Western Anglicanism Seriously Compromised

So says a Kenyan Archbishop:

The Primate of the Anglican Church of Kenya says the tables have turned in the Anglican Communion thus it is time for the Global South to assert itself and take the gospel back to the West.

In his New Year sermon delivered at All Saints Cathedral, Nairobi, The Most Rev. Eliud Wabukala commented that, “…in our modern context we need now to be thinking of mission beyond our borders. In the past we have been the recipients of missionary endeavour and we thank God for those who brought the gospel to this land, but now the sending nations of the West are in deep spiritual and moral crisis and it is time for us to take a lead in global mission.

“The majority of Anglicans are now in the Global South and that means we need to take greater responsibility in global leadership. We cannot simply stand by as we see many of the Anglican Churches in the West, including the Church of England itself, being severely compromised by the deepening spiritual and moral darkness of the societies in which they are set.”

The evangelical archbishop noted, “The GAFCON movement is one way in which global Anglicans are responding to this need and I am very happy that in October this year, we are expecting the second Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON 2) to be held here in Nairobi and we look forward to welcoming Anglican leaders from around the globe.

“I believe this will be a strategic moment in the reshaping of the Anglican Communion to fulfil our vision for global mission and a time when we will experience a foretaste of that glorious gathering of the people of God which Isaiah prophesied.”

Wabukala said that the emphasis on a ‘holistic gospel’, one which expresses both deed and word, must be truly holistic in the need to seek after the presence of the God who reveals himself in the Scriptures at the heart and centre of our life as a church.

The Kenyan Archbishop said Christians should be neither optimists nor pessimists, but people with a strong hope in the promises of Scripture and the power of prayer.

 

The Calamitous Condition of Contemporary Anglicanism

In Virtue Online:

If Holy Scripture and Reformational standards are to be our measure the present state of the Anglican Communion is lamentable. Discounting those rare exceptions in academy, diocese, and parish where the roots of Cranmerian and Augustinian doctrine and devotion are still firm, and are flourishing with Gospel witness and works, the Ecclesia Anglicana and its offshoots have taken a terrible tumble into a morass of confusion, vacillation, and imprecision in matters of theological and ethical principle.

Anglicanism is an entity where sound belief is minimal and anything goes. Centuries of gradual drift from historic moorings have suddenly hurtled us into rapids that carry us to a rushing watery precipice of destruction. Seemingly gentle meanderings into alternative streams of freer thought facilitated by Biblical criticism of a skeptical turn, and “innovation” allowed by a recapitulation of Roman thought and practice, markedly weakened the stance of an honored member of the Reformed family of Churches.

Classic Anglicanism has waned as an influence of any importance or effectiveness in the Anglican fold which has become so inclusive and comprehensive as to have become nullified as a force for the unambiguous representation of the message of eternal salvation through Jesus Christ.

So far gone are we from the verities of the Word of God that we marvel at any mitred head that merely pronounces the name of the Saviour and mutters a feeble “Sunday School pupil’s” attempt at expounding disordered (re Ordo Salutis) and diluted elements (soften the matter of sin and its damning consequences) of the Christian faith.

How many public pronouncements of our leadership, especially on great festive occasions when more folk than usual nod towards the Church (and then nod off), would actually lead folk, as desperate and doomed sinners, to faith in the only Redeemer?

Behind the vagueness and moral and socio-political exhortation looms the specter of an easy-going, undemanding, fatally poisonous, notion of universalism, or a soul destroying confidence in sacramentalism and the mechanism operated by a priesthood now Scripturally obsolete (Letter to the Hebrews).

The tragic virus of irrelevancy neutralizes our Western sector of the Anglican Church as an agent of the good news of salvation, and more than that, our waywardness from truth, and into grievous error, imperils immortal souls. Our preoccupations are earthly and not heavenly. We are incapable of fulfilling the Mosaic mandate to “set before Israel life and death, good and evil” (Deut 39:19). We can no longer differentiate or declare these matters.

The seed of our defection is our initial concession to Arminianism (Archbishop Laud and all that) where ultimate choices are man’s and not God’s. Instead of ringing out the glorious, humbling, and encouraging fact of divine sovereignty we have a “god” wringing his hands over the control that recalcitrant men exert over him and his purposes. With God’s “wills and shalls” asserted in Scripture for us to receive (Spurgeon) unconditionally as absolute, Arminianism, as a humanistic philosophy that counters the Word of God,  always interposes the arrogant comment “if we concur”. It is the rebel cry of the usurpation of divine prerogatives. Once Arminianisn gains a grip all divine mandates become optional, all divine commands or utterances of desire become negotiable. Religion becomes man-serving, man-pleasing, and church life and practice becomes a hopeless melee.

Many Augustinians and Calvinists are cowed by the vitriolic accusations leveled against them. If we conscientiously preach and teach in faithfulness and love we cannot mute the express revelation of God on vital issues of sin and grace that address our consciences and inform our minds concerning self and a successful and sufficient Savior totally effective in carrying out his Father’s assignment. We have no right to trim the Word of God at the insistence of our critics, or question his wisdom in his disclosure of truth.

Truth is not our property but the Lord’s for us to handle with care and candor under his guidance and skill. We cannot negotiate its clarity and power away at the insistence of anyone – colleagues or controversialists. We must keep our nerve and do what is right with loyalty to God and charitableness to men (in so far as we are able). We are truth-speakers as well as peace-makers.

The present is dire, but from our vantage point the future is not fixed knowledge in our possession as it is in the Lord’s. We have a God who can and does raise up children from stones (Matthew 3:9 cf Ezekiel 36:26). We serve God with this hope ever in our hearts. We have numerous causes of inspiration and encouragement from the past in adhering to a worthy view of God and a salvation surely won for his people however much the Church defects and dithers e.g. ejected minister Christopher Ness (Antidote to Arminianism), energetic apologist Augustus Toplady (Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England, The Church of England Vindicated From the Charge of Arminianism), accurate preacher George Whitefield (“At least, I am sure, we are all Arminians by nature; and, therefore, no wonder so many natural men embrace that scheme”, solid advocate John Charles Ryle (Old Paths), and perhaps the most passionate of them all, the Church of England’s greatest preacher of the 19th century Hugh McNeile, about whom much more needs to be written and known (Does this character of God, this predestinating sovereignty, this distinguishing grace, this unchanging purpose, belong to the Being before whom we bend our knees? And are we indeed (so far as this truth is concerned) scriptural worshippers of the Lord Jehovah?).

A sovereign God can reverse the impending ruin of the Anglican Communion in our hemisphere. The message of prophet and apostle assures us of this. But it will not come through our editing of the edicts of heaven. It will come only through deliverance from compromise of truth and contention with it. We must not be hasty in settling for retreat or defeat but fervently trust that Scottish Presbyterian divine, William Hastie D.D., will be vindicated in his opinion that, “notwithstanding the vacillation and weakness of its doctrinal development” Anglicanism as a Reformed Church may attain its possible noble destiny in the brotherhood of Reformed Churches: “The ecclesiastical ideal of its Reformers was to make the Church of England the living centre and rallying point of all the Reformed Churches; and if its leaders and guides were to take up this splendid conception again and endeavour to realize it, they might be blessed in doing the greatest work for the Reformed Protestantism that the world has seen since the age of the Reformation” (Theology of the Reformed Church in its Fundamental Principles, T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1904).

-  The Rev. Roger Salter

 

The Decline of Evangelical America

Speaking of Evangelicals, the New York Times:

 

It hasn’t been a good year for evangelicals. I should know. I’m one of them.

In 2012 we witnessed a collapse in American evangelicalism. The old religious right largely failed to affect the Republican primaries, much less the presidential election. Last month, Americans voted in favor of same-sex marriage in four states, while Florida voters rejected an amendment to restrict abortion.

Much has been said about conservative Christians and their need to retool politically. But that is a smaller story, riding on the back of a larger reality: Evangelicalism as we knew it in the 20th century is disintegrating.

In 2011 the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life polled church leaders from around the world. Evangelical ministers from the United States reported a greater loss of influence than church leaders from any other country — with some 82 percent indicating that their movement was losing ground.

I grew up hearing tales of my grandfather, a pastor, praying with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. My father, also a pastor, prayed with George W. Bush in 2000. I now minister to my own congregation, which has grown to about 500, a tenfold increase, in the last four years (by God’s favor and grace, I believe). But, like most young evangelical ministers, I am less concerned with politics than with the exodus of my generation from the church.

Studies from established evangelical polling organizations — LifeWay Research, an affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Barna Group — have found that a majority of young people raised as evangelicals are quitting church, and often the faith, entirely.

As a contemporary of this generation (I’m 30), I embarked three years ago on a project to document the health of evangelical Christianity in the United States. I did this research not only as an insider, but also as a former investigative journalist for an alt weekly.

I found that the structural supports of evangelicalism are quivering as a result of ground-shaking changes in American culture. Strategies that served evangelicals well just 15 years ago are now self- destructive. The more that evangelicals attempt to correct course, the more they splinter their movement. In coming years we will see the old evangelicalism whimper and wane…

Another obituary prematurely written ?

 

 

Evangelicalism

The Rev Dr David Hilborn, who is the Principal St John’s College Nottingham:

 

New Principal for Moore College, Sydney

Dr Mark Thompson has been appointed to succeed Dr John Woodhouse at the evangelical theological powerhouse, Moore College, Sydney, one of the largest Anglican seminaries in the world.

Dr Mark Thompson has been appointed to succeed Dr John Woodhouse as Principal of Moore Theological College.

The President of the governing board of the College, Dr Peter Jensen, said “I greet the appointment of Dr Mark Thompson as the next Principal with great enthusiasm. Mark is thoroughly committed to Christ as Lord, and is a fine teacher and a caring pastor”.

Dr Jensen said “His gifts as a speaker, theological educator, author and theologian have been recognised internationally as well as locally. His clear and strong affirmation of the gospel and his capacity as a leader are going to be significant gifts he brings to the College”.

The Archbishop described the college as “well positioned to meet the challenges of change.” “The campus requires development and a new building is planned. The educational opportunities are new and they offer the possibilities of extending the teaching of the College and attracting even more students. With the help of the faculty and staff of the College, Mark is well equipped both to maintain the theological stance of the College and to oversee the developments we need to best serve Christ and his people” he said.

Dr Jensen said “I ask us all to pray for Mark, Kathryn and their children as he takes up this pivotal role.”

Dr Thompson has lectured at the college since 1991. He currently lectures in Christian Doctrine and is head of Moore’s Department of Theology, Philosophy and Ethics and has served variously as Academic Dean and as acting Principal.

Internationally, he has been a member of the GAFCON Theological Resource Group and has helped strengthen Moore’s international links and build its profile overseas.

Himself a graduate of Moore, Dr Thompson was ordained in 1987, serving in parish ministry in St Swithun’s Pymble, St Luke’s Dapto and Quakers Hill Anglican. He is married to Kathryn and they have four daughters. He and his family attend St Matthew’s Ashbury.

Dr Thompson is a member of the Diocese of Sydney Standing Committee and chairs its Doctrine Commission. As an author, he has researched, lectured and published on the doctrine of scripture including his recent book A Clear and Present Word: The Clarity of Scripture (in the New Studies in Biblical Theology series). A further interest is the importance of theological education to the future of the diocese. He is also a prolific blogger.

“It is a great privilege to be invited to serve the College in this way. I’m enormously excited because I believe that Moore College is on the cusp of a range of opportunities for providing strong, clear, biblical, theological education in a rapidly changing world” Dr Thompson said. “The resources we have at our disposal — a brilliant and diverse faculty, a remarkable library, dedicated staff, a rapidly expanding online presence, but most of all a growing family of gifted graduates who appreciate what they gained from their time at Moore — these all are God’s gifts to us and we have a responsibility to use them in the most effective and strategic way possible for the mission of knowing Christ and making him known.” Dr Thompson said.

Dr Woodhouse retires as Principal in early 2013.

Dr Thompson’s blog, Theological Theology, is here. It’s all about the God who has made himself known in Jesus Christ.

 

Indomitable Sydney? The Challenge of Sydney Anglicanism

Religion and Ethics:

The famous Asterix the Gaul comic books that I read when I was a kid begin in this way.

“The year is 50 B.C. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely … One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanam and Compendium …”

The Gauls gain their fabulous strength from a magic potion brewed by their druid, Getafix. But the secret of their ability to defy the odds, and the Romans, comes from somewhere else. They are possessed of a remarkable inner fortitude. They have an almost casual confidence about them that drives their opponents to distraction. They have a clear sense of shared identity in the face of what seems like insurmountable opposition. They love to eat wild boar.

The way the story of the Anglican diocese of Sydney has been told by her supporters and critics alike often sounds like the opening to Asterix. In the view of Melbourne journalist and Anglican laywoman Muriel Porter, for example, the evangelical variety of Anglicanism that in general characterizes the diocese of Sydney is defiantly peculiar.

As Porter reads it, an Anglicanism that is Catholic in liturgy and liberal in theology has triumphed everywhere. It is the dominant form, and reigns unchecked and unchallenged across Australia and even across the globe. This one small diocese of indomitable, very conservative and (to be frank) completely unhinged evangelical Anglicans holds out against the onward march of liberal Catholic Anglicanism. And life is, as a result, not easy for those who surround it and have to deal with it. Sydney’s commitment to lay presidency at the Lord’s Supper and its objection to the ordination of women to the priesthood are symptoms of the baffling and stubborn irrationality that characterizes the diocese. They simply get in the way of what would be a normal development in other places.

The same story can be told from within the gates of the Sydney Anglican village as well. While all around, Anglicanism has capitulated almost totally to the liberal, broad-church paradigm – with the exception a few parishes in each diocese that are allowed to remain traditional Anglo-Catholic or conservative evangelical – Sydney is the only diocese in which an evangelical form of Anglicanism holds sway. Alone it holds the torch against the onslaught of darkness. Alone it defies the complete capitulation of Anglican Christianity to Western cultural mores. Alone it holds to priority of Scripture over culture as authoritative for church belief and practice. Splendidly, nobly alone.

The uniqueness of Sydney Anglicanism…

Do read on here.

 

Evangelicals Becoming More Devout, Catholics Less So

Live Science:

Evangelical Protestants have become more devoted to their religious beliefs over the last three decades, even as Catholics have become less attached to their faith, new research finds.

The denominational differences come even as religious affiliations have decreased overall in America, with the number of people who claim no religious affiliation at all doubling from 7 percent in 1990 to 14 percent in 2000, said study researcher Philip Schwadel, a sociologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Nevertheless, Schwadel said, these unaffiliated individuals seem to be dropping out of religious institutions that they were previously ambivalent about. People who feel strongly about their faith are as numerous as ever.

“The proportion of Americans who say they have a very strong religious affiliation over time is very stable,” Schwadel told LiveScience.

Strength of faith

Schwadel based his findings on a major questionnaire called the General Social Survey, which has been administered to a cross-section of Americans yearly or every other year since 1974. Among the questions on this survey are several about religion, including one that asks how strongly affiliated people feel about their denomination.

By analyzing about 40,000 responses over the decades, Schwadel was able to track changes in how strongly tied people felt to their religion. He found that the total number of strongly affiliated people stayed basically steady around 37 percent, with a small, short-lived bump to 43 percent in 1984 and 1985.

The people who identified as religious but said they weren’t strongly tied to their religion became less common over time, however, dropping from 56 percent in 1990 and 1991 down to 45 percent between 2008 and 2010. This coincided with the uptick in unaffiliated Americans.

“The tremendous growth in being unaffiliated came, I think not very surprisingly, from the relatively uncommitted Americans,” Schwadel said.

Changing attitudes

On a denomination-by-denomination level, the picture gets more complex. While the overall number of strongly affiliated people has stayed stable, that’s because Evangelical Protestants have become more tied to their churches, while Catholics identify less strongly with their faith.

In the 1970s, there was only about a 5-percentage-point difference in how strongly Catholics and Evangelicals felt about their religion, Schwadel said. Today, it’s around 20 percentage points. About 56 percent of Evangelicals currently say they’re strongly affiliated with their religion, while only 35 percent of Catholics say the same.

A few things could be driving these trends, Schwadel said, though the survey did not ask people for their reasons behind their religious devotion. Priest sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church could have shaken people’s trust in the institution, so that they still call themselves Catholic but distance themselves from the Church. Likewise, the demographics of Catholicism are changing, Schwadel said. There are more Latino Catholics in America today than in the past, and Latinos may be less likely to strongly identify with the institution of the Church than white Catholics.

On the Protestant side, Evangelicals became more visible during the 1990s, as well as more politicized, Schwadel said. It’s possible that broader social influence encouraged more people to identify strongly with the faith.

Both the increase in Protestant devotion and the decrease in Catholic faith happened gradually over time rather than sharply from generation to generation, Schwadel noted in the Autumn 2012 issue of the journal Sociology of Religion. That should offer some reassurance to Catholic leaders disappointed to see their flock less devout.

“When it’s that rapid and not really generationally motivated, it may be possible to reverse people’s views,” Schwadel said.

 

A Coming Evangelical Collapse?

Over at Near Emmaus:

In the last week I have read three interesting blog posts that mention people exiling from evangelicalism (or Reformed thinking) that I have found interesting:

- Jason Stellman discusses his controversial departure from the Presbyterian Church of America to the Roman Catholic Church in “I Fought the Church, and the Church Won”–a guest post for the blog Called to Communion. He says that Catholicism was not alluring to him, but that he found it to be “the truth,” especially when he began to doubt the reformational language regarding Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide. Remember, this is the man who lead the trial against Peter Leithart for the Pacific Northwest Presbytery because Leithart was suspected of teachings that were close to those of Rome.

- Roman Catholics are not alone in anticipating more people to flee evangelical and reformed community. The Orthodox Church is asking themselves if they are ready for the “coming evangelical collapse.” Kevin Allen provides a self-diagnosis for this communion in “Are We Ready for the Coming Evangelical Collapse?” He believes that the Orthodox will be “short-term beneficiaries, but that there are many hinderances to people joining their ranks as well.

- Peter Enns has written many blog posts providing an “in-house” critique of evangelicalism’s shrinking boarders warning that there are many who no longer feel at home in evangelicalism as it is self-defined currently. In “Outgrowing Evangelicalism: It’s Not Just for Scholars Anymore” he shows that it isn’t academics alone who are feeling marginalized within evangelical circles. Of course, the so-called “emerging church” has been saying this for sometime now. I think evangelicals seeking to realign and redefine evangelicalism may have a harder time than Roman Catholics and Orthodox because there has yet to “emerge” an alternative to evangelicalism than doesn’t have the feel of evangelicalism run amok with individualism or the type of church that seeks to be “ancient-future” in practice while being liberal-progressive Protestant in theology (something that may lack staying power).

Pentecostalism continues to expand globally and domestically (I think the Assemblies of God are one of the few larger denominations in this country that have seen growth over recent years). There remain many problems there as well. When the energy declines and the emotionalism dries many “thinkers” in Pentecostal ranks wonder what they are doing with their time. At least that was my experience.

Do you foresee a “coming evangelical collapse?” If so, where will evangelicals go? If not, what reforms do you think need to be made?

Eastern Orthodox Lose Two Evangelical Bridges

Christianity Today:

Metropolitan Jonah, by most accounts the highest-ranking, evangelical-friendly archpriest in North America’s Eastern Orthodox Church, resigned under duress in July.

His removal has observers less concerned about his leadership shortcomings, which allegedly led to his removal, than about the widening gap between conservatives and the Orthodox Church.

“His efforts were the most explicit attempt by any Orthodox hierarch to join with evangelicals and other conservatives in a common social agenda,” North Park University professor Brad Nassif said of Jonah’s nearly four-year tenure as primate.

Jonah, a former Episcopalian, was especially popular among the convert wing of the Orthodox Church of America (OCA), which in 2008 constituted 51 percent of the denomination’s 85,000 North American adherents, according to the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute.

His ecumenical social efforts also endeared him to a wider conservative audience. In 2009, he linked arms with prominent evangelicals and conservative Catholics in signing the Manhattan Declaration, which defended a traditional definition of marriage and denounced abortion.

His bold social stances drew the ire of members of his own community, according to conservative pundit and Orthodox convert Rod Dreher.

Dreher, who broke the news of Jonah’s resignation, compared the OCA synod in a blog post to “a pack of ravening wolves” that he said has long been trying to unseat its leader.

The New York-based synod countered the Internet buzz with a statement outlining the allegations that led to Jonah’s forced resignation, including that Jonah knowingly harbored a priest accused of rape in his diocese.

The synod said its request “came at the end of a rather long list of questionable, unilateral decisions and actions, demonstrating the inability of the Metropolitan to always be truthful and accountable to his peers.”

Jonah’s resignation came only five days after the death of 73-year-old Peter Gillquist, who infused evangelical fervor into the Antiochian Orthodox Church beginning in 1987, when he led some 2,000 of his Protestant followers into Eastern Orthodoxy.

“If he had not come into the church and brought those people in, our church would have atrophied to the point of near extinction,” Nassif said. “Gillquist came along at the right moment in American Orthodox history.”

Among his many accomplishments, Gillquist helped create the first Orthodox study Bible and served for a quarter of a century as chairman of the archdiocese’s department of missions and evangelism.

Gillquist, like Jonah, served as a critical bridge for relations between evangelicals and Orthodox, having spent the majority of his career on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ before his conversion.

Frederica Mathewes-Green, a prominent Orthodox author and speaker, called the losses a “double blow” to American Orthodoxy. However, she doesn’t believe this will affect relations between the two groups.

“The change that has taken place so steadily over the years can’t be undone by these two losses,” she said. “And yet, they are losses we regret all the same.”

 

Sydney’s Anglican Church Introduces ‘Submit’ Wedding Vows ‘After Fifty Shades of Grey’

Sydney’s Anglican Church has been criticised after changing the marriage ceremony to include a vow by the wife to “submit” to her husband – a pledge likened by critics to “reading Fifty Shades of Grey”.

The Telegraph:

The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, known as one of the world’s most conservative Anglican bishops, defended the new vow as an attempt to combat the destructive rise of egalitarianism and individualism.

He said the vow was “not an invitation to bossiness, let alone abuse”.

“In the last three or four decades a certain egalitarianism has crept into society and the way people think and I understand that’s the reigning philosophy,” he told ABC television.

“I just happen to think it’s wrong, unhelpful, and in the end we will find it’s better to recognise that men and women are different, that we have at certain points different responsibilities and men will be better men if we acknowledge that.”

The new ceremony, expected to be approved by the diocese of Sydney at its synod in October, requires the minister to ask the bride: “Will you honour and submit to him, as the church submits to Christ?”. The bride then pledges “to love and submit” to her husband.

Though the church will allow couples to choose a vow which does not include the controversial pledge, the new wording has already been used in some ceremonies.

Stephanie Judd, 26, a Christian studies teacher, opted for the new vow at her wedding in January.

“The husband’s love is one of sacrificial love, and to submit to that kind of love is not oppressive, but is actually a joy and a great freedom,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

But the new vow triggered furious public criticism and prompted questions about its legality because it had not been approved by the church’s national governing body. The Sydney diocese is notorious for its staunch conservatism and does not allow the full ordination of women.

“People criticise the Sydney Anglicans for being out of touch, so how wonderful to see the success of Fifty Shades of Grey being so rapidly reflected in the service,” wrote Richard Glover, a Fairfax Media columnist.

“The only question: will fluffy handcuffs now be a mandatory part of bridal wear?”