A New Year’s Diocesan Resolution?

Jan 3, 2018 by

by Charles Raven, Evangelicals Now:

It is again the time when New Year’s resolutions are made, even though experience tells us that they are often short lived.

Perhaps part of the problem is that we are too individualistic and good intentions without the support and accountability of others are all too easily overwhelmed by the pressures of life. We might do better to think on a bigger canvas and decide what we are resolved to do together, as families and as churches. Within the Anglican Communion a resolution which would have lasting and transformative effects in 2018 and beyond would be to follow the example of the Diocese of Port Elizabeth in the Anglican Province of Southern Africa and take a stand for biblical faith.

Affirming declaration

In a little reported but very significant step, the Diocesan Synod at its November 2017 meeting unanimously passed a resolution that any future nominee for diocesan bishop must affirm the GAFCON Jerusalem Declaration. The context of this decision was the announcement at the Synod by the current diocesan, Bishop Bethlehem Nopece, of his forthcoming retirement. He is held in high esteem as a faithful teacher and pastor, but the Provincial Synod is deeply split on questions of marriage and same sex relationships, leading to fears that a successor would not share the same convictions.

In fact, there was a recognition that the diocese needed to respond to the crisis not only in the Province, but also in the Communion as a whole. As Canon Dave Doveton of Port Elizabeth explained: ‘The proposer reminded the synod of the current crisis in the Anglican Communion, where the old centres of power and control are denying the fundamentals of the faith’ and reference was made to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and to the posting, in the same spirit as Luther’s 95 Theses, of the orthodox Southwark Declaration on the doors of a number of English cathedrals, including Canterbury itself.

Ancient creeds do not safeguard

It might be objected that bishops should simply be required to affirm their assent to the ancient creeds, but a moment’s reflection on Anglican history shows that to be inadequate. The creeds were common to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation and for Anglicans the Thirty-nine Articles took on a defining role, not because they were innovations, but because they recovered biblical truths which had been obscured by mediaeval Catholicism.

The 14 clauses of the Jerusalem Declaration, within the essential doctrinal context of the introductory Jerusalem Statement, fulfill a similar role in our day to that of the Thirty-nine Articles in the 16th century. For instance, Clause 2 addresses the contemporary confusions about Scripture by stating that ‘We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading’.

Forfeiting authority

And in a Communion that risks being taken captive by secular ideologies, Clause 13 affirms that faithfulness to the gospel of grace entails boundaries to our fellowship: ‘We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord’.

It may seem surprising that an African diocese should be leading the way by taking this step to secure succession. The common assumption is that secular infiltration of the Churches is a northern hemisphere problem, but Anglicans in the global south are at risk too and the primary reason is not a hostile culture, but the influence of the ‘old centres’ of the Anglican Communion which repeatedly put out the message that it is possible to ‘walk together’ with false teachers who have chosen the broad way that leads to destruction rather than the narrow road that leads to life.

In passing this resolution, the Diocese of Port Elizabeth has recognised the necessity of godly leadership and the pressing need in today’s Anglican Communion to ‘chose life’. I hope that many will be inspired by their example.

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