The archbishop of Canterbury is proposing to effectively dissolve the fractious and bitterly divided worldwide Anglican communion and replace it with a much looser grouping. …
He believes that the communion – notionally the third largest Christian body in the world with 80 million members, after the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches – has become impossible to hold together due to arguments over power and sexuality and has, for the past 20 years, been completely dysfunctional.
Archbishop of Canterbury plans to loosen ties of divided Anglican communion
Comments
6 responses to “Archbishop of Canterbury plans to loosen ties of divided Anglican communion”
-
And Pope Francis is thinking about letting priests get married.
Religion journalism seems to rely a great deal on unsourced rumors.
-
I wonder if divisions in the Anglican Communion over liturgy and theology are as important as divisions over sexuality. There is a marked difference between evangelical Anglicanism and Anglo-Catholicism in belief and ritual, but these differences are polyvalent. It’s important to remember that in world Anglicanism, issues such as sexuality do not map exactly over liturgical or theological positions. This is why, I suspect, Abp. Welby has quite a task on his hands should he wish to reform the political structure of the Anglican Communion.
-
@Jordan Zarembo:
The liturgy wars in the AC have been going on for a very long time (although it’s a bit difficult to imagine a “Bob Dylan mass” in the 1800s), and are in many ways a feature, not a bug, of the communion (Article 34).
-
-
I’ve heard it lamented by an Anglican that their communion managed to preserve unity for over a century in the face of widely divergent and contradictory positions on the real presence in the Eucharist, but can’t manage the same thing over questions of sexual ethics. I think it says something about which of our practices are really self-defining as humans.
-
Whether there is any truth here or no, he clearly has a lot to contend with. I wonder how he plans to deal with the recently-announced re-instatement of licensing for religious leaders:
The strategy, which was supposed to be published in spring this year, has been delayed for months amid deep concern in some parts of government and most of the counter-extremism community about its most radical measure, to ban individuals whose behaviour “falls below the thresholds in counter-terrorism legislation” but which “undermines British values.”
So religious leaders who have broken no law but ‘undermine British values’ will be banned from serving as ministers.
And this at least is more than hearsay:
[Prime Minister] Cameron has said: “For far too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens that as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach.”
-
@Kevin Crow:
This seems to be correct. So a Catholic teacher who teaches that marriage should be between a man and a woman cannot rely on freedom of religion or freedom of speech but may be dismissed for going against “British values” as defined by the government of the day. George Orwell warned us about this.
-
by
Tags:
Please leave a reply.