Articles - From the Vicar

Unlike many of the churches that emerged from the sixteenth and seventeenth century Reformation, the Church of England has never seen itself as a 'confessional' church, that is to say a church which views it as necessary (or even desirable) to subscribe to a 'confession' or statement of how the traditional creeds should be understood. Although the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (to be found in the Book of Common Prayer) are sometimes thought to constitute such a 'confession', their original purpose was in fact almost the opposite: broadly speaking they were an attempt to reconcile conflicting doctrinal standpoints in the interests of achieving a comprehensive church unity at a time of enormous religious upheaval in Tudor England.

There are now those within the Anglican Communion in general, and the Church of England in particular, who seem dissatisfied with our legacy of broad toleration of difference within our church and who wish to ignore Queen Elizabeth I's wise reluctance to 'make windows into men's souls'. The word 'liberal' has become a term of abuse, often (and absurdly) contrasted, in discussions about belief, with the word 'orthodox', as though one cannot be both.

Over the years I have found one of the many strengths of God's people at St. Edmund's to be our willingness to embrace each other's views with grace and good humour, even where we differ. God forbid that we should ever, even inadvertently, judge a brother or sister Christian in our fellowship on the grounds that their views are not (in our view) 'orthodox'. And should we be tempted to do so, some words of Archbishop Rowan Williams ought to give us pause for reflection:
"In the body of Christ, I am in communion with past Christians whom I regard as profoundly and damagingly in error - with those who justified slavery, torture or the execution of heretics. They justified these things on the basis of the same Bible as the one I read, and these were people who prayed - probably more intensely than I ever shall. How do I relate to them? How much easier if I did not have to acknowledge that this is part of my community, the life I share; that these are the consequences that may be drawn from the faith I hold along with them. I do not seek simply to condemn them but to stand alongside them in my own prayer, not knowing how, in the strange economy of the Body of Christ, their life and mine may work together for our common salvation. I do not think for a moment that they are right on matters such as those I have mentioned, but I acknowledge that they 'knew' what their own concrete Christian communities taught them to know, just as I 'know' what I have learned in the same concrete and particular way. When I stand in God's presence or at the Lord's Table, they are part of the company to which I belong." (From an Address at the 1998 Lambeth Conference)

In other words, a humble recognition that all our understandings are partial and provisional is part of what it means to be a Christian. May such a recognition be ours at St. Edmund's as we continue our journey together.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay