Contention 1: WHAT IS THE GLOBAL ANGLICAN COMMUNION?
by Stephen Noll, Contending Anglican:
“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare’s doubting Juliet asks. So why title a book “The Global Anglican Communion” when I could have chosen otherwise? Juliet is tragically mistaken – names matter – and so, I contend, one cannot wish away the tragic truth: that the name “Anglican Communion” no longer defines a coherent Christian body.
THE CRISIS OF ANGLICAN IDENTITY
Anglicanism has come to a crisis point in its history, a noble history to be sure, but like all histories subject to the judgment of God. And as the prophets of old warned the leaders of Israel, it is not enough to recite “the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,” and not do those things which the Lord requires (Jeremiah 7:1-7).
Ten years ago, the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) met in Jerusalem and stated this indictment of the official Communion in its Jerusalem Statement:
- that some of its churches had accepted and promoted a false Gospel of sexuality;
- that this action had led to a breach of fellowship among its members; and
- that the official “Instruments” of the Communion had failed to discipline its heretical members.
This indictment did not emerge overnight. It was the sober conclusion of ten years of controversy following the approval in 1998 of Lambeth Resolution I.10 on Human Sexuality. That Resolution, sponsored by bishops of the Global South and passed by an overwhelming majority, had addressed the rising issue of homosexuality by affirming our Lord’s teaching of lifelong monogamous marriage of a man and a woman or of abstinence as the only two ways of sexual expression (Matthew 19:1-12) and rejecting homosexual practice as “incompatible with Scripture.” This moral teaching was and continues to be spurned the Episcopal Church USA, later joined by others. In a subsequent series of meetings, the “Instruments of Unity,” including the Primates and Anglican Consultative Council, called these churches to repent, but they would not. The Archbishops of Canterbury failed to exercise their moral authority, and in 2007 Rowan Williams explicitly reneged on a commitment to his fellow Primates to carry out their resolutions.
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