Can the Liberals's reconcile with the Fundementalists

[Boshirou]

So I did a bunch of research on the whole Episcopal Church's suspension by the Anglican Communion a few months back for a youtube thing I do
(link here on the incident if anyone is interested).

And what I kept wondering by the end is how practically Liberal Christians could reconcile with conservative Christians?

Because writing them off, or speaking of them in a smug and vilifying way doesn't seem very productive, and contrary to the Love we are commanded to show as Christians.

 

[hedrick]

It’s hard to see how we can reconcile. We have fundamentally different ideas of what the essentials of Christianity are. What’s worse, we have fundamentally different ideas of where Christian theology comes from.

Specific issues such as homosexuality will likely be resolved with time. I'm not so convinced that the more basic difference will be in the foreseeable future.

In principle we can agree that while we differ, we accept each other as fellow Christians, and work together to the extent that this is practical. Unfortunately this is easier for liberals than conservatives. The conservative definition of the Gospel makes it difficult for many conservatives to accept may liberals as even being Christian. It's hard to see how to change or ignore that. This is a problem even in CF, where strictly speaking most liberal Christians do not meet the criteria for posting in Christian forums, except possibly "controversial theology."

(Incidentally, there's no body with the authority to suspend the Episcopal Church. Since it appears that the Archbishop of Canterbury is normally the one asked to choose representatives of the Anglican communion, it seems best to interpret the decision as a recommendation to the Archbishop not to choose any Episcopalians. Your video suggests that he hasn't followed this very strictly. The Church of England could probably break communion with the Episcopal Church, but they haven't done so, and are unlikely to do so. Among other things, if it did so, it would have to break communion with most of the major English-speaking churches, and quite likely in fairly short order, with itself.)

 

[FireDragon76]

Love is an ideal, but it's an ideal that has to be tempered with wisdom. Trying to reconcile is sometimes pointless. Even Jesus understood this.

Hedrick is right. What some on CF do not understand is the diversity of views within Christianity on many subjects. Christianity is not a monolith that shares anything but a few essentials in common at a core, it's far more complex than that. The differences in doctrine, practice, and spirituality between even different Protestant churches can be profound and isn't something that can be easily swept away with ideals like love.

Those who tend to argue that the Christian message must be clear often do so for evangelistic reasons, they believe Christianity is something that must be packaged and sold to people, to be accepted or rejected as an "offer", and that disunity and complexity hurts that cause. But not all Christians think of the Christian life in those terms.

Hedrick is also right about the situation in the Anglican Communion. There is no such authority for anyone in the communion to declare anyone else "out". The Anglican Communion is not some Protestant version of Roman Catholicism with a hierarchy that can make juridical decisions about those matters. Those who try to make it sound like the Episcopal Church is on the "outs" have an agenda they want to push.

 

[Arcangl86]

I would love to see reconciliation, the only difficulty is that some people have an all or nothing view of doctrine. The marriage canon is a good example since it is the main focus right now. All it did was allow individual dioceses and parishes to choose to perform, or in the case of dioceses, allow parishes to perform SSM. But even that was too much for some, and of course there were those who were unhappy that it was an option and not a requirement.