Group Calls for Separation from Anglican Communion

By David W. Virtue
6/5/2008
Virtue on Line

The group claims the Archbishop of Canterbury "shares that same disregard for Scriptural authority that is evident in The Episcopal Church."

NEW YORK (Virtue On Line) - A group of influential global Evangelical Anglicans believes that the Anglican Communion is fatally flawed and that there must be a clear and decisive separation from the See of Canterbury with the formation of a new Communion that is global in scope and truly Anglican in doctrine.

"Anything less will leave faithful Anglicans throughout the world as unwilling collaborators in a counterfeit Communion which makes a virtue out of the toleration of teaching contrary to scripture, is rife and ingrained with such false teaching and is led by an Archbishop of Canterbury who himself so teaches."

"Freedom from the hegemony of the Anglican Communion's pretended fellowship, with all the compromises and distractions it entails, is imperative if those Churches of the Communion which have not abandoned the sovereign authority of Scripture are to be free to develop that true communion and fellowship which has at its heart the transforming power of the gospel," say the writers representing themselves under the umbrella of the The Society for the Propagation of Reformed Evangelical Anglican Doctrine (SPREAD)

In a paper titled "COUNTERFEIT COMMUNION AND THE TRUTH THAT SETS FREE", the writers say that there are now two distinct religions in One Communion - one is a revisionist Anglicanism which has adopted contemporary Western humanism and its sceptical assumptions about the Bible while retaining a veneer of religiosity.

The other is the Anglican reformed catholic faith, wrought in the Church of England during the Protestant Reformation and defined by the Church of England's Articles of Religion, 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the 1662 Ordinal.

"The agonizing of recent years about Anglican identity, the tortuous consultations of the Windsor Covenant process and the chronic (and seemingly calculated) ambiguity of many statements by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth establishment all bear witness to the drift of the Anglican Churches of North America and the British Isles, and those of a similar Anglo-American mindset in the Southern hemisphere, away from historic confessional Anglicanism."

The writers point to doctrinal confusion in the Anglican Communion over the approval of same gender sexual relationships. "The abandonment of biblical sexual morality is not a minor ethical aberration but a growth now visible having been rooted in many years of doctrinal decay."

The writers blame the Archbishop of Canterbury, because, they say, he shares that same disregard for Scriptural authority that is evident in The Episcopal Church.

"The Archbishop of Canterbury is in no position to exercise spiritual leadership and hopelessly compromises the ability of the present Anglican Communion to resolve a crisis which continues to intensify, most obviously in North America with its growing exodus of orthodox congregations to overseas jurisdictions."

The writers say Dr. Williams is inconsistent. "You cannot accuse others of disobeying the scriptures on homosexuality while you yourselves are disobeying equally clear commands of scripture to avoid such false teachers."

The writers argue that within the mother Church of England the erosion of orthodoxy has been less dramatic, but equally serious. "A survey in 2002 found that a third of the Church's clergy doubted or disbelieved in the physical resurrection and only half were convinced of the truth of the virgin birth. As the recent history of North American Anglicanism all too clearly demonstrates, once the creeds have been emptied of shared meaning, biblical morality shares a similar fate.

"This process is already well under way in England. In July 2005, the English House of Bishops gave their support to the British Government's legislation creating Civil Partnerships, which was explicitly designed for those in same gender sexual relationships and gave such partnerships a legal status virtually indistinguishable from marriage. Clergy of the Church of England were allowed to enter such partnerships on the rather improbable, and certainly unenforceable, condition of abstinence. "

"The Communion-Breaking Significance of Approving Same Gender Sexual Relationships cannot be treated simply as a matter of sexual ethics within an encompassing theological orthodoxy, but is symptomatic of a fundamental rejection of biblical authority which strikes at the very heart of Anglican identity."

WILLIAMS A FALSE TEACHER

"We must ask - is there any reason why this admirable biblical logic should not be applied to the Anglican Communion as a whole? If attendance at Lambeth is in contravention of the clear commands of Scripture to avoid false teachers, then on what grounds is it still possible to describe oneself as being in communion with them, especially when the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has the power to declare who is in communion and who is not, is himself a false teacher?"

"Since being in communion with such teachers clearly violates Scripture, all those Churches, which seek to be in submission to the authority of Scripture, should break from the Anglican Communion forthwith."

"To remain in communion is to legitimize, or at least to hold as something indifferent, that which imperils eternal salvation by treating same gender sexual relationships as consecrated - ordaining as priests/presbyters and consecrating as bishops those engaged in such conduct and blessing same sex unions."

"Many church leaders seem to have lost their capacity to recognize this shocking reversal for what it really is; the exchange of natural sexual relationships for unnatural, is nothing less than the mark of a culture which is under divine judgment because it has radically rejected the Creator God (Romans 1:26). And this is the practice false teachers seek to sanctify."

"The essential meaning of communion is relationship, a shared fellowship which is often referred to as maintained by the 'bonds of affection'. True communion is a gift of God's grace which is animated by the Holy Spirit, but it is never independent of the truth of Scripture."

"A communion which maintains relationship with those who persist in the radical and unrepented rejection of biblical authority has become a counterfeit communion. It becomes an exercise in idolatry as its own continued existence is elevated above faithfulness to the Word of God which brought it into being."

The writers say that some conservatively minded Anglicans are reluctant to break their ties with the Anglican Communion because of the unexamined assumption that the Anglican Faith is inseparable from the See of Canterbury and identical with the Anglican Communion.

"Since the Communion is a particularly English legacy of Britain's global influence and Empire, the link seems quite natural, but this association is now demonstrably false and fatally toxic."

They cite the Rev. Prof. Stephen Knoll who commented on the Anglican Communion's failure to exercise effective discipline of heretical members saying, "We must start by admitting that that Global Anglican Polity has leaned far too heavily on the benevolent patriarchy of the Established Church and the British Empire. The idea that a rapidly expanding body of Global South churches must be governed from an historic See dominated by a secular government and a compromised mother church is, to be blunt, a dangerous exercise in nostalgia."

They described the bewitchment as "insidious" because it dulls sensitivity to the Scriptural imperative to separate from false teachers.

"Instead it encourages the tolerance of such leaders in direct contradiction of the Risen Christ's warning to the Church in Thyatira which is rebuked because 'you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice immorality' (Revelation 2:20)."

"The result is a false orthodoxy based on process and the maintenance of institutional unity rather than a unity based on revealed biblical truth. Being 'Windsor compliant' is not a long- term guard against the remorseless advance of the revisionist Churches' destructive agenda and will undermine the capacity of participants to preserve the Anglican Faith. The advocates of anti-Scriptural teaching have time on their side and they know that the longer they can engage in dialogue the greater the chance they have of establishing their position."

"The ABC's call for the Anglican Communion to be made a 'safe place' for gay and lesbian people assumed that this could only be done by keeping the debate open - which of course makes the Communion an unsafe place for the gospel."

"Scripture warns us that 'false teaching spreads like gangrene.' Collusion leads to contagion. The middle way is an illusion. False teaching has its own malign spiritual dynamic and we urge that it is now so embedded in the structures of the Anglican Communion that amputation is the only remedy left."