{"id":7010,"date":"2025-10-28T12:55:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T18:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/whatgodwantsforyourlife\/?p=7010"},"modified":"2025-10-28T12:55:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T18:55:27","slug":"breaking-up-the-anglican-communion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/whatgodwantsforyourlife\/2025\/10\/breaking-up-the-anglican-communion\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking up the Anglican Communion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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The election of the Right Reverend Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury has inflamed tensions across the Anglican Communion.\u00a0 Although the majority of the church is comfortable with the choice, some members of Anglican family have said that they can no longer look to Canterbury for leadership \u2013 though not nearly as many as some would have you believe.<\/a><\/p>\n

Most of those churches are in Africa and are members of what is known as GAFCON.\u00a0 But leaders of the Anglican Communion in North America<\/a> (ACNA) have used the occasion to\u00a0 renew their objection to women\u2019s ordination; and they have also used it to suggest that their objections have been justified by the response on the African continent.<\/p>\n

In the west women\u2019s ordination revolves around the fullness of the Gospel. By ordaining women we acknowledge the fact that the image of God can only be fully comprehended in both men and women, not by mena and women individually.\u00a0 Ordaining women honors the breadth of God\u2019s healing intention.\u00a0 And, in turn, that healing intention is made evident when women and men consecrate the body and blood of Christ.<\/div>\n
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Ordination is not a right.\u00a0 It is a calling.\u00a0 But our choice ordain women is based upon Christian anthropology, soteriology, and sacramental theology.\u00a0 I would also note, it is based upon the logic of God\u2019s saving work among us.\u00a0 Put rather more colloquially: If you baptize someone, you should be prepared for that person to be called to ordained ministry.\u00a0 If you ordain someone, you ought to be prepared for that person to be called to the episcopacy.\u00a0 And if someone is called to the episcopacy, then you ought to be prepared for that person to be called to an archbishopric.<\/div>\n
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But though I am in favor of Mullally\u2019s appointment and \u2013 more generally \u2013 the ordination of women, I can understand why some of our Anglican brothers and sisters cannot bring themselves to ordain women.\u00a0 Their history is very different from that of other churches in the Anglican Communion.\u00a0 They face religious and cultural challenges that are unique to them \u2013 including Islamists who use women\u2019s ordination as a wedge issue \u2013 in order to isolate the church.\u00a0 So, there are good pastoral reasons to let the dissenting churches pursue their own policy.<\/div>\n
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But, for the same reason, those members of the Communion should let the rest of the Communion pursue its own course, and it should forego threatening the rest of us with schism.\u00a0 That, it seems to me, is the essence of\u00a0 \u201cCommunion across Differences\u201d<\/a>.<\/div>\n
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What about our friends in ACNA?\u00a0 On that score, I confess to a certain amount of fatigue and frustration.\u00a0 The fact that some of their leaders would use the reaction in individual cases to make the argument that they were right and that women should not be ordained strikes me as cynical \u2013\u00a0 a tedious effort to re-litigate a conversation about women\u2019s ordination.<\/div>\n
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We had this conversation with them decades ago.\u00a0 They did not carry the day.\u00a0 They chose to leave The Episcopal Church, even though TEC remained a member in good standing of the Anglican Communion.\u00a0 They risked their own connection with the larger Communion and it didn\u2019t seem to concern them then.<\/div>\n
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I wrote my first book on women\u2019 ordination in 1996<\/a>.\u00a0 Some of the best priests in the church who have responded to the call of God on their lives are women; and we have benefited by a fuller understanding of the church\u2019s vocation through their efforts. ACNA\u2019s time would be better spent answering the fundamental questions about their own ecclesiology that they have left unaddressed.\u00a0 And as a Communion, we should move forward across our differences.<\/div>\n
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Photo by Nishesh Jaiswal<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The election of the Right Reverend Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury has inflamed tensions across the Anglican Communion.\u00a0 Although the majority of the church is comfortable with the choice, some members of Anglican family have said that they can no longer look to Canterbury for leadership \u2013 though not nearly as many as some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":7049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5054],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sarah-mullally"],"yoast_head":"\nBreaking up the Anglican Communion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The election of the Right Reverend Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury has inflamed tensions across the Anglican Communion.\u00a0 Although the majority\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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