Birthed by Henry VIII's sexual sins, the Anglican Communion splits over its latest ones

 

The seeds of Anglicanism's destruction were sown in its own beginning, but no one ever talks about that anymore. A not little original leaven has nearly leavened the whole lump.

The Anglican Communion Is Coming Apart

Not even two weeks after the Church of England unveiled Sarah Mullally as the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury, a network of conservative Anglicans has exploded what fragile harmony or consensus existed.

... “We cannot continue to have communion with those who advocate the revisionist agenda, which has abandoned the inerrant word of God as the final authority,” [Archbishop of Rwanda Laurent] Mbanda wrote.

... Nobody expected Gafcon to approve of the choice of Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury. The former senior nurse turned bishop previously led the project to introduce gay blessings and also represents the first woman to ascend to the throne of Saint Augustine in Canterbury Cathedral, an issue for certain Gafcon provinces that do not ordain women as priests or bishops.

... Mbanda said the Global Anglican Communion was closer to a rebrand than a new organization and that it was the revisionist Anglicans in the UK and North America who were the true schismatics. 

... Felix Orji, a Nigerian bishop who leads an ACNA diocese in Texas, said some provinces which have had a foot in both camps will have “an intense battle over this issue.”

... “We’ve been pleading for repentance, for rapprochement, and now you have a woman, and this woman is in favor of everything we’re against,” the ACNA bishop said. “And so there is no hope. If the Church of England had chosen a male who is evangelical, I don’t think that this decision would have been made.” 

... “It is important that the primacy of England should not take precedence over the primacy of Scripture,” he said. “We cannot allow our affection for England to trump affection for Christ and his Word.” 

Faithful Anglicans in Africa and global South fire shot across the bow of deviant Archbishop of Canterbury over same-sex marriage

Conservative Anglicans Call for Break With Archbishop of Canterbury Over Same-Sex Blessings

Conservative Anglican leaders said that their church, riven by disagreements over homosexuality, could no longer recognize England’s Archbishop of Canterbury as first among equals and called for an overhaul of how the global denomination is led. 

Friday’s statement reflects a growing consensus among conservative Anglicans, most of them in Africa and elsewhere in the global South, that Archbishop Justin Welby should forfeit his world leadership role because of his support for the Church of England’s decision in February to allow the blessings of same-sex relationships. 

“This renders his leadership role in the Anglican Communion entirely indefensible,” said the statement by the Global Anglican Future Conference, known as Gafcon, which met this week in Rwanda.

More.

St. John Henry Newman rationalized Catholic adoption of paganism from time immemorial as sanctifying and transmuting it, same as bread and wine are transformed into holy body and blood by priests

Canonized a week ago, Newman was originally an evangelical Anglican.

Peter Hitchens: Protestant England as I knew it has almost entirely disappeared

From his splendidly temperate and richly informative essay, LATIMER AND RIDLEY ARE FORGOTTEN: A PROTESTANT UNDERSTANDING OF ENGLAND’S MARTYRS, here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

For More and Fisher have, more or less, won. The Elizabethan settlement long ago broke down. The Anglican Church, once forged to a gleaming hardness by the fires of Bloody Mary, has rusted away. Its Catholics now brandish thuribles and don chasubles, bowed down by embroidered copes at elaborate High Masses. Even its archbishops of Canterbury now array themselves in garish vestments that would have appalled their grandfathers. Its Protestants have wandered off into a land of guitars and modern language, full of the sort of enthusiasm Anglicanism once feared and despised, its Calvinism quite undiluted by godly order, sobriety, and reverence. The Elizabethan Prayer Book, which Catholics were once forced to endure, has almost disappeared from use in its own churches, except in cathedrals, or in a few services for very old people, held early in the morning or at sunset, until the Grim Reaper takes a hand, attendance dwindles, and they stop forever. The Prayer Book’s penitential, stern theology is too rich a mixture for a land that has grown comfortable with divorce and abortion. The English Bible, that great cause for which William Tyndale was strangled, is neglected and unread, its thrilling trumpet-blasts of seventeenth-century poetry unknown even to the officially well-educated, and almost never used in church. By another paradox, Roman Catholics have their own vernacular Bible and prayers, dreadfully inferior in beauty and euphony to those of the Church of England, though few know, because they have never heard or seen anything better. The Roman Catholics have even introduced Communion in both kinds, taken to singing hymns, and brought in married priests through the back door by ordaining married Anglo-Catholic defectors to the Ordinariate. Protestant England as I knew it has almost entirely disappeared, and its once-universal opinions are now regarded as odd, eccentric, and intolerant. Only in Northern Ireland and a few corners of Scotland will you find any remnant of the once-dominant worldview that saw popery as the ally of poverty, of “brass money and wooden shoes,” and of despotism.

Message on church sign once easily understood now requires explanation to thoroughly pornified public mind

Anglican Communion excludes the tiny homosexual-inclusive USA Episcopal Church for three years

It's about time:

"The decision in England will have little impact on Episcopalians in the pews, who have grown increasingly liberal after the 2003 consecration of the openly gay priest Gene Robinson as the bishop of New Hampshire. That action prompted dozens of U.S. churches to break off and declare their allegiance to conservative rival groups. ... The constituent churches, which preside over a membership of about 85 million, are self-governing. ... Like other mainline denominations, the Episcopal Church, home to U.S. presidents and the nation’s elite, has struggled to fill its pews in recent years. It has lost more than 20 percent of its members since it consecrated Robinson, and new statistics suggest that membership continues to fall, dropping 2.7 percent from 2013 to about 1.8 million U.S. members in 2014."

Read more at the link.

A Romanist Defines John 3:3 By John 3:5, And So Requires Baptism To Be Saved

Roman Catholic interpretation of being born again is on display here, where being born of water and spirit is said to define being born again, a natural if mistaken view with a long pedigree:

In verse 5, Jesus clarifies what he meant by “born again,” saying a similar sentence again but substituting in the phrase “born of water and the Spirit.” While the term “born again” is vague enough to possibly mean simply a conversion experience, being “born of water and the Spirit” is obviously not, at least not exclusively – I’ve never seen anyone get wet from saying the sinner's prayer.

What Christian action involves water and the Holy Spirit? The answer: baptism. To be “born again” means to baptized. This is not only the current Catholic interpretation of this text (also held today by many Anglicans, Lutherans, and Orthodox), but also the interpretation given by the early Church Fathers – indeed all orthodox Christians prior to the 16th century Protestant Reformation. ...

Jesus is teaching something that evangelicals frequently deny, but that the Catholic Church has always maintained: that baptism is necessary for salvation.

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This exegesis pays no attention, needless to say, to the narrative's rich symbolisms featuring an adult skulking about in the dead of night as opposed to a helpless child who would fittingly be asleep in his bed at such a time and be approachable, naturally, only in the full light of day. It knows nothing of the need to recover the natural openness, submissiveness and wariness of evil characteristic of a child, to which the mature adult like Nicodemus has normally long past said farewell. Nicodemus' adult skepticism, of course, is notably presaged in the person of Nathanael already in 1:46.

Nor does the interpretation take any note of the difference between only "seeing" the kingdom in v. 3 and actually "entering" into it in v. 5, which suggests that being born again is different from actually believing and is instead the necessary praeparatio for conversion, a view consistent with the Synoptic triple tradition about little children, "of such is the kingdom of heaven". To be born again is something an adult must do, not a child, a vivid circumlocution for entrusting oneself to the care of the Father.

Submitting to baptism in v. 5 is clearly the theological point intended by the Evangelist, to be sure, but as such it is evidence of the Urkatholicismus which is not yet apparent even in the long endings later fabricated to finish the damaged Mark, where baptism is described but as yet not required.

Just another sign of "John's" later time and place, a correction of a prior narrative which was thought to be inadequate, Luke the historian's efforts notwithstanding.