Hard to know what will be the future of Anglicanism. I follow the news from time to time on VirtueOnline and Global South Anglican websites.
For those who don't know the history, in 2004 the Windsor Report was released in London, the result of ongoing issues related to the Episcopal Church's ordination of openly gay bishop V. Gene Robinson and the resulting "alternate oversight" orthodox bishops in the global south were giving to orthodox Anglicans who wished to not be associated with what they believed to be the last straw in a long history of heresy. The Windsor report recommended three small things. It suggeted there be a moratorium on consecrating new gay bishops, a moratorium on the blessing of same gender unions, and it also chastised bishops who crossed ecclesiastical boundaries and established parallel provinces. In practical effect, it solved nothing and extended the anguish.
But just a few weeks ago in Tanzania, the Episcopal Church was given something of an ultimatum, one which surprised many. In Dar Es Salaam, the Global Anglican communion embraced three key propositions with which the TEC must comply at risk of unspecified consequences. It put the focus on the radical novelties of the TEC and actually suggested that the alternate oversight provided by Global South Bishops was understandable, and should be halted only after some other alternative oversight was put in place on an interim basis. Tanzania insisted on:
1. An interim response by Sept. 30, 2007 by TEC that it must fully embrace the recommendations of the Windsor Report.
2. For interventions from outside provinces into TEC territory to cease a "robust scheme" of pastoral oversight" must be provided for both individuals and congregations alienated from the TEC.
3. The Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefforts Schiori must recognize that people have lost trust in her and she MUST embrace the Windsor Report in order to bring about an end to all interventions.
Sooner than expected, the TEC responded by playing the victim and pointing the finger back at the orthodox bishops from the Global South and elsewhere. Jordan Hylden nice summary of where things now stand in First Things. First the playing of the victim:
"We affirm once again the deep longing of our hearts for The Episcopal Church to continue as a part of the Anglican Communion.
"We would therefore meet any decision to exclude us from gatherings of all Anglican Churches with great sorrow, but our commitment to our membership in the Anglican Communion as a way to participate in the alleviation of suffering and restoration of God’s creation would remain constant.
Then the changing of the subject and finger pointing:
"Other Anglican bishops, indeed including some Primates, have violated our provincial boundaries and caused great suffering and contributed immeasurably to our difficulties in solving our problems and in attempting to communicate for ourselves with our Anglican brothers and sisters.
Finally, throwing down the gauntlet:
"It is incumbent upon us as disciples to do our best to follow Jesus in the increasing experience of the leading of the Holy Spirit.
"We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church."
Many have pointed out that the word "gospel" in TEC speak is essentially the United Nations Millenium Development Goals and not the gospel most Christians would think of. But the bottom line, in a statement from the American Anglican Council, a group which favors orthodox belief is that the TEC completely avoided the issue they are supposed to address:
"The bishops did not address the key issues on which the primates have requested a response—namely, whether TEC will abide by the Communion’s standard of teaching on human sexuality (as expressed in Lambeth Resolution 1.10) by giving its assurance that it will not permit rites for same-sex blessings or consent to bishops living in same-sex unions."
One Rev. Greg Brewer, rector of the Church of the Good Samaritan, the evangelical/charismatic priest of one of the largest parishes in the Northeast U.S., put it rather bluntly as to where the rubber meets the road:
"I consider this state of affairs to be deeply tragic. In some ways this feels similar to the choice that was before many American families in the heat of the Civil War. Opposition to slavery and a commitment to national unity on the one hand, and the support of slavery and the right of the confederacy to determine its own governance on the other, split families and friends. The price the United States paid was very high indeed, and the wounds from that war still scar the psychological landscape of our country. As the Communion splits, no one within the Communion will come out of this conflict unscathed."
Where did all this mess originate? It did not originate with and is not primarily about sexual morality. It originated with a theological crisis, a breaking of the tether to basic historical and biblical beliefs about God. Once that tether was cut, a steady, unmistakable drift away from everything else was inevitable. C. FitzSimons Allen is quoted on Virtue Online:
"The drift of this "generous orthodoxy" has only accelerated. The unrebuked atheism of Bishop John Spong's "12 Theses," the acceptance by the Bishop of Massachusetts of the claim by the Rev. Carter Heyward, Professor at the Episcopal Divinity School, that her "God is different from and superior to the Hebrew/Christian god," and that the Trinity is a "homoerotic relationship between three males" are examples of this "generous orthodoxy". The Bishop of Pennsylvania claims that the church can "rewrite the bible" (and must do so to encompass that Bishop's teaching). The New Testament scholar and Episcopalian, Marcus Borg, who has reduced the Christian Faith to unitarianism, is a perennially well received teacher among the "generous orthodox."
Of course this long theological drift and history that is helpful to understand - to innoculate other denominations from the same drift. Robert Sanders explains further what has gone on historically, and for current context, he quotes one Michael Johnston, in his book Engaging the Word:
"I prefer to think that God's variety, ambiguity, nuance, and contradiction come honestly from people's authentic experience of God in concrete and diverse situations. In this incarnational stance the divine and the human are both involved in the ongoing work of creation, so God makes us up as we go along as much as we make up God. (p. 97). "
Sanders responds in a way most biblically minded Christians can understand...
"...faithful biblical exegesis begins with the plain meaning of the words. This plain meaning is genre related, but nonetheless, exegesis begins with the literal meaning of the very words themselves.
"Other factors are of course relevant, but one must begin with the plain sense. Revisionists, and Johnston is typical, want to avoid the concrete, specific, actual meanings of the biblical words because they know very well that these words deny the liberal agenda, above all, homosexual relations.
"As a result, they adopt a heretical notion of God the Word, claiming that God is mystically known, that he never speaks specific words that his revelation is relative, evolving, and capable of further elucidations which can contradict and superseded previous formulations including Scripture itself. "
But this drift is absolutely not confined to Anglicanism and other mainline churches. Consider the following quotation from CT's Leadership Journal blog, Out of UR. It is from the first in a series of excerpts from a new book edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, called "An Emergent Manifesto". The quote is from Fuller Seminary's Barry Taylor.
"I think that the Christian faith has been held captive to a “pseudoorthodoxy” for much of the late twentieth century. Christianity’s love affair with modernity and its universalizing tendencies created a climate in which the general assumption has been that what constitutes Christian faith has been “settled,” and therefore any challenge to the status quo is often rejected as unbiblical or unorthodox. The assumption is a singular understanding of the faith. The easiest way to undermine different perspectives on issues like faith and practice during my lifetime has been to call someone’s commitment to orthodoxy into question. But Christian faith is open to discussion. Historically it always has been. It can be questioned and reinterpreted. In fact, I would argue that it is meant to be questioned and reinterpreted.
"Religion is always a cultural production, and sociocultural issues cannot be discounted from the ways in which we envision and understand faith. Issues and questions raised by our particular cultural situation not only inform but shape the various ways in which we interpret the gospel. If there ever was a time to question the status quo, it is now."
The whole mess in Anglicanism in the US started with Bishops questioning basic theological conclusions in the Nicene Creed about the nature of God. It eventually has led to an nearly complete replacement of the gospel, that human beings are fallen and in rebellion against God and need repentance, forgiveness and a new life. It is built on the assumption that God is "ineffible", above human understanding and cannot be describe in human language, so that knowledge of God is experienced and culturally driven.
Now, in a daughter publication of presumably the flagship publication of American evangelicalism, we have a serious proposal that says what constitutes the faith is not settled, is open to interpretation, is culturally determined and that now is a great time to question the status quo. Talk about clueless! Talk about depressing.
As one who spent his early years in the Roman Church, most of his adult life in the Evangelical church and the past couple of years in a church under the umbrella of one of those Global South churches intervening in the TEC crisis, all I can say is that history repeats itself - evangelicals beware. Anglicans beware.
Jesus asked a question once, "when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8). Wonder what the answer will be?
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