Single-issue magisterium has been created
Giles Fraser in the Church Times on how we are to recognize who is Anglican and who is not:
This may be a dated caricature, but the genius of the Church of England has been to allow different theological temperaments to worship alongside one other, united by common prayer and community spirit. This was how we recognised each other as members of the same Church. This was our particular charism, and we were widely valued for it.In Anglicanism, however, the joys of common prayer and community spirit are replaced by ideology. This Anglican Church is a new invention, a global piece of post-colonial hubris, driven by those who feel that a Church that is genuinely Catholic must have outposts throughout the world.
Bishops get on planes and fly to other parts of the world to sit in committees with other bishops, hammering out policy — although no one in the secular world cares two hoots about what they decide. Over time, these meetings have created a new Church with a single-issue magisterium based on an unhealthy fascination with what gay people do in their bedrooms. This, apparently, is how we are to recognise each other as Anglicans.Since Giles is well aware of the proper usage I believe he is intentionally using Anglican Church rather Anglican Communion to make his point.
Read it all.
Fraser is a leader of the coalition of 13 liberal Church of England groups who yesterday in Ruth Gledhill's words are '[c]ondemning as “flawed” Dr Williams’s recent declaration that the way forward lay in a “twin-track” Anglican Communion [and] revealed plans to bring in same-sex blessings and gay ordination in England, as has happened in the Episcopal Church in the US.'
It is becoming increasingly clear when you think about what is happening now in the Anglican Communion—the proposed covenant and Archbishop Rowan Williams' reflections on General Convention in particular—that the primary driving force behind the Covenant and related issues is the desire of many, especially many Bishops, to turn the Anglican Communion into an Anglican Church.
One of the great things about Anglicanism is that it tends to preserve much of what is best in the Catholic faith while avoiding much of what is worst. Trying to turn the Anglican Communion into something that is more like the Roman Catholic Church as an organization would, I think, serve to bring the more negative aspects of the the Roman Church into Anglicanism.
Certainly when we think of the Church, in the universal sense, as the body of Christ we should desire to see ourselves, as Christians, in a unity of faith and spirit with all Christians. That does not necessarily mean, however, that we must be joined together in one organization.
The Church as an organization clearly has much value and a certain necessity in preserving and advancing the Christian faith. But essential as it is, the organizational aspect of Christianity is arguably where it is most human and least divine. With apologies to Einstein, the Church should have as much organization as is necessary, but not more. How much is necessary? It seems to me that would be about halfway between Congregationalism and Roman Catholicism. And, hey, guess what, that is just about where the Anglican Communion has traditionally found itself.
Please, let us not pretend that we are preserving the Anglican Communion by turning it into the Anglican Church.
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August 5, 2009 12:26 PM