The twentieth century saw a sea change in the life of the Anglican Communion between its beginning and its end. The Anglican Communion, which at the fifth Lambeth Conference of 1908 was represented by 223 bishops (all of them Doctors of Divinity and a majority of them from England) organised into 11 Provinces, blossomed into a Communion of some 750 bishops (almost all of them indigenous) at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, representing perhaps 70 million Christians organised into 38 Provinces.
Such growth has been almost entirely in the South, and all the really big Churches are now in the continent of Africa. If we are to believe their own statistics, the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) comprises some 20 million adherents, the Church of Uganda, 10 million, the Church of Kenya, 5 million and Episcopal Church of the Sudan 4.5 million. Besides them, only the Church of England can compete with 26 million baptised, although 25 million of them hardly ever bother to darken the doors of Church on a Sunday. The growth of the Anglican Communion in the twentieth century has been phenomenal. Today it is a truism to say that the average Anglican is a black woman under the age of 30, who earns two dollars a day, has a family of at least three children, has lost two close relatives to AIDs, and who will walk four miles to Church for a three hour service on a Sunday. These are the realities of the Anglican Communion, and probably quite alien to the Diocese of St Asaph.
It should not be surprising therefore to discover that the twenty-first century has brought a growing impatience with the cultural and financial dominance of the NATO aspects of Communion life, and with it, a growing critique of the Churches of the West. Not only are we in the West shrinking in numbers unlike the growing Churches of the South; for many critics, the Churches of the West are losing a sense of their identity as they get lulled into the liberalism and relativism which are presumed to be the hallmarks of the modern Western society.
This quote reveals Cameron’s position:
“Every Ephraimite seeking to cross the river is questioned by the Gileadites. If they cannot pronounce the word “shibboleth†correctly, thus proving themselves aliens, they are slaughtered, and the Scriptures – a little too gleefully for modern tastes – recalls that 42,000 Ephraimites – a tribe enrolled in the Old Testament among the tribes of Israel, note – are killed as a result of this episode.
It can too often appear these days that we Anglicans are busy making the issue of homosexuality a shibboleth. Unless you can articulate your views in exactly the desired way, be it adapted towards a conservative or a liberal agenda, then you are likely to get cut down. The very nature of your Anglicanism, of your orthodoxy, of your Christian faith, the very value placed upon your membership in the body, is made to depend on one particular articulation of one particular understanding of one particular moral issue, and your position on this matter is used to read back into the whole of Christian faith and discipleship as the way for it to be understood and evaluated. If you’re found wanting, then you are liable to be treated as a sinner and tax-collector. So homosexuality has become Anglicanism’s shibboleth – as a leading commentator said to me the other day “If you’re not on the right side on this issue, you fool yourself if you think you’re Orthodox.â€
Sexuality is not an easy issue. When the bishops of the Church in Wales sought to provide guidance upon the issue in 2005, they identified no less than five different positions which they believed were held “with integrity†by members of the Church in Wales. While it is by no means the most important challenge facing the Church in the early twenty-first century in a world where millions die of starvation and illness, where injustice and poverty still stalk many societies, I fear that there is little doubt that as an issue it will not go away – and that it is one with which all Christian communities, and not just Anglicans, are having to engage.
An authentic and faithful Christian response to the challenges of human sexuality will have to be discerned, but am I alone, I wonder, in being fearful about the way in which we appear to be tackling the question in Anglicanism. Does it have to be by way of shibboleth? Is everything else in the rich life of the Communion reduced to secondary status?”
This is the ‘there are other sins, why is this so important?’ argument.
One should ask how the FIVE different opinions on homosexuality were identified and judged to be ‘held with integrity’??? By what criteria and ethos? Did the Holy Scriptures, the writings of the Church Fathers or the ancient Jewish scholars or 2000 years of Christian scholarship prior to Lambeth 1998 and TEC General Convention 2003 enter into this equation? How was the evidence regarded, weighed, balanced?
Cameron seems to be just another relativist and sentimentalist. He cries ‘love, love’ and discards the preponderance of Scriptural evidence. It seems Scripture cannot supply the weight and compelling importance that sentiments, feelings and wishes do.
The ‘shibboleth’ argument is not valid in the face of Jesus’ admonition that the way is narrow and hard that leads to eternal life and the way is broad and easy that leads to destruction and damnation.
The broad and easy way is doing what comes naturally, what feels good, seems right to the natural mind, but is contrary to the Scriptures. Christianity is all about going against the dictates of the human fallen state, the ‘old man of the flesh’ about crucifying the carnal nature with its passions and compulsions and living a holy life free from the power of sin, compulsions and addictions.
True Christianity demands we choose and if necessary oppose and go against the way of the (secular) world, the flesh and the devil, the media, parents, grandparents, friends, the other world religions, and nowadays, against a growing number of apostate ‘churches’ and their leaders.
It’s pretty much the same address Cameron gave in April at the GTS Anglican Covenant Conference.
As for “Cameron seems to be just another relativist and sentimentalist. He cries ‘love, love’ and discards the preponderance of Scriptural evidence …” perhaps he asked himself WWJD and read [url=http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022:35-40;&version=31;]Matthew 22:35-40[/url]
WWJD? – Easy answer. “Go and sin no more.”
Sadly, #2, the kind of ‘love’ you and he are substituting for real love, is false compassion and pity, the equivalent of a surgeon refusing to do surgery because it would hurt. There are souls at stake and they are being left unhealed, unhelped, in bondage to sin by false priests and bishops who bless and affirm their sin.
Pity cannot change Scripture, the Truth of God that sin is harmful, nor can it change reality or the evidence of science, medicine and Scripture.
We are missing the point of what Canon Cameron says about the fact that leaders “in the Western” church speak contemptuously of the Global South, bringing racial implications into play. He is saying that the US expects something in return (ideological approval) when it spreads money around among other provinces. The canon could not be more correct, and I wish the APB and the PB would take counsel from these words; they both need the advice. The ABC absurdly claims in his recent statement on Gafcon that the Anglican Communion does not have a “colonial” structure, for example. I am quoting the following about the most significant part of the lecture, as I read it:
“In a lecture about the crisis facing world Anglicanism, Canon Cameron said that senior clerics in the Western church were in danger of adopting a NATO-style attitude of “intellectual superiority”.
He criticised the US church, which donates generously to the African and Asian evangelical provinces of the Global South, for placing “implicit obligations” on the recipients of their largesse. . . .”
Here’s more from another paragraph:
“Alongside these ties of friendship – the so-called bonds of affection which have been described as holding the Anglican Communion together  there has lurked an unconscious sense of superiority and dependency: a sense that all the really educated theologians find their homes in Oxbridge, and that all the really big money comes from the United States.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4257718.ece
MP, I’ll tell you what the Episcopal Church had to do with the Gafcon statement: as you must remember, it caused the crisis that occasioned the statement. And, for the further information of MP, I have not repudiated the Archbishop of Canterbury (I was one of his biggest supporters and a teacher of his books), but I hope he will enter the “listening process” with his advisor Canon Gregory Cameron (as above).
Please delete the last paragaph of my post above. It is off-topic and should not have appeared here.
Susan+, #2, the first great commandment is the one that seems to be overlooked and the one GAFCON is focused on. The second great commandment follows naturally from the first. Making a god of MDGs is not following the first, even if one thinks one is following the second. To deny the word, but proclaim good works as a goal is not pleasing to God, according to scriptures. Therein lies the conumdrum for reappraisers. They can say all they want, “but we did such good things for the poor, the imprisoned, the sick.” But God will say back, “but you denied me and my Word, and I do not know you or recognize what you did.”