Vocation Deferred: The Necessary Challenge of Communion

http://anglicancommunioninstitute.com/content/view/82/1/

[The Anglican Communion Institute] 7 May 2007--There are at least two working conceptions of the church vying with one another in our midst as Anglicans that have consumed the energies of almost all of our councils. Neither of these two views has shown any real interest in figuring out Christ’s call and prayer to unity among his disciples. Furthermore, neither can coexist with each other. Their continued promotion will represent not only a turning away from communion but will most certainly destroy the practical realities of the Anglican Communion itself.

One view, which I shall call the “localist” view, is one that the TEC’s general leadership seems to be vigorously pressing at the moment. It claims that every local church fulfills the Gospel calling wherever it is and according to whoever it is, and is faithful only as it does this. The Gospel is fully or at least rightly realized insofar it is incarnated in this or that place. This is the church: an autonomous act of faithfulness – of which there may be many, none of which impinge upon the integrity of the other. The localist view represents a certain kind of self-sufficiency with respect to the church – the sufficiency of local faith.

Another view, which I shall call the “confessionalist” view, is held by many conservatives (though not all), in both Western and non-Western churches. It defines the church according to a definite framework of belief and practical assertion, and claims that where the Gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments duly administered, there is the church, and nowhere else. There is, in fact, only one church – not many instances of it; but this oneness is given at any moment only in the congruity of true preaching and sacrament. The true church is an event, sometimes extended in space but not necessarily, that takes in the breadth or narrowness of ecclesial reach at any given time. This view represents another kind of self-sufficiency – the sufficiency of identity.