NZ ANGLICANS BREAK APART
by John Stringer.
It’s official. Further to the earlier stories here at KB on this schism (here), dozens of Anglican parishes across NZ, lots of vicars, and hundreds of worshippers (including entire congregations, like St Stephens Shirley) are breaking away.
“Clergy signal move for new Anglican diocese”.
It’s a nationwide development. Blenheim, Canterbury, Waipa, Nelson. The denomination will divide over conscience and theology, as happened to the Methodists years ago (Anglicans decide much more slowly).
Kiwibloggers will recall Winston had some things to say about some of this. “Winston wanting to steal the cathedral off the Anglican Church.”
The schism is over the canons of the church and the sanctity of Scripture as the guide to what Christian life and morality is. The catalyst has been the intrusion of same-gender “blessings” ‘by God,’ voted for approval inside Anglican churches at a recent Synod. A proviso was also voted in, that parishes may dissent and the church could live wth two steams of “truth” (“agree to disagree“). But for many that is a line too far. “There cannot be two truths” as many parishioners have argued.
The STAR leads with the story on its front page today. “A breakaway Anglican diocese could be established…parish clerics from across the country (will join) to establish a new national diocese.”
In Canterbury alone, nine clergy have resigned across seven parishes: St Johns Latimer, St Stephens, St John’s Woolston, St Savior’s, St Nicholas, St Christophers, St Marks Rakaia.
While many remain, such as the historic St Paul’s Papanui, the congregations are adamant they still disagree and will not support same-gender blessings ‘by God’ in their churches, by their new vicars, or in their buildings. They are clear, they embrace and accept gay worshippers, but cannot reach as far to condone active sexual unions between people of the same gender as “blessed” by God and won’t allow those rituals within their churches as an issue of conscience.
So NZ Anglicans dissent, disagree, some are leaving, some are staying. It’s nothing new, actually. Rev John Wesley was an English Anglican minister. He did not want to leave the Anglican fold but was eventually forced to do so over theology and conscience. He reluctantly formed “the Methodists” with his brother Charles Wesley (the famous hymnist) and many other dissenting Anglicans. That was in 1868. The Salvation Army later formed out of the Methodists. Horses for courses.
Of course, the Anglicans themselves (the Church of England) broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534. Such are the rainbow colours of the human church diversity, as colourful and varied as church stained-glass windows.