One More Time: It's Not About Sex

Shrimp again. Fr. Ken Harding, a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada and rector of All Saints' Church, Athabasca, Alberta, writes this today on Anglican Mainstream, which is "a community within the Anglican Communion committed to promote, teach and maintain the Scriptural truths on which the Anglican Church was founded and which guarantee its catholicity":

Anglicanism has prided itself on its heritage which accommodates a broad range of worship traditions, with a similarly broad range of viewpoints on nonessential theological issues, thus providing a rich variety of Christian expression all within one Anglican Communion. However, it was always understood that Anglicanism has boundaries. Over the past 50 years theological liberalism and revisionism have tested those boundaries, suggesting interpretations of Scripture which are more culturally and politically motivated than scholarly informed.

Many claim that the issue which has brought the Anglican Church to this crisis is homosexuality. That is not entirely true; homosexuality is simply the attention-grabbing issue that sells newspapers and secures political and public support. The real issue is hermeneutics, how Scripture is rightly interpreted. All the other divisive issues arise from that one underlying question.

Many media reports suggest that the group in Canada and the U.S. which is now under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Primate of the Southern Cone (lower South America) is “breaking away” from the Anglican Church. That is totally inaccurate. Actually, it is the Anglican Church of Canada that has “broken away” from the worldwide Anglican Communion and “departed” from its own founding constitution through a series of political decisions which are contrary to the repeatedly stated standards of Anglican belief and practice. The Communion, through its National Archbishops (called Primates) and its various Councils, has repeatedly stated its position. It has asked that Canada withdraw from full participation in the Communion’s governing bodies because we acted inappropriately. Canadian Anglicans who wish to remain faithful to the historic standards of belief and practice in the worldwide Anglican Communion were forced by events in Canada to appeal to the worldwide Communion for pastoral care and oversight.

Shrimp has added the emphases above. Read his entire post, "Not Split - Rewoven."

And, one more time -- for the Confusionists are good at at diverting us from this, too -- see Fr. Harding's reminder that the schismatics are those who, should the church divide, depart the faith.

Shrimp out.