Monday, October 10, 2016

The elusive search for intra and inter Anglican Communion and communion unity

With H/T to Ron Smith, a series of links re the recent Global South conference and communique is posted by Ron on his blog, here.

A reflection on the conference is posted here.

The conference communique is here.

A joint statement on same-sex unions from the Global South Primates and the GAFCON Primates Council is here. It repays careful readings, both for its sensitivity pastorally and its clarity theologically.

An emerging sense from conferences such as this one just concluded is that Global Anglicanism will continue to be a significant communion of Anglican churches around the globe, whatever the future state of the Anglican Communion [official, historic body of Anglican provinces and extra-provincial dioceses].

Also to be noted is this astute reflection on the recent Anglican-Roman Catholic meeting in Rome: authority is the key to real progress in unity between these two communions.

I may return to these matters in coming days ...

7 comments:

Glen Young said...


Hi Peter,

Some good comment has come out of the G/S conference. Also a very timely piece by Fr.Alexander Lucie-Smith stating quite clearly,the difficulties of a deeper Unity,while the Anglicans maintain their present attitude to the Scriptures; as is manifest by some bloggs on your site.

Father Ron said...

regarding Glen's comment, wouldn't it be rather ironic if the sola Scriptura people in Anglicanism now found more reason to embrace Rome than Canterbury? It would really test which branch of Christendom they found less toxic.

Anonymous said...

Hi Peter; it seems to me that evangelicals have an advantage over others in Anglicanism when communicating with Catholics or other Christians. On the whole, Catholics can easily find out what evangelicals believe. With non-evangelical Anglicans, it's more of an Alice-Humpty Dumpty discussion. It's hard to have unity when words can mean whatever I want them to. So, it wouldn't be ridiculous if evangelicals thought they understood and were understood by Rome better than non-evangelical Anglicans. It has nothing to do with degrees of toxicity.

Nick

Glen Young said...


As a sola Scripturalists,I embrace both Rome and Canterbury, along with the other Catholic Communions.As a family we quite often attend St. Pats. on a Sunday evening.One of the parts of Christendom which I question, is that which distorts the Scriptures to conform their religion to the neo-Darwinist, cultural Marxist modernistic secular world view; to me they are mistaken,NOT TOXIC.

Andrew Reid said...

Greetings from Cairo to you and your ADU readers!
I was not a participant in the GS meetings - the closest I got was seeing the group photograph as we came out of church on Friday morning :)
I would draw people's attention to a few things from this conference:
- The growing convergence between GAFCON and GS. They are independent bodies and in the past some of the GS leadership have distanced themselves from GAFCON's stance and activities. This joint statement suggests a unity of purpose even though they
- The non-participating observers who were invited to attend, including Bishop Paul Butler of Durham, Bishop Tim Dakin of Winchester, Archbishop Glenn Davies of Sydney, Canon Phil Ashey of the AAC and Rev Chris Sugden of Reform UK. While it is still a non-Western movement, they are keen to partner with like minded orthodox groups across the Communion.
- The growing conviction and confidence of the non-Western Anglican churches. This has obviously been growing over many years, but Ashley Null's presentations on Cranmer highlighted the influence of Augustine the African on his theology and ministry. The GS feels it has something distinctive and important to contribute to the Communion, not to be a plaything fought over by the different factions within the Western church.
- The absence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. There is confusion about which of the events in Rome or the GS was planned first. But the significance of the ABC choosing to attend the event in Rome was not lost on delegates, especially when the TEC presiding bishop attended in contravention of the Primates' decision that TEC shouldn't participate in ecumenical events.

MichaelA said...

Hi Fr Ron, "sola Scriptura people in Anglicanism" (that is, most of the 85 million Anglicans in the world) already do "embrace" both Rome and Canterbury, and many others besides. And we don't find any of them "toxic", although we disagree with them from time to time, on some issues. Since you yourself also disagree with others from time to time and on some issues, I am sure you won't judge us for that!

So there doesn't seem to be much of your question left to answer.

BTW, the expression sola scriptura originates at least as early as the 13th century, i.e. long before the Protestant Reformation.

Peter Carrell said...

Hi Ron
Don't describe fellow Christians as misogynistic and homophobic without actual cited evidence.
I am simply deleting your comment to this effect without attempting to redact it.
Comment on issues please and not people.