Confessing Evangelical

The Midwest Conservative Journal provides a useful reminder that - contrary to the overwhelming impression given by media reports over the past twelve months - the real scandal at the 2003 ECUSA General Convention was not the ratification of Gene Robinson's election as Bishop of New Hampshire, nor the vote to recognise same-sex blessings as "part of [the] common life" of the church, but something rather more fundamental, which ultimately lies behind these more high-profile decisions.

Astonishingly, at that General Convention the House of Bishops voted down a resolution (B001) that called on the church to affirm the "Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral", which sets out the following as a "bare minimum" statement of Christian faith and practice:

1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as “containing all things necessary to salvation,” and as being the rule and ultimate standard of the faith.
   


2. The Apostle’s Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.
   


3. The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself - Baptism and the Supper of the Lord - ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution, and of the elements ordained by Him.
   


4. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church.
   

Now, it's pretty clear from the behaviour of many liberal/revisionist bishops since last August - best characterised as a combination of episcopal tyranny and canonical fundamentalism - that their objection was not to the fourth "corner" of the quadrilateral. So here we have the spectacle of "Anglican" bishops voting, by 84 votes to 65, with 8 abstentions (abstentions! the fact that some of them apparently either don't know or won't say is even more astonishing than the "no" votes), against the authority of Scripture, the truth of the Creeds, and the ministry of the Sacraments.

While the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral is not, and was never intended to be, a comprehensive statement of Anglican doctrine (that is found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles), to deny its first three "corners" is to cease to be a Christian church in any meaningful sense of the word.