Here is an interesting tidbit from the Global South webpage concerning Archbishop Gomez and his idea about what an Anglican Covenant is good for:“A ‘church within a church’ is the plan for the Covenant” Archbishop Gomez said, allowing those who hold to the Anglican ideal to remain united. “We have no curia, we have no central administration,” he noted. There “must be a way of holding each other accountable” he concluded, for “without the Covenant Anglicans will drift” apart.”
It would appear that he doesn't deny that the larger body of folk related to either the Anglican or wider Christian body of belivers is the church. Rather the Anglican Covenantis about "a church within a church." It is, in other words, a rehash of the notion that "the real" church consists of those who are baptized and somehow really, really, really holy.
There are about a hundred things wrong with the notion of "a church within a church," not the least of which is that such a gathering of people will identified not as "in the world but not of it," but rather as "in the church but not of it."
Archbishop Gomez has grasped the apple, eaten and burped.
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ReplyDeleteanonymous...I am asking again that anyone who posts use a name...any name... and use it consistently so that we can distinguish people who post from one another.
ReplyDeleteI've asked this before several times. Perhaps you are not the anonymous from prior postings.
++Gomez seems to have forgotten what happened to the Church following the making Christianity the imperial church by Constantine. It sent those who would be holier than the rest to the wilderness to be anchorites. It too brought a 'church within a church' or a two-tiered church. It didn't work then and it won't work now.
ReplyDeleteAs I read this tidbit from Gomez, along with many other such recent pronouncements - I have to wonder: are the Episcopal clergy who want to huddle as "churches within churches" and the priests who have signed onto CANA et al -- are they still contributing AND expecting to draw pensions from the Episcopal Church? Is that why we keep hearing, "we're about to leave..." but never quite do so?
ReplyDeleteIt's been said before, but I'll say it again. All this is nothing more than a reappearance of the ancient Donatist heresy, which ranked Christians based on their perceived holiness.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't such a foolish idea. Provinces have long had differing levels of association between one another.
ReplyDeleteIt only becomes a bad idea if some churches within the Anglican Communion cut themselves off from the rest. Or if they treat the rest as second-class members.
It's not the positive linking together that's undesirable - it's the (unnecessary) negative consequence of damning everyone else that's unacceptable.
To make a positive statement need not imply anything negative about others.
And none of this needs a Covenant.