In reality, the Anglican constitution is a fantasy of Bishop Doss, as the paper ignores how the Anglican Communion came into being, including the concessions that the American Church had to make first to the Episcopal Church of Scotland and then to the Church of England in order to receive Episcopal orders from those churches. These concessions both included doctrine in the form of creedal language and changes in the prayer book. It also ignores the Colenso controversy which sparked the first Lambeth Conference and the first Anglican border crossing – the creation of the Diocese of Mauritzberg which was coterminous with the Diocese of Natal. I don’t think any paper can effectively address the structure of the Anglican Communion without addressing these two issues – the admission of the Episcopal Church to communion with the churches in Britain and the Colenso controversy. To ignore these issues is like talking about weather while not discussing cloud formations, or maybe a discussion of shoes without addressing the issue of feet. If anything constitutes a common law of the Anglican Communion, it is these two issues and how they were handled.
The paper, in addition to ignoring the foregoing issues, lacks concreteness by previous examples (perhaps precedent from a common law legal point of view) in its assertions of what this Anglican constitution really is, other than citation to Hooker for his three strands and how the Church of England dealt with competing theologies and practices before the Anglican Communion was ever established. During these times, a hierarchical structure governed in the Church of England (and, arguably, still does) which enables someone to impose a solution on various disputes. The Queen enforced a prayer book. I note that Doss does not suggest that the Queen do so again, but comprehensiveness does not exist in a vacuum – someone has to provide to glue to hold the comprehensive church together. Doss, while arguing for keeping the structure (or lack thereof) that we have in the Anglican Communion, supplies no glue for holding things together.
The paper also assumes, without proof, that same-sex sexuality and the doctrinal innovations of the Episcopal Church are good and true, essentially foreclosing any further discussion of them. It lays the blame for the current controversies squarely at the feet of traditionalists and ignores the fact that the innovations of the Episcopal Church, while perhaps not challenging the mythical Anglican Constitution (if such even exists), are squarely against the Christian thought and teaching of a majority of Christians and certainly Anglicans. While the paper recognizes the fact that the Anglican Communion is built partially on like-mindedness, it then ignores the evaporation of this like-mindedness as a cause for the current controversies.
Excellent, Brad! Why aren’t you legal advisor to the Presiding Bishop? You understand real precedent, judicial procedure, etc. and write supremely better than the lawyer-bishops who drafted the recently released bishops’ statement (which Bishop Henderson has denied part in.)
“[The report’s] most fatal flaw is that it believes a member province of the Anglican Communion cannot be excluded or barred from participation” —Brad Drell
As in . . .
“Your honor, even if my client had committed murder as the prosecution charges, he cannot imprisoned or executed. He has said that as clearly as he can. Now can we all please get on with our lives?”
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“Why aren’t you [i.e., Brad] legal advisor to the Presiding Bishop?” —Alice Linsley
Because his integrity exceeds his ambition.
Brad’s history is relevant. The “innovation” however is whether sexuality and same sex sexual activity, are relevant in and of themselves, outside the context of two individuals in a particular sort of relationship. Until conservatives stop looking at a particular relationship between two people of the same sex as fundamentally defined by sexual equipment, we remain in the “gnostic” realm of ideas rather than the problem: the concrete reality of sorts of homosexual relationships that look a lot like the fruits of the spirit in heterosexual relationships.
Evolution, also, is an innovation, one that affects the nature of creation.
Wilkins, are you suggesting that absent of the observations of the equipment, a person can “be” anything he/she/it wants to be? That man chooses ones sex, not God?
John (#3), I’m a basic concrete thinker so I need examples, illustrations, etc. to understand what you are saying. Could you please clarify for me? And how does what you are saying pertain to Brad’s assessment?
John Wilkins, #3, if equipment is ignored, then we are talking about blessing a friendship, nothing more and nothing less. No one is against that. But that is not what we are talking about is it, and you know it. We are talking about blessing sexual unions between two persons of the same sex. Without that tidbit of information, there is no controversy, no heresy, no problem. I’ve never seen sexual union with one of the same sex being used as an interpretation for Jesus’ second commandment (or His first, either). But hold forth, if that is what you believe He is saying and let me hear your support for that.