Anglicans and Their Unwelcome House Guests

Imagine a fan so full of admiration that he takes your name and moves into your house. Your family has always tried to reach out to others and so you allow him to stay with you as an act of kindness.

Weirdly, after this fan moves in he becomes quite critical. He decides that many of your costumes and ways are unworthy of the family name and begins to demand that you change them. Your own children stop coming home, because the interloper has become so obnoxious.

At that point, charity finally exhausted, you demand that he leave. He then barricades himself in his room, which he points out you have called "his room," and refuses to leave. He calls you a false and hateful person who has missed the "spirit of the family." Neighbors who have not followed the situation wonder why you are being so mean to a family member. You simply wish that he would go form his own family and leave you in peace.

This story might help a neutral observer to understand what is happening in American Anglicanism.

Over the last half-century, the American Church has become an embarrassment to the global Church. They ceased to be Anglican in any meaningful sense, or in some cases even Christian, and the rest of the Anglican world finally decided to clean house. Certain people hijacked the American Anglican "family name," but had no real ideological connection to the historic faith.

The world is telling them to go find their own house.

Only the most narrow minded person, whose vision of Christianity is parochial enough to see the Church as primarily European and North American, could be confused about the situation. The amazing thing is how patient the global majority has been with the struggling, shrinking American church.

Global Anglicans are a tolerant group, but are finally telling the liberal interlopers to go their own way and stop pretending to be Anglican. They are reaching out to the actual Anglicans that remain in North America and are working to rebuild the American branch of the movement. Worldwide Anglicanism is trying to save the brand!

This is not a family split, since the people being politely asked to leave are not really part of the global Anglican family. All of this is confusing to Americans, since what is left of the Anglican Church here, sadly decayed from its height, but still possessing great wealth inherited from long dead orthodox members, is in the hands of these Anglicans-in-name-only.

While the historic Anglican community has always been theological diverse, these innovative interlopers had nothing to do with either the Evangelical Anglicanism of Wesley, the more Reformed Anglicanism of Cranmer, or the Anglo-Catholicism of Pusey. As a national church Anglicanism was tolerant of diversity amongst Christians who were not Roman Catholic, but believed the Creed.

This polite spirit of theological accommodation, part of the English patrimony, was abused in America. Some people thought Christianity had to change, and quietly brought on this change in America by using old Christian words to describe very different ideas.

This is not to insult American innovators like Bishop John Shelby Spong. They certainly have important and interesting things to say, but as reformers they seem not very courageous. Luther, at least, did not pretend to be a Roman Catholic.

Those who have found Anglican beliefs, or even Christian beliefs, wrong, should form their own religion and argue for it. We shall see how they do. It seems, at best, impolite to take over institutions founded on the blood and money of people who had the old beliefs, but this is what they have done. Still, global Anglicanism seems willing to let American innovators keep the money and the property, allowing them a dignified departure.

This is a sad thing, but it need not be a hateful thing.

Americans who wish a new religion that uses the name of Jesus, but little that the New Testament says, have a right to form it. Americans that don't like Christian morality have the right to form a church based on the morality they do prefer. Those leaving Christendom know that we shall miss them, would welcome them back, and will be fascinated to see what comes of this new faith.

Many of us will look forward to reading their books and engaging in discussions with them. Friendly, open, interfaith dialogue with pioneers of this new faith like John Spong, can only benefit Christians.

Here is hoping that when the left that has controlled the American wing of Anglicanism is finally and politely asked by the rest of the world to leave off calling themselves Anglicans, that they will bravely give up the buildings, endowments, and vocabulary and strike out on their own. That would be admirable and interesting.

Meanwhile, the rest of us look forward to ecumenical dialogue with Anglicans in the United States after clarity is achieved. The global reach of this renewed Anglicanism will go far in helping other Christians forget the sad parochialism that has so gripped the Episcopal Church in the United States for the last fifty years.

The competition of ideas is good for everyone and clarity and coherence in Anglicanism will enable that voice to once again be heard in the ecumenical debate. Those of us in other parts of Christianity in America can only benefit by a renewed, evangelistic zeal from that ancient and important church.

Comments

Please report offensive comments below.

John Mark Reynolds has done a fine job. There are elements of the Anglican Church including the head of the Episcopal Church in the United States, which have departed from the teaching of the Holy Catholic Church. Within the Christian community there is a great deal of differences, but the Episcopal Church in the United States is teaching what Holy Scripture calls sin as something Holy.

Scott+

Posted by: Scottphillipwilson | January 4, 2009 5:27 PM
Report Offensive Comment

I'm rather amazed by two aspects of the seven previous comments.
The first is the profound level of ignorance revealed about the Christian faith and its history, particulalry about what has been happening in the Anglican world over the past century or so.
The second is the number of commenters who interpreted Reynolds' piece as an attack on homosexuality -- a topic he did not mention or even allude to in his article. These commenters seem to have a fixation on their own genitalia.

Reynolds is writing about the U.S. "Episcopal" church leaders' betrayal, abandonment and rejection of all the ancient creeds of the universal Church -- beginning with the rejection of the authority of Scripture. The recent flap over homosexuals is simply a particularly clear (in that it directly rejects explicit Scriptural texts) example of what has been going on for decades. The previous commenters have missed the forest by focusing on the latest weed to appear -- and this says much more about them than about Reynolds and the Believing Anglicans.

Note, by the way, that I'm not hiding behind a pseudonymn. I am an orthodox Lutheran of Swedish heritage who has seen the same pattern develop in my beloved Church of Sweden -- there too, the underlying problem is rejection of Scripture, and the homosexual agenda is simply the second most recent fad to emerge from a trend that began when the socialists took over the state church in the 1920s, and promptly began destroying it from within and without. Today, the "Church" of Sweden is no longer even a Christian church, though it still has a small believing remnant. In the CoS, the 'avant garde' is becoming bored with pushing homosexual agendae and is beginning to move on to radical environmentalism -- just another fad to replace and reject the Faith Once for All Time Delivered to the Saints.

Posted by: Barnekow | January 4, 2009 12:23 PM
Report Offensive Comment

To read Dr Reynolds on the sacred purity of the Anglican faith, you'd be excused for not realizing that the Anglican Church was founded as a cover for Henry VIII's desire to be an adulterer.His sacred vessel was born of sin.

Posted by: ssr047 | December 22, 2008 8:51 AM
Report Offensive Comment

This essay makes no sense at all. And it is a little mean-spirited. No one came into the Episcopal Church and kicked the "good" people. The Conservatives became complacent and indolent and let the liberal people become dominant, and then decided that the acceptance of gay people was going too far. I am a little sick of all these conservative blaming everything bad on the gays. Why do Conservative Religious types hate gay people so much? If they cannot get over it, this will surely be the end of Christianity.

Posted by: DanielintheLionsDen | December 21, 2008 2:28 PM
Report Offensive Comment

According to the US Biblical scholar, Morton Smith, of Columbia University, a fragment of manuscript he found at the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem in 1958, showed that the full text of St. Mark chapter 10 (between verses 34 and 35 in the standard version of the Bible) includes the passage:

"And the youth, looking upon him (Jesus), loved him and beseeched that he might remain with him. And going out of the tomb, they went into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days, Jesus instructed him and, at evening, the youth came to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God".

Posted by: Farnaz2 | December 20, 2008 4:57 PM
Report Offensive Comment

I mean, obviously they know that playing to homophobia was generally the only thing putting their ideologically-Fundie Christian screwups *over the top* to get in office in the first place, but then again, just imagine if, relieved of their *oh-so-heavy burden of queerbashing in the name of their God,* they'd put all that energy into *more concertedly doing the wrong fricking thing with our economy, environment, infrastructure, geopolitical stability, and future.*

Kind of like taking a hit for the team, when I say it that way.

But, again, enough. It's at the point where it's just shrill and silly, and as always, a diversion while the people they elect rob us blind for the greedy.

Posted by: Paganplace | December 20, 2008 1:20 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Seriously got to wonder what these people could be doing if their lives didn't seem to revolve around giving queer people a hard time.

Then again, given the shambles the last guy they elected left the country, if not the world in, maybe it's selfish of me to complain. After all, if they hadn't been coming after *me* with their injustice, blindness, and inability to recognize the humanity of fellow humans, I shudder to think what else they might have broken.

But, at this point, looks like bigotry against me is all they *got left,* so enough.

Posted by: Paganplace | December 20, 2008 1:14 PM
Report Offensive Comment

You Christians sure have problems with an awful lot of people.

Posted by: Farnaz2 | December 19, 2008 12:32 AM
Report Offensive Comment

In a very odd way, I agree with much of your post. The Catholic Church recently issued a 'policy statement' opposing abortion, stem cell research, cloning etc.,in other words everything that they designate as 'God's' realm of control. When humans learn to control what was 'Gods sphere of influence' they no longer need 'God' or any priestly intercession. Fighting for a fundamentalist position is fighting for the existance of religions. Reason and intellect are always the enemy of superstition and the control of humans that religion provides the ruling class.

I'm pretty sure you are uttering BS when you speak about the European Anglican Church as Ancient and Important. Ancient it may be, but Europeans are flocking from the church in large numbers and it will soon be as inconsequential as you imagine the liberal American version.

Posted by: ender2 | December 18, 2008 9:35 AM
Report Offensive Comment

The comments to this entry are closed.

John Mark Reynolds

Posts By Category

Posts By Date

Anglicans and Their Unwelcome House Guests

Comments