Lambeth Theme: Deep Division A Battle for Biblical Authority

The Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, which meets once every 10 years, is wrapping up this weekend in Kent.  Issues that some observers believe might destroy Anglicanism have been front and center: homosexuality and gender. However, at its root, the issue dividing theological conservatives and liberals at Lambeth is one of biblical authority.

As R. Albert Mohler Jr. has well pointed out, a fissure between conservatives and liberals within the Anglican fellowship has developed across a geographical fault line: Africa.  Here evangelical Anglicans are proclaiming the Gospel in the face of militant Islam, as well as against Euro-Anglicans who are captive to the culture on issues of homosexuality and gender.

This division, however, is not as tidy as the mainstream media seems to think, Mohler further relates, because there are many conservative bishops in the U.S. and Europe that are vocal opponents of the consecration of homosexual bishops and the ordination of women.  This has been evident at the Lambeth Conference.

As one illustration, African bishops called on openly-gay bishop Eugene Robinson of New Hampshire to resign and save the Anglican Communion. While some U.S. bishops openly expressed anger and hurt over Robinson's exclusion from Lambeth, African bishops have experienced significant support from Anglicans in the U.S. and other countries. Conservative Anglicans have also opposed the ordination of female bishops, which the Church of England narrowly approved earlier this month, just prior to the Lambeth Conference. Arguing that Scripture forbids the ordination of women, more than 1,300 members promised to leave the church over the issue.

While African bishops are clearly leading the way in the assertion of biblical authority within the Anglican Communion, there are many bishops in other places who are holding the line for truth. In the U.S.,  the churches of one diocese in California is leaving the communion over this issue and some Anglicans in Virginia have already left the fold.

Also, more than 230 bishops are boycotting Lambeth because of Robinson's ordination. The most profound division, however, is not geographical; the most basic divide lies between those who bow in submission God's Word and those who stand in authority over it.

Bishop Mouneer Anis of Egypt, Primate of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, expressed this truth during Lambeth when he called the divisions in the Anglican Communion "unbreachable walls." The division over homosexuality represents a division over the fundamentals of historic Christianity, he said: "We are not divided by mere trivialities, or issues on the periphery of faith. We are finding it very hard to come together in the essentials."

The essentials of Christianity are bound together by a commitment to the sufficiency, authority, inspiration and inerrancy of God's Word. Anis's words point to the crucial area where the tectonic plates have moved beneath Anglicanism, a movement that is shaking it asunder: a wholesale rejection of biblical authority. The venerable Anglican theologian J.I. Packer boiled the argument down to its foundational tipping point in a recent interview: an embrace of homosexuality is a rejection of biblical authority and ultimately, the Gospel. Sadly, Lambeth has illustrated this all too well.

One Sudanese bishop, whom media reports did not name, gave a clear witness to the biblical foundation for Anglicanism's historic view of human sexuality and gender and it is a rejection of the theology herein expressed that has removed Anglicans from the days of J.C. Ryle and taken them where they are today:

"The Bible is very clear about God's plan in creation. He created male and female. And also, the Bible says, ‘Who can advise God on what to do? He does things according to His holy will.' Now, as human beings, who are we to change God's plan? Who is our Creator? When we are changing His plan, we are acting against His holy will, because it was His intention to create male and female. This  can also be seen in insects, birds of the air, bugs-they were created male and female, not male and male or female and female. And the Bible says that  He blessed them and said ‘Be fruitful.' The God Who is saying He is the Way, the  Truth,  and the Life is the God who again in Jesus has told us that God is a Spirit, and those who worship Him shall  worship in truth and spirit."

Amen. As Lambeth adjourns for another decade on Sunday, let us pray fervently for those Anglicans-in Africa, North America and other places-who seek to uphold the authority of Scripture. May God steel their resolve and grant them the grace to remain, like Bunyan's character, valiant for truth, in the war for the heart of the Anglican Communion.