Faced with a bid from Canadian clerics to bless gay weddings, the worldwide Anglican Communion now faces a real risk of breaking apart over differences between its liberal and conservative wings.
“The train and the buffers are getting closer,” said religious journalist and commentator Clifford Longley.
“The Anglican Church is unravelling,” Longley concluded as Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams struggled to keep his global flock of 77 million Anglicans together in a bitter war of words over homosexuality.
The latest challenge to Williams, spiritual head of the Anglican Church, came from Ottawa.
What a patchwork piece, missing some context and facts. What purpose but to rouse or annoy.
What is significant about the article is the headline by a major news organization. I do get tired of the back and forth charges of “schismatics”, but we are all abundantly clear about who has done the tearing of the communion.
Failure to disapline TEC has lead us to this. The +Rowan will have much to account for.
RSB
FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!
NorteoAmericano’s (admittedly the lesser influential more northern ones) make a grander bid for being the cause of the AC breakup! Griswold and Browning in the dumps because they aren’t prominent! VGR gets top billing again even while on sabbatical! PB Kate trying desperately to hold the line and reel in the big fishes after baiting the hook in New Orleans! ACO and Standing Committee Report out as chum!
Flash! Flash! Flash!
New spin but old, old story.
Can someone explain to me why we simply do not turn our backs on TEC and the far left? What purpose is being served? Call the faithful bishops together, leave out all the left wing, and see about building an international Anglican church. Why is the concept, not only difficult, but apparently impossible. Why are we paralyzed? Is it from staring too long into a snake’s eyes? LM
#5, Larry, I think there are two main obstacles: first, leaving property and money to TEC by those leaving; second, recognition as a part of the Anglican Communion by AbofC. Neither he nor his predecessors have recognized prior separations, even when they are a part of a province of diocese that is recognized i.e. AMiA. Those leaving still want to be Anglicans, not just a part of a small “continuing church.” The GS primates are helping as much as possible, but the AbofC and many in the ACC “curia” are undercutting things so greatly, that it is hard to see where things will go, unless there is a global split of Anglicanism, which obviously could also happen.
Larry, I am squarely in agreement with you.
Sooner or later, the Bible-believing and God-honoring in the Anglican Communion will CONCRETELY become THE WORLDWIDE Anglican Communion that is Christian – with or without the “recognition” and “blessing” of the apostates-in-high-offices.
The Revisionists think property in the Americas and in Europe is everything. I think not. The Church started (NOT from the present Europe) with nothing but the grace of God and Divine Providence. It will continue to wax strong as long as we recognize and honor the source of ALL things (visible and invisible).
Thankfully, with men of guts and godliness, such as The Rt. Rev. Jack Iker et al, I am hopeful for the restoration of Anglican Christianity in the Americas and beyond.
Regarding the Covenant, I am not hanging my hope on the Proposed Covenant as the answer to the problem, because, in a covenant, good-faith, trust, integrity, and honesty are key essentials: I see none from the Revisionists.
The situation in the Anglican Communion is further worsened by the fact of the titular head’s irresponsibility (and I don’t use this word loosely).
Fr. Kingsley+
Father Kingsley, I understand, as I suppose you do, the pain that comes from leaving one’s home church behind, and there is a special pain in knowing that one is leaving many hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of dollars behind. This isn’t greed, not really. One has worked to put one’s church on a sound financial footing and this has taken years and so much hard work.
I come from a small corner of northeastern Mass and southeastern New Hampshire where many of the churches are very very old. One touches pews that were made without power tools – such beautiful, meticulous joinery, such solid craftsmanship. I have always connected Christianity with such craftsmanship, a thing beautifully put together, made to last and last, generation after generation. One touches such pew backs, opens old oak doors with no metal in them anywhere, and one senses the past, as a thing solid, substantial, enduring, very much alive, like the pews and the high, many-paned windows. To give this up is to extirpate an identity.
And yet, you are right. The courage to rely on the Grace of God, to take the old craft and make a new church of it, to start from scratch and make the finely wrought thing, this is what is necessary, not the money or the real estate, and to declare this spiritual artisanship at home in a global communion, this is where we must go.
We need a leader, and it is not Williams. I think we all know that now. But who? Where do we look?
What you say about the covenant is also true, but with the right leader, we may establish in it the trust and integrity that our global church absolutely demands. Larry
#6 Which is a key reason why I don’t take all the [i]Sturm und Drang[/i] from the reasserter movement seriously. It all boils down to property and recognition from an organization (the AC) that many of you disrespect at every opportunity. If you really had the strength of your convictions, you’d shake the dust from your sandals and move on. That fact that you [b]don’t[/b] says loads.
At least Larry, and a few others here, has seen through this. And while I’m sure he and I would agree on precious little regarding the current unpleasantness, I can at least respect his integrity.