Monday, November 7, 2016

CANTERBURY TESTIMONIES AND THE SCANDAL OF CHRISTIAN DISUNITY

From The Living Church-

Lately I’ve been dipping into James Pike’s edited volume from 1956, Modern Canterbury Pilgrims: And Why They Chose the Episcopal Church. It’s the ideal book for the nightstand: Each essay can be read easily in one sitting, and none are so intellectually demanding as to impede falling asleep afterwards. If C.S. Lewis suggested that the ideal nightstand volume is “a gossipy, formless book that can be opened anywhere,” this book isn’t quite that ideal, but it is its ecclesial cousin.

One of the most memorable pieces in this collection is by the great poet W. H. Auden. It includes tantalizing bits of autobiography and not a little substantive theology. (Often, I find, it is poets and historians and novelists who have a better grasp of the import of certain doctrines than the professional theologians.) I recommend reading the whole essay. But for now, I just want to quibble with where Auden ends his reflections. In his concluding paragraph, he writes this:

Into the question of why I should have returned to Canterbury instead of proceeding to Rome, I have no wish to go in print. The scandal of Christian disunity is too serious.


More here-

http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2016/11/07/canterbury-testimonies-and-the-scandal-of-christian-disunity/

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