Bp. Iker: Global Anglicanism: Beyond the Elizabethan Settlement toward the New Anglican Conciliarism

Address delivered Jan. 16, 2009, at the Mere Anglicanism Conference in Charleston, S.C.

Have you noticed how nearly everything we speak of in today’s world is global? We live in a global community, with a global economy, with global warming. We engage in global politics, caution against global war, and fear global ruin. Little wonder we should speak of a global Anglicanism, though in some ways such a concept is misleading.

Modern technology and Internet communication have indeed made our world a much smaller place. What happens in one part of the world is immediately communicated across the globe. What touches our common life in one place impacts countless others in far away places. This is as true of the church as in other areas of contemporary life.

The consecration of a partnered homosexual bishop in the Diocese of New Hampshire impacts the life of the Diocese of Jos in Nigeria. The blessing of same-sex unions in a growing number of North American dioceses send shock waves throughout the Anglican world. To speak of Global Anglicanism is to speak of fragmentation, division and schism, as reflected in the preponderance of media stories about the Anglican Communion in recent months, rather than a unified, missionary church rooted in the historic faith and practice of Anglicanism. Global Anglicanism is coming apart, not coming together, and the crisis that besets us shows no signs of being resolved any time soon. One wonders about a communion of churches bound together by “bonds of affection” rather than by true doctrine and godly discipline. What sort of a global church is it that is held together by sentimentality rather than truth? Is such a communion worth preserving? the rest