Some news reports purport to tell us what some primates think about the Windsor Report:
Christian Challenge ANGLICAN PRIMATES’ PATIENCE WITH ECUSA’S “DELAYING TACTICS” LIMITED, GOMEZ WARNS
and this: ON WHAT IS OUR ANGLICAN UNITY BASED? – Statement from Five Primates (PDF file)
A number of analyses relating to the Windsor Report have been issued by people who stand on the conservative side of the presenting issue. Here are links to several of these:
Anglican Mainstream issued a Briefing Paper – Church of England General Synod
This is milktoast compared to the next two items.
Church Society, Reform and Fellowship of Word and Spirit issued a brief thunderbolt: Joint Statement on Windsor – CS, Reform and FoWS
Australian evangelicals issued a huge document,criticising the WR in detail, including a paragraph-by-paragraph commentary. Links to the document available via sydneyanglicans.net New rules needed: Aussie evangelicals respond to Windsor Report
If you want a newspaper summary of this, the Church Times had one: Eames found erring
Could someone tell me first where I can find a statement of “the faith”, then tell me when that “faith” was delivered, and to which saints, and by whom? If ever there were a naive notion it has to be this one. I doubt very much whether when Forward in Faith use the expression they mean anything like what the Sydney Anglicans mean when they use it as the title for their critique of the Windsor Report.
From the Aussie’s statement: “The force of the argument is the authority of scripture and whether there is a fundamental divide in terms of the stance towards the scriptures. ‘Without this being healed, there is no point in tinkering at the structural end of the equation,” the book’s authors declare, describing the situation as “a collision of irreconcilable belief systems within the one institution'” Sadly, I may have to agree. From this summary of their views, there is *nothing* Anglican that I can recognize in them. The new religion of 20th Century American Fundamentalism has tragically metastasized to significant portions… Read more »
Responding to Rodney’s question, a series of statements on FiF UK’s view of the faith may be found at this URL: http://www.forwardinfaith.com/about/uk_index-uk.html I’m sure he is right in discerning a major difference between FiF’s view of the faith and that of the Diocese of Sydney. While JC Fisher may go a bit far in seeing “nothing Anglican” about Sydney, I would sympathise with him/her to the extent of saying that Sydney has certainly moved away from recognisably Anglican forms in its worship. Its theology, I read some time ago, tends to be based on a highly theoretical reading of some… Read more »
“Irreconcilable belief systems” is apparently quite right, since three thousand years of study and analysis and two thousand of near-universal consensus make no impression on Mr. McInnes, who seems to regard churchmanship as the core (if any) of faith, and since Mr. Fisher cannot recognize Anglicanism in any belief structure which pays any attention at all to Scripture — when in fact Anglicanism is the most Scripturally-based of the descendants of the primitive church, and when Cranmer was a guiding light in the preparation of the KJV Bible! And of course Mr. Fisher further suggests that anyone who has not… Read more »
For any organisation in the world, members agree on essentials/fundamentals (which is partly what makes them members of that particular organisation in the first place) and encourage free debate on nonessentials.
Of course there must be free debate on essentials as well – but if there is disagreement here, then the conclusion is that two or more different organisations/bodies are present. By definition.
Therefore, what Rodney McInnes calls ‘naive’, far from being naive, is universal and literally unavoidable.
“ON WHAT IS OUR UNITY BASED?”
Didn’t a Lambeth Council Resolution from 1898 say our principle bond of unity is the prayerbook? The article “On What is our Unity Based” doesn’t even
mention the prayerbook.
Rob
Rodney, it seems Jude in his epistle does not consider “the faith once delivered” a naive notion, since he urges us to “contend earnestly for the faith once given to the saints” in the first few verses. A careful reading of Jude (won’t take much of your time, it’s only one chapter!) shows that Jude was responding to those who were changing the Gospel. J. C., you might be interested in a letter responding to a gay man who asked the pastor of Irving (TX) Bible Church whether he and his partner would be welcome at services. Here’s the link:… Read more »
Living Waters, a ministry in UK and Ireland to persons dealing with sexual brokeness (and rare is the person in this age who is not) has published a response to WR, one that acknowledges that there has, indeed, been a lack of listening to and empathy for the experiences of gays and lesbians. LW seems to have been working out in practical terms a true ministry to LGBs that is grounded in BOTH grace AND truth, both justice and mercy, which we find perfectly unified only in the Trinitarian God Himself. Here’s the link:
http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/news226.asp
I’m sorry not to have been clearer in my earlier post on this topic. The notion which seems to me naive is that at some fixed time in the past and never to be repeated or supplemented (“once for all”), someone (either God or some human agent) gave to a group of human beings (“the saints”) a clear body of teaching which is totally self-contained and to which nothing can, or needs to be, added (“the faith”). The fact that different groups claim to be able to identify this “faith” in terms which are so different as to be irreconcilable… Read more »
Milton, Jude 1:3 does not answer my question – it begs it. In his warning the writer seems to find the “faith” in the Hebrew scriptures and in a more recent tradition which is unidentified. If the “faith” had already been delivered by the time this letter was written, then all the later discussion by the church fathers was just hot air. As for finding in organisations like Living Waters a place where GLBT people are “listened to” in a way which is likely to lead to any understanding of the nature of human sexuality, I beg to differ. Their… Read more »
Rodney said “The notion which seems to me naive is that at some fixed time in the past and never to be repeated or supplemented (“once for all”), someone (either God or some human agent) gave to a group of human beings (“the saints”) a clear body of teaching which is totally self-contained and to which nothing can, or needs to be, added (“the faith”).” Hi Rodney, I believe that the standard conservative answer to you comment would be that the core of Christianity (beliefs, values, way of living) was defined long ago and that we are hardly likely to… Read more »