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Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity.
1 Corinthians 13:13

             The Archbishop of Canterbury has appealed to the bonds of affection which exist between Anglicans to help us get through the crisis presently facing our Communion. 
            In my ten years at the Good Shepherd I have learned a lot about affection.  I have seen the affection which our members show each other, I have felt the affection which they have shown to me, and, above all, I know the affection we all have for our beloved church. 
            Although it may sound presumptuous, I think the Good Shepherd has something to teach the wider church.  If the unity of our Communion is threatened by a loosening of the bonds of affection, may this not have something to do with the fact that we have distanced ourselves from those things which united us as Anglicans for more than four centuries?  I refer to the Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible, and our common origin in the 16th century English Reformation. 
            Here these things are still important, not because we are stuck in the past, but because we still love and venerate the things which first made us a church. 
            At the diocesan level, there is certainly no affection in the attempt to euthanize struggling parishes like ours for the sake of the bottom line.  This policy has received an unflattering portrayal in the documentary “God and Money” about the demise of the Church of St. Stephen in the Fields.  Affection would be shown in words of encouragement and support, not in threats of closure. 
            This lack of feeling manifested itself back in 1985, after the Book of Alternative Services had been approved by General Synod.  Those who had grown up with the Prayer Book and mourned its loss got no sympathy.  With many rectors it was “my way or the highway.” 
            Intolerance for a traditional style of worship has now come back to haunt us in the intolerance for the homosexual lifestyle which is tearing our church apart.  Intolerance begets intolerance.  But without tolerance the Anglican way becomes impossible, and only affection makes tolerance possible. 
            Affection enables us to tolerate in another what we could never accept in ourselves; affection moves us to try to understand ideas and behaviour which may strike us as un-Christian.  In the words of Ignatius Loyola,

“Every  good Christian ought to be more willing to give a good interpretation to the statement of another than to condemn it as false.”

February 3, 2008

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