Friday, January 25, 2008

#10: Historic Anglicanism is an open fellowship

This is the final post from Dr Barnett on his Ten Elements of Historic Anglicanism:
"Tenth, likewise it is an open fellowship, not restrictive of membership nor exclusivist or sectarian in temper. This provides for a broad accessibility to the church of those outside its active membership. A steady flow has come to it from other churches, which historically had separated from it, as well as from the non-believing community."
I wrote 2 posts about welcoming HERE.

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Pic on Flickr by P Kinski.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps this is one of the things that most draws me to historic Anglicanism. After being introduced to Reformed theology in college, I spent many years in Presbyterian and Reformed Baptist churches. While it felt comfortable to be among like-minded brethren, I eventually became quite disenchanted by the theological rigidity. It seemed that everything had been figured out sometime in the 17th century and immediately promoted to a matter of orthodoxy. I appreciated their zeal for the truth, but I wondered if left any room for theological humility. Sadly, in practice, Anglicanism has often failed to defend those things that truly are matters of orthodoxy. But I appreciate that on other matters, the discussion can continue without the continually threat that discipline will be exercised if the "wrong" answer is reached.