ABC has two interesting articles on community, the first on secular society, the second on the international Anglican church.
There's a good article on the ABC's Drum on the Q&A failure-of-a-debate between Richard Dawkins and George Pell. Try not to let Scott Stephens' pontificative pollysyllability put you off, it's quite a good social comment. Basic point: we're so used to doing whatever we want, just coz we want to, we no longer have any basis for shared community. Questions without answers in a Kingdom of Whatever.
Then John Millbank has an excellent article on the future of the international Anglican communion. Note his presuppositions about the nature of the church:
- "... the Anglican Communion [is] part of the Universal Catholic Church (it has never been officially identified as "Protestant")..."
- The Anglican denomination has been "struggling against" Puritanism and Calvinism.
And this only goes to show there really are only two views of church unity: either confessional (Protestant) or personal (Catholic). Both sides throw around the words "gospel", "spirit", "mission" etc, because they have different definitions of each - a different gospel, a different spirit, a different mission, a different everything. As a Protestant, I of course believe that the Catholic denomination is not part of the church catholic - it is apostate, because it does not hold to the Biblical teaching about Jesus, his atonement, salvation, the church... anything, really. Sydney Anglicanism, with African and Asian Anglicanism, has always been unashamedly Protestant; British and American Anglicanism has trended towards Catholicism. Rowan William's departure may cause the faithful Anglican remnant to finally embrace the Reformation. Better five hundred years late than never.