Communion or Separation?

Anglican Mainstream ^ | 24 October 2003 | Philip Gidings

[ahadams2]

Communion or Separation? Philip Gidings Church Times - 24th October

"If his consecration proceeds we recognise that we have reached a critical and crucial point in the life of the Anglican Communion ... the future of the Communion itself will be put in jeopardy".

That was the response of Anglican Primates to the prospect of the consecration of a priest in a committed same sex relationship to the office and work of a bishop in ECUSA. Why so serious a consequence? Why does this one ethical issue threaten the unity of the world-wide church? Why does it matter to English, African, Asian or Latin American Anglicans who is chosen to be a bishop in North America or what is their attitude to same-sex couples seeking the church’s blessing on their relationship?

Why it matters - the Reliability of Scripture

Just as the sixteenth century controversy about indulgences revealed a deeper disagreement about Scripture, the role of the papacy and ultimately the ground of our justification in Christ, so this contemporary disagreement is the tip of a substantial ice-berg. Again the authority of Scripture is at issue. Again the limits of diversity within the world-wide church are under challenge. And again those issues lead us back to how we understand the Gospel itself and its relevance to our contemporary world. Can God’s word to us in Holy Scripture be relied upon or not? When God promises forgiveness, restoration and eternal life in response to repentance and faith, can His promise be trusted? When the New Testament speaks of the man Jesus of Nazareth as God incarnate, the Messiah whose resurrection signals the defeat of sin and death, is it to be believed? Is what the Bible says the controlling authority for our faith and conduct – or just a collection of disputed texts from which we can select what we currently like and discard the rest?

Why it matters - the Role of Bishops

And what of the role of bishops? Are they guardians of the faith once delivered to the saints or representatives selected to demonstrate the inclusiveness of the church community? Are they the symbol of hope for minorities or the focus of unity for the whole body? To what extent should a bishop be limited in what he teaches by the legitimacy which the office of guardian of the faith and focus of unity gives to his words?

The statement from the primates gathered at Lambeth last week gives some clear answers to such crucial questions. The primates re-affirm ‘our common understanding of the centrality and authority of Scripture in determining the basis of our faith’. They also re-affirm the resolutions of the 1998 Lambeth Conference on issues of human sexuality, themselves based on the authority of Scripture. And they rebuke the unilateral actions of the Diocese of New Westminster and ECUSA seeking to substitute alternative teaching on those issues. Those unilateral actions ‘jeopardise our sacramental fellowship with each other’. And should the consecration of Canon Robinson go ahead, it will ‘tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level’. His ministry will ‘not be recognised by most of the Anglican world and many provinces will consider themselves to be out of Communion with ECUSA’.

So the primates have firmly repudiated two key planks in the campaign to force acceptance of active homosexual people into the Church’s leadership. The first is that the received tradition rests on ‘a few disputed texts’, which ignores the fact that all the Scripture texts about homosexual practice are negative, and that Scripture is abundantly clear from start to finish that the only acceptable context for sexual intercourse is within hetero-sexual marriage. The second revisionist plank repudiated by the primates is the assertion that each province is juridically autonomous and can do what it likes according to its own canons. Such legalism reveals an impoverished understanding of ‘communion’. As the primates point out, such unilateralism compromises and undermines the mission and ministry of other parts of the church and thus contradicts the mutual accountability which lies at the heart of true communion. It is the road of separate development, not common pilgrimage.

A stark choice

And there lies the stark choice before us. Will ECUSA and New Westminster choose the way of autonomy, and separation, or the way of mutual accountability, and communion? If ECUSA on 2 November defies the strong plea of the Lambeth primates just as New Westminster did the primates’ plea from Brazil, they will be separating themselves from the world-wide Anglican Communion. As the Lambeth Statement indicates, provision will then have to be made for pastoral care and oversight of those congregations and dioceses in North America who wish to remain loyal to their Anglican heritage based on Scripture and Order. And for the Church of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury personally, there will arise the agonising question: which route do we choose: do we go with ECUSA and New Westminster into separate development? Or do we remain in Communion with the majority of provinces world-wide, including many English Anglicans – and solidarity with the other major world-wide Communions, Roman and Orthodox? Surely we want to be a dynamically growing movement for world mission, inclusive of all races and cultures, not a shrunken sect confined to the margins of the so-called post-modern culture of the one-third world.

Philip Giddings is Convenor of Anglican Mainstream UK and one of the Diocese of Oxford’s representatives on the General Synod.

[ahadams2]

Ping.

[VRWC_minion]

This is a good summary. I e-mailed the article to the vestry of my church.

[longtermmemmory]

Does the central office in england have a plan for United States churches that wish to remain in the communion but not the ECUSA?

[RonF]

It seems like the Anglican Communion's first choice would be for ECUSA parishes in disagreement with their Bishop to be able to petition and receive from their own diocese permission to receive episcopal oversight from a different bishop, presumably to be assigned by 815. This kind of thing is done now in the Church of England, I believe.

[ahadams2]

You wrote "Does the central office in england have a plan for United States churches that wish to remain in the communion but not the ECUSA?"

If only it was that easy! Remember the archdruid of Canterbury has publicly stated that he personally supports the homosexual agenda, and is only standing against it because he's trying to hold the Anglican Communion together. As far as I know we can expect NO help from Canterbury.