On the Way forward for Anglicanism
by Martin Davie:
A response to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s vision for the Anglican Communion.
On 14 October the Archbishop of Canterbury posted an update of the plans for next year’s Lambeth Conference on the Conference website.
Part of this update includes a section entitled ‘God’s Church for God’s World – Our life together as the Anglican Communion.’ [1] What the Archbishop writes in this section is extremely important because it sets out his vision of what he thinks the Anglican Communion is an should be, and what he thinks is currently endangering this vision.
In this article I shall offer a commentary on this section, explaining where I think what the Archbishop says is correct and where I think it is mistaken…
… the Archbishop correctly notes that, as things presently stand, it is unlikely that those who attend the Lambeth Conference will have ‘a single common understanding’ on ‘marriage, sexuality and relationships’ and he also correctly notes that those who belong to the Anglican Communion speak more than 2000 languages and have ‘deeply embedded and possibly different views of what is right and wrong, both culturally and in our understanding of the Bible.’ However, the moral he draws from this is problematic.
The Archbishop says, as we have seen, that the members of the Anglican Communion, as members of the Christian Church, are called by God: ‘ to find ways of continuing together, knowing that we belong to one another and obeying the commands of Jesus to love one another, and where we disagree, disagreeing well.’ The problem is with the implicit connection that the Archbishop makes between loving one another, disagreeing well, and continuing together.
The Archbishop does not spell out what he means by ‘disagreeing well’ but in context it appears to mean continuing in fellowship with those with whom we disagree about what is right and what is wrong and how to interpret the Bible. The problem with this approach is set out in paragraph 89 of the 2004 Windsor Report. This paragraph makes the point that not all differences that exist within the Church can be bundled together as being ‘adiaphora’ – matters on which we can simply agree to disagree. It declares that it is not the case that:
‘…. either for Paul or in Anglican theology all things over which Christians in fact disagree are automatically to be placed into the category of ‘adiaphora’. It has never been enough to say that we must celebrate or at least respect ‘difference’ without further ado. Not all ‘differences’ can be tolerated…”
See also: “God has called us… to stand for the true gospel witness”, by Russell Powell, Sydney Anglicans: The Global South grouping of the Anglican Communion is moving away from being based on geography to being founded on doctrinal orthodoxy.
Please right-click links to open in a new window.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
