Another Divisive Unity Report

http://www.evangelicals.org/news.asp?id=654

[EV News] 24 Apr 2007--The recent report, Growing Together, is evidence that over thirty years of talks about Church reunion have been ineffective and misdirected. The process, known as ARCIC, failed because it had as its main goal institutional unity rather than unity in truth and faith.

Now a new approach is being tried, represented by IARCCUM, which focuses on joint activity and mission. However this cannot escape the fundamental divisions which still exist.

At the reformation, after centuries of conflict, the Church of England freed itself from the yoke and authority of the Roman Church and in particular the Pope. This facilitated the reformation of teaching and practice in the Church.

Growing Together shows that the fixation with the authority of the Bishop of Rome continues. This betrays the heart of the problem; that the errors of the Roman Catholic Church have been propped up by the false claims of the Papacy. Indeed, since the Reformation various Popes have deepened division by claiming that blatant errors were infallible truths. The papacy has thus been one of the chief causes of division in Christ’s Church.