Now that the Anglican Covenant is dead in the water, those who seek to revise what it means to be the Church have no need to worry about the process set out in the fourth section of that document (assuming that they would have needed to worry if the Covenant was adopted anyway). Regardless, the drive for CWOB is a manifestation of commitment to an “autonomous ecclesiology” rather than “communion ecclesiology.”
Bryan Owen Offers a Helpful Summary of some response to the Communion of the Unbaptized Proposal
Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Christian Life / Church Life, Anthropology, Baptism, Episcopal Church (TEC), Eucharist, General Convention, Liturgy, Music, Worship, Parish Ministry, Pastoral Theology, Sacramental Theology, Soteriology, TEC Parishes, TEC Polity & Canons, Theology, Theology: Scripture
Very helpful. It should not be thought that permission to communicate the unbaptized is a trivial matter, let alone a gesture of hospitality. It’s adoption would involve a radical reinterpretation of Baptism in a manner which would fundamentally undermine the meaning of the sacrament. “As baptism beginneth life” wrote Richard Hooker. He didn’t mean that Baptism usually occurred in infancy, a sort of rite of passage. He meant that Baptism transforms a person ontologically. In it we are ‘in Christ’ buried and risen to a new life. Not only would communication of the unbaptized trivialize Baptism, it would also transform the Eucharist from the action in which we anticipate the Heavenly Banquet and participate in the Risen life of Christ, into a welcoming meal of temporal fellowship, a sort of glorified Coffee Hour.
There was a time when the essential doctrines of the Church were there, to be received and lived into. More and more these doctrines seem to some to be irresistible targets for change. One has to ask what impels people to treat holy things as mere ‘political’ platforms, as open to revision as party manifestoes. Do they realize that they are handling holy gifts?
Very well said, wvparson.