Adams the Cultural Christian

You'll find in the interview posted below that Bishop Adams makes a number of appeals to culture as he discusses the Anglican crisis that he helped create. Despite the exhortations in the Old and New Testaments against adopting cultural mores, Adams appears quite comfortable in choosing cultural norms over biblical ones.

A second issue that I found interesting was Adams dismissal of the possibility of schism. It's as if he were reading off the talking points that were distributed to American bishops prior to Lambeth. As a number of less public relations minded bishops have pointed out the GAFCON movement is the elephant in the room and Adams will certainly not want to even concede that the GAFCON elephant is standing in front of him. Given the size of the GAFCON elephant you might think that Adams and pecusa would reconsider their defiance, but that would be a logic that is inconsistent with pecusa's continuing bleating that they are being led by the Spirit.

What is the GAFCON movement? It is an effort by primarily Global South archbishops and bishops to bring some order to the instability within the Anglican Communion since pecusa acted unilaterally in defiance of the rest of the communion in 2003. The GAFCON fold represents 75% of the Anglican Communion. Since the Lambeth Conference was organized to not make decisions and not discipline erring pecusa, GAFCON has emerged to bring health to a communion that has been severly wounded by pecusa and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Will this result in schism? I and many others hope not, but to not acknowledge the problems that pecusa has caused is simply dishonest on Adams' part. It's not the first dishonesty on his part as we saw through the Bollinger debacle, but the continuing pattern is disturbing. There are at least a few voices, including prominent Anglican bishops, who are calling for an orderly separation of the liberal and biblical portions of the Communion. Of course, Adams would never acknowledge this.

Adams and pecusa are minority voices in the Anglican Communion and the only reason that they have any standing is because they have money. pecusa gave significant funds for the Lambeth Conference and will be asked to contribute more to help wipe out the deficit that the conference incurred. While there is not a formal schism at hand, it would be even-handed to note that parishes have left pecusa, other provinces of the Anglican Communion have severed ties with pecusa, and there is yet to be any resolution to the crisis that again, Adams helped create. He will put in his lot with cultural norms and refuses to see that his cultural norms keep him from adopting biblical ones. He also is not willing to listen to the vast majority of Anglicans who have exhorted pecusa to repent and return to biblical norms.

Liberals like Adams love to talk about dialogue and listening while they turn a deaf ear to those who disagree with them while they proclaim cultural differences. It's a shame that those who encourage listening are such poor listeners themselves. The Anglican Communion has been speaking for over 10 years now and pecusa continues to walk in defiance of the Communion. If there is a schism Adams and others in pecusa will have no one to blame but themselves.