Bishop of Rochester and the three 'C's

The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, has delivered a strong address to the Prayer Book Society at its annual general meeting that you can  listen to here. He warned that the Anglican Church was too ready to adapt to modern culture. He called for the Church to reaffirm its traditional identity as a confessing, conciliar and consistory church. He was also critical of councils that 'make no decisions', a veiled attack on the recent Lambeth Conference. I've reproduced some edited highlights below. Also, please join in prayers for the family of the regular contributor to this blog, the Rev Tom Allen of Big Bulky Anglican, who has died suddenly.

He began by speaking about Anglican identity and the growth in churches catering to specific interest groups.

'In the Anglican Communion for instance when I was the general secretary of the Church Missionary Society I was always being confronted by the desire particularly of Anglicans in Africa to have single-tribe dioceses who wanted to be together. Mostly i responded with hostility to such a suggestion.

'But we are not a stranger to this here.

'This new fashion of network churches - for people like one another in taste for music or whatever it maybe who want to be church together.

'It might be possible for us to agree that Christians can be church in this way as long as this is not the only way they want to be church.' (Closer study of the New Testament had brought him to this conclusion.)

'The question precisely with many of the emerging church movements is whether people can be or are committed to such universal belonging.'

Again and again, he said, people make out that Anglicans believe nothing or that Anglicans can believe anything. 'I don't know which is worse.'

'When we say we want to be confessing Anglicans we mean there is a definite content to our faith.'

The Churchs  should also be conciliar. 'This goes back to the old vision of looking to a council of the church that could resolve christian differences.'

The Church needs conciliarity so members can come together to agree how Christian life is to be lived today.

'We cannot do it in a corner. We cannot do it, to be quite honest, by having meeting that do not make any decisions. We have to grasp the nettle because some very difficult decisions have to  be made about our life together or there will be no life together.'

The Church must also be consistorial.

'It has to be how discipline is exercised in the church by the church acting together and this we need desperately if we are going to be a coherent body.'

He said there had to be room for exploration 'but also where there is a clear sense of discipline among those who have responsibility for passing on the faith of the apostles.'

He continued: 'Anglicans have never claimed to be the one true church. Praise God for that. Successive Lambeth Conferences have said that if in the cause of unity of Christ's one true church Anglicanism has to die then so be it. So there's no claim here to finality.

But there is a sense that God has given this tradition certain gifts which it should not lose and which it should offer the rest of the church as a gift whilst also of course being willing to receive from others.

'When we look at the question of identity we find the Book of Common Prayer is at the centre of it all. There is a particular way of worshipping which seeks to give honour to god by doing things as well as they can be done.

He gave an example of how he believed Anglicans do worship better than Catholics because of their attention to detail.

'Even when Anglicans and Roman Catholics are saying the same things they say them in different ways.'

He regretted the abeyance in theological colleges of teaching ordinands the history of the fathers and the councils of the church. athers nand the bible are complementary. Ordinands were given the old prayer books to be aware of 'the rock from which they have been hewn' not to keep on their shelves like an antique.

He warned that in its current difficulties, the Communion 'may be in danger of undoing now everything we have taught the Roman Catholic Church.'

He said was a great debate at the Reformation  about the exercise of discipline. 'You cannot have a church where there is no discipline.'

In one case in his diocese he wanted a cleric to be disciplined but was warned that it would mean using a piece of legislation that had never been used before and it would cost £1 million.

Comments

[Robert Ian Williams]

But Doctor Nazir Ali has adapted to the modern world...he pionered female ordination ( condemened as late as Lambeth 1948) and appointed the first woman Archdeacon in the Church of England. furthermore he accepts divorce and re-marriage forbidden by the Church of England until 2001!

If St paul can be revised on women and divorce...why not gays!

The answer is St John Fisher of Rochester..who saw that Christian truth and orthodoxy can only be guaranteed through God's divine plan, the Papacy...hence he laid down his life.

[wyclif]

This article is riddled with spelling errors and typos, including the headline "Bishop of Rocheser" (???)

[FrDarryl Jordan]

Bishop Nazir-Ali said, 'You cannot have a church where there is no discipline.'

Seems congruent with the CDF's Declaration entitled Dominus Iesus and its infamous typology. There is one Church but many 'ecclesial communities'.

Most are man-made. Only one is God-man made.

I will say mass today with special intention for Fr Tom Allen (RIP).

He wrote many wonderful things. In light of his passing, perhaps his most poignant post shared his insight into the despair amongst too many overworked and underpaid Anglican priests, especially those trying desperately to support a family, financially and otherwise.

http://bigbulkyanglican.typepad.com/bigbulkyanglican/2008/08/house-for-duty-priesthood.html

May his prayers now further aid our writing (and our working).

[David Palmer]

FR VAN WIDSOR says,

"It is only in more recent times that we have been acting like a group of protestant sects bound together with a mutual love of all things British, Anglophiles if you will. If we were not part of the Catholic Faith, why would he care about orthodoxy, the Church Fathers, a Book of COMMON Prayer, maintaining sacraments, or teaching Christian morality?"

Although Presbyterian I received my early nurture as a Christian in the Anglican Church and was taught that it was a Protestant, ie Reformed Church.

However I think you raise some important points.

As one belonging to what you wish to call a Protestant sect, we do consider not just the Bible, but also the Creeds and Sacraments (baptism and Lord's Supper), the Church Fathers judiciously read (as we all must do for there are some differing paradigms - just think of the Western Church's focus on the unity of God following Augustine and the Eastern Church's focus on the three persons following the Cappodocian Fathers) and Reformation Confessions as part of our heritage.

While we may have very real differences Catholic to Orthodox, Catholic to Protestant, Orthodox to Protestant there is far more that the orthodox (and I use that term as the antithesis of revisionist) hold in common, be they Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant.

[Mike]

Fr Van Windsor has misunderstood the Bishop. He didn't mean that the Anglican church is not part of the one catholic and apostolic church he meant that the COE is not the church on its own and therefore has the power to alter the faith and order of the church. It is precisely because we believe that the Anglican church is part of the universal catholic church that decisions such as opening the priesthood to women and then making them bishops is devisive and therefore wrong. It is precisely because the bishop believes this that he cares about those things that Fr Van Winsor mentioned.

[Fr. Van Windsor]

It does seem that much of what the good bishop says is true, not just for the C of E but for the whole of the Church. We do need to express a common faith, under-girded by Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. I would also agree that the beautiful expression of faith found in the traditional BCP's (not just the 1662) should be the standard. However, he says that the Church has never seen itself as the one true church, and with this I would disagree. We have always taught that we are a part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Church. It is only in more recent times that we have been acting like a group of protestant sects bound together with a mutual love of all things British, Anglophiles if you will. If we were not part of the Catholic Faith, why would he care about orthodoxy, the Church Fathers, a Book of COMMON Prayer, maintaining sacraments, or teaching Christian morality ?

[Mark]

I love the Anglican church. A strong church is vital for a strong Universal church. Bishop Michael and the principles he preaches are vital for a strong church. I pray for him and the strengthening of the Bride of Christ. Be it in England or Orissa.

[George Parr]

Oh the power and the glory....in a democracy would anyone vote this man in to parliament?

[j]

Is it possible that Dr Nazir-Ali fancies the top job?

[Vaughan]

The CoE is finally finished and we should all be very happy! It was founded in dishonesty and has lived its sad days on the arrogant assunmption that church and state are co-terminal institutions. Actually the CoE and privilege are co-terminus and nothing else. Let it die - and soon!!!

[Karen Freeman]

Tell that to the Anglo-Catholics who are determined to use the English Missal or the Roman Missal!

I don't get this fixation with sticking to the 1662 BCP.

Common Worship is based on the BCP, anyway. Common Worship is a great resource, I think. Common worship for our contemporary context, which won't date for a long time.

Anglicans outside of the UK have got their own prayer books as well, and this is entirely appropriate, considering the fact that their context is not very like Britain in 1662.

[Fr Mark]

Oh yes, very handy for an autocratically-minded and completely unaccountable bishop to call to be allowed to exercise more discipline.

Pretty feeble stuff, though, isn't it? He thinks that making churches round networks is or isn't alright, then? Let me guess, he thinks it's alright when it means African bishops wading into North American jurisdictions, but would be incandescent if TEC started running parishes in his diocese... or am I wrong?