The same faith? : comments [Matthew's Journal]

I'm not entirely happy with the answer that I had to give in the poll, but it was the one that most closely approximated my view.

I don't think that viewing homosexuality as being acceptable means that someone is not a Christian, and from all the FCA / GAFCON stuff I've read (which is a lot, not just the small amount that makes the mainstream media) I don't think anyone in FCA / GAFCON thinks that either. The issue (well, one of the issues) is really that the FCA people¹ consider the issue of homosexuality to be the presenting issue, the underlying issue that is actually a problem is their approach to the scriptures.

GAFCON state that (http://www.gafcon.org/news/background_on_gafcon/) homosexuality is only the presenting issue (of the crisis in the Anglican community). That FAQ page also explains why they think that this is a separate issue from other things that they might disagree on. In fact what is interesting about GAFCON / FCA is just how broad it is, theologically (including people from low church evangelicals to high church anglo-catholics), and numerically (if you look at the number of Anglicans represented by the Bishops / Archbishops who attended GAFCON I think it comes to something like 70% of the communion).

Broadhurst's comment is repeatedly quoted all over the place as if that view represents the view of FCA. I think that's extremely unfair - it's something one person said (and from what I've read it's not clear he did say it), and the comment is stripped from it's context (one might say "The devil is alive and well and living in place X" without meaning it literally - context is everything).

I think what is far more worrying about the Episcopalian church is how Schori has departed from the church's historic view of the uniqueness of Christ and the need for salvation through him. That and that they seem hell bent on fragmenting the communion (see Williams regret over the issue (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/13/archbishop-rowan-williams-gay-clergy), and Tom Wright's analysis (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6710640.ece) (remembering that Wright has constantly been hostile to FCA)).

¹ I am an FCA person, but here I mean the leaders

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From the coverage I've seen there also seems to be a theme of attitudes to other religions and proselytising. There have been a few Muslims get ~~to set up theocratic states in which they stamp out other religions why can't we~~ all the fun type comments, but I guess in your analysis this is all tied up with arguments about the truth and validity of the Bible and whether that should be stoutly advocated to others. I imagine some in the FCA members see too much pussy footing around other religious communities as a sign of relativism.

What do you think?

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GAFCON / FCA people have a number of core beliefs that unite them. One is that Christ is unique, and that Jesus is the only way to salvation (John 14:6). A natural consequence of this is that people in other religions are heading for judgement. This isn't a particularly new or surprising doctrine, but the liberal wing of the church (like Schori in America) do not seem to believe in the uniqueness of Christ, or that the world needs salvation through him.

I don't know exactly what you mean by a theme of attitudes, but as a Christian I believe that anyone who is not saved through Christ's death on the cross is not saved at all.

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I agree with you about the worrying issue of Schori's departure from the church's historic view on the uniqueness of Christ.

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I'd question how broad GAFCON/the FCA actually is - you imply it sweeps across the CofE from the low to the high (i.e. taking in the middle), but the reports I've seen indicate that it's an alliance of certain portions of both extremes. There are also a lot of blog posts from disaffected members of Forward in Faith about the FCA launch, which they attended, and how they found it disappointingly dominated by conservative evangelicals. To these bloggers one worry is that the FCA's obsession with the 'first order' issue of homosexuality will drive their own concerns over the 'second order' issues such as female headship down the agenda. The differentiation made between those two concerns (given that one could argue the scriptural basis of the 'second order' issue is firmer than that of the 'first') makes me think that perhaps there is more to this than FCA taking a very literal approach to scripture.

I can't find an attendance list for GAFCON, just their summary. Do you happen to have seen one? It would be interesting to know exactly who did go. Equally, if you know of one, I'd like to see a clear incidence of Shori saying something incredibly heretical - all I can find is her rather unclear statement that other religions provide people with a way toward God, which is not of itself a denial of the uniqueness of the incarnation.

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One interview (in Time) went like this:

Interviewer: “Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?”
Schori: “We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.”

NPR followed up on this:

Robin Young [NPR]: TIME asked you an interesting question, we thought, "Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?" And your answer, equally interesting, you said "We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box." And I read that and I said "What are you: a Unitarian?!?" [laughs]

What are you– that is another concern for people, because, they say Scripture says that Jesus says he was The Light and The Way and the only way to God the Father.

Bishop Schori: Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. Umm– that is not to say that Muslims, or Sikhs, or Jains, come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through… human experience.. through human experience of the divine. Christians talk about that in terms of Jesus.

Robin Young: So you're saying there are other ways to God.

Bishop Schori: Uhh… human communities have always searched for relationship that which is beyond them.. with the ultimate.. with the divine. For Christians, we say that our route to God is through Jesus. Uhh.. uh.. that doesn't mean that a Hindu.. uh.. doesn't experience God except through Jesus. It-it-it says that Hindus and people of other faith traditions approach God through their.. own cultural contexts; they relate to God, they experience God in human relationships, as well as ones that transcend human relationships; and Christians would say those are our experiences of Jesus; of God through the experience of Jesus.

Robin Young: It sounds like you're saying it's a parallel reality, but in another culture and language.

Bishop Schori: I think that's accurate.. I think that's accurate.

That is not the gospel, that's a false gospel. That is Christianity, and it's certainly not Anglicanism. Compare her answer with Article XVIII of the Thirty Nine Articles:

They also are to be had accursed that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the light of Nature. For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.

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Ah, I didn't see the follow-up interview, which clarifies things.

There is undoubtably a difference between arguing that all humans can experience God, and that the Spirit works in and through those who are outside the church, and that we should not place limits on that work and the possibility of salvation for those who do not know Christ, and what Schori seems to be saying - and affirming in her last response - which is that there's nothing unique about Christ at all, and he does not necessarily play any role as great high priest. She's gone a bit John Selby Spong.

Nice to see the 39 articles getting a mention. I hope you're following all of them, and not just using the conveniently useful one that support this argument.

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I can't say that I am following them. I have read them, but not recently, so I don't know them off by heart or anything like that. I'm a 'new Anglican' as I recently regained my faith. I'm currently working on reading through the whole of the Bible - when I've done that I'll focus more on reading and knowing more about other things (alongside still studying the Bible of course).

I only quoted that article because it seemed relevant to the discussion, not because I think it's more special than the other articles or anything.

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Article XXXIX is useful to know if you plan to marry by Special Licence.

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At the risk of giving a spoiler, one of the 39 Articles tells you that the Bible contains everything you need to know.

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Spoilers for Anglicanism! I love it!

This reminds me of a comment I made about

alextfish's NaNoWriMo novel (which contained an explicit sex scene) which I described as a "spoiler for real life".

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Here is a quote from an entirely random PDF (http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stjohnsvancouver.org%2Fmedia%2FPDFs%2FPowell-Russell-gafcon.pdf&ei=bWReSrvdKd_LjAeS09TiDQ&usg=AFQjCNG-RSE2a2m0dtRpDotUFJ-NzoSZCA&sig2=1xbrtktGVaUhFK4RDoaGJA): "If you want to talk in terms of numbers, it is a rough guide to say that the leaders involved in Gafcon – although around 25 percent of the number of bishops represent about 75 percent of the Anglican Communion.It is anticipated there will be 250 bishops and their wives, and 500 clergy and lay." The PDF has no authority of it's own, I only link to it because it matches what I remember the figures being. A little more Googling shows other pages with very similar statistics.

I remember having an Excel spreadsheet that showed how many bishops from each area where in attendence. It was about 25% of the worldwide Anglican bishops. Those Bishops did represent about 70-75% of the Anglicans in the world. One of the interesting things is that the representation of bishops is quite badly skewed because the Episcopalians have something like ten times as many bishops (per 1,000 people) as (I think) the Church of England, and the African churches have even fewer bishops per person than we do.

One of the net effects of this is that the Episcopalians can shout very loudly even though they represent an extremely small percentage of the church. Similarly (partly because of this and partly because we are prone to listen to American Anglicans but not (for example) African Anglicans) people tend to think of GAFCON as some small splinter group, but if you look at the figures it represents the overwhelming majority.

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Since those stats were given out by GAFCON, and trumpet their success, high-attendance and representation rate, I'm a bit distrustful of them. Neither GAFCON or the FCA has proved to be very good at providing the press with trustworthy releases. I have found some other GAFCON supporters stats stating that around 200 bishops attended GAFCON. 600 odd attended Lambeth (obviously there was some overlap, and some stayed away).

Apart from anything else, I believe that the Nigerian church calculates its membership on the basis of baptism rather than attendance - odd given that they're is associated with the Fellowship of CONFESSING Anglicans, I think. Also the irregular ordination of bishops and priests by GAFCON members makes me cagey about believing that their bishops represent huge numbers of well-informed, GAFCON-committed local laity.

TEC does have an awful lot of bishops per capita, of course, but I think that GAFCON manages to shout pretty loudly.

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I don't see any reason to doubt the GAFCON press releases particularly, I haven't seen any consistent lack of trustworthiness in their releases. When GAFCON occurred I followed everything in quite some detail, and the independent (by which I mean by bloggers - i.e. not the GAFCON organisers) numerical analysis was very similar. I would expect the figures to be slightly over-egged because everyone always does that (by choosing the most favourable way of representing stats rather than by just lying about the numbers).

That the Nigerian church calculates on that basis is indeed odd, and it'd be far more useful to know attendence. Nevertheless I think however we might quibble about the exact numbers, we can't say that they're some minor splinter group - they represent a very large number of Anglicans, if not (as seems likely) the majority.

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