The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who will be enthroned next month, has already failed in his primary duty. In one of his first official acts as the new ABC, Welby has appointed Canon David Porter, who is said to be widely experienced in peace building, group facilitation, and training, to a newly created position as "Director of Reconciliation." Welby faces a communion divided between the small but wealthy revisionist Anglican churches in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., and the orthodox Global South Primates whose churches comprise more than 80% of the Anglican Communion's constituent members.
The ABC is already trying to ignore the fact that two different religions exist under the name "Anglican." By hiring a corporate consultant to build reconciliation, Welby acknowledges that he does not embrace any notion of Christian truth and that he will treat foundational differences in worldviews as mere political problems. Obviously, Welby plans to use his new office to function as a secular corporate CEO rather than a defender of the faith.
Therefore, he has already abdicated his duties as a Christian bishop, chief of which is to guard against false teaching. The very title "Director of Reconciliation" tells us that Welby sees the crisis facing the Anglican Church as a human resources issue, needing only business management techniques to solve it.
As David Virtue reports, "Until the issue of false teaching is addressed, as identified by the Jerusalem Statement and the Declaration of 2008, there is no theological way to heal the tear in the fabric of the Communion. There must be a willingness to repent of false teaching and reconciliation strategies which avoid this question earn the scathing rebuke of Jeremiah, "they treated my people's wound superficially, telling them, 'Peace, peace,' but there is no peace'." (Jeremiah 6:4).
Read more from VirtueOnline here.
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