What will happen to the Church of England and Anglicans in 2020?
by David Baker, Christian Today:
As we look ahead to the coming year, what may happen to the Church of England – and indeed to the wider
Anglican Communion?
Predicting the future outside the pages of Scripture is a notoriously unwise thing to do. Not, of course, that this has stopped some from trying. According to American pastor F. Kenton Beshore, for example, the second coming of Jesus will be between 2018 and 2028, with the rapture by 2021 at the latest.
So hold on to your hats, everyone.
Well, who knows? Maybe Pastor F (as we might call the good Reverend Beshore for short) will be proved right. Or maybe not. Undeterred by all those who have gone before him and got it hopelessly wrong, F reckons it’s all got to kick off within a generation of the founding of the modern State of Israel in 1948, with him calculating a generation as between 70 and 80 years. He’s not one for vagueness, our F. Needless to say, he’s not Church of England.
As a good Anglican, however, I specialise in vagueness, especially when it comes to any attempt to forecast the future.
So here, rather than any firm predictions, are simply some questions – questions that may shape how 2020 unfolds in relation to the Church of England, and, to a certain extent, the wider Anglican Communion.