Over the past thirty years or so, the homosexual agenda has been the point of leverage for a profound change in Western culture that in my view has been the final tipping point from a Christian to a post-‐Christian culture and these changes have powerfully shaped the Anglican Churches of the West which have, in their different ways, been accustomed to articulating a mainstream morality. The Lambeth Conference of 1998 marks the point at which those secularising pressures were decisively manifested and this is where my analysis of contemporary Anglicanism begins.
The story of the Anglican Communion since then can only be understood if we recognise it as the relentless effort of revisionists to undermine the collegial mind of the Communion, expressed by the overwhelming majority of its bishops at the Lambeth Conference of 1998.
They reaffirmed the biblical understanding of sexuality positively and negatively, affirming that the Conference ‘upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage’ and also ‘rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture’.
At stake here was not just an aspect of sexual ethics, but also primary questions of the authority of Scripture and human identity. But rather than settling the issue, Lambeth 1998 simply became the trigger for sustained conflict.
........
So taking the Lambeth Conference of 1998 as my starting point, the aim of these three lectures will be to survey the contours of two very different Anglican ecclesiologies as they have emerged out of this recent history. One is what I think we can most accurately describe as conversational ecclesiology; the other is the recovery of a confessional ecclesiology.
Read it all, and all three lectures may be found here
The story of the Anglican Communion since then can only be understood if we recognise it as the relentless effort of revisionists to undermine the collegial mind of the Communion, expressed by the overwhelming majority of its bishops at the Lambeth Conference of 1998.
They reaffirmed the biblical understanding of sexuality positively and negatively, affirming that the Conference ‘upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage’ and also ‘rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture’.
At stake here was not just an aspect of sexual ethics, but also primary questions of the authority of Scripture and human identity. But rather than settling the issue, Lambeth 1998 simply became the trigger for sustained conflict.
........
So taking the Lambeth Conference of 1998 as my starting point, the aim of these three lectures will be to survey the contours of two very different Anglican ecclesiologies as they have emerged out of this recent history. One is what I think we can most accurately describe as conversational ecclesiology; the other is the recovery of a confessional ecclesiology.
Read it all, and all three lectures may be found here
No comments:
Post a Comment