Lionel Deimel: Has Rowan Williams done us a favor?

Lionel Deimel wonders whether the Archbishop of Canterbury has done our church a favor by kicking Episcopalians off of Anglican ecumenical bodies:

Rowan Williams has expressed concern about our partners in ecumenical discussions knowing who speaks for the Communion. He doesn’t want to confuse our sister churches, and he doesn’t want Episcopalians expressing views to outsiders that misrepresent the mind of the Communion.

It is important that we unpack this point of view. First, it presumes that there is a mind of the Communion, at least in the sense that the Anglican Communion has an agreed-upon mechanism to articulate such a thing. This has not been the understanding within the Communion heretofore, and anyone advocating such a thing now—Rowan Williams, for example—is trying to implement a radical innovation under the guise of defending the status quo.

Also implicit in the archbishop’s position is the radical and destructive notion that Anglicanism is all about creating doctrinal uniformity, rather than providing space for exploring theological possibilities under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that might lead to a fuller understanding of God’s plan for our world.

If, in ecumenical discussions, we do not represent the Anglican Communion as being characterized by a certain theological diversity—which is what the Archbishop of Canterbury is trying to accomplish by banning Episcopalians from those discussions—we are either misrepresenting the Communion or conceding its transformation into a collection of conventional, confessional churches—not what the world needs us to be, I would suggest.

Posted by Jim Naughton on June 24, 2010 1:50 PM | |
Comments (3)

For Orthodox Believers, it's important to be updated on exactly where their Church stands with regard to the Word of God.

ABCanterbury is doing a needed service. People will now know which Belief System they are joining. The 2 camps have been blurred for too long... it's time to separate Sheep from Goats. No one knows the time of the return of Christ, and no one knows the time of their own death. Bishop KJS and her teachings point one way, and the Anglican Communion points in the opposite direction. It's time for seekers to actually look into God's Word, and make a decision.

Posted by LGMarshall [TypeKey Profile Page] | June 24, 2010 9:07 PM

LGMarshall, go read Matthew 25:31-46 again. The sheep and goats will not be separated by us, but by the Son of Man.

And the Son of Man will not separate sheep from goats according to their "Belief System," but according to who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, and visited the sick and the imprisoned.

I suggest you read what Bishop Katharine writes and not what some bloggers write about her. I have always found her sermons to point the same way as Matthew 25. And that is true orthodoxy, which is much more generous than commonly believed.

Posted by Christopher Hayes [TypeKey Profile Page] | June 24, 2010 9:38 PM

It's not about theology or ecumenicity but about power: preserving the position of Augustine's chair. Canterbury has a long institutional memory and has decided that, in the long run, 40 million people in the pews is a better bet than $6 billion in the vault.

The strategy appears to be alienate TEC and use it as a whipping boy (or girl) to keep the Global South and the Commonwealth Provinces subserviant to Canterbury.

Posted by Paul Woodrum [TypeKey Profile Page] | June 25, 2010 8:12 AM

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