This is the eve of the ordination of three new deacons to the Church of England diocese of Dunedin, New Zealand.

One of those to be ordained is a practising homosexual, and his ordination is threatening to split the Church in New Zealand and the Anglican Communion. The Latimer Fellowship (a 60-year-old society of Evangelical Christians within the Anglican Church who seek to maintain the authority of the Bible in the church's life) and Anglican Mainstream NZ have written a letter to the three Archbishops of the New Zealand Church appealing to them to stop or postpone the ordination of a man who is understood to be in an 18-year same-sex relationship. The Bishop of Dunedin, the Rt Revd George Connor, has announced his intention to ordain him in Dunedin on Saturday 4th November. The view expressed in the letter was that, if this ordination proceeds, it would not only breach the Constitution and Canons of the Church but fly in the face of the calls for restraint on this issue from the wider Communion and the Archbishop of Canterbury. In a separate letter the Vicars of New Zealand’s 10 largest Anglican Churches have also expressed their own protest at the proposed ordination.

The ordination of practising gay clergy is only a part of the story. In case this is seen as “homophobia” and “gay bashing”, the situation would be exactly the same should the Bishop of Dunedin agree to ordain a man who is living with his mistress, or who is having an affair. Such a person is no more suitable for his practise of sex outside marriage either, hetero or homo making little difference.

The whole of the story has to do with the capitulation of Biblical Christianity to current elements of this postmodern culture. This includes a disregard for Biblical morality, Biblical authority, and a move towards a politically correct inclusiveness that smacks of universalism in religion. As an example of where this revisionist cultural agenda can take us, the recently elected Presiding Bishop to the Episcopal Church in America, Katherine Jefferts Schori, stated in an interview with Robin Young on “Here and Now”, October 18, 2006, the following:

“Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. That is not to say that Muslim’s or Sikhs or Jains come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through human experience — through human experience of the divine. Christians talk about that in terms of Jesus.”

Source

The following is an address given by The Rev. Dr. Bob Robinson to the Pre-synod Conference of the Diocese of Christchurch, 31 August 2006.
It states exactly how “Anglican Mainstream” (those doctrinally orthodox believers) view the current situation in the Church of England.
I present it here as I believe it speaks the minds of those of us who are feeling badly betrayed by our Church, often going unheard while being pressured into endless “listening to” of the liberal arguments as though to wear us down into tired agreement. This is Biblical Christianity that, should it become “revised”, will no longer be Biblical Christianity - or Christianity at all. Despite the spin given it by Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, Jesus Himself said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

What Mainstreamers Really Think But Have (Mostly) Been Too Afraid To Say It

“Mainstream Anglicans see this disunity in our Church as the result of a defection from the Gospel of Christ and a capitulation to western culture. Because this is the central issue, endless talking about Anglican identity, unity and distinctiveness misses the point, mostly wastes our time and ignores the real reason for our unhappiness as a denomination.”

WHO ARE WE AS ANGLICANS?
Pre-Synod Conference, 31 August 2006

Kia ora tatou. I'm standing here as some kind of voice for so-called ‘mainstream' Anglicans —
‘mainstream' being the imperfect shorthand for those evangelical, charismatic and other orthodox Anglicans who seem generally to agree with what I'm saying (and using ‘orthodox' doctrinally).

So, to the initial question ‘Who are we as Anglicans?' Mainstreamers give a fairly ho-hum answer to this question of Anglican identity. If they are like me they simply say: Anglicanism arose as the vernacular English way of being Christian. In terms of traditional labels a denomination emerged that was and is Protestant, Catholic and Reformed. In one way our identity is as simple as that. This is a contextual and instrumental understanding of Anglicanism as a vehicle for expressing the Gospel of Christ and implementing the mission of that Gospel in a given cultural setting. That's why mainstreamers see themselves as Christian before Anglican and culturally popularist rather than culturally elitist. They want to be the church of the people; they usually succeed, which is why mainstream churches tend to be well-attended and attract 20 and 30 year olds in ways that other Anglicans others don't.

The reason why we mainstreamers like being Anglican is overwhelmingly a Christian reason: being Anglican enables us to be Gospel- and Christ-centred people in NZ. Anglicanism enables us to be Bible-focussed, community-minded, culturally adaptable, and world-facing. The central defining point is the Gospel — the Kingdom of God message that centres on Christ, that is contained in the Bible and that confronts us and our world with the call to turn to the living God by believing in Christ and to serve Christ in church and world.

Notice that I haven't mentioned those voluntary and secondary commitments that Anglicans also embrace — eg episcopacy and the structural and accountability dimensions as seen in the ‘instruments of unity,' three Tikanga structure etc. These can and sometimes do (though not always) help the good order of the Church. But the essence of the church is defined by its faithfulness to the God-given Gospel of Christ. There is nothing unique about Anglicanism. It is but one of many geographically-derived and authentic ways of being Christian. Our primary identity as Anglicans comes from Scripture and the Gospel of Christ — those divinely given aspects of identity. Note the order: Christian before Anglican.

And this raises another issue: why are we even asking this question about Anglican identity? It is because of the divisions in our Anglican Church — both local and global. These divisions do or should worry all of us and I want to make clear what especially worries mainstream Anglicans. Whether it's the haemorrhaging of an increasing number of members and parishes and (most recently) five dioceses since the American Episcopal General Convention (that was June); or two gay UK Anglican priests (one of them a Dean) getting married (that was last month); or British liberal Anglicans threatening to split from Canterbury (that's this month) we may be facing a civil war that could destroy Anglicanism as we know it.

Mainstream Anglicans see this disunity in our Church as the result of a defection from the Gospel of Christ and a capitulation to western culture. Because this is the central issue, endless talking about Anglican identity, unity and distinctiveness misses the point, mostly wastes our time and ignores the real reason for our unhappiness as a denomination.

The implication of the preliminary papers sent is that if we can somehow muddle through to a better understanding of our identity our wounds will somehow be healed. But for mainstreamers the central issue is not Anglican identity. The central issue has to do with Christian identity and threats to that identity caused by the cultural captivity of parts of the First World Anglican Church.

Where does this revisionist agenda come from? One helpful analysis of recent theology is that of Professor David Ford of Cambridge University whoseThe Modern Theologians1 maps the five ways the recent century church related its message to Western culture:

*———————–*————————*————————*————————*

Repetition Engagement Correlation Accommodation Capitulation

Anglicanism has traditionally assumed one of the three positions on the left. But this map reveals other options seen when our church chooses to accommodate and even capitulate to doctrinal relativism (eg, the Cathedral Altar cloth issue), to moral relativism (as seen in acquiescence to the gay agenda), and to pluralist muddle (thinking that incompatible understandings of the church can and even should coexist — eg at our recent General Synod).

Doctrinal relativism.
The Cathedral altar cloth with its Hindu prayer has upset mainstreamers. Why? [Email me for a detailed and nuanced discussion because the cenral issues are theological and not to do, in the first instance, with artistic freedom of tolerance.] Let me ask two questions:

If we know Christ, why would we even want to pray such an agnostic prayer?

If we believe that Christ is the world's redeemer (and that is his claim at the Last Supper) why would we want to display such a prayer in a Eucharistic setting? This Hindu prayer might suit an altar ‘to an unknown God' — but not at the Eucharist where Jesus so clearly state that He is the new covenant between God and humanity.

The only explanation known to me is a diminished view of Christ and the Eucharist. One of the virtues of Anglicanism is that it has chosen to be doctrinally modest — but this is no excuse for being doctrinally loose, or implicitly denying the uniqueness and finality of Christ.

Moral relativism.
The greatest threats to Anglican identity come from the erosion of our Christian distinctiveness by cultural accommodation. To apply that to the issue of ‘gay rights' in the church: the agenda of Anglican revisionists comes not from the discovery of new Gospel or Biblical values but from a desire to accommodate to culture (in this case, to capitulate to it) with gay-partnered clergy and even one gay-partnered Bishop. To say this is not to be homophobic; almost every mainstream congregation has gay members.

Pluralist muddle and General Synod.
There is not much point in the Episcopal church in the US offering what it calls its “sincerest apology” when it does nothing to undo the damage and pain it has caused in the Anglican world. It is shameful, in the opinion of most mainstreamers, that our General Synod recently passed a motion that, in effect, offers encouragement and latent support for the American Church. Our General Synod needed to rebuke North American Anglicanism's disrespect for the pain and sense of betrayal caused by it behaving simply as it wishes — in a maverick way that signals a smug American cultural superiority. Liberal revisionism is not only deeply troubling to mainstreamers here in NZ and elsewhere. It is deeply offensive to nearly all African, Asian and Latin American Anglicans too. We cannot proudly extol a worldwide Anglican communion and ignore what most of its members believe. There is a future only if Western Anglicanism heeds the words of judgment being spoken against it by the poor and non-white members of our communion. It is disgraceful that General Synod wants us as a church to ignore that by offering tacit support to the American church.

Here in New Zealand we have Bishops with similar revisionist urges to use episcopal office as a ‘prophetic' lever to pry people loose from the incrusted positions of the past — for example in the ordaining of gay-partnered clergy. Most of them seem willing to resist these urges. But when our leaders do such things it's our (mainstream) churches people leave; we suffer. (And discussion should also mention the disastrous ecumenical consequences as well.)

The accommodating liberal agenda doesn't work. Bishop Spong did, of course, diminish his Diocese of Newark by 43% during his time as Bishop there. Did I hear the other day that the Dunedin Diocese has shrunk to 13 stipendiary clergy and that if you withdrew the mainstream parishes (that have ignored or rejected the liberal agenda) that Diocese would implode? Jim Veitch at the national Anglican conference in the early 1990s: “It's liberals who have ruined the church in NZ.” I do realise that my analysis is hurtful because it seems to cast doubts on the Christian profession of some Anglicans. Of course liberals have not completely abandoned the faith; I can see that some of their actions have some continuity with orthodoxy. But to say that the liberal agenda doesn't actually build the church seems visibly and painfully true.

In sum, what we see is the subversion and transformation of Christian belief and practice by the logic of autonomous individualism. The best analysis I have seen is provided by Philip Turner, the former Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale.2 He's writing about ECUSA — the former name of the American Episcopal Church - but what he says applies to us also.

“As the English theologian PT Forsythe once wrote, “If within us we have nothing above us we soon succumb to what is around us.” The — internal life of ECUSA may well lack a transcendent point of reference—one that can serve as a counter-balance to the social forces that play upon it. A certain emptiness at the center is suggested also by an analysis of the theology that currently dominates ECUSA's pulpits. The standard sermon in outline runs something like this: “God is love; God's love is inclusive; God acts in justice to see that everyone is included; we therefore ought to be co-actors and co-creators with God to make the world over in accordance with inclusivity.”3

“Here is the theological projection of a society built upon preference — .. ECUSA's God has become the image of this society. Gone is the notion of divine judgment (save upon those who may wish to exclude someone), gone is the notion of radical conversion, gone is the notion of a way of life that requires dying to self and rising to newness of life in conformity with God's will. In place of the complex God revealed in Christ Jesus, a God of both judgment and mercy, a God whose law is meant to govern human life, we now have a God who is love and inclusion without remainder. The projected God of the liberal tradition is, in the end, no more than an affirmer of preferences.

“Jews have always held that idolatry is the greatest of all sins. In the end, the actions of ECUSA must be traced to idolatry, to the creation of a God made in our own image. — Contrary to the assertions of many liberal Episcopal clergy and bishops, the concern of the bishops from the global South does not stem from the fact that they have not as yet lived through the Enlightenment. It stems rather from a perception that a form of idolatry has infected ECUSA and that this infection has led to forms of gross disobedience that compromise not only Anglican but Christian identity.”

Is there a way forward?
Archbishop David Moxon is calling for a lengthy period of prayerful, careful, respectful re-visiting of the Bible and “with Christ present in the room.” It sounds promising — except for two things.

(1) Mainstreamers have sat through decades of these calls to revisit the issues. But no new Biblical or Gospel facts emerge; it simply seems to be another attempt by liberals to push their revisionist agenda onto the rest of us. The real issue is accommodation to the culture — and decades of trying to justify this from the Bible simply won't work; it's intellectually dishonest. How do I put this politely? Our church is divided. It's not the evangelical, charismatic and other orthodox Anglicans who have caused the division! We're tired of being put under pressure to revise the Gospel — and that's what it feels like to us.

(2) What about doing the investigation “with Christ present in the room”? That too will also meet with a guarded response from mainstreamers given the way in which every recent defection from the Great Tradition tries to coopt Christ. When the Bishop of Los Angeles presided over the union and blessing of two of his gay clergy he began by stating ‘Christ is present here with us.' The same kind of promiscuous ‘Christ-talk' was heard at Gene Robinson's consecration. But the only Christ we actually know is the Christ of Scripture — all the rest is speculation and every attempt to domesticate Christ to serve unbiblical and revisionist agendas collapses for precisely that reason.

And that brings me back to my main point. Anglican identity is primarily Christian identity. Why are we Anglicans? Simply because Anglicanism is one of many good ways of being Christian. The primary identity comes from Scripture and the Gospel of Christ — those divinely given aspects of identity that make us an orthodox church. So, to quote Professor John Webster, “An orthodox church is not just one kind of church — ; it is just the church. — ‘Heterodoxy' is not another way of being the church, any more than a lie is another way of telling the truth.”4 Unless we can find practical ways of safeguarding and extending a vision of dynamic orthodoxy, faithful to Scripture and the great tradition of Christianity, our identity will remain compromised and our future bleak.

That's the blunt summary of what mainstreamers think about Anglican identity. We estimate that these mainstream Anglicans make up between 40 - 60% of practicing Anglican adults in NZ. Let's call them half of our Church. And because they are the younger part this percentage will grow. Of course the mainstream part of the church is not perfect. There are temptations to triumphalism, individualism and ungraciousness. Not all mainstreamers think and act alike; there is quite a diverse range of opinion and ways of doing things. And, as an academic I know that every issue is complex and multi-layered. But in forty years of watching Anglicans in NZ I have never seen these mainstreamers so strong numerically and so well-equipped theologically - and I have never seen them so determined to resist the revisionism that is the root cause of our disunity.

One last point. New Zealand doesn't actually need Anglicanism — quite apart from the fact that New Zealanders don't seem very interested anyway. But what NZ does need is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let me reassure you of the mobility of Kiwi Christians under the age of 40 who will gravitate to — or leave — Anglicanism in direct proportion to the presence of (a) excellent preaching; (b) doctrinal orthodoxy; (c) the quality of relationships and pastoral care. The future of Anglicanism depends upon those priorities — not upon further analysis and dialogue.

Who are we as Anglicans? We are a church called to be Gospel-centred, Christ-centred, biblically-based and doctrinally orthodox. Our future is strong and assured if — and only if — we remain true to that foundation and resist the suicidal urge to build on any other. Because, of course, “There is no other foundation than the one already laid: that foundation is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3.11).

Bob Robinson bobr@netaccess.co.nz
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May I also commend to you a helpful website: www.latimer.org.nz where recent discussions include: The Implosion of ECUSA; General Synod; Uniting Church Divisions; Hindu Altar Cloth.

1 David F Ford, ‘Introduction to Modern Christian Theology' in The Modern Theologians, edited by David F Ford, second edition (Oxford: Blackwells, 1997), 1-3.

2 From his article, ‘The Episcopal Preference,' First Things, 137 (November 2003), 32f; and also, in expanded and revised form, as: ‘ECUSA's God and the Idols of Liberal Protestantism,' in Ephraim Radner and Philip Turner,The Fate of Communion: The Agony of Anglicanism and the Future of a Global Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 243-51. An earlier but equally devastating critique is: RR Reno, In the Ruins of the Church: Sustaining Faith in an Age of Diminished Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2002).

3 Given the habit of some NZ Deans and Bishops of posting sermons on the web, this analysis is not without significant parallels here as well.

4 At ‘The Future of Anglicanism' Conference, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, 30 June — 5 July 2002.