The [International Anglican Liturgical] consultation heard two important papers. The Rev. Dr. Simon Jones of Merton College, Oxford, raised the issue of requiring that one party be a baptized Christian (in the context of unashamedly revenue-driven television and internet ads by the Church of England). The Rt. Rev. Mdimi Mhogolo, Bishop of Tanganyika, Tanzania, lamented the suppression of indigenous customs of marriage through laws modeled on those of the United Kingdom. Both papers raised serious questions about how the Church engages with culture while at the same time not abandoning a Christian-based liturgy.
One of the thorniest problems for Anglicans is our concern, inherited from England as part of the medieval Western Church, to contract a marriage at the same time as celebrating the marriage. In the Byzantine tradition vows are not part of the official liturgy; marriage is celebrated by crowning and blessing, and not contracted by vows. Of course, in most Western countries, the requirements of canon law passed into state law, and the exchange of vows is not an optional extra, but a legal necessity.
Who’d have thought it – TEC trying to achieve an end run around a largely unnoticed and hugely unrepresentative Anglican consultation.
Excellent critique by an important liturgist. More push back from the Communion to TEC’s deviance.
We should all very much welcome Prof. Spinks’ willingness to share his views of the Consultation, and most especially of TEC’s role within it. Bryan Spinks is one of the Anglican Communion’s (make that “the Christian Church’s”) most notable scholars of liturgy, as well as one who works in the midst of a very diverse formational setting within the US (Yale Divinity School), so he is hardly a marginal voice in these matters. Indeed, his public protest regarding the way over-representation of “Euro-Atlantic” members has unbalanced proper discussion of matters like marriage within the Communion, and the way, even in such an unbalanced setting, TEC’s brazen attempt to legitimate unacceptable liturgical rites has been clearly rejected by the Consultation — this protest needs to be taken very seriously by Communion members, especially noted by North Americans, and registered by Communion leaders like Lambeth and the ACO. Whatever these last may feel themselves, the current of antipathy towards TEC has been growing stronger, not weakening, in large parts of the Communion; at some point, its force will simply sweep away the remaining bureaucratic resistance to disciplining this errant church.
As a former Professor at Yale I was also struck by this essay from Bryan Spinks. Yale Divinity School is obviously on the progressive/revisionist trajectory so this is not an obvious contribution, in spite of the fact that Professor Spinks is, as Radner notes, a world class expert. I was also struck by the careful and measured tone, which all the same pulls no punches. One can pray that his essay will be read in places where decisions about the communion’s life are made.