If you keep an eye on the Church News, you probably will have seen that a select group of representatives of various Evangelical groups in the Church put forward a proposed covenant to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Not surprisingly the more liberal end of the Church didn’t much like it, but what is interesting is the reaction of some of the more Evangelical end. By far the most comprehensive, and in many ways damning analysis comes from the evangelical Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, who as a friend of a number of people involved in the drafting of the document, is very apologetic before he starts.
Tag Archives: Anglican Church
Which Way Will It Go?
Before the fall out from the convention has even settled, it looks like the election of a new Bishop of Newark, a post previously held by John Shelby Spong, is going to cause more arguments, as one of the four candidates is gay. The diocese have said that the committee deliberately avoided discriminating against candidates on the grounds of sexual orientation. Essentially, they have handed the decision to the members of the congregations in the Newark diocese, and as with the recent election in California it will be their choice of Bishop that will ultimately trigger, or avoid more arguments.
In the UK, Ruth Gledhill’s article in the Times yesterday that assumed that any Anglican covenant would be defined in terms of the conservative position has produced a swift response from Colin Slee, pointing out firstly that no covenant has been defined, and also floating the question as to whether many congregations in the wider Church of England, such as his own in Southwark, would sign up to it either. This offers the possibility that the Church of England as a whole may find itself theologically closer to the liberal provinces that include Scotland and New Zealand as well as the US and Canadian churches than the conservative provinces in Africa and Asia, and drafting a much more liberal covenant than the conservative churches could stomach. This of course raises the possibility that ultimately it may be these conservative provinces that will find themselves excluded, rather than the liberal wing.
Yet More Anglican Postings
Father Jake has posted a series of interesting posts over the past few days. The Bishop of New Hampshire has written an open letter in the wake of B033, especially with regards to the feelings of delegates who felt they were betraying other members of the Church in the cause of Anglican unity, only to have it thrown back in their faces. The Times has published an article questioning whether Rowan Williams is too brainy to lead the Church. Perhaps the most interesting comment item is this article from the Guardian comparing and commending the US Church, and comparing it with what is happening in the Church of England. Michael Hampson, the author of the article has a new book, The Last Rites: The End of the Church of England that will be published in October.
Should Anglicans Welcome Schism?
So for the third time in as many days, more Anglican church discussion. I had thought that I’d leave the topic for a bit, but having read an opinion piece by Damian Thompson entitled ‘Anglicans should welcome a schism’ in yesterdays Telegraph, especially comparing it with the sermon that we got at St James on 11th June from the soon-to-be assistant to the Bishop of Europe, currently a chaplain at Wellington College.
Looking at the sermon first, being Trinity Sunday, it paralleled the Trinity with the Church, the Trinity being an example of three distinct and different entities that are part of one whole. The essential thrust of the sermon was that this is how the Church should be. The essential point of the sermon was that Church unity was of primary importance.
Contrast this with ‘Anglicans should welcome a schism‘ which is based around the premise that the Anglican Communion has essentially not been a communion since parts of it failed to recognise all the priests ordained in other provinces after the first ordinations of women. The general gist of the article is that we’ll all be better off with the Anglican Communion as we know it gone. However at least part of the purpose of the article seems to be to wind up as many different Anglican groups as possible (which from the comments he seems to have done).
For example he describes the behaviour of George Carey on his foreign trips is described as ‘quasi-papal’, says that ‘some bishops of the Episcopal Church have more in common with a crystal-gazing Californian housewife than George Herbert‘, and says that many parishes in Australia have fallen into the hands of Protestant iconoclasts whose hatred of Popish practices makes Ian Paisley look positively ecumenical’. He also seems to lay the blame for the increasing radicalisation of parts of the Church of England at the door of the Anglican Communion. Whilst the article as a whole is pretty provocative, it does make some interesting points, and certainly the point that the communion hasn’t really been in communion for years reminded me of the furore when I was a child when, pre the ordination of women an American woman priest came and celebrated communion in an Anglican church in London.
On reflection, I have to say that I tend to agree more with the Telegraph article than the sermon two weeks ago, not least because all the arguments and politics seem to me to be totally missing the point – what is the point of a church that spends it’s entire time arguing over technicalities, over who can and can’t be members, rather than actually doing the work the church was set up to do? As I’ve said before, I’m finding the whole thing increasingly tedious, and seriously, having to put up with more of these kind of arguments up to Lambeth 2008 and beyond doesn’t exactly fill me with joy. However I fear that that will be what we will get, as both sides regard themselves as the true Anglicans. This is probably where I disagreed most with our preacher two weeks ago, as he said that the Church was weaker for different groups threatening to leave. This assessment is totally opposite to what I see – no group is threatening to leave, they all want to stay, but instead it’s one group wanting another to leave, or be forcibly ejected… None of the groups are going to leave willingly, and I doubt that any group will be booted out either, so we’re left with the ridiculous situation of everybody claiming to be in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, whilst not being in communion with each other.
Ooops, Thats Another Fine Mess The Anglican Church Has Got Into
This article in the Times raised a smile, although I feel a good deal of sympathy for the priest involved.
Basically, the vicar of Ealing in West London has been elected Bishop of the Lake Malawi diocese in Central Africa, following an almost twenty year relationship with the diocese. During that time he has raised over £250,000 for projects in the diocese, visited frequently, and even arranging hospital treatment in the UK for the previous Bishop for the cancer that ultimately killed him.
However there is a slight problem, the diocese is very conservative in their theology, and the vicar of Ealing is not. In fact he used to lead the Modern Churchpeoples Union.
The church in Central Africa is now busily trying to unlect their new Bishop, despite him winning a significant majority in the election, using eclesiastical law to find a problem with the process of election.
All in all it’s another embarassing bit of worldwide publicity for the Anglican Church. Basically the regular electors elected the man on the basis of having met him and his actions, and yet the whole ongoing war within the Church has resulted in other parts of the church abusing it’s own powers to unelect the duly appointed bishop. Father Jake offers a pretty succinct statement of the whole situation in a recent posting, in the USA, which seems just as relevant to this.