|
In Luke chapter 14 verse 33, in the clear words of Scripture, we find: In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. If you insist on a literalist interpretation of scripture start with that verse. But that is not the Anglican way; Anglicans approach the Bible as a holistic revelation rather than a collection of "proof-texts" or even a set of rules. "Classic Anglicanism did not expect the church to have a detailed and certain knowledge of the mind of God. For doctrine, it was content with relatively simple and ancient formulae. It focused less on perfect orthodoxy than on maintaining the community of faith with its life and conservation. We believe that no one will ever possess a complete and detailed account of God’s will, but it is enough that the Spirit will work with us in the unity (not uniformity) of the church to guide us toward truth." "If we want to live out this classical Anglicanism, we need to recognize that it is a counter-cultural act in the United States. The cultural religion of America is the religion of Geneva and the Puritans. It expresses itself particularly in a certain way of reading the Bible – a way presupposing that the Bible is a well-camouflaged book of rules. No one ever seems to explain why God should have wished to make such a riddle of these rules. But the preachers are certain that they have the key to them and they are happy to impose them on the rest of us." - L. William CounytrymanMichael Ramsey when speaking of the Anglican Spirit said: "May I add here a cautionary note? While holiness is both a fact and a potentiality, it is impossible to enforce the holiness of the church by rejecting people who do not conform to certain moral canons. That has been tried often both in the history of the church, most notably by the early Puritans. When one says that the church is meant to be holy and therefore we will exclude those who are not holy, the inevitable happens." "You can turn out the fornicators, the murderers, and those who apostasize in times of persecution; you can turn out sinners of every kind, but you cannot turn out the sin of pride. This sin, the most deadly of all, is always present but not always easily identifiable. So of you are going to purge the church of sinners, you will need to purge it of the sin of pride and turn everybody out. As Anglicans, we believe that these attempts to purify the church by certain ethical criteria cause it to lose the reality of what it means to be dedicated to the holiness of God." "I pray that none will be offended if I seek to make the Christian Religion an inn where all are received joyously, rather than a cottage where some few friends of the family are to be received." - Richard Hooker |