Since the topic came up, recently, about the Church of England, I feel compelled to add my observations. What has been going on, lately, started before I was born, and it has been causing concern for decades. To try to avoid misunderstandings, the Church of England is a group of many diverse churches under the umbrella of the Church of England, known as the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion is not immune to any of the problems that every other church has. However, in many respects, it somehow gets the dubious honor of being the one that has many of those problems before the others, in the Christian Church. Ask the Archbishop of Uganda, or Foley Beach, the ACNA, what either thinks about this topic, and you will see we criticize ourselves, quite well. Yes, we have problems.
Those of us who belong to one of the many churches in the Anglican Communion, which I have now been in two, have witnessed the problem before many of the other churches saw it happening, and it has worried us. Some use the word, schism, and it happens. Teresa Ford has written about the struggles her church is going through. Pray for all our churches. We need all the help we can muster. Prayers will help a lot.
As with governments, churches have their politics. Every church on the planet has that same problem, and people line up along similar ways as Democrats and Republicans, or let’s just leave it simpler and use the left and the right, to avoid ancillary discussions. In the Episcopal and Anglican churches we have vestries to administer the goings of the individual churches. Then, there are dioceses, headed by bishops, and finally the Archbishop of Canterbury. Our Church has laws, Canons, not unlike the Roman Catholic Church, but we are different to a degree. We were, in fact, ruled or guided, and brought into communion with the Roman Catholic Church from the time when Pope Gregory sent St. Augustine to try to bring Celtic Christianity into the fold, if you will, and eventually, an English King tried to divorce and remarry and get the blessings of the Roman Church. Well…
Boom! A new Church forms, called the Church of England.
I’m not going to say who was right or wrong. And it is not worth the argument. But I will say that there were a lot of politics and intrigue, from thence forward. It’s really nothing new. While many may squabble over terms , like Protestant and Catholic, many of us consider ourselves as Anglo-Catholic. I believe that has endured over the centuries. While we have no Vatican, a country of its own, as the head of the Roman Catholic Church, which holds more strict control over the doctrine and canons, we have a few splinters. We don’t do that the same way.
What I find interesting, however, is that we share many of the same problems. We have left leaning communicants and right leaning ones, as just about every other church has, and it is sometimes as rough as two tectonic plates forced against each other. It seems that, every day or so, a church calls into question over a part of canon, in our church, and I believe it to be the same in the Roman Catholic Church as well, and all the rest. One side will start trying to change the Canon of the Church, in order to suit a certain lifestyle, or preference, and what makes up Canon is based on the Gospel, and sometimes some other things. I’m only using the Roman Catholic Church as my example, because we have more similarities than differences, since we were once in communion with the other. I think we still are to a great degree. But the problems we face are happening in every church hierarchy.
This Anglican priest refused the wokeness and was punished for it. He gave a great Oxford debate over the issue we struggle with our bishops with.
His ordination was cancelled by the same Church of England because his views were wrong, to the political makeup of the heads of the Church. You be the judge.
It is based on cultural anomalies being forced on people, by political activism. I say anomaly because, although you will find a homosexual around every corner you look, the ones who are active are those activists. The real numbers of them are estimated to be around one to possibly two percent of the population, to the best of my knowledge. So, just who are these people trying to change Canonical law? We live in a changing culture. That’s life, but Man’s culture has no place in changing the Canons of any church, because the churches are in the business of saving souls, and that means preaching the Gospel, not just getting attendance up for the sake of that plate that gets passed around during service. Nor are we to just welcome with open arms and say, “We don’t mind that you keep on sinning. By the way, you can keep the sin and become a bishop.”, are we? Any and all suggestions are welcome from those who claim to have solved this type of situation. Please speak up.
The left side and the right side are the tectonic plates, I mentioned above. I think it is safe to say that the split in opinion is the same as a conservative arguing with a leftist. The left claims to be the compassionate ones, and seem to think their opinions are superior to the Bible, when the Bible, New and Old Testament is the ultimate authority over all the Christian Church. It is that simple. Some may state that differently, but that is how I see it. Here is a recent example of how Welby tried to wrestle with a leftist who is trying to pervert the church, when I thought it couldn’t do worse. it is a pretty serious error in interpretation:
If you watched that til the end, you see how leftists are throwing everything at Welby, and he just makes it worse. My church has been having this discussion, about homosexuals, marriage and women priests for a lot longer than most realize. How do you reconcile the teachings of the Bible and our culture? Someone is going to have to explain to me another way, that is able to replace Scripture and also able to remain a church. I believe the two cannot ever be reconciled.
That is exactly what Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is either struggling with, or trying to do. All I will say about him is that I believe he has gone off the rails, or been shaken by the earthquake that is to come, because he is not the only Archbishop of Canterbury who got us here, only the present “first among equals” in our church. Please pray for my church, as well as all churches. This is not a unique problem. It is the Church that is under fire.
We are being persecuted from within and without. We may just be the first ones, as usual. Just remember who may be next, if you aren’t already. The Church is about saving souls, not bending to culture. No one has banned homosexuals. We welcome the sinner, just not the sin. The Church is about saving souls, not creating new sin. In cases, like the one the Church of England is going through, we are complaining and praying that the Church should repent, as we do. If it won’t, there will be a problem worse than saying a word like schizm.
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