The top clerical adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury has some stern words for both sides in the Anglican wars. He warned US and UK Anglicans to stop feeling so superior to Third World Anglicans:
Urging understanding of the conservative evangelicalism which led to a rival Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans being set up in Jerusalem last week, Canon Cameron said: "The average Anglican is a black woman under the age of 30, who earns two dollars a day, has a family of at least three children, has lost two close relatives to AIDs, and who will walk four miles to Church for a three hour service on a Sunday."
But he also warned conservative Anglicans not to make homosexuality a "shibboleth" upon which they break the Anglican Communion.
This I do not get. The homosexual question within Anglicanism goes right to the heart of how Christians are to understand Scripture, tradition and the nature of the human person. It's not possible to compromise on this issue. Would Canon Cameron not be better off telling church liberals, the innovators who are very much in the minority among Anglicans, to back off their "shibboleth" for the sake of unity? After all, it is they who are pushing the divisive new doctrines. Of course they would say that it is no shibboleth at all, but a matter of justice that cannot be delayed.
There can be no compromise. Anglicanism is doomed says Demophilus, a mournful C of E'er:
Well, if there is one thing we moderns do not excel at it is holding the middle ground and withstanding the tensions of life; amid the fragmention of modernity we long for false absolutes, forgetting that the infinite is involved with, but not contained within, history. And so its no surprise that Anglicanism, already, perhaps, particularly unstable, is being reduced to a contest between liberals and fundamentalists. Archbishop Orambi from Uganda is cited in Mr. Kavulla's essay as saying, "This Bible is black and white. It is not a historical document." Well, no and no. This really is crude theology, a vivid example of the fundamentalist's tendency to double down against doubt and complexity. And yet the Anglican Left, those who emphasize the "new things" the Spirit seems to be working are no better. Too often their thinking is lacking in rigor and their schemes of interpretation -- of both Scripture and tradition -- are as hucksterish as the fundamentalists, if possessing a different valence.
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rombald: I always have difficulty remembering which has the 4th and which the 14th!!
Well I grew up with both! But the "quatorze juillet" was rather anticlimactic. To tell you the truth, I was never all that keen on the storming of the Bastille, guillotining the royals, la Terreur, Marat in his bloody sitzbath, all followed by that upstart Corsican dwarf. Pretty squalid stuff. The Americans did the revolution right. Vivent les Etats-Unis!
Thanks for the Independence Day good wishes. And best of luck with the republican movement. "President of England" sounds a lot better then "Queen of England"! Will the vice-president have to learn Welsh, I wonder?
By the way, Rombald, I should have mentioned that, yes, there are four states called "commonwealths". I don't think Virginia was ever called a dominion, but I might be wrong. Canada used to be the "Dominion of Canada" but they dropped that when the Queen volunteered to pay taxes, or whenever. Are they a commonwealth now?
And, transubstantiation notwithstanding, the RC's probably don't want Canterbury back, you're right. It's a beautiful old cathedral and the Novus Ordo crowd goes more for the Masonic Lodge style.
Roland: I've just checked. You were right on both counts.
Virginia is a commonwealth. It was called Dominion before independence, apparently in recognition of having supported the Crown in the English Civil War. I thought it had kept the title, but it must have changed it to commonwealth at some point, perhaps at independence.
Canada was Dominion until the 1950s, and is now just Canada. It's Australia that's a Commonwealth - I got them mixed up.
I do like the word "Commonwealth". Like the French "commune" it's much richer than "community", involving the feel of cooperation or common good (the common weal). I could imagine Rod writing about it at some point.
Thanks for that information, Rombald. I was just doing a bit of research on it myself.
I explain the name "Commonwealth of Massachusetts" to people by saying that the wealth is held in common because the government's confiscatory taxation policy expropriates individual wealth. And this is what resulted from Lexington and Concord? "No taxation without epresentation!" Well, we've got the representation to thank for the taxation!
Come to think of it, we might have been better off under the King. :-)
rombald,
Virginia has retained the title of "The Old Dominion" as a nickname -- most (maybe all) of the States have nicknames of one type or another -- Georgia is "The Peach State," Florida is "The Sunshine State," Ohio is "The Buckeye State," Pennsylvania is "The Keystone State," etc. And the Commonwealth of Virginia is nicknamed "The Old Dominion." I know you're British, but I don't know if you live in the States. If you do and you already knew all this then I apologize for being pedantic.
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