Western Anglicanism seems to have reached the point where it no longer believes in its own creeds. After all, if Anglican clergy actually believed that God came to earth as a man, if he is the propitiation for our sins, if he rose bodily from the dead, if he is alive today and will one day return, surely they would want to convince others of this. Including those of other faiths. Including Muslims – they rarely tire of telling us how inclusive they are.
Rather than “make disciples of all nations” the mission has become “observe similarities with all religions”.
From here:
St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church in Leamington, Ont. made headlines recently with an ongoing foray into interfaith cooperation.
Following its annual picnic last September in which the church had invited Syrian refugees to attend, St. John established an arrangement with a local Muslim community to use the church’s community hall. A CBC report was shared thousands of times on social media, and the Anglican Journal later offered its own coverage.
At a time of rising Islamophobia across Canada and around the world, instances of solidarity between Christians and Muslims such as that at St. John provide counter-examples of Canadian attitudes toward Islam. The Rev. Andrew Wilson, rector at St. John, has received much positive feedback since the story on his church picked up traction.
“The response that people have actually sent to me, they said, ‘This is Canadian. This is who Canada is.’ And they say, ‘Yes, and this is who Christ is.’ So I’ve had both responses,” Wilson said.
Islamic prayer and worship within St. John Anglican church has provided an opportunity for the Anglican clergy and members of congregation to observe similarities between Muslim and Christian worship.
Why pussy-foot the issue ? Surely the empirical evidence supports as a plausible hypothesis that a significant, and more importantly a politically controlling, fraction of Anglican clergy in the West do _not_ believe the credal “God came to earth as a man, he is the propitiation for our sins, he rose bodily from the dead [etc]” and hence do _not_ accept as a _primary_ imperative “make disciples of all nations”. Intellectually honest people do not let the aforesaid creed and imperative being seen as offensive, whether by, albeit decent, secularists or by, albeit sincere, other religionists, to alter their fundamentals. C.S. Lewis had much to say addressing this. For an early example, see his Pilgrim’s Regress: in the very first chapter, The Rules, the pilgrim John as a boy is taken to the local Steward (read Vicar), a generally convivial and jovial cleric, who puts on a mask of severity to instruct John in the Rules (read Creed/Faith) scaring him, and then at the end removes the mask and whispers “I shouldn’t bother about it all too much if I were you.”
That’s it ! Say the Nicene each Sunday, but when push comes to shove and don’t-say-anything-offensive is the primary imperative then “don’t bother about it too much” becomes the order of the day, and clerics, with the support of their parish establishment, will descend into “rent-seeking” instead of the Gospel economics of “what does it profit a man ..” [Mark 8:36]. Good practitioners of such rent-seeking ascend to the episcopal.
To Muslims, Jesus was just a prophet. To Christians, Jesus is the living God.
What rising Islamophobia across Canada?
“What rising Islamophobia across Canada?”
Well, exactly. It looks like we have some sort of petitio principii going on here:
“At a time of rising Islamophobia across Canada and around the world…”
They have taken a premise and made it a conclusion. Reminds me of the climate change argument – “the science is settled!”
Well said, JJM. Early propaganda.
Inter-faith dialogue might well be acceptable as long as Christians understand that Muslims and Christians DO NOT worship the same “god”. Further we need to ask why Muslims consider Mohammed a prophet knowing that he not only had multiple wives but that one of them was only six years old with him consummating the marriage when the girl was only nine — a definite example of extreme pedophilia. Society generally accept the fact that there is a “god” but seems to fail on knowing and/or accepting the GOD of the Bible.