"Reports of My Demise..."

"Anglicans lack identity..."

"I expect the meetings in Rome have begun an inexorable reabsorption of the Anglican Church into the world's oldest institution. The church created by the charismatic King Henry VIII has found its current archbishop, an undertaker, appearing to see his mission as an orderly burial."

According to Ross Cameron, former Federal MP for Parramatta (and one of several devoted Roman Catholic Liberals who came to prominence during John Howard's premiership), "we must assume the Anglican idea is fast reaching its use-by date." Cameron is quite polite in his Op-Ed piece from last Saturday's SMH: "It has, however, been a great innings". Cameron is quite ready to assign Anglicanism as the origin of everything from religious tolerance to scientific discovery. But Cameron is ready to consign Anglicanism, if not to the dustbin of history, then at least the historical retirement village.

Which is because of a fundamental error in Cameron's thesis. Cameron's Anglicanism has no identity because hasn't developed since the turmoils of Henry VIII. And this is an error because Anglicanism hasn't been static, and has had significant developments in expression and identity in it's five centuries (which I have previously described here). According to Gerald Bray:

"Most people seem to believe that when Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534, he invented the Church of England and made himself its head in order to legitimise his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and that since that time, his successors have all been bound to belong to this somewhat dubious creation, an obligation which is symbolised by the royal title ‘Defender of the Faith’. This is false." - Honi soit qui mal y pense (worth checking out for Bray's analysis on current moves to remove the exclusion of Roman Catholics from Monarchy).

Cameron's analysis of the early history of the Anglican church is somewhat erroneous. The average Anglican in the 16th and 17th centuries would have strongly aligned themselves to the Protestant cause. And to argue that England sat on the sidelines of the "religious wars" (which according to D.B. Hart had more to do than with the rise of the nation-state against empire and church) is to ignore most historical scholarship in the area for the past 20 years (such as Jonathan Scott).

Cameron's Op-Ed is also typical of most detractors of the Anglican Church from the western world. The Anglicanism they see and present is declining in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They present it as increasingly irrelevant and being run aground by "fundamentalists". What they neglect is the phenomenal growth Anglicanism has experienced in Africa, Asia and South America. The rise of the Global South has not revitalised Anglicanism, it's the future. Cameron's assertion that Anglicanism is entering her autumn years are greatly exaggerated. Which is why I'm looking forward to the Monday night of CMS Summer School when the President of CMS, Peter Jensen, will be speaking on the role of a mission agency in the Global South.

Photos from the GAFCON website.

Swimming Up The Tiber

The Roman Catholic church this week has announcemed that it has created a structure to welcome home 'traditional' Anglicans unhappy with the 'rampant liberalism' (ACL) in the Anglican church. Whether this will have the apocalyptic consequences for the Church of England that The Times says it does remains to be seen (Ruth Glendhill talks about this leading to the disestablisment of the CofE, and reclaiming of churches and cathedrals by Roma Catholics “'stolen' from them at the Reformation'). Oliver O'Donovan, commenting on the nineteenth article in the 39 Articles of Religon ("so also the Church of Rome hath erred..."), had this to say on ecumenism and institutional unity:

"Ecumenism is one of the ways in which the institutions of the church must be shaped and re-shaped to express the truth of the church itself more adequately than they do. But, of course, not any form of institutional unity will be appropriate. It must be a kind of unity which corresponds to the unity which the Holy Spirit gives, a unity which can comfortably embrace the diversities of gifts, operations and services within the united confession that 'Jesus is Lord'. Unity of the wrong kind will fail, just as disunity fails, to make the church institutions an effective sign of the gospel." - Oliver O'Donovan, On The Thirty Nine Articles - A Conversation With Tudor Christianity, 1986.

Lonely Protestantism

Today's prophetic jewel comes from Katay in Theology Through History, talking about the hardening of protestant scholasticism (I can't spell) in the 17th century, and the rise of pluralism. Katay talked about what makes Roman Catholicism attractive for evangelicals is that we above all protestants like our guru's, and the "Romans" have the guru of all guru's, the vicar of Christ, and from him ex cathedra the ultimate source of biblical authority, whilst for protestants, it is just us, our conscience and our bibles (plus a few external, social influences). To be a protestant is to be very lonely. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.

Katay also talked about the three stages of leadership that we see in the New Testament that we see in the bible; first Jesus and his authoritative teaching, actions, and achievement, secondly the apostles and their authoritative announcement of Jesus, and thirdly the the apostles good deposit, and the "apostolic descendants", which continues down till today (and where we no longer have apostles to tell us what's what). In in response to a question about the ill's of pluralism and lack of authority, Katay said, and I quote:

"Our problem isn't so much denominationalsim, our problem is a lack of apostolic authority."

Comments? Thoughts?