Tuesday 10 April 2012

Two articles on community, secular and sacred

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.