The second part of a series of articles on Windsor by the evangelical think-tank "Fulcrum" has been posted on their website. There's a very accurate observation made as part of its diagnosis of the present situation:
"When the Windsor Report posed, as the alternative to its own approach, that 'we shall have to begin to learn to walk apart', it clearly did not mean this as a choiceworthy alternative, one that the church of Jesus Christ could opt for with integrity. It was to be viewed as a horizon of total failure.[6] Unhappily, it seems to have underestimated the capacity of Anglicans to think the unthinkable. The immediate effect of the hardening of the anti-revisionist position was to make the breach more likely; indeed, some voices, however little representative, did not hesitate to suggest that this was something to be welcomed. On the revisionist side the idea of an amicable separation of the ways had long been mooted - just another example of liberal other-worldliness, unfortunately, since the only separation ever to be looked for was bound to be far from amicable. To the anti-revisionists looking in this direction it was to be a solemn exercise of church discipline. A curious combination of ecclesiological influences, Calvinist and patristic, had already encouraged a number of bishops to raise their voices and announce the several combinations of churches and bishops with whom they were and were not in communion. The resulting untidiness in the Anglican world communion began to make some think that a shoot-out would be the desirable curtain-fall.But this severely underestimated its difficulties. Such an occurrence would, for one thing, destroy the Anglican identity. "
The article goes on to examine why a simple "breaking of Communion" would not be the biblical answer to finding a way out of the controversy. It is most definitely worth the time to read.
So read the rest here: Fulcrum: The Care of the Churches
Comments