Order, freedom and human flourishing
At the cease of my kickoff mean solar day at Full general Synod for ten years, it felt as though I had been there about a week, rather than but an afternoon and evening. Time goes more than slowly for two main reasons: either because things are detailed and ho-hum; or considering things are intense and exciting. Both can be establish in any session of Synod. A number of the items would be reported in The Week's regular column 'Boring but important.' But at least an equal number involve engaging in vital issues which generate vigorous and passionate debate.
Three things stood out for me from the first mean solar day. The get-go might seem surprising—it was Evening Prayer afterwards the formal concern of the 24-hour interval, taken from the Volume of Common Prayer. To run across the profound and straightening theology of the BCP evening collects after nearly five hours of talking and argue felt like coming across a lush oasis, in the midst of the desert of activeness, information and superficiality which has laid waste much of mod culture, and to be plunged caput first into its clear and deep waters.
The second highlight was the run into with many friends and colleagues from every part of ministry over the years. I realised that, coming back to Synod fifteen years after first attending, I have spent quite a flake of the intervening time swimming effectually the fairly small pond that is the Church building of England. As a issue, I have met quite a few of the other fish and got to know many of them well. It was corking to renew onetime acquaintances—but to start making new ones likewise. I experience very heartened to find that there are many fascinating, able and inspiring people here, and the side by side 5 years will be very challenging and stimulating, of that I accept no doubtfulness.
The 3rd highlight was listening to Justin Welby's Presidential Address to the Synod and response to question. (Note to the reader: this is not an exercise in sycophancy now that I am on Archbishops' Council!). Questions are a regular feature of each session to Synod, and are an opportunity for anyone to enhance awkward problems of anyone else. There were a couple of questions to Justin about the Primate's coming together which would have looked to virtually like barbed weapons, lobbed across the floor of the chamber, designed to inflict maximum impairment. But he embraced these questions as friends, welcomed the challenges, and thanked the questioners. Some have assessed the Archbishop as a consummate politician—only hither he came over equally a conscientious pastor, sidestepping the temptation to be drawn into a binary conflict, and living out his deep confidence nigh reconciliation in relationships.
The other half of this was the Presidential Accost itself, which you can either sentry or read for yourself. Information technology was a striking, challenging and unapologetic exposition of the process of and statement from the Primate'due south gathering—despite the misreporting of most of information technology in the national press.
The spin included such elements as proverb that the Primates had had their phones removed, and that they were being treated as children. Fifty-fifty some seasoned journalists believed this and printed it as fact. It became quite a joke amidst united states, with people waving their phones at me from time to time to signal that my powers were express. Neither were they treated every bit children. Secretary General, sit down up and go on your easily notwithstanding. [Laughter]
Justin located the process very clearly in the history of the development of the Anglican Communion, demonstrating how all the processes were in clear continuity with what had gone before. Withal at the heart of their time together was a profound theological and spiritual reality.
Nosotros washed each other's feet and each prayed a approval on the 1 who had washed our feet, before washing the feet of other Primates; a great contrast to what is oftentimes portrayed as the conflicts within the Communion. Many of us were moved to tears. [This] sets before us the reality of the Anglican Communion. Information technology is the very work of God inspired by the Spirit, total of fallible human beings who must confess their sins and who crave the comforts of the Word and the hope of the Sacraments and the case of the Saints and the shepherding of those called by God, however weak they may be, into leadership, if nosotros are to exist to the world the symbols of unity, which are our calling and purpose, and which will enable us to proclaim more confidently the Good News of Jesus Christ.
In the final part of the Accost, the Archbishop reflected on the dynamics of club, freedom and homo flourishing, stimulated by a chapter written by Tim Jenkins when Dean of Jesus College, Cambridge, in the book Anglicanism: The Answer to Modernity. Justin summarised Jenkins observations about the relation of these 3:
Disaster has come whenever one chemical element has overcome the others to an excessive caste. A hunger for power, masquerading as social club, has very oftentimes overcome freedom, and neglected man flourishing. Order is essential, simply it exists to assure foot washing and dear, not domination. Certainly after the Reformation, and the religious wars that dominated Europe for the following 100 years or more, it was a sense of perverted order that led to the appalling cruelty which is almost without parallel in Europe until the 20th Century. The Church, confronted by modernity, sought power through order rather than human flourishing or freedom: information technology was out of these tensions that Anglicanism emerged, and from 1867 and the first Lambeth Briefing developed a relational model of authority.
The Church in its order is meant to encourage the freedom in Christ that is promised, and homo flourishing that is the vision of the kingdom of God. When the residual is incorrect, and even more and so when we feel threatened, like a ship with a dysfunctional crew heading for the rocks, different groups all strive to grab the wheel so that, as they see it, they may demonstrate that they and only they know the manner to avert disaster.
This is a powerful appeal, and the attraction to prioritise human flourishing seems an of import protect against both the abuse of order and the indulgence of freedom. But is information technology the ultimate measure of what is skilful? I wonder if we demand to go further. John Twisleton, from Chichester Diocese, offers a challenging review of the volume as a whole, and Jenkin's chapter in particular.
In the most provocative and concluding essay Timothy Jenkins presented Anglicanism as a Christian tradition offering both order and liberty yet subordinate to the end of homo flourishing. He wrote of territorial embeddedness and conversational style as distinctives of an Anglicanism, which serves human flourishing, which we call conservancy, or the Kingdom of God.
The last sentence reveals the rather this-worldly nature of the volume. Is conservancy actually identical with human being flourishing? Just in a transcendent view of humanity – and the book is weak on that to say the least, though not as weak as modernism, it has to exist admitted!
Anglican pragmatism looks for what works and helps communities to flourish – but there are Anglican principles as well, non to the lowest degree those that witness the transcendent reality of Jesus Christ and applaud the countercultural challenge of scripture and tradition. Although the essays contain some references to Christianity equally counter cultural the overall tenor is of a religion that engages with the civilization past going with the flow.
Anglicanism is past nature inclusive and as such very comfy almost reasoned dialogue inside a postmodern culture. To stay robust though it needs fresh consciousness of the wondrous momentum of the Christian tradition as a whole of which it is but office in space and fourth dimension.
I think hither Twisleton touches on a great paradox of Christian religion. In Morn Prayer at the offset of the session we sang of Jesus, hungry and thirsty in the desert, and proclaimed our willingness to 'suffer with him'. Information technology has been quipped that, in the Former Testament, Proverbs says 'Do this and you will be blessed' to which Ecclesiastes replies 'I did, and I wasn't'. Jesus teaches his disciples in Mark 10 that they will be blessed when they forsake the comforts and securities normally associated with human flourishing. The Beatitudes await like a very indirect way to be 'blessed'. And Paul, and James, and John in Revelation—all the writers in the NT—assume every bit evident that suffering and hardship are the way to wholeness. Our faith, co-ordinate to ane Peter, is so precious that it is like gold refined past burn—which cannot feel very flourishing to the gold itself as it goes through the process.
The paradox is this: humans simply flourish as God intends when man flourishing is the penultimate, butnot the ultimate goal of human living, both in the ordering of obedience to God'south commands and the radical freedom in Christ which is strangely realised in and through this—that ultimate goal existence the realisation of the kingdom of God. One of the challenges for the Church of England is whether it will stay faithful to this transcendent, rather than merely human being and humanist, vision.
Follow me on Twitter @psephizo
Much of my piece of work is washed on a freelance basis. If you have valued this post, would you lot consideraltruistic £1.20 a month to support the product of this blog?
If yous enjoyed this, do share information technology on social media (Facebook or Twitter) using the buttons on the left. Follow me on Twitter @psephizo. Similar my page on Facebook.
Much of my work is done on a freelance basis. If yous have valued this post, you can make a single or repeat donation through PayPal:
Comments policy: Skillful comments that appoint with the content of the post, and share in respectful debate, can add real value. Seek starting time to sympathize, then to be understood. Make the almost charitable construal of the views of others and seek to acquire from their perspectives. Don't view debate every bit a conflict to win; address the statement rather than tackling the person.
Source: https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/order-freedom-and-human-flourishing/
0 Response to "Order, freedom and human flourishing"
Postar um comentário