In last week’s Church Times David L. Edwards argues that the new Anglican Covenant may already be out of date.
Read the whole article here.
WILL THE NEW Anglican Covenant, which has already been drafted, be regarded as decisive by many people over many years? The history of attempts to define Anglicanism in a long text do not suggest a “Yes” — unless the Covenant is revised substantially as well as stylistically…
Lovely oxymoron that !
This covenant is starting to sound like prayers to put the genie back in the bottle. Bring back the “good old days” when men were really men, women were really women, and non-Christians were really little furry creatures not worthy of our Creation. Bring on globalisation, authority and democracy; as long as the wind is blowing in our (economic) direction. Sponsor dictatorships and death squads if the wind (power and/or money) are blowing someone else’s way. How many continents and nations should be hampered and destabilised simply so a few can plunder and swim as and where they will with… Read more »
Biblical fundamentalism is the worst enemy not only of traditional Anglican sanity but of the power and authority of Scripture itself.
“Biblical texts must be handled “faithfully, respectfully, comprehensively, and coherently” with the aid of “our best scholarship”, but “primarily through the teaching and initiative of the bishops and synods”.” Amen to that.
May I recommend the delightful interview of Bishop Richard Harries by Richard Dawkins which can be found on YouTube — it is a model of sanity, dialogue, and serene understanding of the major perspectives opened by Scripture.
Harries-Dawkins conversation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS2TFVe9LDc
I see that the sentence on the use of Scripture that I said Amen to actually comes from the proposed new Covenant. It is a sentence that could be interpreted in a narrow way, where “comprehensiveness” and “fidelity” might mean yoking oneself to every archaic dictum of Scripture, rather than interpreting Scripture in light of its ultimate purpose and in dialogue with the signs of the times.
It seems to me that this is very dangerous, indeed wide open to abuse from whomever will define themselves as of “authority”.
“faithfully, respectfully, comprehensively, and coherently” with the aid of “our best scholarship”, but “primarily through the teaching and initiative of the bishops and synods”.”
Each of these is a lethal threat to scholarship, not least the “-fully”s.
“Biblical fundamentalism is the worst enemy not only of traditional Anglican sanity but of the power and authority of Scripture itself.”
I’d go further. I’d say it’s the worst enemy of the Kingdom of God.
It reads to me that we have hardly yet gotten our minds and hearts and communities around two sticking points. One is the subtle but telling difference between a familiar Anglican claim – scripture contains all things needed for salvation – and the newly invigorated realignment claims – that scripture must and can only be read one, strictly correct way. I used to think that all Anglicans more or less subscribed to the former, and that therefore the conservative views/hermeneutics were simply one point on the wider Anglican spectrums, and happily so. Now of course that is all called rubbish,… Read more »
drdanfee I found this article posted on Ekklesia overnight heartening. http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5053 There is talk of the British government dropping the phrase “war on terror” as it connotes more alignment and credence to various groups than they would have otherwise. MP Hilary Benn is quoted as saying “The fight for the kind of world that most people want can, in the end, only be won in a different battle – a battle of values and ideas.” It hyperlinks back to a January article http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/news/world/070124tutu where Desmond Tutu comments that God is crying because Creation has been turned into a nightmare. Like… Read more »