I, along with many others (”bewitched” or not according to Rodgers) recognize our sad failure as a Communion to make decisions about Scripture well, in the sense of carefully, communally, persuasively, and consensually. These decisions have not happened. TEC didn’t make any, the AMiA didn’t contribute to any, the Global South has not yet accomplished any in a widely persuasive manner. But why should this surprise us and why hold it against Williams in a particular way? Such careful, communal, persuasive, and consensual decisions regarding the meaning of Scripture’s direction of the Christian Church’s life is a rare gift, ever since the Jerusalem Council. Orientals and Catholics failed over centuries; Catholics and Greeks have failed; Lutherans and Roman Catholics on justification failed for years (and recent breakthroughs have not exactly changed the playing field); Anglicans and Presbyterians and Methodists have failed, and all to the rending of the Church’s integrity and subversion of her witness. And yet all these failed efforts engaged the minds, hearts, and labors of saints and theologians far greater than, I dare say, those active in most of our Anglican churches today. Still, for all this, Rodgers’ response to this is “separate!”, as if this will bring health, to anyone involved. It should be instead, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of David, have mercy on us!”
But the Scripture is clear about all the contentious topic of sexuality, Rodgers would surely say. And I agree with him there; the problem is that not all in the church are persuaded by his or my assertions and arguments. Yes, but the church has already made its decision about this, e.g. at Lambeth. Again, I agree; but she has not made a clear decision about how to deal with those who have rejected Lambeth’s teaching. Yes, but in the meantime (even before!) we must separate from those who are either not persuaded, or have not decided, or who have rejected decision, or who do not yet know how to respond to the rejecters”¦ And why is that? Because the Scriptures are clear on the matter.
In part, this regressive dynamic seems driven by the fundamental belief Rodgers has that the Scriptures need no considered reflection and consensual interpretation in order to govern the Church effectively. For it would appear that the logic of Rodgers’ reasoning leads inexorably, not just to a “church of the like-minded” ”“ that would be fine, if there were such a thing (I am not afraid of agreeing with people; indeed I long for it!) ”“ but to the reduction of “church” to the passing moments of individual certainties where in fact like-mindedness has little chance of solidly emerging. Invitation-only conferences like GAFCON can serve a useful purpose; but not a decision-making one. For there are only some Christians among the Anglican family who are currently persuaded by the claim that the “Scriptures tell us we must separate from Canterbury and split the Communion”. If this were not the case, there would be no “urgent call” and pages of accusation. By definition, Rodgers and his colleagues have not persuaded; and by definition, those they will persuade (and they will, no doubt) will not themselves “be” the Anglican church in any integral way.
[i]Perhaps this elf missed it, but I couldn’t find any link in this essay to the SPREAD document to which Dr. Radner is responding. For those interested, you can read it at [url=http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/13223/]Stand Firm[/url], where it was posted yesterday and where there has been an active discussion thread, including some mention also of Dr. Radner’s response which Kendall has posted here.
Please note, my mentioning this is not an endorsement of the SPREAD document. I just imagine folks will ask where to find it since I don’t see the link anywhere here in Dr. Radner’s response.
–elfgirl[/i]
Thanks elfgirl, it does seem best to read the SPREAD document first before Radner’s reply. On first glance it seemed to me that Radner is so full of invective that he seems like one protesting an accusation that has struck too close to home. But I will reserve final judgment until I read them both.
I have commented before that I think that the ABC has determined that the AC can only be saved if nothing happens. This explains what Matt recounts above. I think Dr. Radner and the ACI is in the same mold. They are desperate that the AC survive. They say that they deplore the inovations of TEC yet they realize that any effective discipline will split the AC. If the unity of the AC is the top priority then nothing must happen and the orthodox must be strung along with promises of action while making sure that that action never takes place.
Thus: All bishops must go to Lambeth and GAFCON is bad.
We must wait for the covenant which is so far down the road that it will take many years before we learn if it is effective or not and in any event it is not designed to resolve the current problem. All this is preservation of the status quo of endless debate and insures that the day of decision will never come.
In the meantime TEC continues on its way.
[blockquote]Yes, but the church has already made its decision about this, e.g. at Lambeth. Again, I agree; but she has not made a clear decision about how to deal with those who have rejected Lambeth’s teaching.[/blockquote]The church seems to have made her decision about how to deal with them. She has declined to discipline the error and will allow those who reject Lambeth’s teaching to remain.
‘at least as problematic as the Spread document’ — this is surely a crucial observation. The Spread document is a misinformed, hostile, open piece of invective. Radner is clear it is questionable whether one should respond at all, but assumes it is important to do so because it is written (apparently) by a Bishop, and could represent the grounds for splitting the communion at Gafcon, held by others in places of responsiblity. As some of us believe the Communion worth preserving; and have not given up on the means to do that (even if one disagrees with this); it is logical and important to rebute this. Perhaps the question, then, is: is Kennedy correct that most simply regard the Spread document as ‘problematic’ and not worth the effort?
A large part of Ephraim+’s essay is designed to counter Rowan Williams’ as a “scriptural heretic.” In particular, it is his contention that we have a new Rowan the archbishop which is different from Rowan the academic. Ephraim+ then cites various references. We have all had the pleasure of sifting through the nebulous writings of Rowan Williams – by this I think he means that and by that he means this, this ambiguous paragraph counteracts that seeming proposition in that one. But I would point to Rowan’s less nebulous words: “I will take the opinion of the primates into account in the invitations to Lambeth.” “An invitation to Lambeth is to acknowledge working within Windsor and correspondingly towards the Covenant.” (Rowan, where are those promised letters to bishops like Andrus, Ingham, Tanner-Irish, and Gray-Reeves???)
There are words and there are actions. Matt+ (#4) lists some, but we can add to the list: The above mentioned lack of letters (Bp Wright, what say ye now?) and the whole indaba format which is carefully crafted to continue the “processing” which we have all seen only results in the further advancement of heterodoxy.
I recall how Ephraim+ strongly objected to Bp Duncan’s statement that the ABC is lost as an instrument of unity. (Bp Duncan was actually quoting this from another source, I believe.) I cannot fathom that anyone could view him as something other than an instrument of disunity at this point. He is hopelessly compromised having surrendered his integrity as well as his standing in the eyes of his laity.
So what to do? Separate from the ABC? What I think the leaders of GAFCon are doing is to simply move on and forward and hope that the ABC will follow. What is the destination? I certainly don’t know, but we must move out of this slough where the Anglican “Communion” is mired and where Rowan Williams would like it to wallow – at least for another ten years.
[blockquote]The apostolic model is nothing of the sort. Paul did not berate the Galatians in Galatians 1 for acting precipitously…but for not acting at all. The only council that needs to be held with regard to those members of the clergy who promote and or bless homosexual behavior is the council that meets to pronounce anathema and excommunication.[/blockquote]
Thank you, Fr. Kennedy. All who hold to TEC and the AC as sacrosanct institutions – that includes the ACI – take note. “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:9 – ESV) We’re well past the time of woulda, coulda, shoulda… And being wrongly critical of an organization (SPREAD) that is actually trying to do something is patently counter-productive.
Radner, it would appear, would have believers in the Gospel of Jesus Christ yoked with those of a contrary gospel. An effectively do nothing attitude actually aids and abets the accomplishment of the goals of the contrary gospel. No wonder ASA and contributions are dropping like stones; those lay folk, heh, they are pretty savvy.
By the way “considered reflection” sounds an awful lot like the vaunted “listening process”. Members of the ACI need to get out of their little protected, closed cloister and into the parishes around the country. They’ve been in the books way too long…
Br. Michael, BTW, right on target analysis in your #5!
The whole premise is flawed. The Anglican Communion can not be saved from splitting. IT ALREADY HAS. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada have seen to that. They split when they walked away from Christian belief and practice. By their own actions, they have not torn the bonds of affection, they have split themselves from the communion. The see of Canterbury might was well be vacant for all that Rowan has done to protect, preserve, and defend the faith. He has denied the faith himself and has failed terrribly in his obligation to drive out strange teachings. He has become a messenger of strange teaching. Split? It has already happened. Now we have to figure out who is who and what are we. The name Anglican is not reserved for any particular church. It is a desciption actually of a branch of God’s church, not a religion unto itself.
The time for hemming and hawing is over….done with! Come, GAFCON…..GO, Lambeth!
I agree with Matt Kennedy that the SPREAD document is problematic. Indeed, I find it more problematic than he probably does, since the R in SPREAD stands for Reformed, and I am much less Reformed than he is (in the sense of Calvinist or Protestant). I am troubled that the author(s) of this latest SPREAD document haven’t identified themselves, making it harder to assess in terms of its practical importance (as opposed to the intrinsic validity of its arguments or its theoretical importance).
But it won’t surprise Dr. Seitz or other readers familiar with my stance as a firm supporter of the outside strategy (the CCP etc.), that I find Dr. Radner’s attempt at rebuttal even more problematic; indeed I find it significantly more so.
The noble but naive leaders of the ACI (and the “Windsor Bishops” or perhaps I should say now the “CP bishops”) still are committed to “the impossible dream” that this crisis can somehow eventually be resolved through a consensual process. Frankly, I that hope has been completely dashed and is totally unrealistic.
An incredulous and frustrated Ephraim Radner asks what appears to be a rhetorical question, why is the forlorn, hapless Archbishop of Canterbury being regarded with such disdain and mistrust by people like the anonymous authors of this SPREAD document, or by the leaders of GAFCon? But I will treat it as a real question.
And the answer is actually quite simple. Because Cantaur treated the primates’ deadline of Sept. 30th, 2007 as a non deadline. Because he invited despicable, heretical scumbags like +Michael Ingham of New Westminster in Canada or the prevaricating PB of TEC who don’t have the slightest real regard for the Windsor Report and its process to Lambeth. And not least, because he stoutly refuses to repent clearly and publicly for his past public support of the “gay is OK” delusion. Because he continues to treat superficial, institutional unity as more important than genuine theological unity. Because he continues to treat this wearisome, vexing dispute as a matter of biblical interpretation instead of being flatly a matter of accepting biblical authority—or not. Because he treats it as a matter of adiaphora that ought not to be communion-breaking, when that is plainly false (at least it is abundantly plain to me and the vast majority of the world’s Anglicans).
Bottom line for me: preserving the outward form of unity in maintaining a Canterbury-centered, current Instruments-based AC without also maintaining a genuine unity based on restoring our lost agreement on classical Anglican Doctrine and Discipline is OF NO VALUE. The outward unity of the AC is DISPENSABLE. The truth of the gospel is NOT. That is the long and the short of it.
It is becoming steadily clearer that there are indeed two mutually exclusive religions operating within the current “big tent” of Anglicanism. But “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Oil and water simply don’t mix. Never have. Never will. There is simply no real possibility of “peaceful co-existence” here. Forget it. Kiss the AC as we have known it goodbye. Grieve it, and let’s move on.
The emerging Global South led orthodox Anglicanism that is linked to Abuja and Kampala rightly holds doctrine to trump mere matters of polity. The withering, decaying heretical Anglicanism that is linked to Canterbury and New York does the opposite, and for all practical purposes treats polity as trumping doctrine. Now both Doctrine and Discipline are important, but Doctrine is always primary and decisive.
David Handy+
As I commented on the SPREAD/Radner exchange here:
http://mcj.bloghorn.com/3839#Comments
“It was interesting to read the SPREAD document, but what it means is not only that ‘Biblical separation’ (to use TUaD’s term) from the AbC and the liberals is a necessity — but clearly these Evangelical Anglicans will find it hard to avoid the same ‘Biblical separation’ from Catholic Anglicans, ‘papalist’ and non-papalist alike, if they are true to their principles and insist on the prescriptive nature of their view of what constitutes ‘Anglican orthodoxy.’
Not that I find this in the least objectionable; in fact, I applaud it. I have long felt that only a robust and clear embrace of a prescriptive ‘Anglican orthodoxy’ will allow ‘dissident Anglicans’ to flourish; and since, when one gets down to brass tacks, Anglican Evangelicalism and Anglican Catholicism are (despite wide areas of agremeent between the two, as against the apostate revisionists) incompatible versions of Christianity, yoked together only by the stifling vise of the Elizabethan Settlement and its Laodicean toxins, they would do well to make a clean break one with the other — and not try to concoct some absurd agreement to ‘agree to disagree’ about WO, ecclesiology and sacramental practice.”
Katherine, #6, you are spot on. To do nothing (“…. she has not made a clear decision about how to deal with those who have rejected Lambeth’s teaching”) IS a decision. It’s a decision to live in communion with false prophets– look at the fruit (or lack thereof) of TEC.
“Still, for all this, Rodgers’ response to this is “separate!â€, as if this will bring health, to anyone involved.” It has brought health– spiritual, emotional, often financial– to those who have separated from oppresive heritics.
The attempt to hold the AC together under the current circumstances is a case of too little too late. A common covenant that has any real meaning and ability to hold us all together needed to be in place before a major controversy tested it. Creating one now will be like trying to build a house in a hurricane. We would be better off to honestly divide and then work at coming back together if and when the significant differences between us are able to be resolved.
Having read both pieces, SPREAD’s and Radner’s, I think SPREAD is overly critical of Williams (whose problem appears to me to be more one of being in over his head than one of theology) and appears to call for a formal split in the communion, which I think is not likely. I suspect that the beginnings of an orthodox North American province recognized by a large portion of the global south is possible, but there is little need for the primates involved to actually do anything respecting their relationship to Canterbury other than to ignore Canterbury in light of William’s destruction of their trust in him for all the reasons in #4. In fact, I wonder if the SPREAD piece is intended to argue with the global south holding that view.
But then Radner’s response also seems overwrought. A lot of effort goes into pitching for the preservation of the communion and attendance at Lambeth. I would be more persuaded had the ACI or a group of orthodox bishops any plans to actually do anything at Lambeth to support orthodoxy. And one must admit that, after the evidence from the HoB meeting in New Orleans, there is little reason to expect orthodox bishops accepting the current state of affairs to make any efforts, even futile ones.
I also find that my reaction to criticism of orthodox critics of the communion by the ACI is usually not “one is right and the other wrong”, but rather, why does not the ACI instead try to find a way for those critics to remain (or become) a part of the communion than just throw eggs back at them? I note that Radner cites the original decision by Carey not to invite the AMiA bishops, but I also recall Carey suggesting that he might rethink that decision today. Frankly, I think the communion would be less likely to split, albeit more likely to have some spirited debates and to accomplish better things, in July, if invitations had been extended to all bishops, including CANA and AMiA, rather than just the ones who agree to be more or less quiet.
William’s efforts to have nothing happen at Lambeth may turn out to be something like trying to keep the lid on a boiling pot – letting a little steam off may turn out to have been the wiser course.
Finally, the ACI’s approach provides no answer to parishes which are under pressure in revisionist diocese. People are going to leave, and some provision needs to be made for them. Sticking it out for a generation or two is not a good answer to a young family with children growing up in the church. I know that this is often remarked upon, and undoubtedly the ACI is tired of hearing about it. But criticising those who have left while offering no alternative is an incomplete response.
[blockquote]Rather, the Church cannot act upon the Scriptures, as Church, unless there is common agreement as to what the Scriptures mean and how they apply; nor should members of the Church attempt to preempt this agreement in ways that destroy the common life. And, of course, the 39 Articles say the same thing (a. 34 on “offending against the common order of the Church†through “private judgment†put into practice).[/blockquote]
But when the Church has already acted on a subject and come to common agreement, incorporating it into established catholic teaching, a contemporary fragment of the body (i.e., the AC) should not be free to call that teaching into question by having discussion or dialogue or process. In fact, ISTM that even authorizing or sanctioning the consideration of changing the teaching is [i]precisely[/i] private judgement.
🙄
I just imagined an attention getting headline being “The Last Lambeth” with an article following which identifies the 1998 Lambeth, not this year’s, as the last one that really mattered. 2008’s version, with a significant number not attending and by it’s very format, will matter less. Unless something very dramatic takes place 2018 will be even less significant.
The issue with the TEC and Ecusa before is their Theology of Inclusion and not that they want to defend the position of same sex sexual relations as a reasonable interpretation of the Scriptures in their context.
Dr Radner is a very able man but it seems like many that he does not notice or chooses not to pay attention to the replacement of the Christian faith with the pluralist faith within TEC.
I appreciate and applaud Ephraim Radner’s arguments (being halfway through reading The Fate of Communion). I find it difficult to believe, however, that John Rodgers could have been the author of the SPREAD document? Do we have any further evidence that this is so?
I really dislike the SPREAD document and its whole tone. As Dr. Tighe points out, there would be no future for those of us who are of an Anglo-Catholic persuasion, other than, perhaps a sort of dhimmitude in the non-Canterbury centered communion the authors of the SPREAD document envision. I also think they are dead wrong in their appreciation of the situation. I also think Dr. Radner is too willing to accept the failure of the instruments of unity to enforce the teaching of the AC in the matter of sexual conduct.
Reading the SPREAD document, I couldn’t imagine myself in an alternative communion that shared the authors’ extreme protestant views.
#17
I agree completely. The matter of the presenting issue is settled and has been so. The teaching of Scripture is clear and there is not the slightest bit of wriggle room for the honest reader. The teaching of the RC and the Orthodox as well as most of the protestant denominations affirm it, though the protestant denominations are beginning to cave in to the same cultural subversion as TEC.
God won’t prosper that which He is not part of. TEC is giving daily evidence of that. The gall of this speck of Christianity telling the 2/3rds world that they must keep listening to them is a sin.
I think people are now beating a dead horse. With perhaps a few pockets where orthodoxy still exists, I would suggest the vast majority of believing Christians have already left TEC for other churches, and most of those for traditions other than “Anglican,” whether it be Reformed (as in my case), Lutheran, Nondenominational, or Roman Catholic. At least half the people in my present small group Bible Study were raised as Episcopalians, which is understandable since in my childhood it was the second-largest Protestant denomination in this area, after the Congregationalists (who have also pretty much disappeared).
I will just mention my own former parish, which I really can’t even see as Christian any longer, whether orthodox or heterodox. Every year I am amazed by what is taught the children (if there still are any children) in “Vacation Bible School.” Last year it was that the United Nations MDGs are the Gospel that we must fulfill.
Here is this year’s VBS topic (conserving precious water), straight from the VBS flier:
[blockquote]
HOLY WATER
VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL
JUNE 16 – 20, 2008
Water is a common chemical substance (H20) that is essential for the survival of all known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor. Water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface, mostly in oceans and other large water bodies. Some of the Earth’s water is contained within man-made and natural objects such as water towers, animal and plant bodies, manufactured products, and food stores. Clean, fresh water is essential to human and other life. However, in many parts of the world – especially developing countries – it is in short supply.
[i]We shall not finally defeat AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and any other infectious diseases that plague the developing world until we have also won the battle for safe drinking water, sanitation and basic health care. [/i] (Kofi Annan)
We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life. [i]From the Baptism Service, Book of Common Prayer[/i]
[i]Let all who thirst, come to the water. Though you have no money come, receive grain and eat. (Isaiah 55:1)[/i]
Water is one of our most precious and necessary gifts. How can we be stewards of the gift of water?
Come to Vacation Bible School and explore through:• role-playing and drama• art projects• science experiments• games• stories and discussions• field trips(Of course this is a perfect excuse to go to the beach!)
[/blockquote]
The Holy Spirit has long ago departed this church.
As part of a response to Stephen Noll, E. Radner stated, “And this is the alternative I see: simply dying, promoting the truth, though probably uncertain as to its real promise in the face of its abandonment around oneself, and one’s own abandonment by fellow-defenders, dying — figuratively, and perhaps corporately — where one is.” It seems to me that Dr. Radner is committed to this idea and it provides context for his arguments. It was a good but not a convincing argument for me.
I really don’t (and didn’t) believe that I would persuade anybody here. Most of the folks who have commented have already left TEC and the Communion of Canterbury. God bless you all. I find it all rather sad, for a host of reasons, but we all have lives to live, and choices to make. May the Lord uphold each and every one of us.
As more than one of you have noted, however, there will be a rather deep struggle for some as to whether they wish to be (or are even allowed to be) a part of a church run along the protestant reformed lines of Rodgers and Sydney, not to mention the question of who sets the evangelical tone of such an organization. If it likes the tone of SPREAD, there may be some adjustments that need to be made, to say the least. However, there are people attending GAFCON who, in fact, are not necessarily eager to go this route. They include, frankly, many Africans and Asians. It is good that that everyone have an alternative view available as to the meaning and foundation in truth of the material being set before them, from someone who nonetheless shares some of their fundamental commitments. I wrote for these persons.
I am well aware that many commenters here have harbored a theological and personal dislike for Rowan Williams at least as deep as Bp. Rodgers’. But I think that facts marshaled to support such dislike (I’m not sure exactly what that means, actually — can “facts” ever “support dislike” in a Christian sense? well, assuming they can….) are not as weighty as some suppose. The litany of Williams’ failures over Dar es Salaam and afterwards is a case in point.
By the nature of the case, none of us is in anything like a complete possession of the “facts” around all this. We have talked to Primates who were there, to bishops who were not, to Lambeth officials who were and were not, to journalists who talked to somebody who was and so on. Some of us, quite frankly, have talked to more than others. Some have themselves talked to very few (despite having strong opinions). Ignorance abounds, including on this blog.
I publicly promoted a strong prosecution of the Communique’s elements as well as of another Primates’ Meeting and so on; and I also pressed these views privately with Lambeth and Williams. My views, like the views of many here, were not followed. An interesting question is why this fact bothers me so much less than it does some others here.
First, I suppose, is the obvious: most people don’t do what I want and what I think best and true. That, I’m afraid, has been the story of my and most people’s lives. So what? I guess we all make decisions about what we do with the rather intransigent fact that we rarely get our way. More specifically, however, is the question of how we explain why we didn’t get our way, based on the reality that we don’t really know all the facts. (By the way, I doubt Williams knows all the facts himself — such is the swirl of multiple demands, bits of information, counsel, and parallel decision-making going on in a church at this level.)
On this second score, then — what’s the explanation we give in this case to not getting what we wanted — I have in fact received explanations as to why Williams didn’t do what most of here wished he had. Again, I must weigh the explanations within a context of relative ignorance. But the one explanation I think most reasonable is one I accept because it fits well the facts of what I know about the actors in all of this. And this explanation is the following (this is all old news, I realize): the Primates themselves did not have the common mind to prosecute or support prosecution of the plan they had, on paper (well, maybe on paper, since many of the agreements were apparently only verbal) signed. So, according to this theory (probable, I say), if Williams had pushed in a given direction, a large group of Primates would have resisted; likewise if he had pushed in some other direction. And with these resistances would have come more conflict and splits. And so he kept waiting to find some common collegial support for one direction or another, to no avail. And the notion of bringing the Primates together yet again (according to this theory) appeared more and more pointless, because of the stated and expressed angers among Primates not only at Dar es Salaam but subsequently. The last things most of the Primates wanted (so I have been told) was to get together again, so miserable has been the experience of these gatherings the past few years.
Why do I think this explanation probable? As I said, it fits much of what I know about many of the actors in this drama: without going into details, incapable, and without the gifts or apparently the desire, to get beyond paper agreements which they find distasteful either in their formulation or in their form. And in this, I’m afraid, they express no deeper malaise than their bishops and many of their priests and people enact, at least judging from the public stage. The run-up to GAFCON, furthermore, marks no great distinction in character in this regard.
My sense (it is more than a guess, but less than certain knowledge) is that Williams has pressed the Covenant side of things in the last two years mainly because he has despaired of the capacity, perhaps even good will, of many of the other avenues of council at present. Ought he to have pressed anyway, and just let the chips fall? Perhaps — we’ve ended up with unraveling anyway. But that is hindsight, and furthermore perhaps a rather hopeless way of approaching ecclesial council in the first place. And therefore does he bear some responsibility in any of this? I am sure he does (as do many of us), and that he would admit to it (indeed, he has). When a few others can join him in some honesty, I will have a great deal more trust in their ability to lead. So far, however — indeed, with increasing vehemence — honesty is in shriveling short supply.
I only heard of SPREAD last week, having read an article on David Virtue’s site. I only heard of that from an e-mail I received from Church Society in the U.K. I read almost all the material on the SPREAD website and telephoned their office asking for more information. The secretary told me that someone would get back to me, I’m still waiting. I am puzzled that only Bp John Rodgers’ name is mentioned and would like to know more. At the same time I have read Dr. Ephraim Radner’s critique and will likely re-read both sources more finely. I am certain that a fracture already exists within the Communion, but I am watching for further fracturing between those who will identify themselves as Catholics and those who identify themselves as Protestants. Could we end-up with completely separate streams of Anglicanism, Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical and Charismatic? Things seemed simpler when we spoke of High, Broad and Low. Is there an inherent flaw in Anglican Comprehensiveness? How long cana house so divided against itself continue to stand? The after-shocks may go on for some time yet.
#26
1. I rather liked your article and am largely persuaded but then I have elected to remain within TEC (and the Communion, as it is currently constituted).
2. As an aside – your new commentary on Leviticus is magnificent, a stunning achievement.
Rowan’s alloting only 4 hours at DeS for the American question, his subcommittee report which a subcommittee member hadn’t even seen but gave the Americans a Windsor pass, his opposition to any deadline, his early invitations despite saying he would ask for primate input, his “the deadline is no deadline”, his involvement of the ACC to assess the HoB response rather than just the primates, his requiring the assessment to be through the very distorted lens of the JSC report, his lack of letters to bishops following up in Advent letter, and most recently the indaba format to Lambeth about which the TEC is ecstatic because it guarantees there will be no consequences for their communion tearing behavior for another ten years…
All these are not Rowan’s fault but the fault of the primates for not being of one mind??? And it is funny how all of them seem scripted to benefit the TEO. Rowan has made a choice of sides but continues to toss out missives like foil chaff to confuse orthodox radar which the orthodox have have bought and continued to delude themselves, “Well, maybe this time he won’t pull the ball away.”
Re #26: Dr. Radner, I certainly don’t have the personal knowledge of all the players that you do, but your reading of events fits my understanding of everyone’s public statements pretty closely. The bottom line is that those here who think that there is substantial unanimity among Anglicans outside North America on how to treat TEC and the ACofC are seriously mistaken. There are deep divisions throughout the Communion and not least in the socio-economic Global South (as distinct from the organization that claims to speak for it). Those divisions are mostly not about homosexuality or any other direct issue of faith and morals, but about the practical question of how to proceed given the reality that there is a substantial minority within large swaths of the Communion that cannot accept its official teaching on this matter.
Some have been arguing for the SPREAD strategy (based on the AMiA experience) of simply setting up alternative structures with a very narrow doctrinal focus and ignoring anyone who chooses not to ride that pony. Others have been arguing for the ACI strategy of allowing the existing procedures within the Communion time to move at their typically glacial pace while refusing to leave our churches until someone can pry our cold, dead fingers from the altar rail and throw us out. I think that Archbishop Williams is aligned with the latter strategy, but he cannot assemble anything approaching a consensus of the 38 provinces (and 6 other jurisdictions).
This is partly because of reappraiser resistance to any form of discipline, of course, but also (and perhaps mainly) because of reasserter resistance to anything short of Total Victory, however it may be achieved at whatever cost. That goal is simply unattainable without transforming Anglicanism into a unitary international body with highly defined doctrine and draconian discipline… in short, something that resembles Oliver Cromwell’s church much more than that of the Protector’s Anglican opponents. Many, if not a substantial majority, of the Primates are unwilling to cede their autonomy to an Anglican Church organized along those lines.
Marginalizing the errant leadership of the North American provinces while preserving as much of the existing Communion as possible would require building a coalition of the willing. That would require primates and provincial synods willing to compromise on secondary matters in order to focus on the primary ones, and such willingness is in very short supply. There has been no regard for due process from either side of this dispute.
Calls for Archbishop Williams to lead a charge against TEC and ACofC under these conditions seem to me like calls for a World War I lieutenant to singlehandedly charge an enemy machine gun nest across an open field without any support. His destruction might be noble, but it would leave his command without a leader and the nest still in enemy hands. His command, notably, is not just the Anglican Communion but also the Church of England, the Southern Province, and Canterbury Diocese, all of which stand to suffer grievous harm if the Communion unravels.
The wise thing for the lieutenant (and the Archbishop) to do under these circumstances might well be to stand fast and preserve his command against the day that it can enter action with some hope of accomplishing something. That may not look as noble as a suicidal charge, but it is a real strategy and not just an evasion of responsibility. It might have worked if his command had been willing to follow his lead instead of dissolving into a chaos of competing mutinous factions.
26 and 31 seek to preserve the apperance of unity in the AC by doing nothing. If in this critical situation the AC can only do nothing then what is the point of it at all?
I have to say sadly that I place the burden for the current impasse in the communion at the feet of of the ABC.
It has already been pointed out that there are a number of actions that RW could have and should have taken and didn’t. Ephraim Radner (whom I respect, admire, and consider a friend) points out that “if Williams had pushed in a given direction, a large group of Primates would have resisted; likewise if he had pushed in some other direction.”
I have no doubt that this is indeed the case. However, as Archbishop of Canterbury, Williams had the freedom to perform one action to which the Primates could not or should not have objected: The Primates at Dar Es Salaam established the September 30 deadline with the assumption that it was indeed a deadline. Archbishop Williams could have and should have immediately called a Primates meeting and allowed the Primates themselves to decide whether or not TEC had met the requirements of the deadline. He would not have been responsible for the decision they made. Instead, he put the assessment in the hands of the Joint Standing Committee, itself composed primarily of those friendly to TEC. Bishop Mouneer Anis has already expressed publicly his utter disappointment with this group.
Second, all the various responses and meetings of Primates and others following General Convention (beginning with Windsor and the Dromantine Primates’ Meeting) indicated that unless TEC stepped back from its decision of GC 2004, it was choosing to “walk apart” from the communion. Dromantine made it clear that until TEC reversed its decision it was in essence suspended from Communion partnership. Thus, TEC was asked not to attend the 2005 ACC meeting, except to defend its actions, and TEC was given until GC 2006 to decide whether or not it intended to walk apart. TEC’s decisions in both 2006 and at the most recent HOB meeting confirmed that TEC intends to stand with its decision of GC 2004.
RW had to have known this when he issued invitations to the Lambeth Conference–yet he issued those decisions prematurely in advance of the Sept 30 deadline, and issued invitations to bishops who had themselves participated in Gene Robinson’s consecration. This shows that he is willing to take at least some actions which a “large group of Primates would resist.”
There are numerous other actions that RW has taken that indicate he is indeed willing to act in the face of Primate resistance. After being asked at Dromantine to appoint a Panel of Reference as a “matter of urgency,” Williams took six months to appoint a Panel led by Peter Carnley, a man whose sympathies and theology lay entirely with those bishops against whom the appellants would be appealing. The Panel of Reference took literally years to come to the rescue of absolutely no one. By the time they finally acted, those who originally had requested their aid had given up waiting. Most of those who appealed to the PoR ended up leaving TEC or the Anglican Church of Canada.
Immediately after GC 2006, something like ten dioceses in TEC directly requested Alternative Primatial Oversight from Rowan Williams himself. Williams’ response was to set up a meeting in New York City where instead of APO, the dioceses were offered KJS’s alternative of a Primatial Vicar, an unacceptable variation on DEPO, which was offered again at DES, and later turned down by the HOB. At the least, at this point in time, RW could have (and should have) stood by his own agreement at DES, and gone forward with the requesting bishops to provide a Primatial Vicar–with or without TEC cooperation. He did not.
When numerous Global South Primates indicated they would not sit at the table with KJS if she were to attend Dar Es Salaam, RW not only made sure she attended, but also appointed her to a position on the JSC, a committee in which she would later participate as a judge deciding whether or not TEC (and herself as PB) had met the requests to which she herself had agreed at DES–and yet manifestly has failed to abide by–particularly in the case of lawsuits. As far as I know, Williams has never publicly criticized the ongoing lawsuits, or suggested that there might be consequences for such a blatant disregard of DES. The Presiding Bishop and local bishops participating in the lawsuits (e.g., Peter Lee) will be at Lambeth.
Finally, and most significantly, it is clear that the communion is in a crisis, and Lambeth is the one occasion capably of addressing such a crisis head on–since Lambeth is the gathering of the largest number of Anglican bishops at one time. Yet RW has made it clear that the crisis that is dividing the Anglican Communion is precisely the one issue that will not be addressed at Lambeth.
Jt is difficult not to see a pattern in the above actions. By acting in some ways and not acting in others, Rowan Williams has guaranteed that others will take other actions. The future of the communion will be decided by bishops of the Global South, not by Rowan Williams, and he has no one to blame for that except himself.
The direction that future will take was indicated by the request made by the Global South Primates at Kigali, when they asked that the orthodox in the US form a new Anglican Province which they would recognize. So far the orthodox in the US have failed in responding coherently to that request. That request is still on the table.
Moreover, both the Global South Primates and the Primates at their regularly scheduled meeting will meet after Lambeth. I believe that it is these two meetings that will prove crucial to the future of the communion, certainly more so than Lambeth. Perhaps more than GAFCON.
Well, having read the SPREAD document I am immediately struck by Radner’s rather deceptive straining at the text in order say this:
[blockquote]It is not only a very serious charge indeed to associate the name of “anti-Christ†with the Archbishop of Canterbury, as Rodgers has done in his proposal (pp.6f.)[/blockquote]
The author does no such thing. The term “antiChrist appears nowhere in the text, but rather in a footnote which is entirely a a Scriptural quotation. And the portion of the text to which this is a footnote is not talking specifically about Williams. But Radber seems to often assume the SPREAD document is all about Williams. It isn’t. It is about apostacy and false teachings on fundamental Scriptural issues being tolerated in the church at high levels and that Williams own theological inclinations leave little hope for disciplining those elements.
What really frustrates me is Radner’s bizaare claim that there is no such thing as the “Anglican faith”. He seems to be saying that Anglicanism is just the catholic faith adapted to the English situation. And what, I might ask, does he think English Roman Catholics are doing? There is, like it or not, a substantial difference between Anglicans and Catholics. They aren’t in communion with each other and this is due to an event called the English Reformation. I don’t know if this is news to Radner or not because he so often shows no awareness of the historical causality of this Reformation on the nature of Anglicanism and why we’re not, as Anglicans, in communion with Rome the way English Christians had been for centuries earlier. Whatever else one might say is the Anglican faith, it must logically be one that accepts the break that occured as, if not good, then necessary. Otherwise, if one posits that the break is not necessary, or at least not necessary for Anglicanism, what, other than intransigence, could keep him from rejoing the motherchurch? One might respond that Rome is not our mother but rather Jerusalem is. But after the Gospel had been planted in Rome and Peter and Paul watered the church there with their blood Jerusalem was destroyed (the actual church having already fled as Jesus told them to do) and would not be re-established there for almost three centuries. I know, another historical bit of trivia. But the fact remains that there is no mother church in Jerusalem to which we can return, while our more immediate older sister church in Rome has been around since the days of the apostles and has been pretty important in the life of the western church, of which we are a part since at least the Synod of Whitby in 664.
Like it or not, Anglicanism, if it is the catholic faith at all, it is that catholic faith reformed, and in such a way as the Articles and Prayerbooks show. Radner may think historical references is “making it all up” but if that is not the Anglican faith then there is none. And if there is no Anglican faith in Anglicanism there is no faith at all. Which is rather the point of the SPREAD document.
This will not be well-received, but having worked closely with +RDW and Lambeth in various contexts, I agree with Radner: opining that +RDW is ‘to blame’ for this or that may be cathartic and/or good blog analytical license, but it tends to seek/assign blame and so foreclose options and hard thinking (‘it is all over, so move on’). My instinct is to resist such judgments not because my powers of analysis are weak or strong, but because it gets Christian witness in the present context nowhere. Clearly the communion is and has been on a steep learning curve (think of +Carey feeling his way re: AMiA). Scolding or assigning blame is not effective, unless it means to reach a conclusive judgment like: (1) all is over, pick up the pieces, find a new form of anglicanism (this is exciting for someone like Handy); (2) this justifies an animus or hunch already formed, and so serves to ‘vindicate’ a view strongly held in the court of blog appeal and contestation (my take on Dar is more right than that of X, +Rowan is Y and I said so all along); (3) any present action other than accepting the Communion is dead is benighted and/or plays into the hands of those whose defeat is first and foremost in our minds (the PB).
Many of us working at this are far less confident that TEC’s march toward approval of SSBs and other known departures from traditional Christian faith/practice will find God’s blessing or the Communion’s, and so at issue is holding the ground that the widest portion of the Communion presently holds and not letting present actions be held hostage to fortune.
Our Communion as a total work in God’s providence requires a balance in leadership, and many of us at ACI believe the conciliar reality of Orthodoxy is something that may well emerge when the dust settles. But for this to happen preemptive efforts to create new federal alliances that assume Communion is dead; judge +RDW both an agent of destruction and obfuscation (at best); without any sense of +RDW’s own acknowledged sense that a new way must be found for the leadership of the Communion, tends to lay blame at his door without accepting the challenges he himself believes the communion as a whole must face. This is said not to exempt him from ‘blame’ but to question whether this is the place to put present energy.
It is time to seek a Communion and conciliar way and to let our prayer and our work be about that. Anything less is something less. It may ‘solve’ a local problem we rank highly, but it is clear that what results will just engender a fresh set of challenges, now far more diverse and impatient of resolution.
I find it sadly illuminating that we continually and determinedly re-produce exactly the cleavages within Anglicanism that have led us to this point.
Chris,
Seems like yesterday on the sidewalk outside the new bishop’s house in January…..
If you are going to refer to “that catholic faith reformed” and refer to Anglicanism, then you are being exclusive. Do you not think that Luther’s heritage considers itself as having prime dibs on that claim? For that matter, what about Franciscanism being the catholic faith reformed, or Benedictinism, or …… you get it.
The catholic faith is always in need of reform. For God’s sake, Christian communities within 30 years of the resurrection of Jesus needed reform.
The question is, is there something distinctive within what we have called (apparently without understanding) Anglicanism that lends itself to the same catholic faith being reformed through the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit? What is it that any one new Christian can hold onto as sign(s) and source of Anglican Christian faith that will lead them to proclaim the catholic faith reformed?
[blockquote]Many of us working at this are far less confident that TEC’s march toward approval of SSBs and other known departures from traditional Christian faith/practice will find God’s blessing or the Communion’s[/blockquote]
I don’t understand this. Of COURSE they won’t find GOD’S blessing. We already know this.
Do you mean these innovations won’t work? We already know that as well.they are doomed to failure because they violate God’s ordained order for His creation.
Do you mean that their failure will be ultimately recognized as such by those who promote them and accept or tolerate them? If what you are drinking is legal may I inquire the brand? When has it ever been the characteristics of sinners like us to recognize the futility of the sin we stubbornly insist on committing?
Hey, rebellion from God will not find His blessing and Israel will eventually turn herself around, right?
Yeeeeaaaaaaahh……Uuuhm…not so much. It didn’t seem to work that way for Sodom.
I forget, when did the Arians figure out their ideas didn’t have God’s blessing? Have Muslims by and large clued into this reality as well? How about Mormons? Cause I’m sure that if they could come to THEIR senses that these foolish reappraisers will eventually do the same. We just have to wait them out, boldly proclaiming to the world that there’s nothing these guys believe that is so bad we would want to break off fellowship with them.
I wonder if THAT will find God’s blessing.
Rob, I said Anglicanism is “the catholic faith reformed, and in such a way as the Articles and Prayerbooks show. Lutheranism is the catholic faith reformed according to luther’s teaching. Presbyterianism according to Calvin and John Knox’s tecahing and the Westminster Confession. The English Reformation is the root of our brand of the faith. Once we depart from that we are no longer Anglican.
Then we’ve not been Anglican since about 1620.
Re: #35,
“But after the Gospel had been planted in Rome and Peter and Paul watered the church there with their blood Jerusalem was destroyed (the actual church having already fled as Jesus told them to do) and would not be re-established there for almost three centuries.”
I agree with this posting, and with its overall assessment of +RW, the defense of whom in #36 would only be convincing if +RW had been pulled from an Anglican version of Mount Athos in 2002 after 30 years of total isolation from ecclesiastical affairs, made archbishop, and left to make what he could of the situation — instead, of course, of having facilitated as a theologian the facilis descesus Averni of the “old-line churches” Anglican Communion into apostasy
and irrelevance by his support of WO and SS, and now acting, ineptly, as poacher-turned-gamekeeper but still a poacher at heart and in mind. Anyway, as regards Jerusalem, while the Christians did flee to Pella during the First Revolt of 66 to 73, and perhaps many went further on to western Anatolia, enough returned to the ruined, but not desolate, city for there to be a succession of Jewish bishops down to the Second Revolt of 132 to 135, when its leader, Simon Bar-Kosiba, launched a fierce persecution of Christians because of their refusal to accept his messianic pretensions. When that rebellion had been suppressed, and the Emperor Hadrian built a new pagan metropolis on the site of Jerusalem, and forbade any circumsized male from so much as setting foot in it under pain of death, the apostolic Jerusalem Church came to its end, and a new gentile church formed on the premises — a church so lacking in any continuity with the earlier one that not only did it never acheive any “maternal” status vis-a-vis the Church as a whole, but its bishop was a mere suffragan of the Archbishop of Caesaerea Maritima. Later on, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, its long-serving bishop, Juvenal, whose adroit and successful maneuverings and switiching of sides at just the right moment in the Christological disputes of the times make him the equal, if not the superior, of any Renaissance pope, got his see elevated to a patriarchate, such that Jerusalem now ranks as fourth among the top four patriarchates of the Orthodox Church. There always was a church at Jerusalem, even if between 132 and 135 one church was destroyed and nearly exterminated, and then replaced by a quite different one.
You’re right, Mr. Tighe. My bad, or mea culpa. It was the elevating it to partriachical status I was thinking of, and of the importnace given to it in the new Christian Empire especially through the atention of Constantine’s mother.
Re: #41,
“Then we’ve not been Anglican since about 1620.”
A paradoxical, bur fair assessment, although I would rather say, “you’ve called yourselves Anglicans, for the most part, but haven’t been able to agree on what that means since about 1620.” I call to mind Eric Mascall’s distinction between “the appeal to Anglican tradtition” (which is to say, to appeal to the doctrinal and liturgical formulae as well as to the teachings of the English Reformers as the basis or at least the starting-point of Anglican self-assessment and self-correction) and “the Anglican appeal to Tradition” (which is to say, to appeal to “the undivided Church” or “the first five centuries” or “the Fathers” — in line with Canon of the 1571 Convocation of the Church of England which declared that the 30 Articles were to be understood and expounded in line with the “Catholic bishops and fathers” — and the understanding that if these contradict what the English Reformers taught, then they trump the Reformers).
In this connection, I recommend, and not for the first time, that comprehensive and exhaustive treatment of this subject in *Catholic and Reformed: the Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought 1600-1640* by Anthony Milton, which I reviewed briefly but very much a propos a decade ago, here:
http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1198-tighe
Yes – I’ve just read David Hoyle’s new book [url=http://www.amazon.com/Reformation-Religious-Cambridge-1590-1644-University/dp/1843833255/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213245893&sr=1-5]Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge, 1590-1644 [/url]
and he narrates the conflict that was caused in Cambridge as the avant garde folks achieved positions of authority in the 1620s.
[blockquote]Scolding or assigning blame is not effective, unless it means to reach a conclusive judgment like: (1) all is over, pick up the pieces, find a new form of anglicanism . . . [/blockquote]
Chris, I think the options you mention are not the only ones. Noting that RW has been instrumental in preventing the effective implementation of the Windsor Report can indeed be effective in reaching other conclusive judgments. The first is that it has become clear that any attempt to resolve the current situation that depends on positive action by the archbishop of Canterbury will fail. So some of us who had high hopes for the implementation of Windsor had those hopes dashed, first at DES (With RW’s subcommittee report), and later, after the Sept 30 deadline. This, of course, does not mean that we believe “all is over” or that we “justify an animus already formed.” (I had no such animus against RW, but rather had great hopes for the WR right up until the DES subreport and the following Sept 30 deadline.)
What it does mean is that if one has committed oneself to a Plan A, and it becomes clear that Plan A will never be implemented because depending on the good intention and actions of a single individual who has clearly indicated his unwillingness to cooperate, then one had best have a Plan B. Part of a possible Plan B is to recognize that there are other Primates besides Rowan Williams, and that a way forward will likely not involve him.
Dr. Witt (#34),
I’m glad you chimed in. I agree wholeheartedly with you, and I do NOT think that you have somehow made ++Rowan Williams a scapegoat and pinned all the blame on him. There is certainly more than enough blame to go around. But, as I’ve already indicated in my #12 above, there are many clear and compelling reasons why many of us have lost all faith in Cantaur. He is a broken reed that can bear no weight. But then again, the whole SYSTEM is broken.
And in the end, that is where Dr. Seitz and I would part company. I do consider the old wineskins of the Anglicanism that we have known and loved to be FATALLY flawed. I do believe that they can’t and won’t be restored. That is why mere “renewal” won’t suffice. Nothing less than a full-scale New Reformation will do, with all the radical, sweeping, revolutionary change(as opposed to incremental and evolutionary change) that implies. And yes, I admit that I find that pospect an incredibly heady and intoxicating one that fills me not with apprehension and dismay but with excitement and energy.
But I also understand those who hold back in hesitation and doubt. I am acutely aware of the severe problems that attended that first Reformation in the 16th century. I am by no means an uncritical supporter of that Protestant Reformation. For instance, to use the terms suggested by Dr. Tighe above, I would be one of those who would generally (but not always!) regard the patristic Tradition as trumping the English Reformed tradition. But there are other fault lines to worry about in this New Reformation that threaten to cause it to fragment as soon as clear separation from TEC and its alien new religion is achieved.
And so I will riase once again the one that personally worries me most. As I keep insisting, the fundamental reality with which we must come to terms is our new social status as a misunderstood minority group in the western world, i.e., our post-Christendom cultural context. And to my way of thinking, the key reason why what I call “the Old Anglicanism” is indeed fatally flawed and the old wineskins simply have to be replaced (not patched up but replaced) is because Anglicanism as we have always known it is hopelessly wedded to an Erastian, Constantinian foundation that is now just plain obsolete. The FOUNDATION must be replaced. And that literally changes everything. It rules out merely remodeling the house. It compells REBUILDING the whole house, from the ground flooor up on a different foundation, a clearly, emphatically post-Christendom foundation. That implies truly drastic change, of very far-reaching proportions. Indeed, the longer I ponder these matters, the more profound and far-reaching I perceive the necessary changes to be and their implications to extend.
Let me remind everyone of the familiar phenomenon of the bell curve effect. That is, whenever major changes take place in any organization, including the Christian church in all its forms, there tends to be a predictable way in which the changes are adopted over time by various people inside that organization. Only a few brave, far-sighted souls champion the change at first. But it gradually picks up support and momentum in the familiar parabola shape of the front end of the bell, then steeply rises until it tops off, plateaus briefly, and then begins its descent after achieving acceptance by a majority of people and so the trend continues until only a few die-hard opponents remain at the end.
So it will be with the New Reformation (I hope!). I flatter myself as being one of those brave, far-sighted souls that is on the leading edge of the bell curve, in the initial 5% say. But the formation of the CCP and the holding of GAFCon represent the fact that we are now at the point where widespread acceptance of this radical change has moved on from the thin front edge of the bell curve and has progressed to the steep upward ascent. With Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya etc. firmly behind it, I do believe that success is eventually assured.
Canterbury represents our glorious past. But Abuja and Kampala represent our even more glorious future. Yes, I’m excited. I’m thrilled about this New Reformation. The Old Anglicanism is terminally ill and fatally wounded. The old wineskins are beyond repair. I say again, grieve it, as long and as deeply as need be. But then, roll up your sleeves and get back to work. A great adventure of unprecedented dimensions is before us.
The New Reformation of the 21st century will probably prove even more drastic and bitterly divisive than the 16th century one, because we are indeed talking about scrapping the whole Christendom mindset that has been taken for granted for something like 1500 years and replacing it (not supplementing it, but replacing it) with a return to the sort of radically sectarian, unashamedly Christ-against-culture sort of Christianity that characterized the pre-Constantinian church. And that makes the changes proposed by the “magisterial” Reformers (including Luther, Calvin, and not least Cranmer himself) all of whom relied on the support of worldly magistrates, well it makes them appear mild and temperate indeed.
There is a great deal more at stake here than most people yet realize. But wonder of wonders, God, in his inifinte wisdom and insrutable providence, has chosen stodgy, staid old Anglicanism to become the battleground where the New Reformation will first be fought, and God willing, won. And yes, that is very, very exciting.
“Let goods and kindred go!” AD FONTES. Back to the future. Back to the Pre-Constantian, Pre-Christendom style Church, that will also be the post-Constantinian, post-Christendom Church.
David Handy+
#46–it has always been my assumption (see my Pro Ecclesia remarks re: Canterbury), if not that of ACI, that what we have been facing is a recognition that anglicanism requires a form of conciliarism with a functional Primates Meeting. People who condemn the present incumbent have their reasons of course, but this has always been only question begging for me, because it does not face into the real problem of how to coordinate Canterbury effectively with the Primates Meeting as an Instrument. (And this is manifestly not the same thing as mobilising this or that Primate — something even +Southern Cone knows has its limitations and can only be emergency — though he is finding that what he offers is received by others with various intentions). +RDW himself understands the limits of his office, and I believe would like nothing better than a smartly functioning Primates Meeting (and this is more than simply getting this or that outcome desired by this or that group). What we have witnessed over the past year is a deep fall from whatever hard work had been accomplished, and it is hard for me to imagine a Primates Meeting, just as non-attendance and non-cooperation has leached into the Lambeth Conference, and so Instrument no. 3 is now affected too. Do I blame +RDW for this mess? Yes, but only in part. A good portion of the ‘blame’ falls on those who actually believe the conciliarity (requiring prominence for Primates Meeting/Canterbury and cooporation both) is impossible and so have gone their separate way. But my chief concern in not to find or assign blame but to try to get the Instruments from dying altogether. For many of us, if that happens, anglicanism is truly over, and no ‘new reformation’ holds any kind of hope. (39 — ‘or the Communion’s’ — I do not believe the Communion at large will accept TEC and SSBs both).
PS–I had not seen #47. My remarks re: blaming were never directed primarly at Wm Witt, and I know he has his own cautions about enthusiastic new reformations.
This is in response to comment #47. I think there are even larger issues evolving around us. This “new reformation” is also in response to the challenge of radical Islam. Look at the flags of many European countries that contain the Christian cross yet these countries are in the post Christian era and no longer have populations that are replacing themselves. I was recently in Scandinavia. The church steeples are a great place to view the cities but the churches themselves house few Christians on Sunday.
Dr. Seitz (#48 & 49),
I repeat what I said in my provocative and yes, highly “enthusiastic” #47: I understand why you and many others would be very hesitant to embrace the New Reformation. I don’t blame or criticize you, and I hope my comment didn’t come across that way.
So who are the real optimists and the real pessimists here? You are optimistic or perhaps still desperately trying to hope against hope that the Old Anglicanism can be salvaged somehow, despite the growing odds against it. And you are very pessimistic about the future of what I call “the New Anglicanism.”
OTOH, I am totally pessimistic about efforts to salvage the old wineskins of the AC, as we have known it heretofore. But ironically perhaps, I have never been more optimistic than I am today that the New Reformation will indeed succeed, by God’s grace.
As I said above, Canterbury represents our glorious and precious past. And it is a grand, if very mixed and ambiguous heritage indeed. But Abuja and Kampala, not to mention Singapore and Nairobi, represent our even more glorious and splendid future. I really do believe that with all my heart. “THE BEST IS YET TO COME.”
And much of the greatness and splendor of that New Anglicanism will be due to the fact that we will be freed from the shackles of the inevitable theological and religious compromises forced on us by our Erastian roots (i.e., for the sake of preserving and blessing the unity and harmony of the English nation). I regard it as patently obvious that our vaunted and celebrated “comprehensiveness” as Anglicans as ALWAYS been primarily driven by external forces, i.e., socio-political ones. Despite the lofty ideal that our hybrid mix of Protestant and Catholic elements is due to a desire for “comprehensiveness for the sake of truth” rather than a mere “compromise for the sake of peace,” the harsh reality is that this was only a dream, a mirage, that had and has no actual historical basis. For me, that dream was proven to be a mere illusion, a mirage, years ago. The sad and indeed disagreeable reality is that the Old Anglicanism was, and is, intrinsically Erastian and Constantinian through and through. The Church has always been subordinated to the State, and hopelessly corrupted thereby.
And I openly admit that I absolutely HATE that. I am nauseated by Erastian religion. I am allergic to it. I literally can’t stand it. It makes me want to throw up.
And the only worse than a state church is an ex-state church that still pretends to be a state church. Or an ex-state church that simply can’t conceive of any other way of being a church. After 1500 years, it’s perfectly understandable that Constantinian habits of thinking and acting should be so deeply ingrained and second nature as to seem inherent in Christianity itself. It’s fully understandable, I say, but that is still no excuse. The Christendom era is over. It’s time to move on, bravely and adventurously, into the unknown future.
Ironically, I think I was much closer to converting to Roman Catholicism three or four years ago than I am now. My beloved and esteemed mentor, +Dan Herzog, predicted 20 years ago that I was a Roman Catholic at heart and would someday inevitably follow my great hero John Henry Newman over to Rome. Ironically, neither of us then could foresee than he would himself someday return to his RC roots, while I remained behind on this side of the Tiber. But it was plain to both of us that I was, and am, radically dissatisfied with Anglicansim as we have always known it.
But back in Auguest, 2003 when the fateful and momentous decision was made by the Gen. Convention to endorse Robinson’s election and thus implicitly to support the “gay is OK” delusion and the new religion of relativism that it represents, I could not have foreseen the eventual emergence of the CCP and GAFCon. No one could’ve forseen it. But the passage of time has actually filled me with more hope than despair.
The truth is, I will freely confess that I actually NEVER did have much hope (or even the desire) for saving the Old Anglicanism, with its obsolete Christendom foundation. But now I’m full to overflowing with hope today.
“The future is as bright as the promises of God.”
Hip, hip hooray for the CCP. Hip, hip, hooray for GAFCon. Hip, hip hooray for the New Reformation. The best is yet to come!
David Handy+
[blockquote]I really don’t (and didn’t) believe that I would persuade anybody here. Most of the folks who have commented have already left TEC and the Communion of Canterbury. [/blockquote]
How does Dr. Radner know where this pseudonymonous bloogger, yours truly, Athanasius Returns, is situated in TEC and with relation to Canterbury? It just so happens I am a member in good standing in my parish and diocese, both still a part of TEC. No, Dr. Radner hasn’t persuaded me, nor is such persuasion plausible or probable, as I find that there is virtually no enduring pragmatic value to his harangue against SPREAD.
Chris,
Such is reading emPHASis in electronic messages. When you said, “in such a way”, I did not read that as meaning “uniquely” or “in a fashion”, but “and definitively spelled out as”.
On the other hand, Anglicans have always felt theirs was the only REAL catholic reformed faith.
: )
My apologies for not hearing you correctly.
RGEaton
Br. Michael wrote [cf. #33]: “26 and 31 seek to preserve the apperance of unity in the AC by doing nothing. If in this critical situation the AC can only do nothing then what is the point of it at all?”
On the contrary, the attitude and strategy of RW and the ACI seem to me to be maintaining the (Benedictine and thoroughly Scriptural) value of stability in the face of conflict. I do not see any effort whatsoever on their parts “to preserve the apperance of unity.” RW & ACI have been quite clear and honest about all the disunity we presently face. Their response has consistently been to remain rooted in that particular section of the Mixed Field that is the Anglican Communion, and far from doing nothing, to witness to the power of Christ to effect real (divine-human) communion even in the face of overwhelming (human-human) conflict. Seems like the most mature option to me.
The alternative is to try to carve out one’s own part of that Field and proclaim it “free of Weeds,” ignoring all the while that each one of us is a mixed field of wheat and weeds.
If we really loved our enemies, we would care less about getting our own way or protecting our own turf, and more about simply getting on with the mission of proclaiming the Gospel. No one can stop an orthodox Christian from doing so–not even by killing her, as the martyrs teach us.
I have no doubt that the great desire of many commenters here is simply to get on with the work of the Gospel. My point is that stability is always a more effective way of doing this than separation, because it is precisely the very people and structures from which we want to separate that are most in need of our witness in their midst. Besides which, we can never get away from our own sinfulnes, and it is the height of presumption to think that we ourselves are not in need of stable, mature, loving Christians to help us on our way. And where are such people most likely to be found? In the midst of the Mixed Field, just as Christ chose to be when he lived amongst us. Such people are not threatened by the Mixed Field, even as they pray that the Lord of the Harvest would tend it so that all of our personal weeds are uprooted and all that is left is the wheat of divine, Eucharistic love.
I have no doubt that those who have left this paltry part of the Mixed Field known as the Anglican Communion have many mature and loving Christians among them. But it’s the stability in the midst of conflict that I see missing, and which I long for, and which I have found precisely in the frail human witness of people like RW. He has managed to lead by modeling stability. Whether other people wish to follow him is not his responsibility–it is theirs, and ultimately, they will be accountable not to Canterbury, but to God.
Nathan Humphrey
[url=http://www.communioninconflict.blogspot.com]Communion in Conflict[/url]
So inviting heretics to Lambeth and subverting the process of discipline is now “modeling stability”. Good grief.
Fr. Humphrey (#54),
It’s good to have you rejoining the fray here. I hope all is well with you in D.C. I welcome your appeal to the Benedictine vow of “stability” as an ideal. But even the Benedictines wouldn’t tolerate the promotion of outright heresy and brazen immorality within one of their abbeys. I think you are confusing categories and making an inappropriate analogy here. The issue here isn’t being tolerant and patient with one another’s short comings and human foibles, but of how to deal with stubborn, willful, unrepentant sin and rebellion.
You make a very bold and unguarded claim indeed when you assert as you did,
“My point is that stability is ALWAYS a more effective way of doing this (i.e., getting on with the business of spreading the gospel) than separation…”
Huh? Oh, really?? And just how do you know this?
Perhaps you take it as axiomatic and something to be taken for granted, but all I’ll say here is that such sweeping statements that claim “always” this or “never” that are bound to stir up a tendency for people to look for exceptions to those presumably iron-clad, exceptionless principles. I don’t find your claim biblical or at all convincing.
But despite that rather sharp criticism, I’m glad you’ve had the courage to re-enter the lists and participate in this debate.
David Handy+
Pardon me, but please allow me to correct an important line in my #51 above. In lambasting the Erastian, Constantinian nature of the Old Anglicanism what I meant to say at one point was this:
“The only thing worse than a state church is an ex-state church that still pretends to be a state church.”
I left the word “thing” out above, but the intelligent readers of T19 probably figured out the gist of what I meant. Or regular readers with good memories might have recalled that I’ve made similar statements occasionally at both SF and T19 in the past. But the principle at stake is so important that I wanted to set the record straight.
David Handy+
Passionate advocate of High Commitment, Post-Christendom style Anglicanism of a radically sectarian, Christ-against-culture sort.
Addendum to my provocative #51 & 57.
And anticipating objections, let me stress that there is all the differenc in the world between Protestant forms of sectarianism and the Catholic sectarianism of the pre-Constantinian Church. The sort of radical sectarianism I have in mind is, of course, of the latter sort.
One of the things we are going to have to get over in the New Anglicanism is our instinctive revulsion from all forms of “sectarianism.” After all, Christianity began as a “sect” within Judaism, with all the unpleasant connotations of dogmatism, divisivieness, and moral rigorism that implies. Recall that Luke uses the word “sect” (haeresis) of the Church several times in Acts, and always positively.
I am acutely aware of the classic distinction between “church” type forms of Christianity and “sect” type forms of it in Ernst Troeltsch’s classic work, “The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches.” And I’m well aware that he, and most Anglicans, have had little good to say about sectarian groups within a Christendom world. But that familiar world with its established churches has passed away, or is quickly fading away still in some places where it lingers yet. And as I said above, that literally changes everything.
After all, I’m an American. And I prefer an American style religion: one that’s brash, brazen, in-your-face, confrontational, and adversarial. Not the gentle, mild, reserved sort so typical of the English. And this often makes me wonder, “Do you have to be an Anglo-phile to be an Anglican?”
David Handy+
In favor of a theologically and morally RIGOROUS form of Anglicanism
Thoroughly American
I received a note late today from a faculty member of Trinity Schol for Ministry informing me that John Rodgers has personally told him that he is NOT the author of the SPREAD document to which I have responded. (As I noted, no author was cited.) Another name was mentioned as the author, but rather than potentially further confusion by passing along second-hand information, I will not repeat it. According to the note, John Rodgers is NOT the convener of SPREAD either, as David Virtue reported. What he will say at GAFCON, I am told, is not known.
I apologize for associating John Rodgers’ name with a document he apparently did not write, and with an organization for which he is not the convener.
As early as 2005, however, Rodgers was one of two signatories to a Petition to certain Global South Primates (still on the SPREAD website), where he was listed as “Chairman” of SPREAD. Perhaps he no longer is. He seems to know the author of this particular piece. The Petition he did put forward, however, and which he signed certainly covers the same ground as the “Urgent Call”. It describes Rowan Williams as a an “anti-Scriptural” “threat” to the Gospel and to Anglicanism who refuses to “repent”, and the like — the Petition also likewise lumps in Abp. George Carey into an equivalent camp, quite misleading readers as to Carey’s actual views — and so on. The main difference between the two pieces is that, in the earlier one, the need for a new Communion is laid out as implicitly necessary, now it is laid out as absolutely so. My arguments apply in each case across the board — so I have no apologies to offer on that score in the least. The Petition, I would note, lists several items where Williams is imputed views on the basis of his sitting on the editorial board of something. I don’t know whether this should apply, by analogy, to the SPREAD documents.
I shall have my piece revised so that Rodgers’ name is changed to “the author”, and make other related adjustments.
Meanwhile, I find it interesting that in the thread of one post – the present one – the topic is tied to the dean of one seminary associated with a writing that itself associates the Abp. of Canterbury with “anti-Christ†(and yes, “the author” does indeed “associate†him in this way), with many apparently agreeing that this is a fair characterization, while just above is another posting, from a member of that dean’s own faculty, commending Rowan Williams’ fine theology (pace the Petition’s unmitigated condemnation of his orthodoxy), based on an invited paper delivered at an Eastern Orthodox seminary conference. I’m glad it’s all so clear to everybody – including seminary faculty, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Global South – since apparently Williams has “guaranteed†everybody else’s actions in a decisive way, through his failures — proleptically initiating, it seems, the AMiA itself and its vision even before he was Archbishop of Canterbury — and thereby managed through the deployment of his moral vacuum, to set the course for the New Future.
Don’t wrestle with the pigs, Dr. Radner. You’ll both get dirty and the pigs like it. 😉
Thank you for being a voice of reason.
[blockquote]#46–it has always been my assumption (see my Pro Ecclesia remarks re: Canterbury), if not that of ACI, that what we have been facing is a recognition that anglicanism requires a form of conciliarism with a functional Primates Meeting.[/blockquote]
Chris, absolutely no disagreement here. There was, of course, a functional Primates Meeting at Dar Es Salaam. All of the Primates there agreed to certain things–including KJS. There was a Sept 30 deadline attached to these agreements. There should have been another functional primates meeting after Sept 30 to assess whether TEC had fulfilled the agreements promised by KJS, but there was not.
Why was the Joint Standing Committee (the majority of whose members are sympathetic to TEC–including the PB herself) given the task of evaluating TEC’s response rather than the Primates who established the conditions? The problem here does not seem to be the lack of a functional Primates meeting, but the lack of any Primates Meeting when one was desparately needed.
In personal conversation recently with one Global South Primate (whose name I won’t mention), he indicated that there is no disunity among the Global South about the way forward; however there is no great hope that Rowan Williams is going to provide leadership. He also indicated a good deal of dissatisfaction with what is considered to be a chaotic and divided response among the orthodox in TEC.
So the question is not about commitment to conciliarism. The problem as I see it is that at least one of the instruments of unity seems reluctant to allow genuine conciliarism to work.
[blockquote]People who condemn the present incumbent have their reasons of course, but this has always been only question begging for me, because it does not face into the real problem of how to coordinate Canterbury effectively with the Primates Meeting as an Instrument. (And this is manifestly not the same thing as mobilising this or that Primate —something even +Southern Cone knows has its limitations and can only be emergency—though he is finding that what he offers is received by others with various intentions).[/blockquote]
I certainly was not talking about mobilizing this or that Primate in my comments above when I talked about “other Primates.” I was pointing to the clear disagreement about a way forward (as indicated by actions subsequent to DES) between Rowan Williams and the rest of the Primates gathered at DES (as indicated by their explicit requests, including the now defunct Sept 30 deadline).
But I have not given up on conciliarism. Note that I stated above that there will be two future Primates meetings following Lambeth that I think may be decisive. One is the meeting of the Global South Primates following Lambeth. The other will be the next scheduled meeting of the Primates themselves when they will no doubt respond to the actions of TEC. The Sept 30 deadline has now passed.
One thing that I think clear: Rowan Williams is not in agreement with the majority of the Primates about a way forward. He seems unwilling to consider disciplining TEC if that were to mean taking seriously Windsor’s language about “walking apart.” He seems unwilling to allow the Lambeth Conference to be a real meeting of bishops in which binding decisions are made. This is a real problem for a conciliar solution.
[blockquote]Meanwhile, I find it interesting that in the thread of one post – the present one – the topic is tied to the dean of one seminary associated with a writing that itself associates the Abp. of Canterbury with “anti-Christ†(and yes, “the author†does indeed “associate†him in this way), with many apparently agreeing that this is a fair characterization, while just above is another posting, from a member of that dean’s own faculty, commending Rowan Williams’ fine theology (pace the Petition’s unmitigated condemnation of his orthodoxy), based on an invited paper delivered at an Eastern Orthodox seminary conference. [/blockquote]
Ephraim, I was initially puzzled by the ascription of the SPREAD piece to John Rodgers. The language did not sound like him, and it did not seem consistent with things I had heard him say at other times.
Knowing both members of the faculty to whom you’re referring, I do not believe there is any disagreement about Rowan Williams.
For years I have said (only half-joking) that there are two Rowan Williams–“good Rowan” and “bad Rowan.” The good Rowan appears in strong statements that Lambeth 98 represents the teaching of the communion, or in the strong statement he made at the time of his meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in November 2006. The bad Rowan appeared only two months after the November 2006 meeting with the pope when he began the DES Primates meeting by having his subcommittee produce a Report saying that TEC had complied with Windsor at General Convention 2006–when they clearly hadn’t.
The good Rowan appeared when at the end of DES it appeared that he had endorsed the Sept 30 deadline, the demand that lawsuits cease, and would go about initiating the Primatial Vicar scheme. The bad Rowan appeared when he prematurely issued invitations to Lambeth, allowed the Primatial Vicar scheme simply to die, said after Sept 30 that the Sept 30 deadline was not a deadline, etc.
For most of us at TSM, Rowan Williams remains a puzzle. Much of his theology is solidly orthodox–his incarnational and Trinitarian theology. Some is clearly not–“The Body’s Grace.” Occasionally, he makes statements that indicate he is really committed to a Catholic vision of the Church. (The paper reviewed by Leander Harding above is an example.) At other times it appears that he is solidly committed against any attempt by the Communion to exercise discipline. And there can be no catholicity without discipline.
I can think of nothing that would make the TSM faculty happier than for the good Rowan to effectively throttle the bad Rowan.
Of everything I wrote above, the most important is this:
[blockquote]What it does mean is that if one has committed oneself to a Plan A, and it becomes clear that Plan A will never be implemented because depending on the good intention and actions of a single individual who has clearly indicated his unwillingness to cooperate, then one had best have a Plan B.[/blockquote]
So much of the discussion in the above thread is about Rowan Williams. Can he be depended on or not to do what reasserters think need to be done? The discussion then devolves into variations on:
Plan A will work!
Plan A will not work!
Will too!
Won’t!
Clearly there is disagreement about whether or not Plan A will work. Regardless, an unaddressed question in the above is whether a Plan B is permissible. As I read it, the real disagreement in this conversation is whether a Plan B is permissible. As I have been reading ACI in the last year, they are irrevocably committed to Plan A. I do not read this as a practical commitment, but a moral commitment. That is, the question is not whether A or B is the best way forward. As I read ACI, their commitment to Plan A is not based on whether it will work. ACI believes that commitment to Plan A is the only permissible Catholic position. Is that correct?
Clearing this up might save some time about some of the incessant arguing about whether or not Williams can be depended on.
Bill–good to see you yesterday.
1. I have a different take–given reports from principals–about the dysfunctioning Dar es Salaam meeting (certain Primates rarely present, and when present, uncooperative; Primates having already made up their mind on right and left and so gunning for certain outcomes). Now this may be OK when the Meetings have a past of fair and impartial goverance, but clearly under +Carey no such thing was happening. Indeed, ACI came into existence in some sense to assist +Drexel and help adjust the playing field through the development of key documents that could be distributed, etc. My own sense is that +Rowan has turned to a slightly better group to help him, and the ACO is improved over the days of Peterson; clearly the decision to have +Sentamu along was partly motivated on similiar lines. My own view is that the Primates need to appoint an executive council; that is, they need to take themselves seriously as an actual independent Instrument, and indeed one charged with certain important duties. I do not think +Rowan would stand in the way of this in the least, and has encouraged such a thing himself. On your second point, it is funny about any blanket appeal to Primates or GS. Without divulging names, my sense of the GS is that certain individual Primates are regarded as having amassed too much power and fail properly to speak for the rest. But I do agree that disciplining is something that a majority of the GS agree on, and the hardest question is how to do that, as that implementation is not theirs to prosecute. I believe an executive council of the Primates could run future meetings in such a way, under +Rowan’s presidency, that made a cost clear for TEC. But sadly, we may see the deterioration too fall along. Much will hang on the Lambeth Conference and whether the conservatives present press for strong outcomes. Over and out.
(Re: #56) Dear David+,
I welcome your gentle reproof and correction at my lack of nuancing in using the word “always,” and I recognize the truth of how such absolutist words are like rhetorical red flags in the face of debating bulls (strong bulls of Bashan, no doubt).
Your point is well-taken that as the debate has been framed by reasserters, “The issue here isn’t being tolerant and patient with one another’s short comings and human foibles, but of how to deal with stubborn, willful, unrepentant sin and rebellion.”
My response is to ask: How has God in salvation history dealt with “stubborn, willful, unrepentant sin and rebellion”–at least this side of the grave?
In my reading of Scripture, God has felt free to use a variety of methods, so I don’t think there’s any one hard and fast answer, but one can posit a sort of calculus of discipline and grace (or judgment and mercy).
As a priest and an occasionally (if, I hope, temporarily) unrepentant sinner, I try to keep in mind that an unrepentant sinner today may (by God’s grace) become a repentant sinner tomorrow. This is not merely optimism; I would say it’s faith in the cosmic effectiveness of God’s modus operandi in Christ: that through Jesus, God redeems. My role as a priest (and fellow sinner) is to be with the unrepentant insofar as that is possible…
But instead of getting into the nuances of my preferred pastoral care approach, I’ll say that theologically speaking, I distinguish between two types of “separation” (and because I didn’t make that distinction in my first comment on this thread, I’m guilty of sloppiness–but what else is new?); these are:
1. Separation-as-schism
2. Separation-as-discipline
In the first, I have nothing to do with those I regard as mired in “stubborn, willful, unrepentant sin and rebellion” and end up mired in my own “stubborn, willful, unrepentant sin and rebellion,” that of hating those for whom Christ died and rose again. The sin of schism is (among other things) the sin of writing people off. (Even without formal schism, I anticipate I will have to answer before the Great Judgment Seat of Christ for having written numerous people off within my own local and wider communities of faith, but this first type is specifically related to ongoing institutional schism, in which I may willfully choose to participate.)
In the second, I self-differentiate and draw appropriate boundaries that make it clear that I regard those mired in “stubborn, willful, unrepentant sin and rebellion” as part of my own family, but that I will not, with God’s help, participate in their “stubborn, willful, unrepentant sin and rebellion,” as I have my own “stubborn, willful, unrepentant sin and rebellion” to deal with under God’s sovereign judgment and mercy, thank you very much. And in the midst of this sort of “staying in touch” with those who are mired in a different species of “stubborn, willful, unrepentant sin and rebellion” from my own, I practice the painful virtues of faith, hope, and love, which entail patience, self-control, stability, and the like. Discipline, in this view, is less of an imposition of draconian measures by one sinner on another, but of mutual subjection in one family (or, to mix metaphors, One Body) under the sovereign and powerful judgment and mercy of Christ.
So you’re right that stability on its own is not “always” a more effective way of getting on with the business of spreading the gospel than separation. But stability within the context of separation-as-discipline within the One Body, I maintain, is at least in my view a more theologically defensible strategy for life and mission in the One Church than a lack of stability combined with a disordered separation-as-schism.
I wish you well in your efforts at advocating a new reformation. But if your reformation entails separation, which type of separation is truer to the modus operandi of God in Christ? Or is there a third (or fourth or fifth) type that you would commend to the Household of God? I am eager to learn from you, my brother.
NJAH+
Thanks [61] – [62]. Those are important points to remember and to repeat in formulating any plan ahead.
It seems a reasonable and a natural construction of events that the ABC has acted in the unusual way he has in order to avoid or delay the discipline that is likely – or at least possible – to proceed from a primates’ meeting. One charitable way to describe this is that the ABC acted “out of order,†deviating from generally accepted rules of assembly and decision making, which are intended for fairness and transparency.
It also seems to me that any proposal for an alternative to a primates’ meeting bears a heavy burden of proving that it is not contaminated with the intent or even potential to avoid or delay what might have occurred should a primates’ meeting had been held.
Once you deviate from the rules of order, the only measure that will build trust is to redress the error promptly within assembly.
#64 It baffles me when Anglicans write as if the Church of God is not already visibly split and that each one of us is not already mired in schism. I think some recognition of that reality might be a better starting place in terms of an honesty about our own pastoral context.
Which is to say that maybe you haven’t carried through your own pastoral imperative thoroughly enough? Could it be that you are yourself already in the situation of those you are attempting to correct?
What I’m suggesting is that we learn to speak and pray humbly together about the brokenness of our own situations and discern what it means to respond to Christ’s call in that brokenness. That may require a stability and a patience too – I think it does – but it will not permit us the pleasure of thinking that it is only others who are responsible for tearing the visible church.
[blockquote] On the contrary, the attitude and strategy of RW and the ACI seem to me to be maintaining the (Benedictine and thoroughly Scriptural) value of stability in the face of conflict. I do not see any effort whatsoever on their parts “to preserve the apperance of unity.†RW & ACI have been quite clear and honest about all the disunity we presently face. Their response has consistently been to remain rooted in that particular section of the Mixed Field that is the Anglican Communion, and far from doing nothing, to witness to the power of Christ to effect real (divine-human) communion even in the face of overwhelming (human-human) conflict. Seems like the most mature option to me. [/blockquote]
With respect Fr. Humphrey it seems like abandonment to me. What good is a life boat if it is not used when needed?
(Re #66) Dear driver8:
I deeply appreciate the point you make, as it is one I fully concede. To the extent that any of my words may be construed to imply that I, too, am not a schismatic, I apologize.
The foundational postulate behind everything I write is that we are all schismatics. I think I explain the thinking behind this postulate most concisely in my blog post [url=http://communioninconflict.blogspot.com/2007/01/who-is-schismatic.html]Who Is A Schismatic?[/url], and you should know that in my response to the Covenant Design Group that I am currently editing for submission, I write, “the Covenant should avoid any language that papers over the Anglican Communion’s own complicity in the sin of schism. It should adopt a tone of humility that recognizes that the Covenant is addressed by schismatics to other schismatics, whith the hope of serving the fuller visible communion of the whole Church. The Covenant must thus maintain a ‘penitential’ tone throughout and avoid any tendency to regard the churches in communion with Canterbury as somehow less schismatic than those that are not.”
I hope this addresses your concern and corrects any misperceptions my writing might have engendered.
NJAH+
RE: “According to the note, John Rodgers is NOT the convener of SPREAD either . . . ”
That’s rather odd. Here’s the link to a copy of the petition which names Rodgers as chairman of SPREAD.
http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/32Ang/Ang/SPREADPetn06h30.htm
Other names on various SPREAD writings have been William Beasley, an AMiA priest in the U.S., and Rwandan bishop John Rucyahana.
I also think that Stephen Noll has written for SPREAD although I could be wrong there. It would certainly make sense for him to have written the document, but who knows.
The SPREAD document #1 (see was written to point out the many, many instances of Rowan’s early writings and actions that place him firmly on the side of blessing same sex unions with the contention that this represents the “true Rowan Williams.” Ephraim+ counters, “no, look to his more current writings as ABC”. Mine, Matt+’s, Dr. Witt’s, etc., response is to look to his actions which on every score except Gene Robinson’s non-invitation has been seemingly directed by 815 (and VGR will sell more books because of the non-invitation).
To which we have the wholly lacking response, “Well, a lot of people are at fault.” I could imagine that one of Bill Clinton’s political spin-sters might use this same line.
Then we have Chris Seitz’s response, “It’s not helpful be throwing around blame.”
Ephraim+ calls for honesty…honesty is in shriveling short supply. Well, an honest assessment of basic premises of courses of actions as called for by Prof Witt is certainly not unhelpful. rather it’s mandatory.
Fr. Humphrey (#64),
Thanks for a cordial, irenic reply. It’s late and so my response will be short. In answer to your question about which type of separation I am in favor of, it is of course the second type you mentioned, separation as a form of discipline, not as schism. And the biblical basis for it includes passages like 1 Cor. 5:11 and Romans 16:17-18. But the aim is always that the willful, unrepentant sinner might be shamed into coming to their senses and repenting after all. That is, the hope is always for reconciliation and restoration, but this can’t take place without repentance.
David Handy+
All too often an unrepentant sinner for too long myself
Ruth Gledhill reports that the author of the SPREAD document was Charles Raven.
http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2008/06/gafcon-a-longer.html