Following the kerfuffle in Canterbury, Tobias Haller, BSG, was reminded of a piece he wrote in 2006 in response to issues we were having with the Anglican Communion, and has posted it, unchanged, noting that little has changed between 2006 and 2016, except the approach to ‘management’, which breaks with history and tradition.
From the post:
The leadership of the Church of England, and by extension (since the majority are relatively recent products of English missionary efforts) many of the Primates of the Anglican Communion seem to have taken a managerial approach to the development of doctrine and polity within Anglicanism. One might observe this is better than the almost impossibilist approach of the Eastern Church or the heavily top-down of the Roman, but in recent years these leaders seem to have taken their cue more from those directions than from the more traditionally Anglican model of provincial autonomy to innovate and the process of reception over time.
His re-posted piece is a list of all the times that we’ve reinterpreted Scripture in our continuing relationship with God; taking a Swiftian approach, Haller provides these as a list of times when we didn’t do what we ‘should have’ done. From the post:
Joseph should have ignored the “personal revelation” he received — again in a dream, no less — and acted in accordance with the Law, and when he found Mary to be with child by someone other than himself, had her stoned to death, and her unborn child with her.
Then we wouldn’t be having all these problems with the Anglican Communion.