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HOPE FOR AN ERRING CHURCH
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Murray Henderson replies to Brenda Leroux's questions about his article:
"Hope for an Ering Church".
Dear Brenda,
I appreciate your thoughtful critique of my article: “Hope for An Erring Church”. In it I seek to offer a biblical perspective on why it makes sense for Anglicans to remain within the Anglican Church of Canada as opposed to the admittedly attractive alternative of joining a new expression of Anglicanism such as Anglican Church in North America.
You ask if I am saying “that it would have been better not to have had the Reformation, because violence followed it”. I agree that the intended results of the Reformation were a gift of God to his church. But I take the point of the famous Jonathan Edwards, a leader of the “Great Awakening” of the 1740’s in New England. Edwards observed that when God is on the move in the renewal of his church, the devil works overtime. This results in unintended consequences, unintended that is, by godly people whom God is using as instruments of his renewal. While I agree that the biblical teaching of justification by grace and sola scriptura were the work of God in the Reformation, I believe the evil one moved not only to fragment and divide believers from one another, but to perpetrate through believers, one of the most vicious and destructive wars Europe has ever known. Europe has never forgotten the spectacle of Christians killing Christians in the name of Jesus. So it is not just as you put it that “violence followed the Reformation”, but it was perpetrated on a massive scale by Christians on the basis of doctrinal and moral disagreement. I shrink from a move in our day, which would further fragment Christians.
The Wesleyan and Pentecostal movements did indeed have salutary results in the spiritual life of the Anglican Church. But both movements had large numbers of adherents who remained within the Anglican Church. I remember that famous Anglican Rev. Dennis Bennett of Seattle, who received “the baptism in the Spirit” through Pentecostal friends. These friends assumed that Dennis would leave the Anglican Church now that he had this experience. But Dennis, of course, said that it was now his calling to bring this awareness of the Holy Spirit to the Anglican
Church of which he was a part. Dennis went on to exercise a world-wide ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit. My argument is that he had more influence on the Anglican Church by remaining within it than he would have by becoming a denominational Pentecostal.
Like you, Brenda, I grieve over the wrong turn our Anglican Church of Canada appears to be taking in the matter of same sex blessings, though I still hope God will intervene at General Synod 2010. But many within the church have worked hard to propose a “Covenant” that would help us toward resolving contentious issues such as are now before us. I plan to stay on and to pray that God will bring about repentance and holiness in our church. I want to stay and witness and suffer if necessary to “give God the time”.
With regard to my biblical analogy of the “Babylonian captivity”, I believe that the first reason does indeed apply to us: “that they (Israel) were under God’s judgement for not following him”.
I believe that those of us who believe same sex blessing to be contrary to God’s Word written, are indeed under God’s judgement as part of the Anglican Church of Canada. The prophets of Israel remained within Israel, and felt themselves to be under the same judgement that was descending upon the nation. Perhaps if Murray Henderson and those like him had lived more faithfully for Christ, the Anglican Communion would not been in such dire straits today. So I accept God’s chastening hand, and will seek to work and serve under it, not exempting myself from His purifying fire.
The analogy with Hosea and Gomer and Yahweh and Israel encourages me to think that if God remained faithful to Israel despite her faithlessness, God will not absent himself from us, though in many ways we’ve been found wanting.
Thanks Brenda, for making me think through these points again. I hope we can keep “talking”, and pray that God will come upon us “like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap” (Marachi 3:2).
Blessings,
Murray.
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