HIT THE BRICKS

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

Should the Episcopal Organization end the charade? Lionel Deimel’s down:

Rowan Williams has expressed concern about our partners in ecumenical discussions knowing who speaks for the Communion. He doesn’t want to confuse our sister churches, and he doesn’t want Episcopalians expressing views to outsiders that misrepresent the mind of the Communion.

It is important that we unpack this point of view. First, it presumes that there is a mind of the Communion, at least in the sense that the Anglican Communion has an agreed-upon mechanism to articulate such a thing. This has not been the understanding within the Communion heretofore, and anyone advocating such a thing now—Rowan Williams, for example—is trying to implement a radical innovation under the guise of defending the status quo.

Also implicit in the archbishop’s position is the radical and destructive notion that Anglicanism is all about creating doctrinal uniformity, rather than providing space for exploring theological possibilities under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that might lead to a fuller understanding of God’s plan for our world.

From my perspective, the very notion of an fixed Anglican orthodoxy is antithetical to the spirit of Anglicanism. If this is how the Communion is representing itself to the world, The Episcopal Church should want no part of it. Perhaps Rowan is doing us a favor by relieving us from having to misrepresent who we really are. He certainly is telling us by his deeds that his words about the value of The Episcopal Church are just so much empty rhetoric.

The biggest question, of course, is this: If the Anglican Communion is abandoning Anglicanism as we understand it (and as it has been understood in the past), why do we want to be involved in the Communion at all? Do we really believe that being a part of the Anglican Communion is advancing Christ’s mission to the world as we understand it? How does that work, exactly?

There are, of course, two difficulties here. Lie-Die’s “Anglicanism” is a figment of his imagination. Anglicanism was an attempt to reconcile high-Church “Catholic” CHRISTIANITY and low-church evangelical ProtestantCHRISTIANITY. It was never ever an effort to reconcile actual Christianity with people who wanted the right to decide for themselves just what sins Jesus did and did not die on the Cross for.

The other problem here, of course, is much simpler. What Deimel calls “Anglicanism,” other people call Unitarian-Universalism. And most intelligent people see no need to reinvent the wheel. Still, it’ll give Lie-Die and his “church” a place to go if Canterbury eventually throws them out.