The conventional wisdom is wrong. At least about the Lambeth Conference.
I watched the video news-conference by The Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas and the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts-Schori yesterday. I had these big ideas about live-blogging it, but that wasn’t practical. I am glad I didn’t. In attempting to draw immediate conclusions, I would have missed the heart of the story.
My gut feeling was very positive…that the attempt is to build a basis for resolution of thorny issues by building on relationships. But I was still perplexed, at a time when Anglican divisions are at their highest and most delicate…how can we move forward? And when everyone is itching for a solution (theirs) how can consensus be reached?
One of the most perplexing things about Lambeth is that there will be no legislation, no plenary reports from which resolutions will be drawn, no voting and no Big Reports. This has driven many people a little crazy. If they aren’t going to Say Something Definitive, then what’s the point?
The conventional wisdom is that Lambeth will attempt to paper over differences. There is plenty of precedent.
This seems to be the same ole rationalization for staying “stuck” in sin. Another selection from the book of “Moral Relativism”. Mr Plus certainly has a way with words. Words that have definitions that seem to be different than their previous meanings:
“We are Biblical. We are not Biblicists, but we delve deeply into what God teaches us in Scripture and we attempt to live that out.”
Unusual Bible you have there!
“We are traditional. We know that we stand on a past that has been both rich and imperfect, both a blessing and sinful. In bringing forward what the Church has taught and experienced, and in attempting to make that tradition live in the present, we bring forward the teachings of Christ and his redeeming to the present and into the future.”
Not the “Tradition” that I knew for nearly 6 decades and certainly not the “Tradition” that the church has know for 200 decades.
I’m so sad for you folks that still struggle with TEC’s “new thing”. I so happy to be OCA now. We drive 150 miles round trip share the “good news” of Jesus, our Lord God and Savior, with those that really respect the Bible and Tradition.
Peace to all for I pray daily for you!
Barry
“My gut feeling was very positive…that the attempt is to build a basis for resolution of thorny issues by building on relationships.”
“Building on relationships?”
What do human relationships, outside of concurrence regarding the heeding of the guidance of Scripture, have to do with resolving theological viewpoints that are so widely divergent as to be unreconcilable without the orthodox Anglicans conceding to the heretical demands of the progressive-revisionists?
There is no “give” among the revisionist bishops and their fellow-travelling middle-of-the-road bishops. There are temporary displays of kindly tolerance for orthodox Anglicans, but no “give,” no relaxing of their revolutionary-revisionist fervor.
The progressive-revisionists have left the Anglican Communion in almost every way except for their slender hold on attending conferences. Little of what ECUSA’s leadership says or does has to do preaching “the Faith once given.”
Orthodox Anglicans should push forcefully for two things in the USA.
The spiritual reformation of ECUSA with a complete “house-cleaning” of heresy and heretics from clerical positions in ECUSA and the formation of an orthodox Anglican primacy in the USA.
These two things can occur separately and under a single aegis or they can occur separately with a goal of uniting the two efforts at some time in the future.
We, the orthodox Anglicans, are nearing a schwer-zeit-punkt, a hard point in time, where we will no longer have the luxury of tolerance towards those who fallen away from “the Faith once given” within the same episcopacy.
The progressive-revisionists have made it abundantly clear that they have only temporary tolerance for orthodox Anglicans. It is patently clear, based upon the evidence, that the progr4essive-revisionists within ECUSA intend to squash all orthodox clerical leadership as soon as possible.
Quote: “One of the most perplexing things about Lambeth is that there will be no legislation, no plenary reports from which resolutions will be drawn, no voting and no Big Reports.”
And you can bet there will be no consensus either — whether “built upon relationships” or anything else. The only real unity can only be built upon real surrender to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior — a fact which gets lost in the rhetoric.
Will there be compromise? Probably in some manner. Those who call themselves orthodox but who put so-called “Catholic Order” above Evangelical Truth would love that. But for many orthodox there can be NO Compromise and so, at the end of the day there very well may be– —
— No Anglican Communion. Or at least a very truncated one.
The Church cannot be reduced to a political game.
I have said it before and will say it again
The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the reason there will be no votes at Lambeth is because he has taken the pulse of the communion and there is no support for reopening Lambeth 1.10. That statement stands then as the mind of the communion.
While there could be a point in voting about what to do with those provinces that do not accord with Lambeth 1.10 — there is no need for a vote on the policy of the Anglican communion.
I think that basic point keeps getting lost in this debate.
But neither Lambeth nor the current ABC will enforce 1.10. I may be carved in stone, but without enforcement so what!?
Sorry. It should read: But neither Lambeth nor the current ABC will enforce 1.10. It (1.10) may be carved in stone, but without enforcement so what!?
Br. Michael said “It (1.10) may be carved in stone, but without enforcement so what!?”
Once again, you are talking as if the only thing that’s real is a naked assertion of power and everything else is irrelevant. That’s the kind of thing the World is very good, and it’s the only thing the World respects, but I’m not sure we Christians should so easily buy into the simple calculus of victory and defeat. I understand that it’s frustrating to be “right’ but not visibly vindicated, but take no thought for tomorrow, who may seem to win and who may seem to lose, for it is the gentiles who worry about these things! Maybe Lambeth 1.10 and the witness of the way you live your life will be enough for the Spirit to work with!
Peace!
Mark, I don’t understand your point. God is in control and God’s designs will not be thwarted. That is a given. So why even bother to go to Lameth then.
For more on the idea of “appreciative inquiry,” see here.