Friday, August 08, 2008

United we fall: The writhings of worldwide Anglicanism are another reason to disestablish the Church of England

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11885689

[Economist.com] 8 Aug 2008--In the end it held together, but only just. The 650-odd bishops who attended the once-a-decade Lambeth conference went home with open schism between the liberal and conservative wings of the worldwide Anglican Communion averted. A split may prove no more than postponed, as the agreed mechanisms for making minds meet are oh-so-slowly put in place (see article). But at least the unedifying spectacle of comrades in Christ tearing strips off each other over gay sex will vanish from the headlines for a bit.

Does it matter if Anglicans fall out? Most churches are riven by tensions: it is not so long ago that the Roman Catholic Opus Dei glared at liberation theologists, and Moscow’s Orthodox still squabble like mad with Constantinople’s. But Anglicans lack the glue that binds those churches together: the power of the pope to impose discipline on straying Catholics; the body of undisputed theology that unites Orthodox believers even when they quarrel. Anglicanism works through relationships, a sense of belonging to a family with a shared inheritance. That now has waned. Despite the apparent reprieve, this year’s Lambeth conference could well be the last of its kind.

As a secular newspaper that supports gay marriage and believes in a firm line between church and state, we can hardly claim to be a neutral observer in this. Yet trying to look at the Communion from an Anglican perspective (or that of most of them), two things stand out. First, schism might not be a bad thing. And disestablishment would be a very good thing.

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