NO SMALL DISSENSION AND DISPUTATION

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

You can add Simon Sarmiento to the long list of Anglicans who have apparently not gotten around to reading Acts 15:

Everyone agrees that the Anglican Communion is in a bit of a mess. Having a covenant will not reduce the mess one jot. And the IC/MC campaign has lucidly explained exactly why it will probably make it worse.

How so?

Historical context is crucial to understanding opponents’ fears: this covenant was a key recommendation of the 2004 Windsor report, whose premise was that Gene Robinson should never have been elected as bishop of New Hampshire. From the start, the objective was to oblige local churches to defer to “worldwide Anglican consensus” rather than responding to local circumstances in accordance with local needs.

Translation: reinterpreting 2,000 years of Church teaching just so some self-selected pressure group won’t feel bad.

In other words, conservatives reject the covenant because it isn’t punitive enough.

Quite right.

“Gospel mandate” and “confession of faith” means “If you don’t agree with us, we won’t consider you a true Christian”.

Spare me. When your “theology” permits you to pick and choose what sins Jesus died for(assuming you still accept that concept) and is deliberately and defiantly at odds with the teachings of just about every other Christian church, Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, in the entire world, the seriousness with which you take the Christian religion can legitimately be called into question.

Asked if he thought the covenant would become a reality, the former bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, recently said: “I think so, because I don’t think really there’s any alternative.” Without it, he argued, “the loudest voices tend to win, or at least drown out the other ones, and I have seen that happen and it’s not a pretty sight”.

But responding to the loudest voices was exactly what the Windsor report did – capitulating to Nigeria, Uganda, Sydney and the others – to propose a covenant that establishes a formal procedure to block other Anglicans doing what they judge necessary for the Gospel.

That’s one way of looking at it. The correct view, of course, is that the Windsor Report was a tepid response to two North American provinces arrogantly and unilaterally changing Anglican teaching and theology, not giving a crap what the rest of the Communion thought about it but still wanting to call themselves Anglicans. And the reason why the Covenant is so weak is that Rowan Williams wants to keep American money flowing.

Simon? Since you haven’t read it, here’s how Acts 15 starts out:

But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them,

Paul was an apostle, Simon. He had seen the Risen Lord and had been personally commissioned by Him. So what did Paul do?

Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.

Which he did. The question was put to the whole church, cases were made for and against and a decision was rendered. Be sure to read the rest of it, Simon. Particularly the part about how the Gentile believers were to abstain from sexual immorality Then pass it on to Gene Robinson when you finish.

Why did Paul go to all that trouble? He didn’t have to; he was an apostle, chosen by God Himself, who had seen the risen Christ just as the other apostles had and he didn’t have to defer to them. But he did anyway. Know why, Simon?

Because Paul, an apostle, chosen by God Himself, who had seen the risen Christ, knew that he possessed an important trait that scares modern western Anglicans to death.

Accountability.

Paul was thinking about the whole church, Simon, as well as the Gospel he was appointed to proclaim. “Local circumstances” and “local needs” didn’t enter into his thinking. The Gospel of Jesus Christ did regardless of local opinion.

Truth is true regardless of what anyone thinks about it.

“The only way forward is to establish the principle that these are issues on which it is OK for Anglicans to disagree with each other. And carry on talking?” Please.

The only thing that’s a “way forward” to is making Anglicanism even more intellectually incoherent than it already is. Something would sinful based on “local circumstances” or “local needs?”

Do you have any idea how idiotic that sounds?

Besides, Simon, you and I both know that the North Americans have no intention of ever backing down from their innovations. The only thing all this talking you think we should be doing is designed to do is to get traditionalist Anglicans to admit that they’re wrong.

When one side has decided in advance that it’s right and will brook no opposition, more talking is a waste of time. People prefer churches that actually know how to decide things once in a great while.