A new international coalition to stop the proposed Anglican Covenant begins this morning. It is the brain-child of Lionel Demiel in Pittsburgh and numerous collaborators across the pond including Simon Sarmiento, Giles Goddard, and Madpriest along with contributors from Ireland and New Zealand. Our own Grandmere Mimi is in on it.
The primary purpose of the Covenant is to appease the rebellious rightwing of Anglicanism by punishing the North American churches for being too welcoming to women, gays and lesbians. The proposed Covenant will radically alter the very nature of Anglican Christianity. The confederation of catholic and evangelical believers forged by Queen Elizabeth I, the integrated Via Media articulated by Richard Hooker, will be transformed into the very centralized authoritarian confessional church that both sought to avoid. An international body of Primates will have veto power over the decisions of national and regional churches. No particular church will be able to make changes without approval from all the other churches in the Communion. The Anglican Communion will be transformed from a free association of independent churches into a collection of dependencies held together by contractual obligation.
This organization stands for the original meaning of Anglicanism, where people of diverse and even opposing points of view can live and work together under a single broad roof. Anglicanism is where the long separated sacramental and evangelical paths of Christianity can find their way back toward each other again. Anglicanism is the institutional humility unique in Christianity that says that we do not have all the answers, our human powers of understanding are mortal and limited, but let's find our way together as best as we can.
The new website is also linked over on the sidebar on the No Anglican Covenant logo.
The new website is also linked over on the sidebar on the No Anglican Covenant logo.
Let's torpedo this thing and send it the way of the Bismarck, to Davey Jones' Locker.
Not accidentally, today is the Feast Day of Richard Hooker
A SPECIAL NOTE:
While I'm so happy to see my name included among the founders, in fact, mine was but a tiny tiny role. Happily, greater talents than mine created this organization and are running it. Many of them have worked tirelessly to put this together, especially Lesley Fellows, Simon Sarmiento, Malcolm French, and most especially Lionel Demiel. Thanks to them and to so many others for their magnificent work.
May our endeavors always be acceptable to God and may God prosper the work of our hands.
Albrecht Durer, The Landauer Altarpiece
7 comments:
Blessings to all who saw the way to begin this movement, and like you I pray God's hand on this endeavor.
God bless! [I admit, when I saw your headline listed over at FOJ's, I thought you meant Resistance to the Rethuglicans . . . but the "Anglican Covenant" seems like it was birthed from the sick minds of Rethuglicans anyway, so there's very little difference! ;-/]
Resisting Republican rule too. That works for me.
Bearing in mind the fun we've with other people's acronyms (FOCA, FiF-UK), let's be sure that if we call ourselves The Hookers, we go into it knowingly.
The Hookers. I like that.
"This organization stands for the original meaning of Anglicanism"
I suggest you read the parker society volumes of the 1800's before you make Anglicanism out to be so inclusive of all kinds of views. The purpose of these volumes was "For the publication of th works of the Fathers and early writers of the REFORMED ENGLISH CHURCH. If you want to know what these men believed and what they taught you must read their writings. These writings are from the beginning of the Church of England (1500's) ergo they give the clearest undefiled view of what Anglicanism truly is versus what people would have it be today. I don't believe you will find their writings very accomodating to your all inclusive diverse and opposing points of view. Anglicanism as defined by them is Protestant Reformed Calvinistic and Evangelical. There are 54 volumes to wade through but they are worth reading if you wish to know what Anglicanism is and will always be.
Derrick,
So Anglo-Catholics going back to Little Gidding should be proscribed from Anglicanism and banished to the outer darkness with Satan and all his little wizards.
"Anglicanism as defined by them is Protestant Reformed Calvinistic and Evangelical."
So why did Oliver Cromwell go to so much trouble to behead Archbishop Laud? Why did the Anglican English Navy put up such a fight against the good Calvinist Protestant Reformed Dutch Navy? Why did the English bother to have that nasty bloody civil war if everyone was always Calvinist? I suppose the Osford Movement and the Anglo-Catholic revival of the 19th century are simply heretics beyond the pale. And the Anglo-Catholic socialism of the Cowley Fathers and Frederick Dennison Maurice ... well, we all know that God is conservative and created capitalism.
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