The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has sent an Advent letter to the Primates of the Anglican Communion and Moderators of the United Churches.
The full text can be read either on the Lambeth Palace website, or on the Anglican Commmunion Office website.
It’s a really good letter. Especially the bit about not letting our differences keep us from getting on with the work of the Gospel. I don’t know who started the Indaba process, but it really seems to be taking root and having a positive impact on growing in love, even if we can’t agree. And that opens the doors and windows to working together, especially to bring compassion, food, water, medicine, and nurturing to those in need. This is the path, not the covenant or hierarchical efforts to bring the liberal churches in line with the conservative ones. Hopefully we… Read more »
Cynthia. It’s all very well to talk about living together with difference’, but it take two to tango. I doubt if you could ever get an intransigent anti-women’s-ordination person to live with women in charge. Why, they even demand separate episcope!
Cynthia, I wish I could agree, but it is not a really good letter. In it Dr. Williams continues his basic mistake of trying to please all sides. Most objectionably, he further encourages those who would try to make the Anglican Communion into one structure. This letter is no retreat from that project. Particularly troubling is the phrase “the truth is that our Communion has never been the sort of Church that looks for one central authority…. [I]n the Church we have to have several points of reference for the organising of our common life.” This is archiepiscopal doubletalk. The… Read more »
It is incredible to see the spin that George Conger and then Kendall Harmon’s brigade put on this letter. They say that ++Rowan has – apparently – conceded that the Anglican Communion has become ‘corrupted’. Are they reading a different Advent letter? Being a ‘conservative’ is one thing; being creative with the facts is quite another, and what ++Rowan actually said was: “Despite many questions about how our decisions about doctrine and mutual responsibility are made in the Communion, and some challenges to the various ‘Instruments of Communion’, the truth is that our Communion has never been the sort of… Read more »
Fa. Smith, I hear you, especially the bit about the intransigent people demanding a separate episcopate. That is exactly what happened in TEC, in the face of intransigent people who could not be appeased in any way, the rest started voting their conscience and that’s how we got so liberal. And faced schism, South Carolina is the last gasp. And this is the crossroads for CoE now. However, between provinces in the Anglican Communion, it is possible to coexist and agree to disagree. It’s especially possible if no one tries to exercise power over another province. Power really is the… Read more »