Quotes from the history books
Presiding Bishop William White, the first Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church (1789), said that the Church of which he was a prime architect was to contain “the constituent principles of the Church of England, and yet independent of foreign jurisdiction or influence.”
Quite right. That's why the Anglican Communion has removed TEC for bodies that speak for global consensus. TEC consistently rejects "constituent principles" of the wider church (including its formally stated understanding of marriage) and TEC seeks to impose its eccentric agenda on other Provinces. So TEC's blown its own foundational ideas and the consensus of the wider church. It is a club based on the whim personalities, not a church at its national level.
Archbishop of Canterbury Charles Thomas Longley, who convened the first Lambeth Conference, said in 1867: “It has never been contemplated that we should assume the functions of a general synod of all the Churches in full communion with the Church of England, and take upon ourselves to enact canons that should be binding upon those here represented. We merely propose to discuss matters of practical interest, and pronounce what we deem expedient in resolutions which may serve as safe guides to future action.”
The global synod role was not contemplated because it was assumed that all the Provinces would believe and behave within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy. TEC, by acting the fool, has torn Anglicanism's traditional "bonds of affection" and necessitated that which it claims to hate. On TEC's LGBT agenda, the Communion did express "safe guides to future actions," and TEC simply flipped the them the bird.
Archbishop of Canterbury Campbell Tait noted in 1875 about the Lambeth Conference: “There is no intention whatever on the part of anybody to gather together the Bishops of the Anglican Church for the sake of defining any matter of doctrine. Our doctrines are contained in our formularies, and our formularies are interpreted by the proper judicial authorities, and there is no intention whatever at any such gathering that questions of doctrine should be submitted for interpretation in any future Lambeth Conference any more than they were at the previous Lambeth Conference.”
The marriage rites of The Books of Common Prayer were unified in their statement of the nature and purpose of marriage as monogamous lifetime union between a man and a woman. So TEC has emphatically attacked a "forumlary" expressing Christian doctrine across the entire Anglican Communion.
Resolution 49c from the 1930 Lambeth Conference notes: “Churches in the Anglican Communion are bound together not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference.”
Spewed some perfectly good Guatemala Antigua all over my keyboard reading this. "Mutual loyalty?" TEC signed onto and then promptly betrayed the statements it made with other Anglican Provinces. Common counsel? Then why all these statements of autonomy?
TEC continues to style itself a global peace 'n' justice club with total American authority and autonomy. TEC will tell you that this is "post-modern" or "emergent," church jargon to dress up irrationality as virtue.
TEC vests authority in whoever acts out most eccentrically and shamelessly.
TEC projects its faults on others.
TEC IS AN ALCOHOLIC WRIT LARGE.
h/t Stand Firm for posting TECs talking points
9 comments:
The TEC wants to have autonomy within the boarders of it's province, yet it denies autonomy to dioceses. It want's the US government to work more with the UN but TEC doesn't want to work with the Anglican Communion.My head just reels from this large disconnect from reality.Bottom line TEC is promoting a social agenda with no Gospel. In short TEC has lost the battle to wind "The Hearts and minds" of people to lead them to Christ. We are being led by a bunch of 'rebels without a clue'.
Keith - exactly. Keeping heads reeling is what drunks and other addicts do to those around them. Control by chaos.
The unity of Anglicanism was in its shared formularies through which shared doctrine was taught and reaffirmed, generation after generation across the world.
TEC has changed the formularies.
I am surprised they included that quote from Archbishop of Canterbury Campbell Tait.
Yeah, but like most revolutionaries, they lack the skills to govern. They are finding out that tearing down structures is a lot easier and less time consuming than building structures that work and meet the needs of the people that we are charged to witness and lead to Christ.
Thanks, Perpetua - you are so right about the shared formularies and how TEC has folded, spindled and mutilated them.
Keith (second comment) - good observation. Much easier to cause chaos than to build something affirmative.
They are totally unable to work with people outside of their own self-congratulatory circle.
Keith, TEC really doesn't care about anything but "the agenda". Period. Everything else they say and do is just rationalization toward the support and continuance toward that goal: The destruction of Christianity and the building of a new god in their own image.
When any group needs "talking points" you know that they are in trouble.
When a church needs talking points and does not reference scripture, it has lost.
I have to admit I have been amused to watch how quickly (and predictable) the Episcopal Church hierarchy was to start waving the Ecclesiastical version of the American "Don't Tread on Me" flag. There is even a Facebook group now called, "The Archbishop of Canterbury hath no dominion in this realm..."
Ironically, it was the same people who threw tantrums about American unilateralism during the buildup to the Iraq Invasion. I guess the message is that unilateralism is fine as long as its our unilateralism.
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