After “Shared Conversations” what Gospel will the Church of England share?

Aug 19, 2016 by Jill

by Canon Phil Ashey, AAC:

Summary: On matters of human sexuality, does the Archbishop of Canterbury believe that one must sacrifice the clarity and authority of the Bible to reach lost people? If so, he should admit it clearly and let the rest of the Communion move on. For what he will have left to share is an amputated gospel: grace without guilt, confession without conviction, response without repentance, imagination in place of revelation, and imitation without imputation. In the hopes of reaching people with a more “generous” Gospel in the short run, he will have made that very Gospel even more irrelevant in the long run to the very people he says he wants to reach.

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, seems to have a genuine, passionate commitment to “re-evangelize” England. He wants to keep all of the benefits of an “established” Church, which has a unique public platform for such evangelism of the nation. He has to win back a hostile, secular culture in which the majority of a younger generation believes

He also seems willing to write off those people in the Church of England who believe that the Scriptures speak with both clarity and authority to issues of human sexuality—including homosexuality and the blessing of same sex unions. As we noted last week his Executive Officer has admitted their willingness to “write off” 20% of its membership that cannot agree with the projected results of the “Shared conversations” currently taking place in the Church of England—results that will almost certainly include some “pastoral accommodation” of the blessing of civil same-sex partnerships, in keeping with the recommendations of the Pilling Report. No doubt this is driving the failure of the “Shared Conversations” to engage the Scriptures seriously and with integrity, as we also noted here.

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