Saturday, March 14, 2009

Too late for Anglicanism?

http://ugleyvicar.blogspot.com/2009/03/too-late-for-anglicanism.html

[The Ugley Vicar] 14 Mar 2009--Well, if there is one thing that Liberals and Traditionalists agree on in the Anglican Church, it is that we should ‘expel the immoral brother’. The trouble is, they disagree totally as to what qualifies as ‘immorality’.

Is it immoral for the Church of Nigeria to support the criminalizing of same-sex relationships (as used to be the case in all Western societies until very recently)? Or is it immoral for the Church in North America to sanctify those relationships (and at the same time to shift the boundaries of what may be believed doctrinally so as to threaten any connections with the church’s received faith)?

The truth is, it hardly matters any more as far as the Communion is concerned. St Paul’s warning has finally come true: “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.”

The sad truth is that, even if the Church of Nigeria might need to hear a word of correction, Western Anglicanism is hardly in a position to deliver it. Why should anyone listen to a Church which scarcely has any theological coherence whatsoever? And similarly, how can the Western Church expect to be listened to by the Church in Nigerian, given that it is unwilling to listen itself to a rebuke from that quarter?

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