lent

At our last meeting before Easter would took a break from the dealing with conflict series of studies and had an evening where anyone could bring alone something that they wanted to share. This included poetry, art, reflections and scripture.

Dealing with conflicts in the Anglican Communion - part 3

We now talked about the best way forward... GAFCON is creating a Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (presumably a deliberate reference to the Confessing Church in German under Hitler?). Lambeth wants a moratorium on ordaining bishops who are homosexual and also same sex blessings and to review the structures of the Anglican Communion to see how unity can be maintained, this being an issue of authority. Some of us felt that GAFCON's approach was too exclusive. That it might be possible to have some form of compromise, that we should at least try and find some kind of way forward that keep everyone together. Some of us also felt that it might be possible for different people, different communities and cultures to move at different speeds and it wasn't necessary or even desirable for all parts of the Anglican Communion to operate in the same way. But we also recognised that this can be difficult. Some of us felt that neither 'solution' was best, that to, in effect split, was damaging and to try and impose a practice/doctrine on the whole Communion was not helpful either.

Implications for St John's. We should recognise that there will be a wide range of views about these issues and that it will not be possible or right to try and get a "St John's" view of this issues. To recognise that people hold views sincerely and at times passionately and that we should respect each other as fellow Christians even as we disagree with each other on this and other issues.