THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION is alive and vibrant.
It has survived another Lambeth Conference, a bit bruised, battered and fragmented. Bishops at Canterbury rallied around pertinent issues of social justice, poverty and the environment, and they reached the only conclusion they could on human sexuality: compromise.
That is what happens within a healthy family: members listen to each other, give a little, take a little, and reach a compromise. The result: both poles in the human sexuality debate are left frustrated and eager to battle another day, but it is the “middle road” ”“ via media — that has won the day.
The Anglican Communion emerged ”“ as it always does after a Lambeth Conference — a church struggling to be faithful to scripture and relevant to today’s society. Theologians and church leaders will debate the importance of Lambeth 2008 for some time to come; a sort of ecclesiastical navel-gazing. This issue of The Journal is dedicating an entire supplement to Lambeth.
Well, I do not see the Social Gospel as the Gospel nor Lambeth as a reformation…..
Missed opportunity is more like it, and probably the last one before a real reformation.
“rallied around pertinent issues of social justice, poverty and the environment” You don’t need Jesus to do this. Any civic action club will do just as well.
I think he must have meant [i]de[/i]formation.
Hipper, yes He did, but it is secondary to spreading the Gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus.
[i]Any civic action club will do just as well. [/i]
Do it better actually.
Can marching through the streets of London demanding the government do something be counted as feeding the poor? I’ll take the secularists, Catholics, and evangelicals who actually work to improve the lot of the poor any day.
But what I really wanted to say is that for Mr. Knight to make this claim
[blockquote]That is what happens within a healthy family: members listen to each other… [/blockquote]
is bizarre, given that about a fourth of the Anglican bishops, representing something over one-half of all Anglicans weren’t present, recognizing, as they did, that nothing would happen, nothing be resolved.
I would say the money they saved in not travelling (not to mention the reduced carbon footprint) will do more good for hungry people in Africa than all the marching in London by episcopal tourists.
#4 wrote [blockquote] “I think he must have meant deformation”[/blockquote]
I think he meant [i]mal[/i]formation.
how about implosion (in the west at least)?
Papa Maverick, [i]”You can fool some of the prople all the time and all the people some of the time and that’s good enough for me!” [/i] Keith Knight believes it.
Whoever this guy is, he is CLUELESS. Perhaps he is trying to say something so often that it is believed to be true.
[blockquote] No you don’t need him to do this … it can indeed be done as part of a civic action club as you say … it can even be taken care of by the governments of wealthy nations … but Jesus did command us to address these issues … and it’s certainly preferable—from my point of view—when he is involved. [/blockquote]
Unfortunately, what the MDGs are has nothing to do with Christ or His commissions. Jesus told us to care for the poor, he didn’t command us to force someone else to do it for us. TEC has pledged $1 million toward the MDGs, but it’s not for anything as lowbrow or pedestrian as actually giving money or services to the poor. It’s for lobbying Congress to spend someone else’s money so folks at 815 don’t have to touch dirty poor people.
The Anglican Communion is alive and vibrant…in the Global South. In the north, it is circling the drain and ready to box.
Damian Thompson [url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/blog/2008/09/02/if_dean_jeffrey_john_becomes_a_bishop_the_floodgates_will_open ]writes[/url],
[blockquote] Anyway, if Britain does acquire a Bishop Jeffrey John, then the attempts by Rowan’s spin doctors to present Lambeth ‘08 as a healing experience will soon look even sillier and more desperate than they do already.[/blockquote]
But Mr Knight is correct. The Anglican Communion is undergoing a new reformation.
And Amen to Jeffersonian #11. Our Brother in Christ, Deacon Phil Snyder has written a [url=http://deaconslant.blogspot.com/2008/07/mission-of-church-and-mdgs.html ]short essay on the MDG’s[/url].
[blockquote] The MDGs cannot be a goal of the Church. They are a byproduct of living the Great Commission. The MDGs and any other social justice work are works done because of what Jesus has first done for us. If we make them the goal, we cease to be the Church. If we put them ahead of the Great Commission, we start to worship a false god.[/blockquote]
A very superficial analysis befitting an even more superficial subject.
First the term [b]via media[/b] was hijacked, and now the word [b]reformation[/b] is being subverted.
Yeah, instead of being a REFORMATION it’s becoming a RE-formation. You know, like gathering the wagons in a circle is a re-formation of the original purpose of travelling in a straight line towards a destination.
He clearly calls it. The new reformation — COMPROMISE.
Ugh. Yet another way to spell spiritual death.
To think Keith Knight wrote all that with a straight face. He must be a PR guy.
carl
Utter fluff and content free!
[blockquote]That is what happens within a healthy family: members listen to each other, give a little, take a little, and reach a compromise. The result: both poles in the human sexuality debate are left frustrated and eager to battle another day, but it is the “middle road†– via media — that has won the day.[/blockquote]
An accurate description of what has happened, that is, except that there aren’t really two poles in opposition to each other, the one small (but wealthy and powerful) entity that holds an extreme view hasn’t compromised anything, and as a result, the whole family is being dragged down.