Today’s Guardian has an
editorial which is more of an obituary for the Communion. It opens
An enthusiast who has spent years patching up a vintage car is bound to find it tough to admit that the vehicle can no longer be driven. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, now finds himself in a similarly painful position in respect of the Anglican communion. For years he has used his considerable charm to try to hold it together. But the simmering row over homosexuality has made this increasingly difficult. And two developments in the past fortnight make brutally plain that the communion is already falling apart.
The developments are the
letter from Archbishop Akinola and the
actions of the Southern Cone and the Guardian’s interpretation and conclusion are no great surprise given its own outlook.
Always a loose and unwieldy alliance, the communion has survived since the age of empire only because of the effective acceptance that each church was sovereign in its own land. With the initial encouragement of the religious right in America, however, conservative elements of the communion are trying to impose an infeasible doctrinal unity. Dr Williams has responded to this pressure by seeking compromises. His difficulty is that, as the head of such a loose confederation, he does not have the power to make deals stick, as the freewheeling action of the conservatives is showing. Dr Williams is a liberal who is instinctively supportive of gay people. His desire to hold the communion together, however, has already led him to support a moratorium on the consecration of gay bishops and to suggest that Anglican churches should not recognise same-sex unions through public rites. These concessions have not, however, checked the communion’s unravelling. The fence on which Dr Williams has been sitting has collapsed. It is time for him to preach what he believes.
From a different perspective, but with a similarly bleak outlook, Peter Ould highlights the mounting pressures on Archbishop Rowan in his
Last Chance for Rowan?
5 comments:
Andrew Goddard blogs!!! (Is this what happens when you have a grievance about something?? Still praying for you guys).
Hello,
first, thanks Peter O for the link.
Secondly, a question to you Andrew if that's OK: do you think 'the gay issue' is a first-order one, and if so, why?
To attempt an answer - it seems to me it's a second-order matter, not 'church-breaking', because it's basically an anthropological question. It's not about who God is or how God saves but about who we are who are being saved - is there really such a thing as being gay, or is it a pathology so that those of us who say 'I'm gay' are ultimately deceiving ourselves? It also seems to me that such a question can't be answered solely from Scriptural texts; and whether or not it's a first- or second-order matter can't be decided simply by referring to 1 Cor 6:9ff.
Not sure if that's much of an argument but would be interested to hear what you think... though equally would understand if you're sick of discussing the issue!
Also wanted to ask if you think the recent developments (ie Peter Akinola's letter etc) in th Anglican communion are to do with the gay issue, or whether it's now more than that, so that it could be a bit late / not directly relevant to be discussing whether it's a first- or second-order matter or not.
in friendship, Blair
Welcome to the blogosphere! So glad to see you have a presence here and will be checking in regularly.... Thanks to Peter for the tip-off!
Blessings,
Susan (Blackburn) Griffith
(who formerly taught a bit of Greek at Wycliffe....)
Peter - thanks for the publicity and the prayers.
Blair - thanks for your questions and since you've asked I hope to write a short-ish piece on this soon on the blog. I have a lot of sympathy with your reply but would put it slightly differently (and when I've worked out how I'd put it, I'll blog!)
Susan - thanks for comment, hope to see you around real as well as virtual world.
All the best,
Andrew.
What is clear enough is that there is no possibility of agreement which can allow both views to exist alongside each other - from the conservative point of view, although liberals could live with that situation
No-one is about to change their mind, so hopefully there can still be the opportunity to realise that a divide on a global basis makes sense. Otherwise, the arguments will simply carry on without any conclusion, given the inability to agree.
But, this must be a divide with no winners and losers, where both bodies may choose the term Anglican to describe themselves. Talk of people being thrown out, from either side, will not be helpful.
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