Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Anglican Church of Tanzania breaks communion with Episcopal Church

The Anglican Church of Tanzania has declared that its communion with the Episcopal Church in the USA is severely impaired. It will not accept any financial and material aid from dioceses or parishes in the US which condone homosexual practice or bless same-sex partnerships. It will however maintain communion (and accept material and financial aid is implied) from those those who are faithful to Biblical Christianity and authority of Scripture who either remain in the Episcopal Church or who leave it.
Clearly the Anglican Church of Tanzania is not going to be too badly affected materially by this decision because I guess there will be enough conservative Episcopal dioceses and congregations in the US who will be happy to support it with aid, not to mention other conservative church groupings who will want to support it too.
In one sense such a situation is not very different in practice from what happens anyway in which conservative churches tend to send resources, people and money to other conservative churches. What is dismaying here is that it formalises a split which will can only serve , without further change of heart, to cause the development of two separate "Anglican" Communions in the world - a conservative one and an open one; each believing they represent the tru spirit of Anglican Christianity.

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