The first ever international consultation for Anglican Communion theological college Principals and Deans, gathering together representatives from 27 countries, has been held in Canterbury. We celebrate and affirm the vital significance of theological education for the life and health of the Church and the whole people of God. We believe that good theological education has transforming power, and can promote a global understanding of Anglican identity. Our consultation has contributed to the unity of the Anglican Communion, as well as enabling various models of ecumenical engagement to be explored. We identified through our meeting a shared commitment to fostering active and discerning Christian discipleship which embraces holistic mission and enables the building up of the Kingdom of God.
This probably won’t attract much comment, but this is probably the thing to watch over the next ten to twenty years. I think the liberal establishment will probably focus on trying to draw theological colleges into this kind of ‘dialogue’ – all quite innocuous in their findings for dissemination, but always with people like Archbishop Rowan Williams and Canon Kenneth Kearon as key speakers.
As Sarah Hey’s analysis in one of the earlier linked articles shows, liberalism is a train wreck pastorally [i]by and large[/i]. It doesn’t grow churches by any quantifiable measure – it either maintains them or reduces them.
Its success is almost always by taking control of the theological institutions and thus co-opting leaders produced under another type of churchmanship, and/or by taking control of the central institutional authorities. The latter strategy just isn’t going to work with the non-Western part of the Anglican Communion on the whole. So watch this space for their attempts to see if they can influence theological colleges towards the kind of view of theology articulated in the article:
[blockquote]We believe that good theological education has transforming power, and can promote a global understanding of Anglican identity.[/blockquote]
[blockquote][b][Rowan Williams][/b] described theology to us as a ‘position report’, a description of where we start and where we are now, namely standing ‘in Christ’ by virtue of our baptism and the Spirit, enabled along with Christ to cry ‘Abba, Father.’ Theology draws out implications of being in that particular place.[/blockquote]
That’s the kind of direction they want to move theological education towards throughout the communion. And they’ll be very sane and gentle about it.
Glad to see George Sumner there. Missionary in Tanzania and Navaho Land, Principal at Wycliffe College Toronto.
Yup, come to Lambeth to be patronised and indoctrinated by the Druid. He is spending an awful lot of money these days for this sort of stuff. Where is it all coming from?
Very good point Mark Baddeley.
A large part of the victory or defeat of liberalism takes place in the theological colleges. Sydney Diocese held firm against a determined assault by liberals in the 1980s, not least because Moore Theological College kept turning out orthodox clergy.
Rowan Williams and Kenneth Kearon! They will do their best to use this meeting to suborn the theological colleges to their liberal agenda. I am glad to see that there were no representatives present from Moore or Ridley Colleges in Australia, nor from Trinity or Nashotah in the USA.