In February, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, a Nigerian Archbishop, Josiah Idowu-Fearon, addressed the General Synod of the Church of England; and Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion – 1980 to the Present, edited by David Goodhew of Cranmer Hall, Durham, was launched at a conference.
Archbishop Fearon clarified that the term ‘Anglican Communion’ referred to churches which find their common roots through the CofE and its tradition to the witness and mission of the apostolic church. ‘The very word anglicana implies a living tradition of faith in the gospel as this church has received it … from Augustine of Canterbury … to renewal in the English Reformation and beyond.’ ‘They feel they owe so much of their faith, in human terms, to the faithful giving of Christians in the CofE over the centuries.’
Severing ties?
Some in General Synod have held that the Church of England would do better if it severed its ties with the churches of the Anglican Communion. They regard the position of many of those churches on marriage and sexuality as primitive, embarrassing the witness of the CofE to a secular society on the side of history. Following the vote in Synod on the Bishops’ Report, one BBC interviewee said that the Church of England was for the people of England and should therefore be in line with the prevailing culture of its people. This liberal nativism forgets that biblical Christian theology has no national particularity, with one theology for the English and another for the Nigerian.
