Communing with Christ: A Workshop on Anglican Ecclesiology

http://www.stephenswitness.com/2008/06/communing-with-christ.html

[Stephen's Witness] 4 Jul 2008--My brothers and sisters in Christ, as you know, we are here in extraordinary circumstances. The Anglican Communion stands at a crossroads and we have gathered in the Holy Land to enquire after the ancient paths so that we may discern for ourselves and the wider Church the path for the future that leads to life (Jeremiah 6:16). Let us not pretend that this Conference is not a sign of judgement, God’s judgement on our unfaithfulness as a Communion.

Thirty years ago, I was working on a doctorate on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were produced by a group of Jews who dissented from the worldly leadership of the Jerusalem priesthood and who set up a New Covenant community in the desert of Judea. They saw themselves repeating or rather continuing the Exile of 587 BC, when the nation had been overrun and a remnant sent to the waters of Babylon. The paradigm of Exile and Return is fixed in the Old Testament prophets and has been applied at critical moments in the Church’s history. Martin Luther, for instance, spoke of the “Babylonian Captivity of the Church” by Rome. Each in his own way, George Herbert the Anglican and Richard Baxter, the Puritan, sought to restore the church from the ground up, producing two classics of pastoral care: The Country Parson and The Reformed Pastor.

So today it obliges us to retrace the paths which made the Church of England and its daughter churches great so that we may, with penitent hearts, seek God’s grace and guidance for the future of the Communion. In particular, I am addressing the topic of Anglican Ecclesiology, the doctrine of church, ministry and sacraments, and church discipline.