The Archbishop of Canterbury said this week that he felt “encouraged and uplifted by all traditions” in the Church. He was speaking after a week-long tour of the country, during which he spoke to Pentecostal, Evangelical, and Anglo-Catholic gatherings.
Archbishop Welby spoke at Hillsong, a Pentecostal Church, at the O2 Arena, in London; HTB Focus, a week away for members of Holy Trinity, Brompton, and its plants, in Lincolnshire; New Wine, a Charismatic Evangelical festival in Somerset…and the Youth Pilgrimage to the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.
Writing on his blog on Sunday, Archbishop Welby admitted that, during mass and Benediction at Walsingham, on Wednesday of last week, “My first thought was ‘What a contrast with the past few days.’ But my next thought was: ‘What’s the problem?'”
The problem? If how you pray shapes how you believe, then you have a huge problem. If there is no common prayer, in a tradition that has no Confession of Faith or binding believe structure, you have a major problem because anything goes. There is nothing any longer that binds you together.
Yes, Archer, but I had a different sort of reaction. My problem was with the “all” in ++Welby’s statement, as if he was encouraged and uplifted by ALL the various and conflicting traditions within the CoE. For there are clearly some which are incompatible with the rest. For example, I too could probably be quite comfortable visiting evnagelical and charismatic events like the HTB one and the New Wine conference, and I’d probably be considerably more at home at Walsingham than low-church Welby was. But I would not be comfotable at all at a gathering of “Affirming Catholics,” much less among the extreme liberals of the Modern Church Union variety, or even amongst Broad Church/Latitudinarian types. When I describe myself as a “3-D” Anglican, meaning I uphold and enthsuiastically support the evangelical, catholic, and charismatic dimensions of Christianity, I am very much intentionally leaving out the whole Broad Church tradition, which I deplore.
But the point you riase, Archer, is a crucial one. For way too long, we Anglicans have pretended that the Lex Orandi was enough to guarantee a sufficient agreement on the Lex Credendi. It’s NOT.
David Handy+