Anglican unity in diversity

1 major strength of Anglican as I see it is that we have a unity within our diversity. Indeed this goes right back within the history of the Anglican communion. Anglican Churches are meant to be, as I see it, cultural expressions of Christian faith. We are meant to take into account the culture and context the Church finds itself in and regard this in matters of faith, life and worship. We should be appropriate to our area and therefore indigenisation or enculturisation is a necessity otherwise we cease to be relevant and even accessible. So we should be locally adapted to the needs of the people.

We do of course have some things which keep us unified, i.e. our shared history, key theology (i.e. the Creeds), and our focus on tradition, scholarship and reason. So, though there are local differences, we are unified.

Unity in diversity is certainly not easy. So, as the accepted norms are V different in different cultures, this is currently held in tension in the Anglican communion.

Unfortunately, I feel that this strength of Anglicanism is currently being attempted to be stamped out. I am referring of course, to the current debate about homosexuality and gender. By taking into account all we are meant to when assessing situations (i.e. taking into account our tradition, scholarship and reason, while of course listening to God guiding us), our cultural context compels us to marry same sex couples in Christian services and to consecrate women and those in same sex relationships as Bishops. Unfortunately, S.An culture doesn’t currently feel the same and we should agree to disagree and so we should get on with living our lives, our faith, as we should, as God calls us to. If our African brothers and sisters choose to spilt from us, this is of course a sad thing, but is it not sadder to deny our context, our culture, what it means to be an Anglican, our beliefs, our way of life, and even our calling from God? For this is surely what we are doing when we fail to express our Christian faith and belief accurately and culturally by not moving forward with blessing same sex unions and consecrating women and those in same sex unions as Bishops.

How can we ignore our consciences by waiting any longer to do so? We are compelled to do so and by not doing so we should not be surprised that many people (and young people especially) in today’s modern society express their faith in their own way independent of the Anglican Church and Christianity. By not doing so, we have made, and are continuing to make, ourselves culturally inaccessible to many within the UK today. More than this, we are committing the sin of being hypocrites by preaching God's egalitarian love but failing to live up to this in practice.

The time to move forward is now. The Church needs to be a current expression of Christian faith in today’s current society. It needs to be a local expression of faith, belief and behaviour, within a wider diverse Christian faith. We have always been united in diversity, why now should we let people from other cultures manipulate us into thinking we can no longer have this unity in diversity? We can, and we should. And more importantly, we can and we should while moving forward with our culture, our beliefs, our faith and our mission from God.