Dr. Mark Thompson, Moore College, Sydney, Australia
offers a good evaluation on “The Anglican Debacle: Roots and Patterns.” This paper could be an abstract for a
doctoral dissertation, assessing not just the Anglican “debacle,” but Western Anglicanism's “apostasy, infidelity,
and corruption.” Or, Anglicanism's long road to "judicial hardening and judicial blindness." This article is long,
but worth perusal.
The
Anglican Debacle: Roots and Patterns
– by Dr. Mark Thompson
No Golden Age
I remember almost twenty
years ago reading an article by Robert Doyle in The Briefing entitled ‘No
Golden Age’.1 (It’s shocking that it is actually so long ago!) The
gist of the article was that the idea of a golden age of Anglicanism, in which
biblical patterns of doctrine and practice were accepted by the majority, is
nothing but an illusion. Biblical Christianity has always struggled under the
Anglican umbrella. At some times it did better than at others, but there was
never a time when evangelical Anglicanism, even of the more formal prayer book
kind, was uniformly accepted or endorsed by the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer were, after all, burnt at the stake with the
consent of most of the rest of the bishops in Mary’s church.
The Puritans who stayed
within the Church of England suffered at the hands of Elizabeth I, and William
Laud and others made life increasingly difficult for them after Elizabeth’s
death. The re-establishment of the Church of England following the restoration of
the monarchy in 1660 was never a determined return to the Reformed evangelical
version of Archbishop Cranmer, but a compromise designed to exclude anything
that resembled Puritanism. Wesley was hunted out of the established church.
Whitfield had to preach in the open air when pulpits were closed to him.
However, the real seeds
of the problem we now face lie in the nineteenth century. John Henry Newman’s
infamous Tract 90, published in 1841, encouraged Anglicans to read the
Thirty-nine Articles as a Catholic document.2 In this way he opened
the door to the possibility that you might publicly assent to the Articles
while reinterpreting them to say what you wanted them to say. What he did in
the interests of a more Catholic version of Anglicanism others would do in the
interests of a more liberal version before very long. As one scholar put it,
‘whether he intended to or not, he taught us to lie’.
Later in the century
liberal approaches to the Bible and Christian doctrine were introduced into
Anglican thought through men like Samuel Taylor Coleridge (whose Confessions of
an Inquiring Spirit was published in 1840 though it had most likely been
circulating privately before then) and two collections of essays: Essays and
Reviews published in 1860 and Lux Mundi published in 1889. By the end of the
nineteenth century, liberal Anglo-Catholicism was the dominant form of
Anglicanism in Britain and elsewhere (with one or two significant exceptions).
So it is not simply that
a couple of rash actions in the past five years or even the last fifty years
have undermined what was a pretty well-functioning institution prior to that.
Evangelical Anglicans have struggled in a hostile environment within the
denomination for a very long time. Sometimes their ministry has flourished, despite
the hostility of the hierarchy. Whitfield, Simeon, Ryle, Stott, Packer, Lucas —
God has raised up many Anglican evangelical leaders in England and elsewhere.3
But their faithful ministry has always involved struggle within the
denomination.
That background might
lead you to ask, ‘So what’s changed now?’ If the denomination has long been
compromised in these ways, and evangelicals have always struggled within it,
why are we arguing that we have now reached a moment of crisis where decisive
action needs to be taken? What is different about what’s happening at the
moment?
The Five New Elements
I want to suggest that
there are five features of what has been happening in the last fifty years or
so that have brought this current crisis to a head.
1. The first is an
increasing number of public challenges to orthodox doctrine grounded in plain
biblical teaching by serving bishops and other leaders in the Anglican
Communion. It really is simply a matter of historical record that the last
fifty years or so have witnessed an increasingly virulent attack upon biblical
truth and biblical morality led by those who should have been guarding both.
There had, of course, been a long history of such an attack from within the
universities and colleges. Academic liberal theology had been flexing its
muscles for over a century. Yet in the nineteenth and early twentieth century
serving bishops within the Anglican communion had mostly been rather guarded in
their public comments and made no attempt to change the teaching of the
denomination in any official way.
Although it might not
have been the first instance of this, we might start with the publication, in
1963 of John A. T. Robinson’s book Honest to God.4 At the time he
was the Bishop of Woolwich. In that book he questioned the doctrine of God and
many other elements of classic Anglican teaching. And this was the new thing:
that a serving bishop should mount a challenge to the doctrine of the articles
and the teaching of the Bible in such a public and unashamed way.
Even before his
consecration as Bishop of Newark in 1976, John Shelby Spong, an admirer of J.
A. T. Robinson, had been writing controversial books. In fact his controversial
views would eventually lead to charges of heresy, which were dismissed in 1987.
In 1986 he published Beyond Moralism: A Contemporary View of the Ten
Commandments. Two years later he wrote Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human
Sexuality. A year later he openly and knowingly ordained a practicing
homosexual man. He has denied the uniqueness of Christ as the only saviour of
the world, and the authority of the Scriptures to determine Christian doctrine
and Christian practice. In 2001 he published his autobiography: Here I Stand:
My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love and Equality.5 In
it he appended ‘Twelve Theses for Christianity in the Twenty-first century’
which begin with the breathtaking statement, ‘Theism as a way of defining God,
is dead’.
In 1984, the then bishop
of Durham, David Jenkins, gained notoriety by commenting in a BBC interview
that the belief that Jesus was raised bodily from the grave was ridiculous, an
infantile preoccupation with ‘a conjuring trick with bones’. His comments were
regarded as controversial and he has argued they were taken out of context, but
on any account is hard to reconcile them with the words of the apostle Paul in
1 Corinthians 15 — ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
he was buried, he was raised on the third day in accordance with the
Scriptures, and he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve’ (vv. 3–5).
In 1995 the then bishop
of Oxford, Richard Harries, defended his cathedral’s invitation to a practicing
Muslim to preach the university sermon on the BBC’s ‘Thought for the Day’. He
quoted Jesus’ words ‘Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons
of God’ and then went on to deduce that since the Muslim concerned was working
for peace in his own country he not only came under the blessing of Jesus, but
shared the title Son of God with him. When challenged about the uniqueness of
Jesus on the basis of John 14:6 he wrote ‘to suggest that Jesus actually said
those words is to deny 150 years of scholarship in the Gospel of John.6
Michael Ingham, the
present day Bishop of New Westminster in the Church of Canada was interviewed
by the Ottawa Citizen in September 1997. In that interview he insisted, ‘It’s
time for Christians to drop the idea that Christ is the one sure way to
salvation’.7 He developed these ideas in his book of the same year, Mansions of
the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multifaith World.8
Outlandish statements by
bishops of the Anglican Communion, undermining the teaching of Scripture and
the doctrine of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion are only barely newsworthy
these days. They seem to come with such regularity and disdain for anyone who
disagrees with them that only rarely do they provoke controversy. Instead, it’s
the orthodox who are the source of scandal as far as the secular press is
concerned. Statements of orthodox Anglican doctrine are often ridiculed and
then dismissed.
2. The second feature we
should mention is the redefinition of the gospel that has occurred in some
parts of the Anglican Communion. It is increasingly clear that the gospel of
salvation by the cross and resurrection of Jesus, with its call to faith and
repentance has been replaced in some quarters by a liberal gospel of universal
reconciliation, what some call ‘the gospel of inclusion’.9 It is
vitally important to recognise that this is what has happened. It explains why
the hierarchy in the American and Canadian churches won’t let go of their
advocacy of homosexuality, for instance. The full inclusion of practicing
homosexuals into the life and ministry of the churches is a gospel issue as far
as they are concerned. As one website put it last year, under the heading
‘Drenched in Grace: Anglicans, Inclusion and the Gospel’ —
More than at any time in
the recent past, those who seek to offer an open, inclusive and welcoming
Gospel within the Anglican Communion are facing great challenges. Now more than
ever we need to be equipped with the theological and ecclesiastical resources
which mean that we can with confidence affirm that the Gospel of justice,
inclusion and peace we try to communicate is scriptural, rational and central
to Anglican tradition.10
Ashley Null, commenting
on the consecration of Gene Robinson, a practicing homosexual man, as bishop of
New Hampshire in 2003 put it this way:
The legislative
leadership of the Episcopal Church, including a majority of the House of
Bishops, believes that they have been called and therefore, inspired by the
Holy Spirit to establish the guidelines by which the Bible is to be
interpreted. And in keeping with their commitment to religious truth as an
experience of the inherent oneness of all things, they have selected those
biblical texts which talk about the inclusion of outcasts as the true
definition of the Gospel of Christ. All other parts of Scripture are either
interpreted so as to support this explanation of Christianity or rejected as no
longer being applicable in our day.11
3. The third feature that
has made this a moment of crisis is the way attempts have been made to
officially endorse teaching which is in direct conflict with the teaching of
Scripture. This could be illustrated in a number of areas. We might focus on
the defeat of a motion affirming the authority of Scripture on the floor of the
General Synod of ECUSA in August 2003. Or we could think again about the
refusal of the Australian General Synod even to allow a vote on a motion
rejoicing in what God has done for us in the cross of Jesus just last year.
However, because it is the catalyst for our immediate decisions, I will simply
trace the official shift of position on homosexuality in the American and
Canadian churches. Perhaps a time-line might be helpful.
§
1943 Lectionary readings touching upon homosexual practice are
declared difficult by ECUSA and removed from the lectionary
§
1989 Bishop Spong of Newark openly and knowingly ordains a
non-celibate homosexual
§
1994 Bishop Spong drafts the Koinonia Statement defining
homosexuality as morally neutral and affirming support for the ordination of
homosexuals
§
1997 ECUSA General Convention defeats a motion to endorse the
Kuala Lumpur Statement, which affirmed the Bible’s teaching on human sexuality
§
July 1998 Lambeth Conference passes Resolution 1.10 affirming the
biblical teaching on human sexuality
§
1998 Synod of Diocese of New Westminster in the Church of Canada
votes to endorse the blessing of same sex unions, although bishop urges caution
for the time being
§
2002 Synod of the Diocese of New Westminster votes for the third
time to endorse the blessing of same sex unions, this time with the support and
encouragement of the bishop (a number of evangelical leaders, including Jim
Packer and David Short) walk out
§
23 July 2002 Rowan Williams announced as Archbishop of Canterbury
despite having admitted that he had knowing ordained a homosexual man 13
§
20 May 2003 The Bishop of Oxford announces that Jeffrey John, an
advocate of gay rights and himself a non-practicing homosexual, will be the
next Bishop of Reading
§
7 June 2003 Gene Robinson, a practicing gay man is elected as
bishop of New Hampshire
§
6 July 2003 Jeffrey John withdraws his nomination as Bishop of
Reading after much discussion in the press and a meeting with the Archbishop of
Canterbury
§
August 2003 General Convention of ECUSA votes to confirm Gene
Robinson
§
2 Nov. 2003 Consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New
Hampshire
§
April 2004 Jeffrey John named Dean of St Albans
§
April 2004 retired Bishop Otis Charles ‘marries’ his homosexual
partner in Pasadena
The roots of this shift
in thinking can be seen way back in the 1940s. However, in the last ten or
eleven years the pace of the push to officially revise the church’s teaching on
this issue has sped up. Now it is not just a matter of an individual bishop’s
heretical opinion, either expressed in private or published for general
consumption. This is the institution changing its official position.
4. The fourth feature we
should mention is the way these developments have taken place in full knowledge
and in open defiance of the objections of the rest of the Anglican Communion,
most commonly on biblical grounds. Those involved were asked not to proceed.
Carefully reasoned arguments explaining the teaching of Scripture were
presented again and again. Letters were sent between bishops and primates.
Phone calls were made. But so committed to the cause were the bishops of ECUSA
and the bishop of New Westminster that they refused to listen and rejected all
calls to turn back.
The repeated nature of
the calls to turn back is very easily demonstrated.
In 1997, three years
after Bishop Spong’s Koinonia Statement began to circulate throughout the
Episcopal Church, the Second Anglican Encounter produced the Kuala Lumpur
Statement, upholding the biblical teaching on human sexuality. A year later at
the 1998 Lambeth Conference, after extensive discussion, Resolution 1.10 was
passed, again affirming the biblical teaching on the subject. That same year
ECUSA rejected the Kuala Lumpur Statement and the New Westminster synod voted
to bless same sex unions.
In March 2001 the
Primates of the Anglican Communion met in Kanuga, in North Carolina and called
upon churches to avoid actions which might damage the credibility of mission,
after identifying the theology and practice regarding human sexuality as a
flash point. Within months the synod of New Westminster voted for the third
time to bless same sex unions. A Global South Steering Committee visited New
Westminster to investigate and in the end advised orthodox parishes to seek
alternative episcopal oversight.
The Anglican
Consultative Council got in on the act in September 2002, approving a motion
urging dioceses and bishops to refrain from unilateral actions that would
strain communion.
A month after the
election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in June 2003, a group of
over sixty worldwide Anglican leaders warned the General Convention of ECUSA
that a confirmation of Gene Robinson’s election would result in ECUSA having
placed itself outside the boundaries of the Anglican Communion.14
Indignant at the interference, the General Convention confirmed Gene Robinson a
month later (August 2003).
In October 2003 the
Primates of the Anglican Communion released a statement following an emergency
meeting in Lambeth Palace which included the observation that the consecration
of Gene Robinson and the blessing of same-sex unions in Canada, if they should
proceed, would ‘tear the fabric of our communion at the deepest level’.15
This meeting called for the protection of dissenting parishes and set up the
Lambeth Commission to propose a way forward. Within a month Gene Robinson was
consecrated in defiance of the rest of the Communion.
5. The fifth and final
feature I want to highlight is for many people one of the most disturbing of
all. It is the open persecution by the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church and
the Bishop and Diocese of New Westminster (and indeed others) of all who
dissent from their program of doctrinal and moral revision. In early 2003, as
the situation in New Westminster was deteriorating, and following the
encouragement of the Global South for parishes in dispute with the bishop to
seek alternative episcopal oversight, Bishop Buckle of the Yukon offered to
provide just that to the beleaguered parishes. In response, Bishop Ingham of
New Westminster instigated charges against Bishop Buckle and the parishes
seeking his oversight and before long the offer was withdrawn.16
Just over a week ago the
same Bishop of New Westminster wrote to Professor Jim Packer, author of
numerous books including the classic Knowing God, and David Short, the Rector
of St Johns Shaughnessy following their vote (along with their church) to stay
within the Anglican Communion yet seek the oversight of a faithful bishop, the
Bishop of the Southern Cone. The letter charged them with a relatively new
ecclesiastical offence, ‘Presumption of abandonment of Communion’ and
threatened to remove their ‘spiritual authority as a minister of Word and
Sacraments conferred in ordination’.17 The bishop’s supporters have
protested that this action is entirely legal and in accord with the
constitution of the denomination. However, these measures are devices which the
liberal establishment has created with this one purpose in mind: to punish
anyone who object to their practice and who seeks a way of remaining true to
biblical teaching and Anglican doctrine when the denomination itself has
abandoned it.
There are many other
horror stories. The new presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church, Katharine
Jefferts Schori, began suing those who opposed this program almost as soon as
she was elected to the position. To date the dioceses of Fort Worth and Quincy
and more recently the bishop and diocese of San Joaquin have had legal action
taken against them.18 The denomination is suing these churches for their
property, seeking to depose those who speak out. The legal action may well be
protracted. Some have resigned because they do not have the financial resources
to resist the revisionists in the courts. Yet the opposition is not going away.
Individual parishes are
being targeted by bishops with the revisionist agenda. ‘The Connecticut Six’
are a group of six clergy and parishes who have opposed the diocesan bishop on
the issue of support for Gene Robinson the acceptance of homosexuality more
generally. Ministers have been unceremonially deposed, church vestry meetings
declared illegal, church officers sacked, and in some extreme cases a diocese
has moved in at night to change the locks and so prevent the dissenting
ministers and congregations from having use of their church buildings.19
Despite repeated calls
from many quarters to respect those who disagree with them and to seek ways to
provide alternative oversight where this is requested, the Presiding Bishop of
The Episcopal Church and others in the house of bishops have pursued a program
of retaliation and persecution of the orthodox in their dioceses. It is not too
much to say that ecclesiastical bullying of the orthodox has reached epidemic
proportions in The Episcopal Church, in Canada, and in other places as well.
Those of you who follow
the websites will no doubt know of many more instances. Friends of mine in the
UK have been called in and threatened by their bishop in response to votes of
no confidence following the appointment of Jeffrey John and Dean of St Albans.
Jeffrey John has since publicly ridiculed the idea of penal substitutionary
atonement.
It is true that in the
recent round of invitations to the Lambeth Conference this July, the bishop of
New Hampshire was not included. This has been greeted with protest from the
Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops. But the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal
Church is still invited, although she supports Gene Robinson and has acted in
this unconscionable way towards orthodox bishops, dioceses, clergy and parishes
in the USA. Those who took part in the consecration of Gene Robinson are still
invited. Those who engineered Jeffrey John’s appointment as Dean of St Albans
are still invited. Bishops within the Canadian church are still invited.
The parishes and
Christian ministers who are under attack have been left out to dry by the
Archbishop of Canterbury. He appointed Peter Carnley, the retired Archbishop of
Perth who is no friend of evangelical Anglicans, to chair the panel of
reference established to consider their cases. As was to be expected, nothing
has happened. The legal cases are still proceeding. The confiscated property
remains in the hands of the heretical institution.
Conclusion
The crisis we face at
the moment has a different character to the background struggle that
evangelical Anglicans have long endured. These five factors have taken us
further down the road of denominational apostasy than we have ever been before.
The embrace of teaching and practice which is directly opposed to the teaching
of Scripture is now being institutionalised in a new way. And it is being done
in the face of careful, godly, biblical calls to stop. What’s more, those who
are making that call are being recast as the villains and every effort is being
made to disenfranchise them and remove them from the Communion.
That’s what’s different
now. That’s why we need to act.
___________________
Footnotes:
1. R. C. Doyle, ‘No Golden
Age’, The Briefing 22 (April 1989), pp. 1–6.
2. ‘It is a duty which we
owe both to the Catholic Church and to our own, to take our reformed
confessions in the most Catholic sense they will admit: We have no duties
towards their framers.’ See John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua (repr.
London, 1965), p. 197.
3. In Sydney we can rejoice
in the inheritance we have received from men like Frederick Barker, Nathaniel
Jones, Howard Mowll, Broughton Knox, Marcus Loane and Donald Robinson.
4. J. A. T. Robinson,
Honest to God (London: SCM, 1963).
5. J. S. Spong, Here I
Stand: My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love and Equality (San
Francisco: Harper, 2000).
6. Private correspondence
to the speaker, 4 June 1995.
7. Ottawa Citizen, 26
September 1997.
8. M. Ingham, Mansions of
the Spirit: The Gospel in a Multifaith World (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre,
1997).
9. C. Pearson, The Gospel
of Inclusion: Reaching Beyond Religious Fundamentalism to the True Love of God
(Azusa Press, 2007).
10. www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/002141.html
accessed 13/3/08. An interesting article by Philip Turner critiquing this
redefinition of the gospel can be found at www.goodnewsmag.org/JulyAugust/ja06turner.htm
Arguably these are simply catching up with the observation of Ashley Null in a
lecture entitled ‘From Thomas Cranmer to Gene Robinson: Repentance and
Inclusion in Anglican Theology’ delivered on 16 July 2004 in Grace Anglican
Chapel, Rochester in which he argued that the centrality of repentance within
Anglican faith and practice was being replaced by the theology of inclusion
11. A. Null, ‘Understanding
the Contemporary Episcopal Church’, posted at http://listserv.episcopalian.org/wa.exe?A2=ind0312b&L=virtuosity&H=1&P=1493.
12. John Spong’s
autobiography makes this identification explicit.
13. The interview was
published in the UK Telegraph on 2 June 2002.
14. the statement has since
been removed from the Anglican Communion website – its url was
anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/35/00/acns3522.html.
15. The communiqué can be
found at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2003/10/16/ACNS3633
16. Details can be found at listserv.episcopalian.org/wa.exe?A2=ind0311b&L=virtuosity&H=1&P=1397
17. See www.anglicanessentials.ca/wordpress/index.php/2008/02/29/ji-packer-threatened-with-suspension
18. Details can be found on
the diocesan websites: www.fwepiscopal.org/index1.phpwww.dioceseofquincy.orghttp://sanjoaquin.anglican.org.
19. Statement from the
Connecticut Six can be found at www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1412016/posts
________________
This paper was presented
by ACL President, The Rev. Dr. Mark Thompson, at the Sydney ‘Lambeth Decision Briefing’,
St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, Friday 14th March 2008.
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