My kindred spirit and deep friend Coop, recently posted that he was heartbroken over the coming schism in the episcopal church.
I'd like to respond to his post and hopefully elicit lots of conversation.
The potential schism is between two camps within the Church, one liberal and one conservative, sound familiar?
First off, it's important and instructive to show what makes up the Anglican ethos, in which the Episcopal Church was born and lives and breathes. The church is a three legged stool:reason, scripture, and tradition.
By contrast the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions are based more in Tradition and Scripture, with an emphasis on Tradition. Here tradition has a much deeper meaning than tradition in the way that we use it. Tradition as a living conversation that goes beyond time and space.
Now the Baptist Church and most Evangelical churches rely on the Scriptures only. This is called Sola Scriptura. Everything is seen through the lens of the Scriptures and the rest is a distortion, an illusion.
So the Anglican perspective is seen three ways and they dance together. Sometimes the dance gets rough. More on this later...
2 comments:
i just wonder if the baby is not getting thrown out with the bathwater, ya know? i mean--what is to stop the liberal Episcopalians from leaving off the other two aspects of the Anglican Ethos (Tradition and Scripture)once there are no more formal ties to Mother Church, for an all reasonable hogjobble of whatever we Americans want in a Church. The Church of do want you want to--in the words of a band called, Jacob's Trouble. I consider myself fairly liberal, its just that when dealing with something where Unity is SO IMPORTANT, as the Body of Christ...I really think we just need a lot of patience. if we do not feel some hurt from this, we are very disconnected from the heart of the Church--she is always in pain when splintered further.
I share that concern. Damn,the older I get the more conservative I become. I'm going to blog extensively on the recent developements on the so called schism and the bishops meeting in Nawlins a few months back.
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