I was told this howler during one of my Church history lectures many, many, many (sorry have an over-active Police Academy gene) years back. It went something like this:
Pope - "Why did the Anglicans cross the road?"
Cramner - "We didn't, we stopped in the middle!"
The Church of England is the Via Media, that is the 'middle of the road' denomination which sits neatly between Rome and Protestant beliefs. We share many of the creeds and formularies with Rome and yet have a reformed theology. We're basically watered down Catholics or Protestants with Prayer Books and a sense of the sacred!
Problem is that, as the discussions on converting to Islam have revealed, we need to become a new style via media in that we have to sit somewhere between the excesses of a number of groups, holding all in tension and trying to be the Christians we're called to be. There are
Evangelicals - Charismatics - Liberals - Middle of the road - Reformed Evangelicals - Revisionists - High Church - Low Church - Feminists - Mysoginists - Prayer Book - FiF - New Wine - Reform - Nominal Christians - GAFCON - FCA - Homosexuals - Bisexuals - Heterosexuals (think we still have some :)) - WATCH (don't WATCH) and many others besides.
It used to be that Anglican was about a relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury (the pointyhead formerly known as Wowan!) and in each area and province around the world (I worked with the church in the Province of Kenya) there was but one group in communion with him. Now there are many who aren't in communion with him but don't want to move aside for those who are it seems! Have your cake and eat it sindrome (sic!).
We need to maintain our position and keep the balance between all the extremes. We're not book-burners but neither are we rampant revisionists. We don;t have any allegiance to Bennie in Rome but neither are we reformed evangelicals or non-comformists. We are Anglicans and we bring balance, perspective and tradition such as no other denomination, grouping or movement in the UK, and the world beyond can.
The middle way which eschews extremes and looks for balance, Scriptural warrant, reason and tradition.
We're orthodoxy with understated style and panache.
1 comment:
A central middle ground as you portray it denies the catholic faith from which the Church of England removed itself. It is for this reason that so many will return to the true faith leaving the unbalanced church that is left to fall into the hands of the women and the liberals (often one and the the same)
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