It’s a long time since I blogged about the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, which were regular topics here during last year’s GAFCON and Lambeth conferences as well as the C of E debate over women bishops. That is partly because on both these fronts things went quiet for several months.
But no longer. Last week the international issues that have divided the communion came up again at the Primates’ Meeting in Alexandria. Next week the issues in England will be in focus at the General Synod meeting. Ruth Gledhill summarises the current situation in an article in The Times. But things aren’t as interesting as they were last year: talk of schism has faded, and instead we have Ruth’s headline:
Anglicans brace themselves for an outbreak of unity
Ruth’s article has a couple of errors in it.
The obvious one is ‘the heretic Aries’ rather than ‘Arius’!
But the Diocese of Toronto is not on the verge of offering same-sex blessings in the same way as New Westminster. New Westminster has ignored House of Bishops guidelines ad the canons of General Synod. The proposal from the bishops of the Diocese of Toronto follow House of Bishops guidelines from 2007 and attempt to offer the highest possible degree of pastoral care to same-sex couples ‘within the current teaching of the church’. This article in the Anglican Journal gives the details.
Diocesan Bishop Colin Johnson is undoubtedly liberal on this subject. But he is also committed to moving with the national church as a whole, and not ignoring it as the Diocese of New Westminster has done.
Thanks, Tim. I guess “Aries” was a sub-editor or spelling checker’s error for “Arius” (my own spelling checker recognises the former but not the latter). As for the situation in Toronto, I’m sure you know it well.
By the way if any of you should want to follow what is going on at the General Synod, you can follow the (unofficial) General Synod Blog and/or some of the other means suggested in the latest post there, which is in fact the first for nearly six months as this blog is active only around the time of meetings.
Correction to comment 207750: Ruth now admits, in this post (11.40):
So her fault, not a sub-editor’s or spelling checker’s.
Pingback: Gentle Wisdom » The Church of England upholds the uniqueness of Christ