Looks like the Anglican bishops at Lambeth in Kent are actually about to employ some form or discipline! Discipline! What? How un-Anglican. Yet it is of the essence of the church, the power to loose and to bind, to forgive and retain sins, and to bring the sinning brother "before the whole ekklesia." But will it work? I'm not incredibly positive, but it seems like the Americans and Canadians are finally realizing that a) they have really pissed off everyone, and b) that while they have money and lots of bishops, they represent a very small section of the Anglican Communion.
You can read HERE for more on the specific plan.
LAMBETH: Windsor Group Announces Forum to Deal with Rebels
The Windsor Continuation Group today announced that it has proposed an Anglican Communion Pastoral Forum "to act in the Anglican Communion in a rapid manner to emerging threats to its life." The first problem facing the Forum would be the role of homosexuality in the church, and second would be the problem of Anglicans opposed to homosexual ordinations and blessings and thirdly those who have crossed provincial borders to find fellowship.
At a press conference to release a new Windsor Group paper on the next steps for the Windsor Process, Bishop Clive Handford, the Group chairman, said that the members of the proposed Forum ought to recognize the "breadth of the communion," and they are to be appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. "This could well be a body ... that could respond quickly where there's a pressure point in the communion," said Handford.
3 comments:
Abu Daoud, there's only one thing that has always bothered me about proposals like this (and that includes the Covenant.)
As long as "reasserters" (such as the Africans) have the upper hand in numbers, this is fine. But the history of the spread of reappraising ideas and people in Main Line churches shows that same people have a knack for taking command of high-level institutions such as is necessary to enforce the Covenant and other instruments.
It would be a great tragedy if, after the creation of such enforcing instruments, the reappraisers wormed their way into command of these, and things ended up worse than before.
I may be wrong about this. I hope I'm wrong about this. But it bothers me.
It seems to me that the best way would be to go ahead and have a split (de facto or de jure) and "run the clock" on TEC's aging demographics while rescuing "that which remains" as the Africans and others have been doing all along.
I know that doesn't fit well with Anglican ecclesiology, but going through another round of what the AC has been through, IMHO, doesn't work either.
Hi Don,
I guess I just have faith in the catholicity of the body, that if there really is representation from all churches and languages and countries, that a balance that is orthodox can be maintained.
Of course, unlike the Catholics, I don't actually have certainty of this or any argument based on tradition or Scripture.
Abu Dawud, I am less optimistic. From the bishop I know in Lambeth, I only hear that 'the americans' (TEC) is adamantly against the proposals by the WCG, and they are not planning to change one iota in their pro-gay policies. There is no chance that TEC will turn back on its 'prophetic' course to accept the gay agenda and reject the historic Christian faith.
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