1c. Ecumenical contexts of Anglicanism today | |
Links
The Agros report (1997) was prepared for the Lambeth Conference of 1998 as an up-to-the-minute survey of the various ecumenical partnerships and conversations in the Anglican Communion Anglican world magazine has an "ecumenical portal" with helpful and interesting links The Office of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations in the Episcopal Church has a very full and helpful website An ecumenical timeline by an Anglican layperson in Kansas City, MO, gives a bird's-eye view of recent ecumenical history A PDF history of the ecumenical movement on the website of the National Association of Diocesan Ecumenical Officers [Roman Catholic] Resources for the agreement between the Lutheran Church (ELCA) and Episcopal Church in the USA
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Ecumenism and Anglican identity Considering that there are a great many Christian traditions and communions, each with its own set of strengths and weaknesses, we might ask:
Some Anglicans have contended, however, that their church is the best. Typically they have argued on one of the following two grounds:
On the other hand, other Anglicans have thought that the vocation of their church was to disappear. An historical overview of Anglicans and ecumenism Before the Reformation. By and large, the Church of England recognizes those churches, traditions, and movements recognized by Rome, and not others. The Reformation and early Stuart periods, 1547-1640. Anti-Roman feeling is often strong, except in the reign of Queen Mary, a Roman Catholic. There is a general recognition of the Protestant churches on the continent. The main theological rationale for recognizing the legitimacy of other Protestant churches is called "adiaphorism": those matters of governing structure and liturgical text by which Anglicans are distinguished from Lutherans and Calvinists are usually not matters of revealed eternal truth, but only adiaphora ("things indifferent"). Ministers ordained on the continent are sometimes licensed by a Church of England bishop even though they have not been episcopally ordained. At the Restoration. Reacting against the excesses of the Puritan party and Cromwell's regime, Parliament passes the Act of Uniformity in 1661, forbidding the ministry of clergy who have not been episcopally ordained, and forbidding non-Anglican liturgy (with certain exceptions, mainly for resident foreigners). The rationale is that a legitimate organizational structure and liturgy are essential to a true Church: Anglicans have these, but Protestants without a proven episcopal succession don't. This policy is opposed by "whigs" or "low-church" Anglicans who continue to think that only "adiaphora" separate Anglicans from other mainstream Protestants. The whigs gather strength after the Revolution, and Parliament passes the Act of Toleration of 1689, permitting the licensing of non-Anglican chapels under certain circumstances. The Georgian and early Victorian periods. Low-church and evangelical Anglicans are increasingly polarized from high-church and (after the 1830s) Anglo-Catholic Anglicans in their ecumenical attitudes. The former cooperate readily with non-Anglicans in social ministries, the Sunday School movement, missions, education, evangelism, prayer meetings, and so on. The latter regard such cooperation with suspicion and hostility. In Toronto in the 1840s, for instance, Anglican evangelicals such as Robert Baldwin champion ecumenical (Protestant) education in the University of Toronto; high-church Anglicans such as John Strachan and A.N. Bethune vehemently oppose it, and found Trinity College in protest. In England in 1841, a low-church archbishop of Canterbury begins cooperating with (non-episcopal) Prussian Lutherans in a new diocese of Jerusalem; the scandal leads directly to the decision by the Anglo-Catholic John Henry Newman to become a Roman Catholic.
Local interest
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