Quotes and Excerpts
- Eliminate ordination of women to the priesthood - this has not happened
- Drop the Filioque Clause from the Nicene Creed - this has occurred in theory as stated in the 2019 BCP (the Lambeth Conference recommended its removal in 1988), but it has not happened in practice.
- Remove the last vestiges of Calvinism - I don’t think anyone wants to go there.
- Warren wanted to push the conversation. This was a provocative effort to change a denomination’s core doctrine and identity, with a ‘Walk Together’ paradigm.
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Warren is astute that the denomination, like all denominations, will be facing new challenges as cultural norms have changed for younger generations.
- Assault - the logismoi first attacks a person’s mind
- Interaction - a person opens up a dialogue with the logismoi
- Consent - a person consents to do what the logismoi urges him to do
- Defeat - a person becomes hostage to the logismoi and finds it more difficult to resist
- Passion or Obsession - the logismoi becomes an entrenched reality within the nous of a person
We are in a post-catastrophe world, and yet the catastrophes did not happen. There are worse things than catastrophes. There is the surrender of the will before even the catastrophes come. There are worse things than war. There are worse things even than unjust war: unjust peace or crooked peace is worse. To leave life by withdrawal is worse than to leave life by murder. To be bored of the world is worse than to shed all the blood in the world. There are worse things than final Armageddon. Being too tired and wobble eyed for final combat is worse. There are things worse than lust — the sick surrogates of lust are worse. There are things worse than revolution — the half-revolution, the mere turning away, is worse. – R. A. Lafferty, “Epistle to the Church of Omaha in Dispersal” in the short story “And Walk Now Gently Through The Fire” (1972) Source: Coming to Terms
Metropolitan Jonas laid out three major issues to resolve when he addressed the inaugural ACNA gathering in Plano:
and:
Met. Jonah gave his stirring invitation in the afternoon; at the evening Eucharist, Abp. Duncan shot it down with derision and ridicule. It was “not edifying” to listen to him do that.
Source: What ever happened with the possibility of communion with the orthodox church
The modern world suffers from a crisis of loneliness we are told. I believe that much of that crisis is simply the by-product of an information society. The economy (whatever that is) knows pretty much everything about us. It is carefully mined from every action we take in the electronic world. That data is mined, stored, and sold. This is not only true, it is more true every day. But all of that information is the opposite of intimacy. Whoever possesses that information does not know you – though they could easily use it to destroy you. The information is dangerous precisely because those who possess it do not love you.
God has no desire to gather information about us. I’m not certain that God knows anything in a manner that could be described as information. God knows us as He knew Simon Peter. He could predict Simon’s denials while reassuring him that he was being prayed for (and preserved). Perhaps those words of reassurance are the very thing that saved him in the end. God knows us as He knew the Woman at the Well (John 4). He Himself was thirsty, but He knew her thirst (living water).
The crisis of our loneliness is, I think, two-fold. It is the lack of intimacy on the one hand (surrounded by information gatherers). It is also a crisis of vulnerability (humility) in which we fear to be known, for ever-so-many reasons. Intimacy is something of a dance. It requires a gift, for the knowledge that comes from love can only be made available freely and as a gift. The gift requires love in order to be received. For what can be known in intimacy can only be known through love. It dissipates in the hands of anything else.
The recent actions of the fourth Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON), which purport to upend the historic role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the life of the Anglican Communion, can be traced by a very clear line back to what the Episcopal Church did in General Convention 20 years ago this summer.
Source: Dealing with the Detritus of General Convention, 2003 – Covenant
Forward in Faith Mission:
Forward in Faith North America (FIFNA) is a fellowship of people and churches who embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who uphold the Evangelical Faith an d Catholic Order which is the inheritance of the Anglican Way. Our fellowship works, prays, and witnesses for reform and renewal of the Church without compromise of truth or limitation of love. Our fellowship includes faithful Anglicans spanning many jurisdictions and structures, with the mission to witness to the “faith and order of the undivided Church.”
In 2017 FiFNA defined its mission:
VOL: How does your message and appeal for the fullness of Catholic faith and practice within Anglicanism, address or speak to the particulars of people in TEC, the Continuing Churches, and the ACNA (and perhaps the wider Anglican Communion)?
BAUSCH: By not taking a position on jurisdictional membership, we want to be able to offer tools which can help any and all of our members to fulfill our mission in their particular context. […]VOL: FIFNA operates across North America within a number of Anglican churches, including the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in North America, the Diocese of the Holy Cross, the Anglican Mission in the Americas, the Anglican Province of America, the Anglican Church in America, and the Episcopal Church (United States). However, FIFNA is not a diocese of the ACNA, which is predominantly evangelical in theology and ethos. Clearly there are tensions there. How do you think you can resolve them? Do you see a time when FIFNA would be a full partner (diocese) in the ACNA?
BAUSCH: FIFNA is not itself an ecclesial entity, and is not in itself within any jurisdiction. However, some of our members within the ACNA are within the Missionary Diocese of All Saints, which is comprised of FIFNA-member parishes and priests. The tensions you describe between some of our perspective and the ACNA are real, but not necessarily negative. At our Anglican best, we strive to see these as differences of emphasis rather than substance, and then continue to promote the understanding of our essential Catholic identity as particularly expressed such things as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. It is also noteworthy that, in the production of the ACNA Catechism, there were FIFNA members involved.
Source: Canon Lawrence D. Bausch
Later that year, following the a dissapointing-for-both-sides College of Bishop’s resolution, alongside a change in finances, it refocused towards education, and as a more volunteer organization:
So as a living organism Forward in Faith’s proclamation of the historic Catholic faith of the undivided church has not changed as much as it is being refocused.
Forward in Faith is refocusing its understanding of its place in mission by putting a renewed emphasis upon the financial support of men headed for the priesthood and training already ordained priests to better evangelize and present the Gospel message in today’s world.
Source: Forward in Faith-North America changes focus
FIFNA has since refocused again under a new president, Bp Menees:
In fulfillment of our mission FIFNA seeks to be leaven in the ACNA, offering retreats, seminars, tracts and more. (Source)
Surfaces stacked high in piles, favorite novels displayed across a piano, tiny tomes tucked under an occasional chair, books stacked high enough to hold your coffee. Not everyone thrives in a pared-down space, even when it pops up again and again as a dominant image in our visual culture.
If this is you, certainly, lean into it. A stack of coffee table or art books twenty-high makes a glorious coffee table next to your favorite chair. A shorter bookshelf built as a pony wall can help create boundaries between rooms where they don’t exist. A vertical stack of books can feel as classic an addition as a traditional column.
A set of shelves in the cramped space under the stairs might make a person feel supported. A console piled high with books invites visitors to get a peek into your passions and persuasions. A wall of books can feel as engaging a visual as the most charming wallpapers. And a room of books can feel like floating in a sea of everything you love.
It is not a church plant per se, at least not yet, but rather a space for brothers and sisters with a shared love of the Lord Jesus Christ to gather for refreshment, nourishment, and encouragement, and also a space where they can invite others to experience genuine Christian fellowship, discover the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness in the Anglican tradition.
Source: What is Church House?
ALL churches are a mess right now, doctrinal pure or no. Churches either have problems with beliefs or praxis. Very rare to find a parish healthy in both areas. Might as well make things better where you are, then to be a gyrovague and run around!
…
Saint Benedict’s call to Stability, and having a Rule of Life helps in these matters. It sounds like the Author is sticking to his, and that’s commendable.
Source: COLUMBA SILOUAN, Comments in Why I Stay
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life…
St. John is not referencing the Scriptures. He is speaking of the living experience of the incarnate Son of God – “which we have heard – which we have seen with our eyes – which we have looked upon – and our hands have handled…” It is this living experience that “we declare to you.” And the purpose of this declaration is more than the relay of information. St. John tells his readers that these things have been declared to them “that you also may have communion with us; and truly our communion is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” [This is one of those sad verses where English translators have rendered koinonia (κοινωνία) as “fellowship” a meaning that is almost bizarre in its failure to render the Greek.]
The communion to which St. John refers is itself the tradition, the context without which his letter cannot be rightly read. And it is clear that St. John believes that this communion is something that can be given. His word for this transmission is rendered “to declare,” translating the Greek, apaggello (ἀπαγγέλλω – related to the word for gospel). St. John’s declaration is the equivalent of St. Paul’s favorite term, gospel (εὐαγγέλιον, evangel), which is itself frequently misunderstood in its meaning and import.
What does St. Paul mean when he says gospel, the good news? Our first instinct is to find a way to summarize his preaching. Thus the gospel is “Christ died for our sins,” or some such phrase. But St. Paul clearly has an almost global meaning for the word:
For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance, (1Th 1:5 NKJ)
It is used to mean God’s revealed plan wrought in the death and resurrection of Christ. It is the preaching of Christ. It is the content of the preaching. But like St. John’s communion, the gospel is not “word only” but also “power.” Thus it is not the proclamation of an idea or a set of ideas, nor the announcement only of an event in history. Gospel is the living power of the communion with the Father through His Son in the Spirit. That living communion is our participation in the crucified and risen Christ.
Source: The Communion of Tradition - Glory to God for All Things
The first signs of Christianity coming to what is now the parish of Beith were through St. Inan who is reputed to have come over from Iona, to which island St. Columba came from Ireland and set up a monestary. In those early days there was no building where the people could assemble to worship or to listen to St. Inan. He preached to the people on the Bigholm Hills. There is a rock formation known, even until today, as St. Inan’s Chair, which, it is reputed, he used as a pulpit. Near St. Inan’s Chair there is a stone, known as the Rocking Stone, (which no longer rocks), and is thought to have been the site of pre-christian worship. This is most probably true as the first christian missionaries in Scotland usually began their work as near as possible to the spot where pre-christian rites and ceremonies took place, evidence of this being Druid’s graves near the Rocking Stone.
Again, when modern Anglicans move on to Rome, they are following through on the logic of their position. They have been taught that they have no beliefs except for those of “the Catholic Church,” and they have been nurtured with a profusion of pre-Reformation ceremonies. Why is it surprising, then, if they embrace a church that lays claim to precisely the same inheritance, but with a more perfect unity of its pre-Reformation ceremony and pre-Reformation doctrine?
Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture
In point of fact–er, experience: lay and clergy that I know who jumped from ACNA over to Orthodoxy or Rome did so largely because of ACNA’s stalemate on female ordiantion, and either persecution for opposing such, or discouragement at the lack of direction towards a solution. The former’s explicit support alienates the classical, the reformed, the catholic; the latter’s implicit support breaks confidence there is ultimately any doctrinal core in the Anglican church, which includes consequences when doctrines are not upheld.
For example, the conversion of Michael Nazir-Ali to Rome appeared to be about the total breakdown in governance in Gafcon: Kenya consecrated two women to the episcopacy in violation of standards agreed upon, and nothing happened except “well it doesn’t matter that much anyway; it isn’t like Gafcon is a jurisdiction” 2) the issue of female consecration/ordination itself, which negatively impacts talks with Orthodoxy, Catholic, Coptic, PNCC; any Apostolic church except Anglican and liberal, affirming Old Catholics.
The above statement then is, in my experience, is inaccurate. People have been taught Anglicanism, including a rich doctrinal history of the classical and Anglo-Catholic luminaries. What they see in Anglicanism is a total lack of gumption to actually be Anglican, and may as well move on to a place that, like the post-Vatican II RC, and Western Rite Orthodox are each more “Anglican” than many Anglicans.
Zero was not the right number for ceremonies, but the number should be pretty low. And Cranmer anticipated in “Of ceremonies” that over time more ceremonies would need to be excised as they proved to be distracting or grounds for superstition.
One can see in this a very modern recognition of the scarcity of human attention: something will attract the attention of the congregation, something will occupy the rector’s explanatory time, something will be the focus of observation and remark for visitors. The traditional Anglican practice strips away much of the outward trappings, fixing the attention on the Word of God, prayer, and music (the one place where ornate elaboration in the service was most characteristically Anglican).
In short, before the twentieth century Anglicanism was a religion of the word. It appealed constantly and pervasively to the ear.
Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture
The English reformers hacked away at the medieval ceremonies with a vengeance. Archbishop Cranmer banned all of the Catholic sacramentals—no candles at Candlemas, no ashes at Ash Wednesday, no palms at Palm Sunday. He prohibited lighted candles on the Communion table. Not only did he remove all crossings in the Communion service, he even revised the text of the service to remove the places where late medieval priests had been in the habit of making the sign of the cross. The mass-associated eucharistic vestments—the chasuble and stole—were gone.
Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture
I see emerging trends amid my students that frighten me—eyes fixed on screens, apathy, lack of concern for God’s moral standards, and dwindling church attendance. But one thing scares me above all else: When they first enter my classroom, most of my students seem to believe that even if Christianity happens to be fully true, it doesn’t really matter.
In response, I encourage students to see that Jesus is reigning right now—socially, politically, morally—and that genuine, this-world harm follows when we ignore his directives. (Check back in a few years, and I’ll tell you if I’m making any headway.)
I also see heartening trends. In comparison with a decade prior, my current students show a deep concern for the social well-being of others. They are more welcoming to outcasts, loners, and misfits. That sounds a lot like King Jesus, right?
They also yearn to connect with others authentically, even as they struggle to learn how to do that through a thousand intervening screens. They are primed not simply to hear a Billy Graham–style gospel invitation in a stadium but to connect with fellow Christians who want to help them grow in loyalty.
Source: ‘Conscious Uncoupling’ from Church Is the New Temptation | Christianity Today
I believe the Anglo-Catholic tradition in today’s context is poised between nihilistic irrelevance and prophetic missional restoration. In the same way that the Church of England needed the Anglo Catholic movement in the 19th Century it now needs its theological and devotional theology once again in order to effectively and appropriately respond to the post-modern challenge. The movement is uniquely placed to help find new ways of engaging with society and finding new ways of spiritual engagement whilst retaining the mystery, holiness and integrity of the Christian faith. In order to realise this calling the movement must fully realise the meaning of apostolic succession and completely re-examine the liturgies and devotional styles that are leaving many Anglo-Catholics restricted and trapped in a Victorian re- enactment that had limited success in its day and is increasingly seen today as unintelligible and irrelevant.
The post-modern context is radically different to what has been before and the church can no longer resist change if it wants to share the Gospel. The church by its very nature is missional and any refusal on its part not to meaningfully engage in mission means it is denying itself, it is no longer sacred or holy and has departed from the way of God.
The extent of the changes required are so significant that a second Oxford Movement is required, a movement strong enough to effectively challenge the skepticism and individualism within the movement itself. Evidence and experience shows that where the tradition does respond to the new context positively it is able to radically reinvent catholic worship that is relevant, accessible and desperately wanted by England’s communities.
Source: Anglo Catholicism: Historical re-enactment society or a potent force for contemporary evangelism
The post-modern thesis whilst helpful in its challenge has created an eschatological hegemony of fatalism and defeat. Experience says that Anglo Catholic churches, like other traditions, can grow and establish sustainability but evidence clearly indicates that to do this they need to change and respond to their immediate context and the wider changes in society. Churches that have a focus on mission and make changes to their life and services grow and thrive.
To achieve this the movement desperately needs a second period of radical and uncompromising deconstruction and reformation, a second Oxford Movement, if it is to challenge the things that are holding it back and preventing it from proclaiming the Gospel anew. Staying the same isn’t an option and indeed could be argued as the definition of madness. Conversely, merging with the surrounding culture is of course also not a desirable option.
Source: Anglo Catholicism: Historical re-enactment society or a potent force for contemporary evangelism
After the vote reaffirming the decision to oust Saddleback, Warren said in a YouTube video that he wasn’t surprised and that he made his appeal “knowing we weren’t going to win.” He compared the movement to that of William Wilberforce, a British politician who lobbied to abolish the slave trade in Great Britain and triumphed after 17 years.
“I wanted to push the conversation,” Warren said. “I wanted to speak up for millions of Southern Baptist women, who I believe their spiritual gifts and their leadership gifts and talents are being wasted. And we can’t complete the Great Commission if 50% of our population sits on the shelf.”
Warren highlighted that the vote wasn’t unanimous.
“The next generation of Southern Baptists, they’re not here,” he added. “I can guarantee that change will happen at some point.”
Source: Southern Baptists finalize ouster of O.C.’s Saddleback Church - Los Angeles Times
A few points:
Warren said. “No one is asking any Southern Baptist church to change their theology. I’m not asking you to agree with my church, I’m asking you to act like a Southern Baptist, who have historically agreed to disagree on dozens of doctrines.”
“From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members."
[…]
“It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century.”
Of all the Catholic martyrs, 85-year-old Polycarp heads my list of inspirational heroes of the faith. In refusing to burn a pinch of incense to the deity of the Roman Emperor, Polycarp said: “86 years have I served Jesus and He has done me no wrong. How can I then blaspheme my king and saviour?” He wasn’t asked to do much. Just sprinkle some incense as a recognition of the crazed emperor’s ego-mania spilling over into a divinity complex. But he refused.
The unwillingness of the early Church to bow down and worship state gods is part of the rich inspiring myth and history of the Church. It set Christians apart. Their morals and their ideals were pitched so differently from their “bread and circuses” neighbours. But they had to take a stand. And from time to time, as Jesus said it would, it cost some of them their lives.
Source: Gavin Ashenden - Catholic Herald
The blunt truth of the matter is that large churches like Saddleback really don’t need a denomination to thrive. These days denominations generally exist to support their medium and small size churches. The fact that the SBC has several large churches in its stable is a testament to a century and a half of evangelisation and organisation. Whether it’s going to be able to use either or both to break out of its ethnocentric and respectability trap and reach out again in a meaningful way is a whole different issue.
It’s worth noting that many of the churches which have defected to the Global Methodist Church are the UMC’s larger churches. Although denominations primary serve their medium and small size churches, they need their larger churches for financial reasons. Given their structure and strength, the SBC, IMHO, is in a better position to survive the loss of one large church like Saddleback than the Methodists several.
Source: Giving Rick Warren the Final Boot – Positive Infinity
I believe that without such clarity and catholicity in theological method the ‘conservatism’ of, say, ACNA on sexual morality or of a traditional Old High Churchman on the ordination of women will prove to be merely the slow lane to the destination already reached by TEC, the CofE, and the Anglican Communion in general.
Source: Old High Churchmen and Continuing Anglicans – Anglican Catholic Liturgy and Theology
We who are Evangelicals recognize the need to address the widespread misunderstanding in our community that sola scriptura (Scripture alone) means nuda scriptura (literally, Scripture unclothed; i.e., denuded of and abstracted from its churchly context). The phrase sola scriptura refers to the primacy and sufficiency of Scripture as the theological norm—the only infallible rule of faith and practice—over all tradition rather than the mere rejection of tradition itself. The isolation of Scripture study from the believing community of faith (nuda scriptura) disregards the Holy Spirit’s work in guiding the witness of the people of God to scriptural truths, and leaves the interpretation of that truth vulnerable to unfettered subjectivism.
The danger of departure from the hermeneutic of the Anglican Reformers has already become clear. The Kigali Commitment promises to “affirm and encourage . . . leadership roles of GAFCON women in family, Church and society.” This statement implicitly ratifies women’s ordination to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy. All three are already being practiced in several GAFCON provinces, and the first two in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA).
We believe in ministry for women in a large variety of roles that the ancient fathers endorsed, including the order of deaconesses. But the ordination of women to sacramental ministry violates the plain sense of Scripture, which the English Reformers prized.
Disagreements among Anglicans about women’s ordination (as well as homosexuality and other controversial issues) make clear that this plain sense can be arrived at only by reading Scripture through the lens of the tradition of the Church.
Furthermore, women’s ordination breaches the conciliarism that the English Reformers practiced and esteemed. They knew that the rule in the early Church in resolving disputes was to accept only rites that agreed with Scripture as understood by the whole Church. The biblical authors insist not only that Scripture is the Word of God, but also that the Church of the living God [is] a pillar and buttress of truth (1 Tim. 3:15). Their criterion is Scripture as understood by the whole Church.
Rites for women’s ordination have been approved without the consent of the whole Church. They have come primarily from a minority of the world’s churches, those that are heretical and dying. This is a new and (mostly) Western development. The ACNA College of Bishops insisted upon this in 2017 when it concluded that women’s ordination is a “recent innovation” with “insufficient scriptural warrant.” This salutary statement recognizes that the recent departure from the traditional understanding of man and woman within the Bride of Christ deviates from the way the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church has understood Holy Order for two millennia.
Source: Is the Anglican “Reset” Truly Anglican? | Hans Boersma, Gerald McDermott, Greg Peters | First Things
The situation in the Diocese of the Upper Midwest was, however, a largely internal matter and the complaints about BR largely concerned his administration. While the situation was contentious throughout The ACNA and has caused emotions to run high and a good bit of poor publicity, it is hard to say that any other diocesan bishop in particular were themselves personally, in the legal sense, grieved by the administration of BR in his own diocese.
Source: About The ACNA canonical problems
Fr. Maximos of Mount Athos is quoted extensively on the subject of logismoi in Kyriakos Markides' book, Mountain of Silence. Fr. Maximos describes five stages of logismoi as detailed in the teachings of the Fathers of the Church:
Fr. Maximos explains that no sin is committed until the stage of Consent, though he warns that if a person is of weak temperament, they are unlikely to be able to resist the logismoi at the Interaction stage.
Fr. Maximos teaches that the best way to combat logismoi is to be indifferent, to ignore them. He suggests that a person should pray to combat logismoi, but only when not overcome by fear.
Source: Logismoi - OrthodoxWiki
The truth is that the GAFCON primates have expressly chosen language that shows they are bent on forgetting that there is still great division, especially on issues of the ordination of women to the episcopate. They have chosen instead to move forward in a way that relegates these very serious issues to secondary, adiaphora, hang-ups. The problem is, if I may be utterly clear, they have even misrepresented the language of the Jerusalem Declaration. This is particularly dangerous.
Source: Convenient Forgetting and the Jerusalem Declaration - The North American Anglican