In his final address before retirement to the House of Bishops and Standing Committee of the Church of the Province of the West Indies, Archbishop Drexel Gomez urged the Church to reawaken to the power of God’s love.
The dry and distant Anglicanism of many parts of the West Indies, must make way for a “more caring and compassionate” church, he told the West Indian bishops and the congregation of St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Bridgetown, Barbados on April 17.
“We must face up to the challenge to see where we stand in love,” Archbishop Gomez said, and “must devise more strategies to assist members in their engagement with God and to foster a deeper commitment” that would transform the believer and society.
The rampant individualism and selfishness of Western culture was the greatest single threat to the faith. Believers must surrender their lives to God and be faithful to his will for their lives, rather than pursue their own moral, political or social agendas.
The Church faces “the challenge of discernment and commitment” as it entered the Twenty-first century, he said, urging the bishops to hold fast to the faith once delivered, and not succumb to the siren song of culture.
This is a leader who will be sorely missed. I pray that he does not retire from the world stage.
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I knew the day of his retirement had to come soon, I just didn’t realize how soon it was going to be, the end of the year. Imagine, consecrated a bishop in 1972, some 36 years ago. That’s a very long episcopate. He must have been quite young when he became Bp. of Barbados. But the sheer length of his time as a bishop isn’t as important as the abundant fruitfulness of it.
The retirement of ++Drexel Gomez will mark the end of an era. This Lambeth and especially the work of the CDG (Covenant Design Group, which he chairs) will be his last hurrah on the worldwide stage. Or so it seems. Somehow, I doubt that after retirement, ++Gomez will just settle down and enjoy sunning himself on some Caribbean beach.
I disagree with the whole Windsor approach that he is so closely associated with. But there is no question that it was a noble cause, and he gave it his all. If it fails to hold the AC together (and I think it is doomed to fail), that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth a try.
++Drexel Gomez is a hero. May God raise up others to fill his big shoes and carry on the fight.
David Handy+
[blockquote]The rampant individualism and selfishness of Western culture was the greatest single threat to the faith. Believers must surrender their lives to God and be faithful to his will for their lives, rather than pursue their own moral, political or social agendas.
The Church faces “the challenge of discernment and commitment†as it entered the Twenty-first century, he said, urging the bishops to hold fast to the faith once delivered, and not succumb to the siren song of culture.[/blockquote]
Truth in two paragraphs! Great words of wisdom!
My brothers and sisters. We must be aware of the rampant individualism in our own lives. We want a solution to the issues facing TECUSA, ACoC, and the Anglican Communion as a whole and we want those solutions now. All to often we are unwilling to wait on the whole Church for a solution, so we start acting. Remember what happend to Abraham when he decided that “God helps those who help themselves.”
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Good words, Phil.
Deacon Phil in Dallas (#4),
Yes, impatience and “individualism” are problems. But there is much more going on here than that. We don’t have endless time to get things done. The Titanic is sinking. Put another way, TEC is terminally ill, probably with something like stage 3 cancer. And that lends urgency to our situation.
Personally, I think it comes down to the familiar old problem of wineskins. Do you want (or more importantly, feel called by God, no matter what your preferences) to invest your time and energy in patching up the old wineskins and working within the system of TEC (as so far the Diocese of Dallas seems largely content to do), or would you rather invest all that time and effort in helping to create the new wineskins required for the New Anglicanism emerging from this New Reformation?
Please don’t take me as disparaging people who feel called to stay and fight the good fight within TEC, or the AC as we know it. That’s a noble cause and I honor you all. But frankly, I just don’t have the patience for it. I’d rather engage in the exciting adventure of shaping the new wineskins that will come out of this great conflict. The New Reformation is already underway. And yes, it will be terribly divisive, and that’s a great tragedy. But it will also be just as life-giving as the original Reformation. Or so I believe.
David Handy+
My brother David+,
I don’t know if you noticed that you said [blockquote]But frankly, I just don’t have the patience for it. I’d rather engage in the exciting adventure of shaping the new wineskins….[/blockquote]
Can you imagine Athanasius saying the same thing? Can you imagine Anthony starting a new church or even the Wesleys? Yes, the Methodist Church was started after them, but they died CofE priests. Can you imagine Francis or Dominic saying the “I don’t have the patience for it.”?
While I honor you and the work you are doing, I know that I am in a “safe” diocese with a wonderful bishop who understands the need to plant churches and that the way we have always done it doesn’t always work. I know that I am blessed to be a deacon (minister) in this diocese and that others have much harder tasks before them.
I, too, believe that we are in another reformation. God seems to let things get black just before His dawn breaks. Witness Good Friday, Anthony, Athansasius and the Capadocians, the Celtic Saints, Dominic and Francis, Luther, Cramner and the Caroline Divines, the Wesleys, the Tractarians, and a host of other reformers in the Church. Each time, things had gone far wrong and each time, God used faithful men (and not a few women) to recall the Church to Himself. I believe it is happening again and not just in the Anglican Communion. I see it in Rome with JPII and Benedict XVI. I see it in the Orthodox boom in the US and around the world. I see it in Africa and Asia and South America. I see the hunger for it in the US and Europe, but we they don’t know they are hungry for it. God’s grace and His call to holy living are all around us. Let us each find the patience for the strong and difficult work ahead of us! Where we are impatient or lack enthusiasm, pray for a fresh renewal of the Holy Spirit and God’s grace.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
My esteemed brother Phil (#7),
Perhaps we have a semantic problem here. When I speak of the need for new wineskins, that doesn’t equate to starting a whole new church. For example, I’d say that when St. Anthony started to attract such a following that a whole monastic movement gathered around him, that was in a very real sense that beginning of some new wineskins, WITHIN the Catholic church and yet essentially independent of its regular structures. Likewise, the Wesley brothers most definitely designed and implemented some radically new wineskins, when the rigid old structures of the C of E in their day couldn’t handle all the potent new wine God was causing to grow and ferment through the Evangelical Revival they helped lead. And make no mistake, when John Wesley chose to “ordain” bishops for America, that was clearly a schismatic act.
And what about Athanasius? No, he didn’t start a new church in Egypt, but he refused to compromise the homo-ousios claim in the Nicene Creed. And as a result, he was sent into exile no less than four different times by various Arian emperors. He wasn’t working for change from within the system then, was he?
Perhaps the way I’m choosing to pitch my approach turns you off, Phil. That’s entirely understandable. Many people find my provocative language of a “New Reformation” needlessly confusing or divisive. But I can assure you that I was being quite intentional in confessing my lack of patience for following the “inside strategy.”
My hunch is that you may be put off by the seeming implication of schism associated with the use of phrases like a “New Reformation” or “new wineskins.” So let me assure you that I still hold to the original claim made by the leaders of the ACN, i.e., that the real schismatics are the heretical revisionists who have hijacked TEC and recklessly taken it off into their “new thing.” After all, we orthodox Anglicans are the MAJORITY of the members of the AC now. They have left us. We aren’t leaving them.
But I’m not interested in merely preserving the orthodox Anglicanism of the past, noble and precious a heritage as it is. We now live in a radically changed world, a secularized, pluralistic, post-modern, post-Christendom world. And that calls for truly radical changes in the way we do church, if we are going to be effective in fulfilling the Great Commission in our day.
Perhaps part of our conflict or difficulty in understanding each other here has to do with the PACE of change that I’m calling for. That is, much like Anthony or Luther or Wesley or Newman, I’m calling for immediate, drastic, and sweeping change. Not gradual, incremental change. In other words, not evolutionary change, but revolutionary change. Nothing less will do, in my judgment.
But as you know, the Church is by nature a conservative institution that doesn’t handle revolutionary change well. And such rapid, sweeping, drastic change is ALWAYS highly divisive. That is part of the high price tag that comes along with this New Reformation.
But it’s a price I’m willing to pay. Let’s face it, the Titanic is sinking. We don’t have endless time to save the passengers before this stricken luxury liner known as TEC slips beneath the waves.
David Handy+
NRA & Phil – I’m with Phil on this issue. But what I hope for and what I think will eventually happen will, much of it at least, not be in my lifetime. And, despite the heterodoxy in many areas in TEC, we should remember that our Lord told us that the Gates of Hell should not prevail against the Church. Please, anybody, don’t come back and say that it’s no longer the Church, or part of it.
rob k (#9),
You won’t get any disparagement from me. I respect your position. It is a perfectly honorable one, and many Anglicans will agree with you.
But I would remind you that the promise given to Peter in Matt. 16:18 that the “gates” of Hades won’t prevail against “the Church” probably applies to the Christian Church as a whole. It doesn’t necessarily apply to a specific part of the universal Church.
The historical record is all too clear. There HAVE been portions of the Church that have failed. And the Lord has removed their lampstand (cf. Rev. 2:5 etc). The Nestorian Church is one example. Closer to home, much of Congregationalsim in both England and New England fell into Unitarianism and utter apostasy.
Besides, the GATES of Hell are for defense, not for offense. The divine promise is that Satan’s kingdom won’t withstand the attack of the Church, not vice versa. Let us assail the walls of Hell and rescue the perishing, while there is time. To use another biblical analogy, “Night comes, when no one can work…”
David Handy+
Maybe taking another tack would help clarify matters. Let’s take a quick look at the historical record. There have been three major attempts in Anglican history to unsettle the Elizabethan Settlement and bring about rapid, radical change in the C of E. All three ultimately failed in the sense that the immovable mountain of the C of E resisted the seemingly irresistible force of the three reform movements that strongly challenged the status quo.
I’m speaking of these radical reform movements:
1. The Puritan movement, of the mid16th-mid17th century.
2. The Evangelical movement, beginning in the mid18th century.
3. The Anglo-Catholic movement, beginning in the mid19th century.
Now granted, James Packer still claims to be a Puritan, born out of time. And there are lots of Anglicans who think of themselves as Evangelicals or Anglo-Catholics. But what I mean is that the radical reforms sought by Richard Baxter, or John Wesley, or John Henry Newman, were basically rejected, the established order prevailed, and many, many followers of those men ended up leaving the C of E in frustration and protest.
And I think it can be forcefully and persuasively argued (and I would so argue myself) that the reason why Wesley and Newman were basically forced out of the Church of England is that they attempted to press for far too much change too fast. The radical reforms they insisted were necessary NOW were simply unrealistic. The church was just plain incapable of changing so drastically and quickly. In other words, the failure of those reform movements were entirely natural and predictable, given the impatience of their leaders. Idealism, after all, can be a very dangerous thing. It so easily borders on Utopianism.
Now the question is: Have +Bob Duncan the Lion-Hearted and the rest of us committed to the CCP fallen into the same trap? Is our idealism and impatience dooming our reform movement to a similar fate?
Time will tell. But I hope not.
David Handy+
NRA – Your points in posts 10 and 11 are well taken. I would add, however, that the Oxford Movement was successful in calling the Church back to its Catholic ontology. Or maybe partially successful.
rob k (#12),
Thanks. I’m always glad to find common ground between us that we can build on.
Yes, I’d agree that the Oxford Movement or Catholic Revival was PARTIALLY successful, despite Newman’s departure in 1845, and the departure of over 700 catholic-minded pirests after the disastrous Gorham Judgment around 1850. And probably one reason why was that the movement slowed down and settled in for the long haul.
David Handy+
#11 NRA Fr Handy
Very interesting analysis: I had taken it these movements had a massive influence, although not always what was intended.
The Puritans overplayed their hand during the Commonwealth making our ancestors’ lives a misery; an element remained in our Sunday observance until recently and some of our attitudes and ethics and there is probably more ingrained in the bedrock of our church than we are aware of.
The Evangelicals form the dynamic core of the CofE today and the motivation behind the new expressions of church we are seeing in the large Christian festivals and evangelism going on. If anything their influence is growing as it has done steadily over the last century.
The Anglo-Catholics recovered the baby that had been thrown out with the bathwater by the Puritans; so ingrained is what they did in the CofE that one is often unaware of it. The fact that we did not all become part of the non-conformists, baptists or Romans is testimony to the strength of Anglicanism as the 55-78 million of us worldwide also witnesses to – one needs to keep sight of that.
+Drexel Gomez with his high ecclesiology has served in a manner we should all be grateful for.