New Directions article by Rowan Williams
on Tuesday, 2 September 2003 at 1.54 pm by Simon Sarmiento
categorised as News
The full text of this article is now on the Forward in Faith website, so far only as a pdf file.
The location to download the file is here.
Addition: it is now available as a normal html web page here at Trushare.
The announcement of it is reproduced below.
New Directions celebrates its 10th birthday with an exclusive article by Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
For the last decade New Directions has been the tribune for Anglican traditionalists throughout the Communion. On its tenth anniversary the Editor, Sara Low, has invited Archbishop Rowan Williams to speak to orthodox Anglicans about the future of the communion and their place, if any, in it.
In this article Archbishop Rowan
- Speaks frankly about the “spreading faultlines” in Anglicanism
- Focuses on the division between those who see the Church as accountable to contemporary human teaching rather than divine wisdom.
- Wrestles with the “communion breaking” issues
- Acknowledges the huge gulf in clergy beliefs exposed by 2002 Cost of Conscience survey “an uncomfortable number of us don’t know how to do joined up theology”
- Outlines the stark choice between the Roman Catholic model of “clear universal visible tests for unity” and the “structural complexity” of Anglicanism and its “messy” future.
- Warns of division leading to “non-communicating” and “competing” entities
- Recognises the growing reality and power of “new alignments”
- Foresees the “weakening of territorial jurisdiction” with its implications for an extra provincial settlement for orthodox Anglicans.
This is a major contribution to the vital and long overdue debate on the future of Anglicanism.