Ephraim Radner: What Way Ahead – Part Two
titusonenine
March 27th, 2007

It is a maddening time within American Anglicanism. Even in the last few days, there is a new restlessness born of the energies of sorrow and hope both, as they seek some resolved path ahead. A few days ago, I wrote about the need to take this time seriously indeed. I wrote in terms of conservative presence within the Episcopal Church, and its now apparent incongruity with the official structures of our leadership. “Normative Christianity” (as one friend has put it) has been demoted and even banished: the Episcopal Church has declared independence. We must take our stands.

Thus, we are no longer in a position to avoid making conscious and determined choices regarding our vocation as Anglican Christians within the Episcopal Church. From one perspective, that has always been the case. The faithful are called to know what they are about, to “count the cost” of their following of our Lord. But at least from the perspective of the larger church of which we are a part – the Anglican Communion – some of those choices have remained provisional, in large part because, although the stakes have been clear enough, the paths offered for acting responsibly and in concert with brothers and sisters within the larger church have not been practically articulated. Many individuals and congregations have therefore been in a position of choosing their way in a fashion that has, by the nature of the moment, been more or less idiosyncratic. This time of obvious provisionality is now past.

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