An Interesting New website

Posted by Kendall Harmon

Check it out.

The claim of those who organized this is:

We are evangelical and catholic Anglicans, and fellow travelers from the wider household of God, assembled and summoned to a common labor in the ecumenical Church of Christ, not least through the present struggles and gifts of our communities.

We recognize that the Anglican Communion—the first instance of ecclesiality with which we, in this particular online assembly, wrestle for a blessing—is incomplete by itself, because we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands the wounds of our Lord’s body: the countless factions and disputes that do not bring Him glory, leaving us all together far short of our call to “share,” as sisters and brothers visibly united, in the “partnership” of His offering (I Cor 10.14ff.).

In a sense it has ever been so. We recall St Paul’s outrage with the Corinthians, who “came together (synerchesthai) …not for the better but for the worse,” a sobering point too-little reflected upon in our day by those, on all sides, who find the Church’s unity and orthodoxy uncomplicated—either simply given, or obviously taken away. Against both of these views, Paul insists that “there have to be factions (hairesis) among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine” (I Cor 11.17-19). And yet the Apostle does not on that account “commend” the Corinthians for showing “contempt for the Church of God and humiliat[ing] those who have nothing” (I Cor 11:22). Rather, Paul’s argument devolves to his prior exhortation to learn from the “example” of “Israel,” “written down to instruct us,” “so that we might not desire evil” but instead the singular “blessing that we bless.” Only upon this, objective basis: the blood and body of Christ unveiled, will the Corinthians learn to “do everything for the glory of God,” that is, to “give no offense to Jews or Greeks or to the Church,” to “please everyone in everything,” and not seek their “own advantage,” so that “many… may be saved” (I Cor 10).




Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Covenant • Anglican Identity • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • * Theology • Ecclesiology

3 Comments
Posted September 11, 2007 at 11:56 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Rocks wrote:

  * Fr. Will Brown
  * Fr. Mark Clavier
  * Fr. Tony Clavier
  * Rev’d Canon John Heidt
  * Fr. Greg Jones
  * Samuel Keyes
  * Graham Kings
  * Dean Nicholas Knisely
  * Fr. Dan Martins
  * Dorsey McConnell
  * Bruce Robison
  * Craig Uffman
  * Christopher Wells
  * Fr. Josh Whitfield, SSC

A lot of these names seem familiar….

September 11, 12:36 pm | [comment link]
2. John A. wrote:

This is a very interesting site and it is refreshing to read material from someone who can think well.  The sermon “Faith Communities in a Civil Society – Christian Perspectives” is interesting.  It contains some great comments that are worth thinking about but this one drives me crazy:

“When I claim truth for my religious convictions, it is not a claim that my opinion or belief is superior, but a confession that I have resolved to be unreservedly at the service of the reality that has changed my world and set me free from the enslavement of struggle and rivalry.” 

G.K. Chesterton has this retort: “At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”

Williams’ main(?) point is much more compelling:  “... but the point which Gandhi invites us to consider is that we shall persuade our culture about this only when religion ceases to appear as yet another human group hungry for security, privilege and the liberty to enforce its convictions. ... It proclaims both its right to exist on the basis of the call of God and its refusal to enforce that right by the routine methods of human conflict.”

September 11, 12:56 pm | [comment link]
3. Dave Sims wrote:

I think ++Williams’ concern is not so much with downgrading the truth status of his religious convictions —I don’t believe that he is a relativist of the sort that Chesterton rightly ridicules. I hear ++Williams saying we should hold Christian conviction in humility and in view of the grace it entails, not as an abstraction arrived at by virtue of our superior rationality.

September 11, 1:16 pm | [comment link]
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