Updated Thursday
For earlier articles about the Church of England’s relationship with the Methodist Church of Great Britain and the Mission and Ministry in Covenant report see here [last two items] and here.
Four posts from the Quodcumque blog about the report.
Richard Peers A Generous Catholicism and Beautiful Anomalies
Philip Murray Generous Catholicism: a reply to Fr Richard Peers
Andrew Davison Guest post from Andrew Davison on #MMIC: Being a 1662 Anglican
Richard Peers #MMIC – thoughts
Diarmaid MacCulloch Christian Today Why Anglicans who object to reconciliation with Methodists should read more history
Jonathan Draper Afterthoughts Anglicans, Methodists and the sticking plaster of unity
Paul Bayes Thinking a moment Mission and Ministry in Covenant
[a new blog from the Bishop of Liverpool]
Ian Paul Psephizo The Church of England and closer union with Methodists
Update
Marcus Walker Archbishop Cranmer The Church of England should welcome Methodists into the fold of the historic episcopacy
as usual, MacCulloch hits the nail on the head – or, as in this particular case, shows us how many different serviceable nails there are, and just as many serviceable hammers can be used to drive them home–home being the Body of Christ. Thanks be to God for the witness of all our Christian brothers and sisters.
I agree with Ian Paul entirely that the Church of England is ‘Reformed Catholic’, and not ‘Catholic and Reformed’ as if these were two notions in tension. But that leads me in the opposite direction to his. If the Church of England’s Catholicism is a matter not of flavour but of substance, this makes it substantially different from an ecclesial body which has not sought to retain Catholic order. Moreover, if the Church of England is Reformed, this makes union with an Arminian group doctrinally unstable. I agree with Dr Paul that high church Anglicans are wont to adopt ahistoric… Read more »
Unless, Liam, you accept broader view of those terms. ‘Reformed’ in its historical context could include Arminianism and indeed most evangelical Anglicans have, in recent decades, been Arminian. Arminianism emphasises the need to ‘decide for Jesus’ which is certainly the model through which I was converted.
Likewise, Methodism may be seen to have kept Catholic order in its oversight structures, where Conference and superintendents exercise episcope. Only if you go for a rather literal (and unhistorical) view of episcopal succession do you get into problems.
At the risk of lowering the tone of this theological debate, may I link to this discussion of Arminianism, as I suspect many of our readers are not expert in this. Others may well wish to explain why this page is all wrong…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminianism
Dr Philip Murray writes persuasively about generosity, and particularly the need for us as Anglicans to share our gifts with our Methodist sisters and brothers. But it’s just as important to receive gifts gratefully, and he says little about the gifts that we would receive from Methodism. The exchange should not be one way.
Diarmaid MacCulloch is right. Though elsewhere he wrote of Elizabeth 1st “The church she produced had a Protestant theology which sat rather awkwardly like a cuckoo in the nest of a Catholic, almost unreformed structure. The contradictions between the two have gone on conspiring to create a Church of England which is never quite sure whether or not it belongs to the family of churches of the mainstream Reformation.”