When secondary issues feel like primary ones

What are the ‘primary issues’, the essentials of the faith around which we unite as Christians; and what issues are ‘secondary’, or ‘adiaphora’? What do we do when sharp disagreements over these matters which, in theory, are seen as ‘indifferent’ compared to salvation, spill over into personal animosity and division?

Five years ago, colleagues and I began the project of forming a new church movement, Anglican in heritage, church order and global affiliation, but intentionally confessional and not aligned to Canterbury. At an initial meeting people from different backgrounds met to talk about the way forward. All were committed to the same understanding of the Bible’s authority and the same gospel; all had shown courage – in standing against revisionism in the official denomination; and in pioneering enterprise by church planting outside it. But it soon became clear that major divisions existed. Some agreed in theory that issues such as ordination of women, charismatic gifts, worship styles and administrative authority structures are ‘secondary’ or even ‘adiaphora’, but in practice they couldn’t see themselves part of the same church grouping as those who held different views.

In the wider Anglican scene, fellowship is sometimes strained or even non-existent between two types of gospel-affirming Anglicans: those who remain in the official structures and those who have left. And then, in recent times, another issue has come to the fore, dividing those who otherwise are united on the essentials of the gospel: the extent to which individuals are perceived to align with victims / survivors of safeguarding failures, or with the power structures perceived to have not taken these failures seriously enough or even covered them up.