Lambeth has not resolved the matter of the ordination of gay clergy and consecration of gay bishops.
It is this issue, together with the ordination of female bishops, which has divided the church. While there was no defined schism at Lambeth, the Anglican church us a suppurating sore.
There is no easy way of saying this. The Anglican Church is fast becoming, if not already, dysfunctional. It is a divided house, it cannot stand.
Moreover, there is a significant delusion regarding its future. Over gay clergy, never the twain shall meet.
To this end, the covenant or moratorium over the ordination of gay clergy, achieved at the Lambeth conference, is unlikely to last.
The North American branch of Anglicanism is being held entirely accountable for the demise of the church’s unity over the 2003 ordination of gay bishop Gene Robinson. It has not given a rolled gold assurance it will desist from ordination of gay bishops or bless same sex unions.
In fact, Jon Bruno, Bishop of Los Angeles, said: “For people who think this is going to lead us to disenfranchise any gay or lesbian person, they are sadly mistaken.”
Moratorium won’t last? How about it never started.
[blockquote]Jon Bruno, Bishop of Los Angeles, said: “For people who think this is going to lead us to disenfranchise any gay or lesbian person, they are sadly mistaken.”
[/blockquote]
I believe I have seen this statement before but, positioned as it was in this edit, it really caught my eye. Disenfranchisement? Who ever said anything about disenfranchisement? Here we see a clear and classic example of the divide between revisionists and the Church. Revisionists do not speak in theological terms. They speak in the secular terms of politics and psychotherapy.
Agreed, Nikolaus. “Disenfranchise?” Are gays and lesbians in danger of losing the vote?
It is my position that the trouble is with the word moratorium, which, according to Webster, means â€an authorized period of delay or waitingâ€. Revisionists can readily and correctly state they waited, and then have proceeded forward with their plans. There should be no moratoria at all, rather, an outright ban, as there is no Scriptural warrant and no ecclesiological, moral, nor theological justification for what they are already preemptively doing. (from my post at SF)
As currently constituted and particularly taking the western branch into account the Anglican Communion [b]is a divided house, it cannot stand[/b]. Do I hear a chisel cutting into a tombstone…..
“Those at Gafcon do not accept female bishops.” –Bantick
This isn’t true, is it? Gafcon included both sides on this matter. There are other misunderstandings in this and other commentaries on Gafcon and Lambeth. How did we get trapped into this claim that the essential reason for the Anglican split is just homosexuality? We should never accept this characterization of the situation, and yet it has been enshrined in the Windsor Report itself and in the Lambeth statements and in virtually all the commentaries.
Paula (#5)
You’re right this isn’t about homosexuality, but that is the presenting issue.
This is about where one places authority, the rise of exceptional individualism, and how we are to bear witness in the dominant culture. In other words, one side sees the perpendicular pronoun as the final arbiter of God’s will and the other maintains that God’s will is found in Scripture, Tradition, and Reason.
I guess it can be summed up in this way, are we to be transformed by current cultural trends or are we called to transform the culture?
Nonjuror and others, I’ll bet there are a lot of us for whom the “presenting issue” was not just same-sex situations; to me, the thing that most forcefully presented the Episcopal Church’s loss of a spiritual compass was the RCRC affiliation that commits us to an unlimited abortion agenda. Right behind the abortion abenda I would rank others that concern euthanasia and assisted suicide, topics which I can see on the horizon in locations like Newark and elsewhere. In terms of sexuality, the general reluctance of church spokespeople to use terms like “celibacy,” in any context, says it all. Of course, doctrinal failures give rise to all of these symptoms. When the Windsor Report identified homosexual issues as THE reasons for opposition to the North American churches, I thought it was incredibly simplistic–and it put us in a no-win zone. There should have been even more outcry then, specifically rejecting that characterization of the situation. (Who would really be perfectly satisfied if that one objection were solved?)
Paula
I beg your forgiveness, I responded as I would to a reappraiser. Mea maxima culpa!
I agree that there are more issues out there than homo-sexuality, and your list agrees with mine.
The common thread in all of these is that TEC has informed its “theology” through a worldview formed by modernist humanistic anthropology rather than letting theology inform the worldview.
How many sermons in TEC last week focused on our unworthiness “gather up the crumbs” vs. demanding our rights before God? Now, how many pewsitters objected to the latter read?
Answer those questions and I think you’ll have the answer for why TEC is in the trouble we are in.
Pax
#4 Athanasius Returns:
I have to agree with the problematic use of the word “moratorium.”
I’ve said before, I think that the Windsor Report was engaged in some shifty footwork with the use of that term. I suspect that it was intended on one hand to suggest to the reappraisers that all we had to do was hold off for a little while, and the rest of the Communion would be bound to come around to our way of thinking eventually. On the other hand, the report hinted to reasserters that if the reappraisers agreed to a “moratorium,” that was the same thing as admitting we were wrong and pledging never to do it again.
Even if the recommendations of the WR had been implemented on all sides, I’m convinced that contradiction would eventually have led us all to pretty much the place where we are now. Reasserters won’t compromise on what they see as a doctrinal issue; reappraisers won’t compromise on what we see as a justice issue. So whither now?
The Catholic/Protestant divide still lurks in the background. It is the most fundamental issue of all.