Why ++Rowan is the Right Man for the Job

Though we are probably not the right people for him, to our own detriment. I wish we listened more closely to his notions of the church:

In its essence, “the life of the local congregation is founded on something received, not discovered or invented” he said, for local churches come into being as “part of a continuous stream of life being shared” in Christ.

The local church can therefore not lay claim of being “complete and self-sufficient,” in itself, but must be in relation with a wider body. “A local church is indeed at one level a community to which is given all the gifts necessary for being Christ’s Body in this particular place; but among those gifts is the gift of having received the Gospel from others and being still called to receive it,” he said.

And her government:

Anglicans, Dr. Williams observed, had “failed to think through primacy with any theological seriousness.” This had given us a “not very coherent or effective international structure that lacks canonical seriousness and produces insupportable pluralism in more than one area of the church’s practice.”

The archbishop urged all to “rethink the meaning of primacy in relation to mission and in relation to what episcopal fellowship really means.”

Read the report here. I hope the full address is posted somewhere soon.