Belief Statement?

[Luke Isham]

(I can't help myself, so many questions such little time!)

I couldn't help but notice as I browsed the site that there was no belief statement.  Is the list of Anglican documents meant to act as one?  Given that the site is still under construction maybe this will follow.

[Matt Williams]

Hey Luke,

Obviously this is up to the 'owners' of the site, but do you think a group dedicated to discussion around the engagement and reapplication of historic Anglican belief, expressed in official documents (which of course point us to scripture), would need another belief statement of its own anyway?

My instinct is that a narrower belief statement than those documents themselves would risk circumscribing the discussions from the start... what are you thinking?

Blessings
Matt

[Tim Patrick]

I think Matt's on the right track. We're not an organisation or institution, but a group of people keen to think well about Anglicanism. If anything, we hope that our studies will serve to sharpen us up on exactly what it is that Anglicans have, do and should believe.

[Luke Isham]

I can see that not having a formal belief statement keeps discussion open and flowing!  

[Gordon Cheng]

Hope you won't think this a cheeky suggestion, but what about the 39 Articles as a belief statement? [Sorry, I had to insert that, my daughter Ruby is watching me type and she really wanted me to put in a smiley of her choosing!]

I don't see that it would inhibit discussion in any way, it would be thoroughly Anglican, and it is currently contested as an Anglican statement of faith in all sorts of surprising places.

[Luke Isham]

Hi Gordon!

Adopting the 39 articles would draw the boundries a little tighter but that might be a good thing for Anglicanism these days!

[Jordan]

I agree with Gordon and Luke.

The fact is, all Australian Anglican clergy are required to sign the following declaration at the commencement of their ministries:


'I.....................firmly and sincerely believe the Catholic Faith and I give my assent to the doctrine of The Anglican Church of Australia as expressed in the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons and the Articles of Religion, as acknowledged in section 4 of the Constitution, and I believe that doctrine to be agreeable to the word of God.'


Tim and Wei-Han, I'd suggest that you place the 39 Articles in a prominent place on the website, not merely as a springboard for discussion, but as a sincere statement of what you personally stand for as Australian Anglicans.

This might help us all to get to an important point, which is that those clergy who deviate from the Articles are not merely expressing an alternative point of view, they are actually indulging in a fairly low form of dishonesty, because they signed the above declaration (or one almost identical to it, whatever was required prior to 1992) with duplicity.

If contracts in the workplace were treated as lightly as Clerical subscription, very few people would remain employed!

Jordan  

[Jereth]

Hmm, obviously the Sydney intruder alert isn't working!

Good to see you Gordo. I would have thought the 39 articles were a given. You should have seen the mayhem that Tim triggered off in the TMA last month when he made the highly controversial suggestion that all Anglicans should uphold the 39 articles!
http://www.melbourne.anglican.com.au/main.php?pg=news&news_id=11143

[Jenny George-2]

Jordan Hitchcock wrote:

Tim and Wei-Han, I'd suggest that you place the 39 Articles in a prominent place on the website, not merely as a springboard for discussion, but as a sincere statement of what you personally stand for as Australian Anglicans.

Well I dunno. I don't know that the website needs a belief statement. It's a place for discussion not Tim and Wei-Han forming a new institution - they are not even forming a group that people sign up to.

Anyway, purely from a symbolic standpoint, if you use the 39 articles as your belief statement then any non-Anglican who doesn't know the articles from a bar of soap who stumbles across the site might well get the first impression that we place them higher than the Bible. Not that we do and anyway the articles themselves refer to the Bible as our authority so it's self-correcting if anyone takes the trouble to read the them, still - it's a bit of a minefield.

But then mission statements, visions and belief statements are things I generally avoid if I can since I think arguing about the precise nature of what they should be often takes more time and energy than the marginal amounts of benefit you sometimes derive from having them.

Jenny

[Jordan]

I guess an organisation which had the 39 Articles as its avowed belief statement would indeed be new!

[Gordon Cheng]

Jereth wrote:

Good to see you Gordo. I would have thought the 39 articles were a given.

So would I!!

But your next statement:

 

You should have seen the mayhem that Tim triggered off in the TMA last month when he made the highly controversial suggestion that all Anglicans should uphold the 39 articles!
http://www.melbourne.anglican.com.au/main.php?pg=news&news_id=11143

shows that, well, it just isn't.

In fact, it would be something both bizarre and unique—newsworthy even—to have an Anglican website set up where the only statement of belief was both Anglican and biblical.

It would set it apart from any other Anglican website in the whole of creation, if I'm not mistaken.