Tag Archives: reconciliation

Living Reconciliation in the Anglican Church of Canada

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The ACoC is going return the church buildings it acquired through the legal system from ANiC parishes; Bishop Malcolm Harding’s portrait will be restored to its rightful place in the Diocese of Brandon; James Packer will be invited to preach at St. John’s Shaughnessy; a certain bishop and a certain blogger who were entangled in a defamation lawsuit will tearily kiss and make up; Anglican Church of Canada bishops will call ANiC the “Anglican Network” not the “Network”. Projectile pigs with “Indaba” tattooed on their porcine posteriors will float gracelessly skyward during the Marriage Canon debate at the 2016 General Synod.

From here:

It is a fractious time in the life of the Anglican church, both in Canada and in the world, but even as the Communion struggles to overcome pernicious divisions over issues such as human sexuality or the ordination of women, it is also turning to the tradition of the scriptures and the indigenous wisdom of its diverse membership to find potential ways forward.

Living Reconciliation, a new book published jointly by SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) in the U.K. and Forward Movement in North America, tries to use the resources that exist within the church to explore more peaceful ways of handling disagreement.

The authors, the Rev. Canon Phil Groves, director of Continuing Indaba for the Anglican Communion, and Angharad Jones, former communications and resource manager for Continuing Indaba, understand reconciliation to be one of the foundational principles of Christian doctrine. The Christian story, they suggest, is fundamentally about how God reconciles his people to himself through Christ, which means that a faithful response to this story must be one that places reconciliation at the heart of Christian ministry.

Justin Welby’s anfractuous path to reconciliation

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Rowan Williams spent ten years attempting to synthesise a middle ground between Anglican liberals and conservatives: ten years of conversation, Indabas and listening. It didn’t work because it is no more possible to find a convincing middle ground between the Gospel and an anti-Gospel than it is between the propositions: 1+1=2 and 1+1=4.

Justin Welby seems to have caught on to the fact that Rowan Williams’ efforts fell flat so, instead, he is attempting to reconcile…. something – I’m not sure what. And therein, I suspect, lies the problem. Two people or groups can be reconciled to one another in the sense that they can mutually forgive one another for past wrongs – something that has been a hallmark of Welby’s ministry to date – but contrary propositions can no more be reconciled than they can be synthesised.

So while he may be able to convince the warring factions in the Anglican Communion that they should not hate each other and may even sit in the same room together, I cannot see much hope for reconciling the beliefs that have driven the two sides apart.

And without that, the reconciliation will be a shallow veneer of strained tolerance that will crack at the first hint that someone is about to express a firmly held conviction.

Read the complete address here:

The Crooked, Straight Path of Reconciliation.

Reconciliation is recognition of diversity and a transformation of destructive conflict to creativity. It holds the tensions and challenges of difference and confronts us with them, forcing us to a new way of life that accepts the power and depth and radicality of the work of the Holy Spirit in our conversions.

We speak often in foreign policy of failed states, or failing states. Their common characteristic is the inability to manage diversity and grow with it, enabling it to change them significantly into better places. The core of the American sense of exclusivism is often found within that vocation of being a diverse and thriving nation.

If the Church is not a place of reconciliation it is not merely hindering its mission and evangelism, appalling as such hindrance is, but it is a failing or failed church. It has ceased to be the miracle of diversity in unity, of the grace of God breaking down walls.