Some rather bracing comments from the secretary general of the ACC

Paidiske

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Probably not?

There might perhaps be some Indigenous expressions of Christianity which are unique to here - really not my area of expertise - but apart from that I can't think of anything.
 
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seeking.IAM

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...I find it interesting that you conflate being Episcopalian with being American (such that you view the Boston tea party as being directly a statement with intended ecclesiological implications, rather than an action which had unintended or unforeseen ecclesiological consequences. Or have I misunderstood?)...

I did not mean to suggest the Boston tea party had direct ecclesiological implications. Rather, I see it as a reflection of the independent American spirit, that we are willing to declare our own path, to stand up for what we believe, and to disregard attempts at external control. While I value being part of the Anglican Communion and hope we remain so, I think there is no turning back for The Episcopal Church. I find it unlikely for TEC to renounce its positions just to stay a part of the fold. I also suspect we will have to be given the boot as I hear no wish to leave voluntarily.

And thank you for your statement recognizing us as your brothers and sisters in Christ, and your delight to share a pew or communion table with us should you ever visit America. It means a lot.
 
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FireDragon76

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Why is it only the US taking flack and being labelled "renegade", and having our identity as American individualists blamed for the dispute? Canada's Anglican church has taken a similar directions as Episcopalians in the US, after all, and they didn't have a Boston Tea Party.
 
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seeking.IAM

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Why is it only the US taking flack and being labelled "renegade", and having our identity as American individualists blamed for the dispute? Canada's Anglican church has taken a similar directions as Episcopalians in the US, after all, and they didn't have a Boston Tea Party.

Scotland too, correct?
 
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FireDragon76

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Scotland too, correct?

Yes, I think so as well. Even England is headed in that direction, slowly.

So it's really it's more of a "north vs. south" type thing now.
 
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Paidiske

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I did not mean to suggest the Boston tea party had direct ecclesiological implications. Rather, I see it as a reflection of the independent American spirit, that we are willing to declare our own path, to stand up for what we believe, and to disregard attempts at external control.

That makes sense... but is that something Christians - or Episcopalians - ought to embrace as part of their/our identity, too? Over against Christian identity and unity? That's what surprised me.

Why is it only the US taking flack and being labelled "renegade", and having our identity as American individualists blamed for the dispute? Canada's Anglican church has taken a similar directions as Episcopalians in the US, after all, and they didn't have a Boston Tea Party.

Ah, if you recall, this thread started with criticism of the other side of the argument.

You're right. But this dispute started when it was just the US, so I guess that's where the focus is.

But from where I am, it's not a north/south thing at all. If GAFCON did leave the communion, what would happen in Australia? Sydney and probably Tasmania, at least, would leave. My own diocese would become a battleground with each parish feeling they need to pick sides, and some of the biggest and wealthiest would leave. (It's an interesting legal question how the wealth and land ownership would play out; possibly they would leave without the wealth).

This is a question that threatens to divide me from parishes not 5km from where I am. To separate me from people with whom I have close collegial bonds and great affection. So it's not so simple and neat as all that; for some of us this schism, if it happened, would gut our churches.
 
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seeking.IAM

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That makes sense... but is that something Christians - or Episcopalians - ought to embrace as part of their/our identity, too? Over against Christian identity and unity?...

Probably not. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
 
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FireDragon76

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The depth of scorn I have for GAFCON is almost boundless.

It does seem like they are inflaming a controversy in order to manipulate the situation to their benefit.

Probably not. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

And what about the whole notion of being "incarnational"? Or the Protestant patrimony of Anglicanism? There have been plenty of Protestant "Tea Parties" that gave the logic of "Mother Church" the old heave-ho. I was actually surprised to learn at one time, Luther, after he read the Papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, which excommunicated him and labelled him an outlaw, that he and his friends burned the Church's canon. I think that tops the list in terms of tea parties.

Alesteir McGrath, in his book, Christianity's Dangerous Idea, states his opinion that eventually Anglicanism will become like Lutheranism - a group of denominations but not necessarily a large, centralised communion. He doesn't see a solution to the tensions between the Global South/GAFCON, and the rest of the Anglican world.
 
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Paidiske

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I don't see that being incarnational - or even enculturated - means that we ought to abandon sound ecclesiology.

To my mind, being a church means one bunch of people don't just declare their own path and do their own thing. We are bound together. I think of it a bit like marriage; one spouse doesn't control the other (ideally) but nor do they operate without reference to each other or their common good.

If Anglicanism becomes a group of denominations, that's not Anglicanism as I understand it at all.
 
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FireDragon76

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I don't see that being incarnational - or even enculturated - means that we ought to abandon sound ecclesiology.

To my mind, being a church means one bunch of people don't just declare their own path and do their own thing. We are bound together. I think of it a bit like marriage; one spouse doesn't control the other (ideally) but nor do they operate without reference to each other or their common good.

Are you familiar with Jesus' parable about the one lost sheep? Jesus says the good shepherd leaves the entire herd of sheep to go after the one lost sheep. Following Jesus is costly and sometimes it is inevitable that we will afflict the comfortable in the name of comforting the afflicted.
 
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Shane R

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Anglicanism will become like Lutheranism - a group of denominations but not necessarily a large, centralised communion.
In the North American context it already has. There is even a similar regional flavor to most of the splinter jurisdictions that I have observed in differences between groups such as ELS and LCMS. Of course, now we are passing into a period of reckoning and consolidation as little groups who have lost whatever charism they once had fold and/or merge with groups that have survived. Just this week we have seen a fairly major tremor pulse through the scene as the Church of Nigeria reworked how it's CANA dioceses (North American diaspora or missionary dioceses that were always under Episcopal oversight by the Nigerians) will interact with ACNA.
 
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FireDragon76

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In the North American context it already has. There is even a similar regional flavor to most of the splinter jurisdictions that I have observed in differences between groups such as ELS and LCMS. Of course, now we are passing into a period of reckoning and consolidation as little groups who have lost whatever charism they once had fold and/or merge with groups that have survived. Just this week we have seen a fairly major tremor pulse through the scene as the Church of Nigeria reworked how it's CANA dioceses (North American diaspora or missionary dioceses that were always under Episcopal oversight by the Nigerians) will interact with ACNA.

People shouldn't be too alarmed by all this- it has happened in the past in the Church's history numerous times, though not in quite such a formal, bureaucratic manner that grabs attention. In many ways, the high middle ages in the West was simply an historical fluke, and one that didn't last too long (the Papal Schism for instance).

Even the Orthodox right now are in serious schism. Some people there can't even go to each others churches, when not very long ago, they could.
 
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Paidiske

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Honestly, @FireDragon76 I don't think you're in a position to tell us not to be alarmed. It's not even your church.

Sure, this is happening at a glacial pace - even in conflict the church can't do anything quickly! - but the implications of this are very big for some of us. I got ordained understanding quite well that the diocese I was being ordained in could tear itself apart over this, but I'm no closer today to answers about what that's likely to look like, or what I will do if it happens. These questions aren't just theoretical, for some of us it might mean massive upheaval.
 
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FireDragon76

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To my mind, being a church means one bunch of people don't just declare their own path and do their own thing. We are bound together. I think of it a bit like marriage; one spouse doesn't control the other (ideally) but nor do they operate without reference to each other or their common good.

Is the Church really supposed to be a magisterial institution like that, above the various social conditions we find ourselves in? It seems to me most of the 16th century English reformers were Erastian, similar to Wycliffe, and not completely unlike Luther and his followers.
 
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FireDragon76

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Honestly, @FireDragon76 I don't think you're in a position to tell us not to be alarmed. It's not even your church.

Sure, this is happening at a glacial pace - even in conflict the church can't do anything quickly! - but the implications of this are very big for some of us. I got ordained understanding quite well that the diocese I was being ordained in could tear itself apart over this, but I'm no closer today to answers about what that's likely to look like, or what I will do if it happens. These questions aren't just theoretical, for some of us it might mean massive upheaval.

I'm sorry I offended you- it was not intended to be that way. It sounds like your real concern is about practical matters for Australian churches?
 
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Paidiske

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Is the Church really supposed to be a magisterial institution like that, above the various social conditions we find ourselves in? It seems to me most of the 16th century English reformers were Erastian, similar to Wycliffe, and not completely unlike Luther and his followers.

I don't see what I wrote as magisterial at all. Magisterial governance would be top-down; one person somewhere (or a committee) dictating to us all. Canterbury (or wherever) making the rules.

I'm talking about something more - lateral, for want of a better word. More collegial, or fraternal; collaborative. Synodical, even! Where it's not top-down but where we are bound to one another. We work together and consult together and have a shared sense of who we are and our mission in this world. Where the eye doesn't say to the hand, "I don't need you," (to borrow a phrase).

My concern is bigger than Australia but I'm trying to use Australia to illustrate to people that this isn't just a question of how closely or loosely provinces relate while each doing their own thing. This goes to the core of questions of who we are and what it means to be the church together, and how we navigate that in a global context. And yes, if we can't find a way forward together, for some of us it's not just going to be a distant sadness that we're no longer formally in communion with folks half a world away, but hard realities about whether parishes or dioceses even continue to exist.
 
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FireDragon76

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I don't see what I wrote as magisterial at all. Magisterial governance would be top-down; one person somewhere (or a committee) dictating to us all. Canterbury (or wherever) making the rules.

I'm talking about something more - lateral, for want of a better word. More collegial, or fraternal; collaborative. Synodical, even! Where it's not top-down but where we are bound to one another. We work together and consult together and have a shared sense of who we are and our mission in this world. Where the eye doesn't say to the hand, "I don't need you," (to borrow a phrase).

My concern is bigger than Australia but I'm trying to use Australia to illustrate to people that this isn't just a question of how closely or loosely provinces relate while each doing their own thing. This goes to the core of questions of who we are and what it means to be the church together, and how we navigate that in a global context. And yes, if we can't find a way forward together, for some of us it's not just going to be a distant sadness that we're no longer formally in communion with folks half a world away, but hard realities about whether parishes or dioceses even continue to exist.

I understand what you are saying, but that's still could be construed as a magisterium of sorts, at least compared to how I would understand the Church as a Lutheran. It's more like how Orthodox think of ecclessiology. It still potentially amounts to an infallible institution, but the authority is more diffusive. Left out of the picture, generally, is the possibility that God could be doing something significant outside the confines of the institution.

Some Radical Orthodox folks in Anglicanism do have that vision, though.

I think its really misguided though. The Church should always be about Jesus and what he has done, not what we do, so much (that's a secondary issue). When it starts being about how we are good at being collegial, rather than Christ, I think it is getting off the rails potentially.
 
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Paidiske

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Infallibility? No, I don't believe in infallibility. I do believe that it's in the process of working through things together that we can discern what God is up to in our midst.

Which is no statement about what God might be doing outside the institution, but more a question of how we seek to cooperate with God within it.
 
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