The Archbishop
of Canterbury has warned that the Anglican church is
tottering on the brink of disintegration amid
disputes between liberals and traditionalists.
In his most
stark comments yet about divisions over issues such
as homosexuality, the Most Rev Justin Welby said the
Church was coming perilously close to plunging into
a “ravine of intolerance”.
He even drew
parallels between the crisis afflicting the
77-million-strong worldwide network of Anglican
churches and the atmosphere during the Civil War.
And he likened the collective behaviour of the
Church to a “drunk man” staggering ever closer to
the edge of a cliff.
Yet he added
that many of the issues over which different
factions in the Church were fighting were
“incomprehensible” to people outside it.
He spoke out
during a sermon in Monterrey, Mexico, which he was
visiting as part of a plan to travel to every
province of the Anglican Communion at the start of
his ministry.
The Archbishop,
who took office in February, inherited a Church
deeply divided at home and abroad.
At home, he has
been attempting to resolve the seemingly intractable
disagreements within the Church of England over
women bishops. But the worldwide Anglican Church has
also been split between liberal provinces,
particularly in North America, and more conservative
regions for several years after the US Church
consecrated its first openly homosexual bishop.
So says the
Archbishop of Canterbury:
The
Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that the
Anglican church is tottering on the brink of
disintegration amid disputes between liberals
and traditionalists.
At last someone
has noticed. Sadly, although the prognosis is
probably accurate, the diagnosis isn’t.
The cause of
the Anglican malaise has never been the fact that
there are disputes between liberals and
conservatives; the cause is simply that liberals
have got it wrong.
Justin Welby
went on to note:
In his most
stark comments yet about divisions over issues
such as homosexuality, the Most Rev Justin Welby
said the Church was coming perilously close to
plunging into a “ravine of intolerance”.
“Intolerance”
isn’t the problem either; misrepresenting
Christianity – and that’s what liberals in the
homosexuality debate tend to do – is intolerable.
Yet he
added that many of the issues over which
different factions in the Church were fighting
were “incomprehensible” to people outside it.
Undoubtedly
true; but the incomprehensibility of the debate
doesn’t mean – as Welby seems to imply – that both
factions must be incorrect.
“On one
side is the steep fall into an absence of any
core beliefs, a chasm where we lose touch with
God, and thus we rely only on ourselves and our
own message. On the other side there is a vast
fall into a ravine of intolerance and cruel
exclusion. It is for those who claim all truth,
and exclude any who question.”
The first
sentence is a suitable epithet for North American
Anglicanism. The second is a sure sign that Welby
has been conned by liberals into believing that
conservatives are intolerant and that making any
demands of anyone renders a church exclusive. The
third appears to be a concession to contemporary
relativism: truth is unknowable.
At least one
thing is correct: we are staggering close to the
edge of a cliff.
