guest column: Soundings in Anglican Ecclesiology

From The Living Church-

It is arguably true that there has never been a time in the history of what we now call Anglicanism that was essentially stable and free from serious conflict. Yet, it certainly does seem as though the last ten to 12 years have been particularly fraught with crisis — crisis of the sort that threatens not just to alter the course of Anglicanism’s evolution, but to radically redefine how we think and talk about it.

In casual conversation, sexuality is often presumed to lie at the heart of our travails. Indeed, it is undeniably the presenting issue. But many have also realized that if it had not been sexuality, it would inevitably have been something else, that forces at work within Anglican life at least since the 16th century would have brought about the same sort of crisis. The sexuality squabble is like the tremor of a quake on the surface of the earth. Yet, it is underneath the surface, in the shifting of tectonic plates, where the source of the tremor lies. These shifting tectonic plates beneath the surface of Anglicanism have to do with ecclesiology: What is the Church? What is the relation of Anglican “churches” to “the Church”? When conflict arises, how should churches, and church members, behave? How can their action be most consistent with the Church’s identity and mission, and what it means to live as a network of Christian communities? Are we accountable to one another? If so, how?

Conflict in any organization that includes human beings is necessarily political in nature, and politics invariably produces winners and losers. Within global Anglicanism, the Lambeth Conference of 1998 overwhelmingly passed resolution 1.10, which “reject[ed] homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.” This political process made “losers” out of those who advocate reassessing the Church’s traditional position on sexual ethics. But in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, those who argue for such reassessment hold majorities in the councils of the Church.

More here-

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2010/6/25/guest-column-soundings-in-anglican-ecclesiology