FiF International News
Archbishop of Sydney writes for New Directions
2 October 2003

In the September issue of New Directions we published an exclusive and ground-breaking article by Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. His assessment of the possible future(s) of Anglicanism received major press coverage on all five continents. 

This month we have invited Dr Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney, to respond to Dr Williams and outline his own thinking on the crises facing the Anglican Primates as they meet this month. Dr Jensen is seen as a standard-bearer of Anglican evangelicals throughout the world and represents a strong, confident and growing constituency in the Communion both numerically and financially. 

In the article Dr Jensen looks at the dilemma posed by the embryonic schism in the diocese of New Westminster over same-sex blessings, the appointment of Canon Gene Robinson, a divorced homosexual, as Bishop of New Hampshire and the attempt to impose a leading homosexual activist as Bishop of Reading. Jensen recalls that all these were done in clear contradiction to promises made at the last meeting of the Primates.  He concludes:

• ‘The innovators are the real threat to unity’
• Dr Williams known views and writings have ‘made the situation more awkward’
• ‘It is going to be difficult for the Archbishop not to act’ and  judges that ‘his peaceable approach has run out of time’

 Dr Jensen suggests three possible courses of action open to Dr Williams:

•  To do nothing. This would effectively confirm the authority of heretical dioceses, establish complete diocesan autonomy and encourage the orthodox to secede or leave.  ‘It will’, Jensen adds tellingly, ‘invite others to act in support of the traditionalists.’
• To recognise both positions as valid. This would establish, finally, Anglicanism as a federation or club rather than a Church.
• Expel New Westminster etc from the Communion. This would cause a furious row but only in the declining, weak liberal, largely white churches.

 Jensen warns that the current crisis has produced: 

• A further disenfranchisement of traditional believers. ‘Faithful Anglicans have been disenfranchised for no other sin than holding on to the majority traditional view’
• Major offence to Third World Anglicans and undermined their mission and ministry. ‘There is deep hurt and the Communion has been destabilised.’
• The clearest evidence yet that the same hermeneutical errors that led to the ordination of women inevitably lead to a rejection of scriptural clarity in other areas of sexuality. ‘Those who have accepted the ordination of women are now being told by both sides of the debate that their hermeneutical method has led inexorably to this moment’.  ‘Our flirtation with secularism has gone too far are we are in danger of losing the moral and spiritual imperatives of the gospel.’

Jensen concludes that these are no ‘second order’ issues but that the division is centred on the person of Christ and the nature of God.  Communion is a wonderful thing but ‘There is a limit to Communion. It comes when souls are put at risk by sustained institutional disobedience to the word of God in scripture’.   In New Westminster et al. ‘The limit has been reached.’

Your can read the article by clicking here . . . in PDF format for which you will need Acrobat Reader.