Because events demand it. The Creed wasn’t part of the Liturgy for the first thousand years. Why the change? Feast days were added to the calendar over the centuries as new saints were canonized. Why the change? Prayer books get revised as new prayers are written, and as language changes. Etc. Change is unavoidable. It’s not the kind of thing we could collectively choose not to do.
Yep. But it was changed when we were all one church. And it was also done by our Fathers. Big difference and consistent with Orthodoxy. I will pray for you and your search. Please continue to pray for mine.
It’s all rather circular though: How do we know it was “orthodox?” - Because “the Fathers” said/did it. How do we know they were “the Fathers?” - Because they were “orthodox.” Looked at a different way, there’s no particular era we could point to and say that the liturgy, for example, was in its “pure” or ideal state. Despite claims to the contrary, the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, for example, has changed quite dramatically over the course of the second millennium. They may claim it hasn’t changed, and that claim may be vital to their identity (now), but it doesn’t bear scrutiny. It is entirely ahistorical. (For that matter, the Anglican liturgy was never in a totally “pure” state, either; it was always a work in progress.)
Unless they come to realize their parents "orthodoxy" was mostly a sham and really a moderate position. It remains to be seen whether the turn will be hard right or left. But perhaps I am misunderstanding what you mean by young people. I've two daughters who are 9 and 7. But for the most part, when I walk into a parish and they are whining about the young people, they really mean Gen X and the older Millenials (like myself). The Gen Xers kids are the ones either turning traditional or raging out in activist liberalism. I met a chap who is 23 yesterday. He was referred to me by the nearest EO priest. He's a 4 year convert and still slightly 'cage stage'. He's very interested in the Western Rite, which is nearly dead in the water for the EO now. Anyhow, this priest hopes the influence of both of us can moderate this young man and help him figure out what he wants to be. And I respect that truly pastoral move. To get an EO priest to acknowledge that the Anglicans aren't all bad, and maybe this guy would fit better with you, is a major step. There are a fair number of voices and a bit of literature arguing for that approach. It seems to be the trajectory of GAFCON. How confessionalism reconciles with the charismatic stream they all say is equally valid, I don't think anyone has thought through.
A good place to start for those inclined…. “We affirm that the Church of our fathers, sustained by the most Holy Trinity, lives yet, and that we, being moved by the Holy Spirit to walk only in that way, are determined to continue in the Catholic Faith, Apostolic Order, Orthodox Worship and Evangelical Witness of the traditional Anglican Church, doing all things necessary for the continuance of the same.” - Affirmation of St. Louis
It does seem a bit odd to castigate removing WO as a pipe dream and then posit that there will be some reunification under the TEC. American Protestantism is not like Europe with its uniting churches.
Not yet, that is. They may find they have no other choice. I’m not saying it’s for certain that it’s going to happen that way. It may not. America isn’t Europe. But given the lack of alternatives it certainly seems probable on some level. I could certainly see, for example, the current UCC, TEC, and ELCA going down that road (to some extent they already have been for some time). Whether ACNA does so as well depends on whether it continues to strive to recognizably resemble historic Anglicanism or instead goes the confessional route. If the latter, one might envision closer relations with the LCMS (maybe) or the NALC, and/or the PCA or even the EPC. (It ought to be scandalous that there are so many to choose from.) It’s all speculative but some kind of consolidation seems unavoidable. Postwar American culture is and consistently has been inherently toxic to traditional religion, and all the traditional (i.e., ‘institutional’) churches (including Catholicism) are on a proverbial sinking ship whether they realize it or not. From that standpoint, there seems little point in bickering over relatively minor questions like who gets to be ordained if the number of congregations to be served is shrinking at an accelerating rate. The schismatic rhetoric is ‘missing the forest for the trees’. We’ll see what happens, but I cannot help but suspect that the number of people caught off guard by the speed at which the religious landscape will change will be quite large.
Seems like many unproven axioms ("Anglicanism isn't confessional" "we must unite") strung together. The only reliably stable form of Christianity in general in the US is evangelicalism. Going the way of Europe seems to be a dead end.
This is a very loaded assumption: Form - What “form?” Evangelical Christianity has no fixed form of ecclesiastical government, no understanding of sacraments as such, no creeds, no liturgy, no recognition of belonging to a broader tradition, no historical sense, and a weird cult-like terminology all of its own. It’s an amorphous, ever-changing entity. Of Christianity - Nominally, I suppose, but emptied of almost all specifically Christian content, and replaced with an emotive, quasi-Gnostic individualism, the weird idea that salvation consists of “asking Jesus into your heart,” and reading the Bible as though it fell directly from heaven and was written for 21st century readers while ignoring the previous 20. Evangelicalism in its generic American form barely deserves to be called “Christianity” at all. If aliens from outer space showed up and went to a Sunni mosque and a Shi’a mosque, and understood the basic concept of religion, they would have no trouble recognizing that Sunnis and Shi’ites belong to the same religion. If they then observed an Eastern Orthodox liturgy, a Roman Catholic (Novus Ordo) mass or Anglican liturgy, and an evangelical service, they would conclude that they had just witnessed 3 separate religions and that the first 2 were far more similar to each other than either was to the third. One of these things is not like the others… “Stable” in the sense of mere total membership numbers completely skips over the manifest reality that one set of alternatives is genuinely authentic, for all its perceived shortcomings, while the other has merely been manufactured ad hoc for cheap mass consumption (and that primarily for the members of one particular political party), and can be discarded just as easily. People who are genuinely seeking a challenging spirituality with breadth and depth won’t be satisfied for long with the latter. What they want is the former. People can castigate “liberalism” all they like, but the fact remains that liberal theology, for all its faults, is at least a serious, reasoned response to the world that actually exists. It is evangelicalism that is the “dead end,” both morally and intellectually.
I'd like to share a quote with you; have you ever read this one? "They (the Papists) say that Christ is corporally under or in the forms of bread and wine. We say that Christ is not there, neither corporally nor spiritually; but in them that worthily eat and drink the bread and wine he is spiritually; and (he is) corporally in heaven." ---Archbishop Cranmer, as recorded in Five English Reformers by J.C. Ryle The roots of Anglicanism grew in the fertile ground of Protestantism, and that fertile ground rests, in turn, upon the bedrock of faith in Jesus Christ's once-for-all, finished propitiatory self-sacrifice on the cross 2,000 years ago. Anglicanism stood in stark contrast against the Roman Catholic concept of the Eucharist, in which Jesus is perpetually Victimized on sacrificial altars in the belief that God the Son in the fullness of His physical flesh and blood, His soul, His deity... indeed, the whole Christ... can be confected within graven (man-made) images of bread and wine which are then idolatrously worshiped before being ingested. Rome will never "clean up" this error. Why should they? They have their laity right where they want them: wholly dependent upon the institutional church to serve up the edible God upon which they depend for grace and forgiveness. Only, they have to go back every week to eat God again and again, because (unlike the true Bread of Life who permanently satisfied our spiritual hunger when we believed in Him, John 6:35) the Roman Catholic idolatrous Eucharist never truly satisfies them. They attempt in vain to receive grace and forgiveness instrumentally, by the fleshly act of eating and drinking, when they only need to place simple trust in the one sacrifice which Christ completed 2000 years ago for the remission of all of their sins once and for all. It is my sincere hope that no Anglican will ever identify more closely with the 'hot mess' that is Rome (in protest of which, 288 English Reformers were burned alive at the stake) than with the Reformers themselves.
Rex, I’m not Roman and never intend to be. But, if my Church ceases to exist, I do intend to have Mass by a priest of proper Holy Orders until the day I die. So that definitely makes me Catholic. Not Roman. Not Eastern. But very, very Catholic. I don’t begrudge you for your position and am not a theologian, so why worry? Your very much dug into your position. Great! That makes us both Christian’s. Greater than great! Besides, I am just an old man who will continue my advocacy for some ideas established by the early Church that are still successfully practiced to this day. So I can’t be threat, can I? Well I shouldn’t. So there. I’ll be on my way…...but you’re welcome to join me anytime. I would love the company. Please pray for me, Rex, as I will continue to pray for you
Wrote something and deleted it. I don't see personally the edification of denigrating or denying the faith of most of our (I guess ostensible or fake) brothers and sisters who profess Christ and are baptized. I find this denigration usually presumes a pristine faith environment in our own churches (if we are being honest, the laity are often poorly catechized in every church environment, but I digress). The question is if the likelihood is some uniting Protestant church. I don't see this as likely. Despite some moves towards it, every mainline church* (even those who have united with others) continues to rapidly decline and suffer from more separations (ex. the Methodists). The one church environment that continues to, by comparison, not suffer from the same decline and instead shows numeric stability or even growth is the one that acts opposite as being portrayed as apparently inevitable for us here in America.
Evangelicalism is a minority in worldwide Christianity. It represents (maybe) one quarter. And we're just talking about right now. What was that number a century ago? Two centuries? Five? Fifteen? But even if it were the majority, if it is worthy of criticism, then it should be criticized. If it is morally or intellectually wrong, it should be opposed. The majority has been wrong by the standards of later generations before. In the 4th century one of the Church Fathers said that "the whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian." I have given plenty of reasons (and there are plenty more) why members of the historic Churches might consider contemporary American evangelicalism (including the charismatic movement) a manifest aberration rather than a legitimate expression of continuity. And you may very well be right. Only time will tell. All I'm saying is that if it happens, I think we can have some idea now of how it might play out. (To some extent it is already happening, albeit slowly and on a small scale.) Even so, denominations in the U.S. have consolidated before. The UCC is an example of this. And while the UCC is small, a mainline combination of the UCC, TEC, UMC, ELCA, and PCUSA into a single organization would probably make it the largest Protestant body by membership in the U.S. by a wide margin (potentially outnumbering even the Southern Baptists). Most of these Churches are already actively cooperating on some level; one would think the potential benefits of an even closer relationship must have occurred to somebody in leadership in these organizations. It may seem unlikely now, but the writing's on the wall, and to dismiss the possibility out of hand for the future just doesn't seem warranted. We will see. The question is whether historic Christianity itself will still exist in any meaningful sense in the West 100 years from now, and whether any new developments make that more or less likely. The historic Churches represent and sustain an enormous amount of inherited spiritual wealth that is in very real danger of being irrevocably lost to future generations.
I've gotten to know the local ELCA guy. He's in his 80s. At some point he got a little overly creative and rewrote the prayers of the people. All this crap about how we've raped the Earth and stuff. It's cringeworthy and I don't think 90% of the congregation cares about any of that stuff. But he's all they can get. Sort of reminds me of my grandparents church. They were ELCA until the day they died. At some point they realized the pastor was kind of weird but they didn't have a lot of choice living in rural North Dakota. They considered the church fortunate to even have a pastor because the town only had about 400 people. Not exactly a destination assignment. At some point, all of these weird pastors will age out and maybe the church can get back to being a church. I guess the question is if there will be anything left by the time that happens.
* I meant to include this in my original post but I am including Rome in this. Without immigration, the RCC faced a similar catastrophic collapse as the ELCA, PCUSA and TEC does but as immigration from Latin America slows this problem will become more severe. I guess we should mourn since apparently Rome and the mainliners are the only true Christians. Maybe the last dozen mainliners in the future united liberal Protestant church can add, "I thank you Lord I am not like other men, even those *shudder* evangelicals down the road" to the prayers of the people.
To get this thread back on subject, I am cautiously optimistic for our new archbishop given my conversations from those who are more in the know than I.
My hope instead is that evangelicals will come to see the error of their ways and return to the historic Church, faith, and practice.