell does that even mean? If you know eventually that the C of E will slide into further relativism, why does it matter to wait? What cowardice. If it's the truth that gays should be bishops, then Williams has no principles to stand up for it, and if it's wrong (obviously) then he has shown a lack of character with those words. By the way, what kind of ecclesiology is this? And who ever accused the Catholic Church of clericalism? This is amazing!]

So far they have not. A willingness to “suffer for the sake of the unity of the church” [you'll never hear of the Catholic Church speaking an untruth for the sake of unity, but the C of E prides itself on it] is something many Anglicans assume only Catholics have to do. The openly gay bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, is in England, popping up on television and radio to declare that Jesus loves him and that history is on his side, while the Global Anglican Future Conference evangelicals are growling from abroad, convinced the Bible is on their side. Kenosis for the sake of unity is not on the minds of any of them.

But that does not stop two-thirds of the world’s Anglican bishops who are gathering in Canterbury. If at the Lambeth Conference they can listen to each other—and to God—long enough, there may be a chance for Archbishop Williams still to build the structures on which future global Anglican coexistence so obviously depends. Global Anglicanism after the Lambeth Conference may still look like a “slow-moving train wreck,” but there is a good chance, under Archbishop Williams, that it will still be on the rails [are we supossed to root for this train wreck to NOT happen? sounds pretty pathetic. The writer clearly doesn't get something.].


BEST QUOTE OF THE ARTICLE (an unintended consequence?)

The gravitational center of Anglicanism has drifted southward, to countries where the church is not part of a liberal political project, and where excessive compromise and nuance mute its proclamation of the Gospel.

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