I just watched a video interview with Kendall Harmon after today’s proceedings. Here is the link if you wish to watch the whole thing.
I want to post a quote from the interview: “You can feel that people sense that where the church is heading is not where they want to go and not where they believe God is calling them to go. The hard part is how do you live in tension with that and what they need to not do is be driven by their emotions over the degree of the problem.”
You see, I can agree with Kendall that many people are feeling that this Church is going a wrong or skewed direction. Heck, I feel it. The problem, for me at least, is what direction am I to go? I won’t go back to the direction of the Akinola-ian conservatives. I can’t go in the direction of Spongian liberals.
I’ve written this before. Here is what I can say about the direction I can go – I believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. I believe Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will coming again. I believe our paramount calling and duty as those who follow Jesus is to love God with all our being and our neighbor as ourselves. I will be a Prayer Book Episcopal priest. I will with charity understand that people will differ with me on how to live out all this stuff in the real world, and that they could well be right.
I believe in the historic Anglican way of approaching our faith and Holy Scripture – not with the intent of upturning the oxcart, but with tradition and reason as guides – by allowing questions, even doubts, and investigating what might well be the Holy Spirit guiding us into more correct understandings of God and our lives here on earth. This is nothing new, nothing profound, but a way of going forward through the landmines of American ecclesial politics.
It is a middle way, an Anglican way, and a way that is not in the direction of a good portion of the American Anglican right or the American Anglican left.
I want to say that after my short conversation with Kendall at Convention, I hope that the conversation will continue. I believe we truly do have more in common, even concerning the underlying and very important foundational issues, then what we may differ over. That’s my opinion.