UNITY OF CHURCHES

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 August 1934, Page 10

UNITY OF CHURCHES

ANGLICAN VIEWPOINT. LONDON, July 11. Recent tendencies in connection with Christian re-union were severely c iticised by the Archbishop of Cam .rbury in an address to his diocesan conference yesterday. He. described them as seeming “to whit le, away existing differences in an c ndeavour to reach some lowest common measure of agreement,” and, so fr.r as the Church of England is cone ined, “to empty it of its distinctive character and witness.”. Nothing, lie said, could be further from the aim of the Appeal to All Christian People issued by the Lambeth Conference in 1920.

The aim of the appeal, Dr. Lang stated, was. not the easy, and superficial one of reducing the treasures of faith and order to some lowest common measures of agreement. “It was an aim more difficult, yet more profound—to appreciate . the value of these respective treasures and to conserve them for the good of the whole United Church.” The distinctive heritage of the English Church had been described by a committee of seventy-four bishops as combining in one fellowship “the traditional faith and order of the Catholic Church with that immediacy of approach to God through Christ to, which the' Evangelical Churches especially bear witness, and freedom of intellectual inquiry, whereby the correlation of the Christian revelation and advancing knowledge is constantly effected.” That, said the Archbishop, was a daring and noble ideal which gave the Anglican Church its special place in Christendom.

BISHOPS’ RESOLUTION. The Primate continued:— . “Yet I cannot doubt that if recent happenings in Liverpool Cathedral had passed without some authoritative protest it might have seemed--to quote the words of the Bishop of Durham—‘that the vital truth of Christ’s Deity was so lightly esteemed by the Church of England that even its explicit denial was not regarded as a disqualification for admission to her pulpits.’ “I therefore welcome the resolution of the Bishops of the Province of York, to whom the matter was referred, that invitations to preachers should not be extended to any person who does not bold, or who belongs to a denomination which does not hold, the,common Christian Faith in Jesus Christ as Very God Of Very God Who for us men and for our .salvation came down from Heaven and was iliade man. “I allude to this matter now because it illustrates the danger of trying to further the cause of Unity by blurring vital distinctions.” Having alluded to Episcopacy as “a divine provision for the right ordering of the Church to which we must l.'c loyal,” though this did not question "(he spiritual reality of duly constituted ministries, of non-episcopal bodies,” the Primate spoke of the hope shared by many that.the Anglican Church, by virtue of its distinctive character and witness, might prove to be what was called a Bridge Church. “At one end,” he said, “it has affinity Vvith the great Latin Church

of the West and with the Orthodox Churches of the East, and at the other end it has affinity with the various Protestant Churches. There is real danger lest in seeking unity with our Christian brethren at one end or the other we should impair our own.”