”˜They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ”˜Peace, peace,’when there is no peace.’
Jeremiah 8:11
taking the Lambeth Conference of 1998 as my starting point, the aim of these three lectures will be to survey the contours of two very different Anglican ecclesiologies as they have emerged out of this recent history. One is what I think we can most accurately describe as conversational ecclesiology; the other is the recovery of a confessional ecclesiology.
Read it all, and all three lectures may be found here
Over the past thirty years or so, the homosexual agenda has been the point of leverage for a profound change in Western culture that in my view has been the final tipping point from a Christian to a post-”Christian culture and these changes have powerfully shaped the Anglican Churches of the West which have, in their different ways, been accustomed to articulating a mainstream morality. The Lambeth Conference of 1998 marks the point at which those secularising pressures were decisively manifested and this is where my analysis of contemporary Anglicanism begins.
The story of the Anglican Communion since then can only be understood if we recognise it as the relentless effort of revisionists to undermine the collegial mind of the Communion, expressed by the overwhelming majority of its bishops at the Lambeth Conference of 1998.
They reaffirmed the biblical understanding of sexuality positively and negatively, affirming that the Conference ”˜upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage’ and also ”˜rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture’.
At stake here was not just an aspect of sexual ethics, but also primary questions of the authority of Scripture and human identity. But rather than settling the issue, Lambeth 1998 simply became the trigger for sustained conflict.
……..
So taking the Lambeth Conference of 1998 as my starting point, the aim of these three lectures will be to survey the contours of two very different Anglican ecclesiologies as they have emerged out of this recent history. One is what I think we can most accurately describe as conversational ecclesiology; the other is the recovery of a confessional ecclesiology.
Read it all, and all three lectures may be found here
Thanks for highlighting this important and seminal set of three lectures, Kendall. It is disappointing, but not terribly surprising, that so far, Raven’s astute and admirably clear lectures have attracted no coments. Perhaps because they have been available on the GAFCON website for a while.
There is a great deal of value in thes bold and lucid lectures, especially in terms of diagnosing what’s wrong with contemporary Anglicanism. I particularly like Raven’s helpful and vivid way of contrasting two incompatible types of Anglican ecclesiology, what he terms the “conversational” ecclesiology that has dominated the official Instruments of Communion under both ++Williams and ++Welby, but which Raven shows began already during the tenure of ++Carey, and the “confessional” ecclesiology represented by the
GFCA movement and the Jerusalem Declaration of GAFCON I (2008). That is insightful and convincing.
I also especially liked his clear and forceful contrast between the outlooks of ++Thomas Cranmer and ++Rowan Williiams, when he describes the former as representing hermeneutical optimism (about the interpreation of Holy Scripture) along with ecclesiological or instituional pessimism, whereas the latter represents the opposite: hermeneutical pessimissim along with ecclesial optimism. I agree.
However, when we move from Raven’s brilliantly simple and compelling diagnosis to his attempt at trying to prescribe a treatment plan for the disease ailing contemporary Anglicanism, things quickly become far more problematic. At the heart of the problem is that Charles Raven seems oblivious to the deeply flawed nature of the historic formularies that are set forth so confidently in the Jerusalem Declaration. I’ve harped on that delicate and controversial topic numerous times on other T19 threads, so I won’t belabor the point here.
Instead, by way of reminder or summary, I’ll content myself with a few highly provocative and debatable assertions, in the hope of perhaps generating a little real discussion here.
A. I totally agree that Anglicanism needs to recover a confessional foundation, and that STARTS by retrieving the 39 Articles and the 1662 BCP from the wastebasket or the historical archives, so that these classic formularies are no longer treated merely as relics, but are seen once more as essential parts of our heritage that must be salvaged and restored to an authoritative status, once suitably updated and modified.
B. That last clause gets to the heart of the problem. There are good reasons why the Articles of 1571 and the 1662 BCP have been in mothballs for generations. Just as there are very good reasons why almost no one uses the KJV of 1611 anymore. That is, just as we’ve come up with better and more accurate translations of God’s Word since 1611, I’m confident that we as Anglicans can, and must, do better than our venerable forebears in the faith did back n 1571 and 1662. In particular, the huge difference that the Catholic Revival has made in Anglicanism since 1833 simply can’t be ignored. Yet Raven implicitly does ignore it, and so does the Jerusalem Declaration.
C. Raven’s assumption that we need not, and should not have, any central magisterium or conciliar authority beyond the provincial level is hgihly dubios. As regular readers of T19 will know, I vigorously disagree. We desperately need to evolve into a truly conciliar global Church, and I think the best place to begin is by creating the Anglican equivalent of a global Supreme Court. We desperately need a global judicial branch in Anglicanism that can render the heretical actions of wayward, renegade provinces null and void.
Enough. I welcome Raven’s work as a very helpful, illuminating, and stimulating beginning. But the real theological discussions that need to happen have scarcely begun.
David Handy+
Charles Raven writes in his third lecture:
[blockquote] “In Justin Welby, we have an energetic Archbishop from an evangelical background, but who shows no signs of deviating from the ecclesiological framework he has inherited. More Continuing Indaba would simply stall that necessary and fundamental realignment of Anglican structures which is now underway to release global Anglicanism from the hegemony of what is looking more and more like a counterfeit of true communion.” [/blockquote]
Wise words.
But the real issue is what AMiE is going to do in England.
Gafcon and the global south can try to just ignore England, but in the medium term that won’t work – the CofE needs the Anglican Communion to endorse its way of operation, so it won’t leave the GS alone. The Anglican Communion Office under Kenneth Kearon is already starting to run thinly-disguised training sessions for liberal activists in the wider communion.
This is a fight – the CofE hierarchy won’t let it be anything else. Gafcon has to take the fight to that hierarchy’s back yard, if it wants to survive in the long term – the only way is to establish an alternative Anglican polity in England. This will be even more difficult to do than it was in North America, and take longer. But it has to be done.