Emergent and Doctrinal Statements

This is one reason I have come to love Anglicanism so much, at least in its broad understanding. We will stand by the historal ecumenical Creeds and in Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.
Here is a recent statement from Emergent concerning its critics’ call for a clear statement of beliefs or doctrine.
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From Tony Jones, National Coordinator, Emergent-U.S.
Yes, we have been inundated with requests for our statement of faith in Emergent, but some of us had an inclination that to formulate something would take us down a road that we don’t want to trod. So, imagine our joy when a leading theologian joined our ranks and said that such a statement would be disastrous. That’s what happened when we started talking to LeRon Shults, late of Bethel Seminary and now heading off to a university post in Norway. LeRon is the author of many books, all of which you should read, and now the author a piece to guide us regarding statements of faith and doctrine. Read on…

From LeRon Shults:
“The coordinators of Emergent have often been asked (usually by their critics) to proffer a doctrinal statement that lays out clearly what they believe. I am merely a participant in the conversation who delights in the ongoing reformation that occurs as we bring the Gospel into engagement with culture in ever new ways. But I have been asked to respond to this ongoing demand for clarity and closure. I believe there are several reasons why Emergent should not have a “statement of faith” to which its members are asked (or required) to subscribe. Such a move would be unnecessary, inappropriate and disastrous.
“Why is such a move unnecessary? Jesus did not have a “statement of faith.” He called others into faithful relation to God through life in the Spirit. As with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, he was not concerned primarily with whether individuals gave cognitive assent to abstract propositions but with calling persons into trustworthy community through embodied and concrete acts of faithfulness. The writers of the New Testament were not obsessed with finding a final set of propositions the assent to which marks off true believers. Paul, Luke and John all talked much more about the mission to which we should commit ourselves than they did about the propositions to which we should assent. The very idea of a “statement of faith” is mired in modernist assumptions and driven by modernist anxieties – and this brings us to the next point.

Continue reading

A profound suggestion…

Man! Stop and think about this (and it has nothing to do with Socialism, Communism, or some other “ism”).
From today’s ‘On the Way’

The Option for the Poor
Gustavo Gutierrez
“If I define my neighbor as the one I must go out to look for, on the highways and byways, in the factories and slums, on the farms and in the mines – then my world changes. This is what is happening with the “option for the poor,” for in the gospel it is the poor person who is the neighbor par excellence….
“But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.”
Source: The Power of the Poor in History

Its official

Well, the date is set and all that is left to do is pass my final interview with the Commission on Ministry next Wednesday, which at this point shouldn’t be a problem.
So, June 3rd at 10:00 am at Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I will be ordained to the Sacred Order of Priests, a Presbyter in Christ’s One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church (aside from the fact that certain large segments of that Church don’t recognize Anglican Orders. Oh the joy of it all!). I will be ordained along with the Transitional Deacons, one year after my diaconal ordination.
I regret that my ordination will not be at St. Paul’s in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where I now serve, but if I want to be ordained before General Convention, this is what has to happen. The next two months are going to be crazy, and I do hold a bit of anxiety about what will happen after General Convention.