The Anglican Communion began with the Church of England separating from the Roman Catholic Church in the middle of the 16th century as part of the Reformation. It is now found in 160 countries throughout the world. The Episcopal Church is the American branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Although Anglicans share in a fairly similar form of liturgical worship, not all Anglicans think alike. “There are vast cultural and theological differences within the church. For example, most of the African churches were started by very conservative English missionaries and, thus, tend to have a rather conservative, literal approach to scripture, the authority of their bishops and social issues, including human sexuality. The American churches evolved in a totally different cultural, political and theological context. … There’s a tremendous clash in approaches” between African and American Anglicans, Boyle said. Many of the African bishops are demanding that the Americans approach the church and religion the same way they do. “The differences are so vast that they are not likely to get easily resolved. Part of what they are demanding is that we all think alike. To us it’s normal to have differences of opinion. For us, our unity isn’t found in thinking alike. It is found in our common worship.”
“Episcopalians aren’t expected to accept everything they are told or always agree with the priest or other leaders. “They take what is of value and use it. I expect them to disagree with me at times. … The church expects people to make their own moral and ethical decisions.” Parishioners are asked to explore issues thoughtfully and prayerfully and to come to their own decisions. The approach is more like, “I respect your opinion, and I will think deeply about that, but that may not be, in the end, what I decide is right for me.” ”
What does the parishoner use, an ouiji board? Is Chrisitianity just a mere rationalization concocted by limited human minds?
Where do Christ’s teachings and the Word of God as revealed by God to the prophets comer in?
And his demeaning reference to African theological thinking is just “over the wall” and into the new-age looney bin.
The tone of this whole article seems to be, do your own thing, as long as I agree with you. The comments about choosing what to believe and about African bishops wanting people to think a certain way are a joke. If you do not or can not believe the Gospel, why are you around? TEC is the one demanding that everyone think their way. I don’t recall any African bishops suing anyone over beliefs. This is just more of the liberal warped clap-trap.
Knit together across countless printings over the years in newsweeklies, lifestyle sections, and stapled pamphlets, these little “We’re-OK-Because-You’re-OK” vignettes comprise the Episcopal Church’s Magisterium.
Further proof that being Episcopalian makes you stupid.
He says, “For us, our unity isn’t found in thinking alike. It is found in our common worship.”
He does not understand that common worship is not merely the same [b]form[/b] of worship being used, but having the same [b]object[/b] of worship. If we do not worship the living God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – then we are not worshiping in common, even if we may used the same pattern of worship or even the same words.
I am continually amazed by those who claim Reason as an authority, and who use “reason” as an excuse not to believe in miracles – particularly the virginal conception and the physical resurrection — and yet who cannot think logically.
AnglicanFirst [#1] writes: “Is Chrisitianity just a mere rationalization concocted by limited human minds?”
Yes; but as with any rationalization, that’s only half the story. The Bible itself teaches us that rationalization — read: human mental conception, the building of mental models of God’s reality — is a two-part process.
• Part 1 is coming up with ideas about how things are. (Personally I’m inclined to think that some sort of divine intervention is involved here, in ways we don’t even begin to understand.)
• Part 2 is testing the ideas, as best we can, to see how coherent they seem to be with the reality that God has actually wrought. (One of God’s principal gifts to us is the ability to observe and piece together evidence from his reality.) Sometimes we simply won’t know enough to say, at least not with enough confidence to justify making big bets. In those cases, fidelity to the First Commandment requires us to admit ignorance; if we were to demand belief that the world is the way we imagine it to be, vice the way God caused it to be, we would be guilty (in the words of David Pailin) of worshiping human wishes.
This two-part approach is enjoined on us in Deut. 18.21-22 (if what a prophet says turns out not to be true, then it wasn’t a work the LORD told him to speak) and in 1 Thess. 5.20 (don’t disdain the creative process, but test everything and keep that which proves to be good). We see this approach, minus the God references, in the scientific method, which has proved to be, bar none, THE most fruitful approach there is to discerning what believers accept as God’s handiwork — and by inference, tantalizing hints as to his nature and his will.
Circling back around to AnglicanFirst’s comment: If we apply this two-part scriptural test to the rationalization / mental model we call “Christianity,” it’s clear that some aspects of it (the Summary of the Law; the Sermon on the Mount) seem firmly grounded in God’s reality, while other aspects don’t seem to hold up so well. That’s OK; we can build on what works, and be grateful for the revelation of what doesn’t. As scientists say, there’s no such thing as a failed experiment, because no matter what happens, we learn something we (probably) didn’t know before, which means we’ve made progress.
———-
Hakkatan [#5] writes: “If we do not worship the living God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – then we are not worshiping in common, even if we may used the same pattern of worship or even the same words.”
Hakkatan, your comment seems to suggest a preoccupation with sorting the world into us and them. That’s a path not just to splintering, but to sawdust.
D.C. Toedt,
You appear to be referring to the god-given ability to discern false prophets, which is exactly what happens to me every time I hear the usual TEC liberal line!
DC,
The phrase “the sawdust trail” is often used to refer to Tent Revivals. the floors were lined with Sawdust, and those who went forward at the altar call for salvation were said to have trod the sawdust trail.
I hope that applies in this case: all Christians who worship in common with other Christians MUST worship the Christian God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit — three in one. Any other god is not the One true Living God of Scripture and Christian teaching.
As to a splintering between us and them, well, that IS Biblically based.
That’s a sawdust trail I will gladly trod.
As much as it shocks me to say, I am *almost* in complete agreement with what D.C. in #6, particularly in his articulation of his two points. His first makes room for an understanding of revelation by acknowledging the possibility of God seeding us, if you will, with new ideas.
In his second point, there are two underlying principles which I am happy to shout from the rooftops:
1) Thinking is different than knowing,
2) Truth exists
Supported by these two principles are D.C.’s reverence for the scientific method, and mine for peer review –which is perhaps a variation on the “Vincentian Canon”; [i]what has been said by others who I have grounds to trust?[/i] In both methodologies, I am not the highest authority. And neither is the methodology the ultimate truth in itself.
Without reference to how I came to faith, or to the times I nearly threw it away, I believe because I trusted men who seemed to know what they were talking about. I prayed, under their encouragement, and discovered. I examined my experience in light of what has been thought before, and found it consistent (in some instances, modified my belief). I used their guidance to be open to an encounter with God as much as the guidance of Tesla to encounter electricity. Then, you “taste and seeâ€
I find that this new piece of understanding, brought by that encounter, is not just more data, but illuminates and organizes almost all the other data I have. So I am confirmed in my belief, and I trust aspects of it that are beyond my testing yet.
The key, though, is to acknowledge that there is Truth, and it may very likely be different (probably IS different!) than what I already understand. I have to be willing to lay my understanding down in order to receive Truth instead. That is how I became a Christian.
[url=rericsawyer.wordpress.com][i]R. Eric Sawyer[/i][/url]
D. C., life is maintained by making distinctions. I don’t eat just any old thing that looks like it might be food; I discern whether or not it is truly fit to eat. Indeed, we have entire government departments that ascertain safe food supplies, because a century or so ago, many food producers were selling spoiled food treated to look as though it were good to eat. And mushroom lovers enjoy good wild mushrooms — but they are careful to learn how to tell the safe from the poisonous.
The same is true in the spiritual realm. God has revealed himself in Scripture, and he tells us what he is like and what we need to do in order to know him. I want to have church leaders who trust the God of Scripture, not some vague, patched-together deity proceeding from their imaginations, using ancient terms with new meanings to disguise the new faith they are expounding as being the ancient faith of the apostles.
I was talking with my bishop a little while ago, and I said that one thing I had liked about the Episcopal Church was that it had a solid core of convictions, but the edges were blurry. In the last few decades, the edges have become wispy and the core spongy. We who believe that “mere Christianity” is the truth do not want to ingest spiritual poison — and so we make distinctions. We do not aim to exclude any person, but we do seek that those who come will find true and nourishing spiritual sustenance, not poison mushrooms, even if those mushrooms are attractive.
Hakkatan [#10] writes: “… mushroom lovers enjoy good wild mushrooms—but they are careful to learn how to tell the safe from the poisonous. [¶] The same is true in the spiritual realm.”
An excellent point, Hakkatan. In the spiritual realm, however, it’s sometimes impossible to know whether any given species of “mushrooms” (different religious beliefs) is poisonous. Many people “eat” them with absolutely no discernible ill effects, and those who do suffer ill effects have usually eaten a lot of other questionable things too, so we have no idea whether it was the mushrooms that poisoned them.
Sure we can. By reading the works of those who have gone before. With Christianity we have 2000 years of records on what works (orthodoxy) and what doesn’t (heresy).
That makes it a lot easier to identify the ‘mushrooms’ from the ‘toadstools’. After all, trial and error may work in some areas, but not in testing poision, and certainly not in gambling with your spiritual eternity!
Jesus said “I am the bread of life” and “anyone who thirsts come to me and wells of living water shall spring forth from you.” When questioned, the disciples admitted: Lord…you alone have the words of eternal life.:
We know the truth from the false through God’s own revelation — written and incarnate in His Son. That’s why the beliefs of those with whom we share worship and eucharist IS important.
Libraryjim [#12], the Deuteronomy passage I cited (18.21-22) enjoins us to test all appeals to authority against what happens in the real world that God wrought. The world learned long ago that it’s far better to go count the number of teeth in a horse’s mouth than to rely on Aristotle’s speculations on the subject. That goes for what Jesus said as much as anyone; after all, he was clearly wrong that the end times were imminent, wasn’t he?
Your test of any religious doctrine seems to be whether it comports with Christian exclusivism. It also seems that you don’t want to share any worship experience with those whose religious views don’t pass that test. I guess then you’ll be asking me to leave, or at least walking out, if I have the effrontery to try to worship alongside you?
DC Toedt: “your comment seems to suggest a preoccupation with sorting the world into us and them”
You mean . . . like sheep and goats??
[i]after all, he was clearly wrong that the end times were imminent, wasn’t he? [/i]
Nope, we just don’t have enough knowledge to know what He (as God incarnate) meant by near. Didn’t He even say that that was knowledge the Father reserved to Himself?
And don’t forget, to God “a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a single day”. What we DO know is that the end times started when He ascended to heaven after His physical resurrection. We ARE in the end times, they just are not going as fast as we thought they were. Prophecy is never easy to figure out until after the fact.
[i]I guess then you’ll be asking me to leave, or at least walking out, if I have the effrontery to try to worship alongside you? [/i]
If you don’t believe the creeds as historically written, and are a practicing baptised Christian, I will certainly be offended if you receive the Eucharist, the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus, which is reserved for BELIEVERS.
As to corporate, non-eucharistic worship (Morning/Evening prayer?), well, even non-believers in the days of the Church Fathers were welcome to hear the liturgy of the Word. If you were there and I knew you didn’t believe, then during the prayers of the people I would pray that you would come to belief through hearing the Word of the Lord, written/spoken.
But yes, Christianity DOES have rules and standards for Eucharistic participation.
from the [url=http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/]1662 Book of Common Prayer[/url]:
[blockquote]So many as intend to be partakers of the holy Communion shall signify their names to the Curate at least some time the day before.
If a Minister be persuaded that any person who presents himself to be a partaker of the holy Communion ought not to be admitted thereunto by reason of malicious and open contention with his neighbours, or other grave and open sin without repentance, he shall give an account of the same to the Ordinary of the place, and therein obey his order and direction, but so as not to refuse the Sacrament to any person until in accordance with such order and direction he shall have called him and advertised him that in any wise he presume not to come to the Lord’s Table; Provided that in case of grave and immediate scandal to the Congregation the Minister shall not admit such person, but shall give an account of the same to the Ordinary within seven days after at the latest and therein obey the order and direction given to him by the Ordinary; Provided also that before issuing his order and direction in relation to any such person the Ordinary shall afford him an opportunity for interview.[/blockquote]
This sentence was poorly composed:
If you don’t believe the creeds as historically written, and are a practicing baptised Christian, I will certainly be offended if you receive the Eucharist, the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus, which is reserved for BELIEVERS.
It could have been written:
If you don’t believe the Scriptures and creeds as historically INTERPRETED, and are NOT a practicing baptised Christian, I will certainly be offended if you receive the Eucharist, the real presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus, which is reserved for BELIEVERS.
composing on the fly is sometimes chancy.
JE.
“Jesus…was clearly wrong that the end times were imminent, wasn’t he?” —DC [#13]
Well, if end times will occur, they’re certainly “imminent” in geologic time. And for One who existed before time began, geologic time is merely a droplet in an ocean.
A repeated theme of the Old Testament is the insistance of wayward Jews on introducing man-contrived gods and worship practices into the Jewish Faith in direct defiance of God’s commandments.
The pagan man-contrived gods were nothing but objects made of metal, wood or pottery and the spurious worship practices included ritual sex with temple prostitutes in the “high places” and the blood sacrifice of children.
This all served to diminish God and His sorrow, anger and retribution are a matter of biblical record.
The progressive-revisionists of ECUSA are repeating the sins of the revisionists of the Old Testament in a modern way in a modern context.
Pagan deities and philosophies are being equated with Salvation through Christ. That is, Christianity is being diminished by being preached as being co-equal with such beliefs as Hinduism, Buddhism, Wikka, et cetera by clergy within ECUSA.
In fact, these pagan beliefs have much in common with the pagan beliefs mentioned in the Old Testament that caused God such sorrow and anger.
It is not unreasonable to feel/believe that ECUSA’s progressive-revisionists may eventually experience the same anger from God and the same level of punishment that was experienced by the wayward Jews of the Old Testament.
DC, laddie, have you read the minor prophets?
LibraryJim [#16] and Irenaeus [#18], we see in sports, in business, in essentially every walk of life, that the world doesn’t highly regard people who get defensive and make excuses when their predictions go bust — especially when the excuses are elaborate and strained, such as (for example) a thousand years is like a day in God’s sight, which indisputably was not what the early church was talking about in its predictions of the imminent end times.
A repeated theme of the Old Testament is the insistance of wayward Jews on introducing man-contrived gods and worship practices into the Jewish Faith in direct defiance of God’s commandments.
The pagan man-contrived gods were nothing but objects made of metal, wood or pottery and the spurious worship practices included ritual sex with temple prostitutes in the “high places” and the blood sacrifice of children.
This all served to diminish God and His sorrow, anger and retribution are a matter of biblical record.
The progressive-revisionists of ECUSA are repeating the sins of the revisionists of the Old Testament in a modern way in a modern context.
Pagan deities and philosophies are being equated with Salvation through Christ. That is, Christianity is being diminished by being preached as being co-equal with such beliefs as Hinduism, Buddhism, Wikka, et cetera by clergy within ECUSA.
In fact, these pagan beliefs have much in common with the pagan beliefs mentioned in the Old Testament that caused God such sorrow and anger.
It is not unreasonable to feel/believe that ECUSA’s progressive-revisionists may eventually experience the same anger from God and the same level of punishment that was experienced by the wayward Jews of the Old Testament.
DC, laddie, have you read the minor prophets?
Elves,
Somehow my post #19 was repeated as post #21.
Please remove post #21.
Thank you
“We see in sports, in business, in essentially every walk of life, that the world doesn’t highly regard people who get defensive and make excuses when their predictions go bust” —DC [#20]
DC: If Jesus Christ was the Son of God and spoke the words recorded in the gospels, we’re not exactly free to lump Him together with losing athletes and failed CEOs.
Irenaeus [#21], my comment about excuse-makers referred to Christians, not just modern ones but also Paul and the authors of 1- and 2 Peter and 1 John. From what we know of Jesus, he didn’t seem to be the sort who made excuses.
In any case, as you know, IMHO the orthodox haven’t come close to making their case that Jesus was a unique, divine, Second Person of a triune God. It’s not even clear he regarded himself as the Anointed One; I strongly suspect that, as a good Jew, he would have angrily rejected any suggestion that he was not just maschiach but co-equal to the Father. Cf. Mk 10.18: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”
I also think we have to be extremely cautious when we attribute particular statements to Jesus. Several of the allegedly-dominical sayings sound suspiciously like later writers or editors — for example, the author(s) of the Fourth Gospel — might have been trying to put words in Jesus’ mouth for their own purposes.
(Eric Sawyer, peer review is certainly a useful too, but it just isn’t enough here. The existence of a consensus for the Nicaean view — among a minority subset of humanity — isn’t dispositive, any more than it was for the Ptolemaic view that the earth is the center of the universe.)
————–
AnglicanFirst [#19], I have indeed read the minor prophets. Their rantings that ancient Israel’s tribulations were the bitter fruit of its disobedience to God is unpersuasive. A far simpler and more-plausible explanation is merely that tiny Israel had the misfortune to be positioned at the crossroads of powerful empires. The minor prophets were like the wannabe drum major who jumped out in front of the parade and pretended to be leading it.
DC,
It surely confuses me as to why someone who obviously does NOT believe the doctrines and teachings of Christianity would want to worship in a church that does. Why would such a person insist on foisting him/her self into such a group, unless to show in their arrogance that they are better than the people IN that group?
It would seem to me that someone who does not believe or hold to the presuppositions of a group would be better served by — and would better serve in — an organization that believes similarly to their own beliefs.
What, except for aggrivation on both parties, could be gained by such a move?
IMO (I long ago dropped the “H”, as I would suggest you do as well, as nothing about your replies or opinions seem to warrant the “H”), a church has the right to insist that those who wish to be a part of their congregation/denomination/etc, hold to the beliefs of that church. The same for any other organization. After all, one wouldn’t join (to use your example) a baseball team and then insist that they change the rules of the game for that team and that they be allowed to play the games of the season using THEIR rules and not the official rules of the league. They would be laughed off the diamond and banned from the park.
Well, this is much more serious in the long run than a baseball game. Eternity is a stake. And for those who are open minded enough to accept the evidence, the orthodox has indeed stood on very solid ground in re: the divinity of Jesus. Only a fool can look at the words of Jesus and conclude He was something other than Lord and Savior of all who will call upon His name. or as C.S. Lewis said (to paraphrase) Lord, liar, or lunatic — He left no other option open to us.
May you open your eyes to His truth.
Jim Elliott <>< follower of Jesus the incarnate Son of God.
This is probably not the right place to post this… but….
I am currently a United Methodist w/ a Roman Catholic childhood. I am so tired of all the LBGT in the UMC, and even more so of the lack of liturgy in (some) congregations. They seem to get farther and farther from the sacraments, and farther away from missional work in the community.
There’s a new (episcopal) church starting up near by that’s part of the Dallas Diocese that I am interested in attending, but after doing some online reading it appears the Episcopal church is in no better shape than the UMC.
The ONLY saving grace I see is that there is some major dissent and some parishes leaving the American church.
I do not want to go from one frying pan into another. I prefer to go to a church that says this is what we believe, this is why we believe it, and end of story, let’s move on with helping other others.
Any recommendations?
Uhmmm….. my sentence should have read that I am
[i]…tired of all the LBGT [b] TALK[/b]…[/i]
Dave, I’m sure such a church will come to mind. I think you’ve been there already. 🙂