…any meaningful step in a constructive direction must include the North American church’s cessation of the practice which is precisely at issue in debate. Christians have heretofore considered what Anglicans are currently debating as impermissible and immoral. We cannot have a debate about whether to do something which the American church in particular with ever increasing speed is continuing to do. The way in which the American church has gone about this has been a fiasco for those advocating for this change . The global debate by TEC’s actions has been set back many more years than most dare to understand.
Amidst all the pleading to work together and to have conversation and on and on must be understood that without a total cessation of the practice–which is what the Windsor Report pleaded for–no meaningful progress is really possible. And what is about to happen at Lambeth 2008 if there is no cessation is that the de facto situation in the entire Anglican Communion will be one of reception on the matter of blessing non-celibate same sex unions. Perceptive readers of the Windsor Report will know that on this matter ‘reception’ is not the Anglican Communion’s collective discernment of how to handle this question. But if nothing is done then whether there is a claim to work together or talk more or not, the tear at the deepest level on the Anglican Communion will get worse. This reality is what the Episcopal Church of the Sudan was rightly getting at.
If this tragedy occurs, the responsibility will lie in manifold places, but it will fall primarily–as it does increasingly–at Archbishop Rowan Williams’ feet.
And if you want to know what the doctrine of reception looks like in practice you need go no further than these comments from the Bishop of Arkansas late this week:
http://episcopalchurch.typepad.com/lambethjournal/2008/08/an-end—-and-a.html
The best analogy todate of the situation is that of a ‘bad marriage.’ A marriage where ECUSA is the wilfully unfaithful partner. Even though this was an ‘early on’ analogy made at the 2003 Convention, if my memory serves me well, it is still the best one.
Unfortunately, the situation is taking the path of most bad marriages and separation and then divorce are becoming inevitable.
Can the marriage be saved at this late date? Possibly. Will the marriage be saved? It is doubtful.
I agree Kendall
Yes, this was Rowan Williams’ party, and it has done what he intended: nothing. The accelerating pace of radicalism in the U.S. and Canada will continue, the splintering of those provinces will continue, and the distancing of other provinces from Canterbury-based activities will continue. Ten years’ time will see a very different landscape, and whether the Church of England itself will escape destruction is in question.
Congratulations to Kendall for speaking clearly and and forcibly. It is time that he do so, and we should all hope that he continues to do so. Larry
+++Rowan is truly good man, but the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time. If Wormwood and Screwtape had handpicked the ideal ABC for this time, they could not have done better.
I think the argument that ++Rowan effectively neutered all the other Instruments of Communion in this process has been convincingly made. This situation was created by TEC and the ACoC, but it was lovingly cultivated by the ABC. It will be his bitter harvest.
He arranged it, he plowed it, he cultivated it and he said it: “On its own, it could mean that nothing matters enough to us to understand why some conflicts are unavoidable and very costly – why some feel we put unity before truth, and so feel we have no very deep sense of truth itself.” Could is, of course, does. Postmodern flexibility is sooooo hip.