The Extinction of the C of E: Two Issues
There has been some very interesting discussion on Facebook and the weblog following my previous post 'When will the C of Eastward exist extinct?'. Out of this, two issues stay with me.
The first comes from John Hayward'southward annotate in his original article on reasons for decline that the three episcopal churches he compares with the C of Eastward have greater uniformity.
ECUSA, SEC and C in W, are allEpiscopal by conviction. It is having bishops and prayer books that set them apart from the other denominations. By contrast the C of E is thenational church, which just happens to be Episcopal. It is divers more past beingness national, and less by being Episcopal, as it is the national and established element that really sets information technology autonomously from other denominations. Thus the C of East has more variety between congregations than the other 3. To give an example from Wales, one Church building in Wales chaplain described his denomination to me as like a Henry Ford auto, "whatsoever color you like equally long as it's blackness"! Generally speaking I have found in Wales, Scotland and the United states a fairly rigid uniformity when visiting different parishes, more so than I have seen in England. Thus the C in W, SEC and ECUSA are narrower, and thus near sectarian in their relationship with non-Anglicans, compared with the C of E.
But the 2d, contrasting point is that the other churches take found information technology easier to change with the times theologically, and their uniformity has meant that this has happened lock, stock and barrel. John does not express his view in these terms, but more in terms of the C of E being open up to evangelical and charismatic influences than the others. Merely a fascinating commodity I read yesterday by J John makes this point in terms of historical continuity.
First, and almost fundamentally, thefoundation of the conventional Church of England is adept, incorporating every bit information technology does both audio doctrine and wise practice. In terms of doctrine, the Church building of England was founded on the Bible and in terms of do it has, despite frequent episodic swings to excesses, retained a wise residuum between Calvinistic severity and Catholic ceremony. A key strength of this skillful foundation is, I would claim, the Anglican Prayer Volume with those oft-neglected 39 Manufactures and the tradition of liturgy associated with it. In a earth of increasingly unchurched people both liturgy and creed are enormously helpful in giving a script to follow.
He (perhaps unsurprisingly) goes on to complaining the fact that many people don't attend to this historical foundation or the claims that it makes on them—simply it is at that place even so. The well-nigh obvious distinction between the C of E and ECUSA, as well every bit a number of other members of the Anglican Communion, is that the C of E has retained is founding documents equally the touchstone—the ASB (as its name makes clear) and Common Worship were both introduced as strictlyalternativeto the BCP, and not replacements of it. Past contrast, when ECUSA introduced its Prayer Book in the 1970s, itreplaced the BCP. Any the cultural issues around this, it turned the church building into something with a basic historical discontinuity at the level of its theology.
One of my regular commentators, James Byron, observes in comments on the previous postal service:
I suspect the evangelical model of growth — culturally liberal, theologically conservative — has topped-out in the West. What's needed is a combination of liberal theology with evangelical style. At the least, it'south worth a shot.
But both John Hayward's analysis and J John'southward perspective suggest quite the contrary. Cultural adaptability, rather than uniformity, combined with theological continuity, rather than cultural conformity, are precisely the combination that has, to some extent at least, protected the C of E. This doesn't mean that the C of E is necessarily evangelical to the exclusion of other theological traditions, as some might infer from J John's comments. It does mean that the C of East has a fundamental hospitality towards evangelicalism, which is not always found in other parts of the Communion. Only much more fundamentally, information technology has a sense of theological continuity which, paradoxically, provides a sense of stability and security which might itself be the thing that is necessary to give the freedom needed to be culturally adjustability. In other words, being culturally liberal and theologically conservative go hand in paw, and both demand each other. In Martyn Atkins' words, it makes it much easy for us to rediscover our founding charisms, and make them relevant to our current context.
This then implies that there are two vital tasks for the missional church. The first is articulated about conspicuously in the Fresh Expressions move: the ongoing search for cultural forms of being church that most effectively engage with our gimmicky culture. But the 2nd is establish, if anywhere, in the Doctrine Committee—or at least in our serious debates about theology. Although some find these debates unpleasant and wonder if they are necessary, they are in fact a vital sign of a missional church. Without the ballast of theological security, we won't be free to engage in the journey to see our culture—and some would argue, we wouldn't have annihilation worthwhile to offer when we got there.
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