There is clearly a division among faiths occurring, which is based on a similar division among cultures. The Anglican Communion, such as it was, was a brave attempt to bridge cultures under the banner of one faith, ultimately stemming from the Church of England. But with that Church now splintering over the issue of women in the episcopate, and the majority’s treating the issue as one of straightforward “civil rights,” can the admission of openly noncelibate gays and lesbians to the Church’s episcopate be far behind? After all, that issue will be debated in the Church on that same ground of “civil rights,” which the English Archbishops recently cited in Parliament to support the measure allowing same-sex civil marriages.
And there you have it. For America, Canada, Britain, and many other European countries, it all boils down to “equal civil rights” for all, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, and their country’s churches feel bound to mirror, and thus to honor, in their own structures that which the legislatures (or judges, as in America) have decreed.
But for traditional Anglicans, including those in GAFCON, the Church is the keeper and guardian of the faith, and is not free to jettison Holy Scripture in an effort to accommodate the society in which it finds itself.
It seems that we Anglicans live in very interesting times, to say the least.
Not just “interesting,” Cennydd13, but truly epoch-making, transformative times. I welcome this typically incisive and insightful article by Allan Haley and I hope it is widely read and pondered carefully.
As my chosen moniker of New Reformation Advocate implies, I firmly believe that we are living in the early days of what future Christians will likely look back on as the Second Reformation, the most massive shake up and realignment among Christians in roughly 500 years. I suspect that we Anglicans represent in microcosm what is happening to the wider Church globally.
And by and large, I’m an advocate for that New Reformation, despite the bitter divisions it reflects and in some ways aggravates. For like the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, I would personally regard this New Reformation as “a tragic necessity.” That famous phrase was the balanced assessment of the original Reformation by the late, great church historian Jaroslav Pelikan (a leading Lutheran theologian for most of his long life, before finally converting to Russian Orthodoxy). Pelikan pointed out that the Reformation was far more necessary than Catholics liked to admit, but also far more tragic than most Protestants were willing to admit. I think the same basic assessment applies to the Great Realignment now taking place, not only among us Anglicans, but among Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists, etc.
I particularly applaud and welcome the Curmudgeon’s detailed treatment of an earlier major realignment in church history, the schisms associated with the breaking away of the Nestorian Church of the East after the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, and shortly after that, the Syrian and Egyptian Churches that refused to accept the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451. That sort of well-informed historical perspective is crucial to retaining calm and hopeful amidst the confusion and turmoil all around us in these tumultuous days.
David Handy+
Two further ideas to prime the pump or fuel the fire of vigorous discussion on this thread.
First, I agree with a growing number of scholars who perceive there to be a recurring cycle of revolutionary shakeups in the Church that seem to take place roughly every 500 years or so. As Counselor Haley has reminded us, the first such momentous and massive schism took place in the mid 5th century, with the Nestorian and Monophysite Churches breaking away from the rest of the Church. It is now agreed on all sides that the underlying causes of that tragic but probably necessary split were more political, linguistic, and social than theological.
Then came “the Great Schism” between the East and West, or at least the formal break between the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople in AD 1054. The two wings of the Church had been drifting apart for centuries, and this time significant theological differences were involved, although as the presence of the Eastern rite/Byzantine Churches in the Roman Catholic fold attests, those differences in theology, liturgy, polity, and sprituality can be bridged.
Then came the Reformation of the 16th century, where truly incompatible differences in theology were obviously involved. Mutually exclusive theologies and spiritualities were colliding, and it was inevitable that they would separate, like oil and water. However, I’ll remind readers that there was such a thing as the Catholic Reformation too. Trent was about more than just a purely negative reaction against Protestantism. So when I call for support for the New Reformation, I by no means am implying the need for another Reformation along Protestant lines (ala the Sydney Neo-Puritans).
But there is an important contextual factor that will make the emerging New Reformation of the 21st century quite different from the three earlier major revolutions in the 5th, 11th, and 16th centuries. That supremely important factor is the breakdown of the old Christendom synthesis between Church and State, and between Christianity and European Culture. The epoch-making realignments that took place in the 5th, 11th, and 16th centuries erupted in a Christendom world with an established Church. Not so today. Everywhere in the Global North, Christianity is now a minority phenomenon, and real Christians are a beleagured and increasingly suspect minority. That radical change in social context totally changes everything.
Secondly, like the “third pope,” Clement, it’s possible to borrow the pagan myth of the Phoenix and see in it a rough parallel to Christian realities. In 1 Clement 25 (wirtten about the same time as the book of Revelation, i.e., roughly AD 96 or so), that early successor of Peter (and Paul) saw an analogy to the resurrection in the fable of the firebird, which arises from the ashes to new life. Anbd in similar fashion, I propose that we can, if we choose, see in the tale of the Phoenix an analogy to the cyclical rebirth of Christianity every 500 years or so. For in the dominant version of that myth, the firebird was reborn every 500 years. It’s an imperfect analogy, but a very hopeful one.
More to come…
David Handy+
Finally (I know I’m in danger of monopolizing the thread, and will quit after this), let me toss out another idea as grist for the mill. There is another way of putting our current Anglican upheavel in historical perspective that I would comment to all T19 readers.
Back when I was in seminary at Yale in the early 1980s, I heard a fascinating lecture given by a visiting scholar from Canada, the great Anglo-Catholic church historian Eugene Fairweather (from Trinity College, Toronto). He proposed a novel and very stimulating way of looking at Anglican history (at least since the Reformaation) through the lens of three powerful reform movements that tried, and ultimately failed, to remake Anglicanism in a drastic fashion. Fairweather called those three great attempts to unsettle the Elizabethan Settlement the “Three Anglican Counter-Reformations.” Now I don’t like the term very much, as “Counter Reformation” doesn’t fit the first two movement very well, but his underlying analysis seems quite convincing to me.
The three great historical attempts to remake Anglicanism were:
1. The Purtian movement of the 16th-17th centuries, led by Cartwright, Owens, Baxter, and others.
2. The Evangelical Revival of the 18th-19th centuries, led by the Wesley brothers, Whitefield, and later Charles Simeon and others.
3. The Catholic Revival of the 19th-20th century (the only one that fits the “Counter Reformation” mold), led by Newman, Keble, Pusey, and others.
I think Fairweather was onto something important. But as I’ve pondered his provocative proposal over the last two decades, I’ve increasingly come to think that we’re now overdue for yet a fourth “Anglican Counter Reformation,” a 4th serious attempt to renew Anglicanism in fairly drastic fashion. And that has everything to do with the fundamental reality of our time, the sea change from living in a Christian culture dominated by Christian values and a biblical worldview to our post-Christendom situation today, where authentic Christians are very much a minority, and an increasingly misunderstood, suspect, and marginalized minority. And that changes everything.
The Puritan, Evangelical, and Anglo-Catholic leaders of the first three great Anglican Realignments all lived in a Christendom social world that they took for granted as an enduring bedrock reality. That is precisely what we cannot do today. Somehow, we must move beyond our Erastian roots in an established national Church and become a genuinely missionary Church. We can no longer think of ourselves as mere chaplains or pastors to the masses, as if they were all lapsed Christians who simply had to be recalled to a faith they still profess. No, now we must learn to see ourselves as missionaries to a largely pagan society that often doesn’t even pretend to be Christian anymore.
That is a truly revolutionary change. I think in the end it will dwarf the Puritan, Evangelical, and Anglo-Catholic movements of the past. That’s why, in the final analysis, I’m actually optimistic about the future of Anglicanism.
The Anglican Communion is finished. It can’t survive in anything like its current state, which is still far too colonial, too England-centered, too Constantinian in its basic assumptions. Above all, it is too gravely compromised by heresy and immorality, since so many of the leaders of Global North Anglicanism are captive to the increasingly unChristian values and worldview now dominant in the industrialized world. So a New Reformation, or fourth Anglican Counter Reformation, is “a tragic necessity.”
The Anglican Communion will almost certainly perish in the fires of the irresolvable conflict that is consuming it as two mutually exclusive gospels contend for mastery within it. But like the Phoenix, I trust that Anglicanism will arise, reborn, from the ashes, by the mercy of God. Indeed, as we move away from our Erastian roots, the best days of Anglicanism are still to come.
David Handy+
I completely agree with everything you’ve said, David Handy.+ We are beginning to see some positive activity coming from the bishops and primates of the Global South, and I think we’ll learn much more this October, when they meet at GAFCON 2 in Nairobi.