This week my thoughts have been drawn to the violence that we continue to experience daily in our beloved country. What we are seeing in the shootings of police officers and African-Americans is a terrible racial divide, deep wounds that have not been healed. As followers of Jesus Christ, what can we do to heal those wounds in the name of Jesus Christ? What can we do to see that the Kingdom of God—where what God wants done, IS done—is manifested in at least some small way, to bring healing and peace to our communities, and across racial divides? These are the questions that I raised in this week’s Anglican perspective video, where I describe how Christians from all races and denominations came together last Saturday in my community to join hands in prayer, in the name of Jesus, in our identity in Him alone, and with his power in prayer to take authority over the spirit of violence that haunts our land, and the injustices behind it. I describe how pastors and people of all ages and denominations came together one evening, white and black together, to pray AND begin sharing personally with each other. Could this be an example for all of our Anglican Churches to be salt and light in our communities?
My thoughts have also been drawn to the ISIS murder of a Roman Catholic Priest in church in Normandy, France. It is almost too shocking to imagine—and yet every day we see pictures and reports of innocent people who are victims of terrorist attacks. This particular murder highlights the singling out of Christians for violent persecution precisely because we offer grace and forgiveness in Jesus’ name. In “No matter how many priests ISIS kills, they can’t win,” Lutheran Pastor Hans Fiene gives testimony to the witness and ministry of that Priest, Fr. Hamel, who modeled the grace and forgiveness that all Christian martyrs extend to their persecutors, in Jesus’ name. Pastor Fiene writes that every faithful Pastor will prepare his flock for such horrible persecution, especially in the West where we have suffered so little. But he closes imagining the final words Fr. Hamel would have said as such a faithful pastor: “Don’t be afraid. These men have come here to take our lives, but they’re too late. Our lives already belong to Christ.” You can find the whole article here. May it be bring comfort and courage to all who face persecution.
There’s a theme here: the confidence, the courage, the healing, and the reconciliation we can bring when we find our identity in Jesus Christ; when our message is the faith of the saints once delivered, with clarity, authority and prayer. If only the leadership of the Anglican Communion would recognize this.
It seems the Archbishop of Canterbury is seeking to do some damage control by calling another Primates Meeting for the first week of October 2017. Apparently this meeting will include an interim report from the task-force created after the January 2016 Primates’ meeting in relation to The Episcopal Church’s (TEC) changing the definition of marriage. We and others have written elsewhere about the profound disconnect between Archbishop Welby’s words to the Primates at their January gathering, and his subsequent actions. Are there any circumstances under which the Primates, especially from the majority Global South and GAFCON, would attend such a gathering if TEC, Canada and now the Scottish Episcopal Church are permitted to attend? It is hard to imagine Archbishop Welby exercising his power to ”disinvite,” or any such discipline, to these violators of Biblical and Church teaching on marriage. We must pray for the leadership of the Anglican Communion to return to identity in Christ, his grace and forgiveness, and his power to call us to repentance and change from the inside out. Reconciliation of divisions is possible on this Gospel basis—but not on the politics of “shared conversations”.
The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey is President & CEO of the American Anglican Council.
7/29/16
