The Church of England is groping towards a harmonious solution of its internal crisis over the ordination of women bishops, but with no guarantee that such a solution exists. The crisis reveals much about the nature of Anglicanism itself. The Anglican claim to be both Catholic and Reformed is a challenging one, for it sets up a tension at the heart of the Church between two tendencies which sometimes point in opposite directions. One problem with the claim is that very few Anglican individuals are both Catholic and Reformed in themselves, even if the Church of England is as a whole: individuals tend to be one or the other and, indeed, so do parishes. The weakness of the third way, liberal Anglicanism, is that it regards both these positions through the lens of relativism, denying both of them any enduring claims to truth.
This thoughtful short piece really does hit the nail square on the head. Hats off to our RC brothers and sisters for cogently capturing the contradictions we Anglicans struggle with.
That honest assessment was quite refreshing to a church that tries to be all things to all people and usually fails.
Note especially the following, widely applicable:
“If one tries to be prophetic without at the same time being traditional, what weight does it have? On whose behalf is one being prophetic? It is one thing to say that the entire thrust of Christian history leads ultimately to … [one “prophetic” conclusion or another]. It is quite another to say that the thrust of Christian history can be ignored if it does not point that way. … If the price of victory is to force tradition into unconditional surrender then it becomes a somewhat pyrrhic one, all the more so if it is widely depicted as Christian faith being forced to bow the knee to secular post-Christian values. That is the danger in saying, as some at the General Synod did this week, that if the Church of England does not allow …[xyz] it will look ridiculous in the eyes of society at large. Instead, the question ought to be: does what is proposed look ridiculous in the eyes of tradition? On that, the debate is far from over.
I do find the short article insightful, but of course lacking in the real details. What ‘liberal’ Anglicans do is in fact attempt to argue the case for womens ordination from the general angle of freedom for women, reflecting society at large, but THAT IS NOT UNIVERSALLY THE CASE. I am a lifelong Evangelical, orthodox Christian and I fully support the role of women as leaders in the church not because I want to be cool and ‘inclusive’ but because of very real and respectful readings of Scripture. Do not patronize actual exegetical work as being from a womens lib perspective attempting to force its way onto the church when many are orthodox, Evangelical Christians who support it for very different reasons.