For some time now, people have been asking me why I haven’t written anything on the current\u201d\u201dor, depending on your point of view, everlasting\u201d\u201dcrisis in the Anglican world. After all, I have been an Anglican for nearly twenty-five years, virtually all of my adult life; indeed, my experiences in other denominations, before I discovered Anglicanism, were so brief and tentative that I don’t even know how to be a Christian except as an Anglican. Nor do I wish to be a Christian in any other way. Surely I have some opinions on the mess the Anglican Communion is now in, on how it got this way, and how it might get out again?<\/p>\n
Well, yes, I do have such opinions. But they are worthless. All such opinions amount to little more than the assignation of blame for past events and predictions of the future\u201d\u201dthe latter usually involving punishments to come for those blamed for the past\u201d\u201dand neither of those activities interests me. There was a time when they did, but I have long since learned how futile such pursuits are, and (more important) how powerfully they distract from the core practices of the Christian life. This is the primary reason why, after too long a season scanning the Anglican blogs daily, I now check just one of them, and once a week, at most. This abstinence has calmed my spirit and removed, I think permanently, my taste for such things.<\/p>\n
Moreover, I remind myself that the churches of the Anglican world are governed by bishops, and I am not a bishop. One of the chief reasons I have held firm to Anglicanism over the years is that I believe that the threefold order of ministry\u201d\u201dbishop, priest, and deacon\u201d\u201dis the model taught by the apostles, the governance particularly approved by God. In this model I, as a layman\u201d\u201deven though I am also a member of the priesthood of all believers\u201d\u201dhave a highly circumscribed role. If my pastor asks me to teach, I teach; otherwise I shut up. In the unlikely (and unwelcome) event of a bishop of the Church asking for my thoughts I would share them; otherwise I keep them to myself, at least in public. The decisions that will shape the future of the Anglican Communion will be made by bishops, not by laypeople, nor even by priests; if I care about that Communion\u201d\u201dand I do\u201d\u201dI had best be praying for those bishops, and not repeating the error of Job in darkening counsel by words without knowledge.<\/p>\n