The answer, I believe, is a resounding and heartfelt “yes.”
No one finds God alone. The intricate web of relationships that form our global communion provide an invaluable network of mutual benefit, often bringing desperately needed resources into remote communities that others either cannot or will not reach, often making the difference quite literally between life and death. Those same relationships call us all out of our self-limited little worlds, cracking open our hearts and minds, challenging and compelling us as a kind of corrective, to see and to understand the full spectrum of Christian witness that often takes place under circumstances and with a kind of courage that many of us cannot begin to understand.
We live in a world plagued by division, conflict, and violence, much of it rationalised, justified, and glorified in the name of God. Indeed our world is starving for a more transcendent vision itself. So how about something new? How about a global communion that reveals a deeply challenging but wonderfully divine truth. Runcie said in 1988, “that without relationship difference only divides.” But I would add, that in relationship difference actually redeems.
Not if there is no real communion. And I think that is the point. If their is no common belief or teaching, if it is just a label to stick on 34 totaly independent provences each doing its own thing and not accountable to anyone, as TEC argues, then there is no point. Simply calling something a communion does not make it so. And to pretend that there is unity when, in fact, their is none, is to perpetrate a falsehood.
The Episcopalians have already demonstrated that they have no need of a global Anglican communion, as evidenced by the division they have brought about between themselves and the majority of Anglican Christians around the world.
Okay, Bp. O’Neill, perhaps you could demonstrate some of this “understanding the full spectrum of Christian witness” and “differences redeeming” stuff right here at home…. starting with dropping your lawsuits against Grace CANA.
[i] But I would add, that in relationship difference actually redeems [/i]
Funny, that’s what the theology behind Christian marriage says – if y’all actually believed that, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Like a coating of glaze over earthenware are fervent lips with an evil heart. Proverbs 26:23
A malicious man disguises himself with his lips, but in his heart he harbors deceit. Though his speach is charming, do not believe him, for seven abominations fill his heart. His malice may be concealed by deception, but his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly. Proverbs 26:24-26
A lying tongue hates those it hurts, and a flattering mouth works ruin. Proverbs 26:28
“Relationship” is not God, lets not worship it as if it were. Nor are all “relationships” positive: slave owner & slave, after all, constitutes a “relationship”. The hangman has a “relationship” with the person he is about to hang. The bishop has a “relationship” with the priest he is about to (or already has) inhibit or depose and with the members of a parish whose building he is trying to posess. I would not consider these particular “relationships” something to be desired.