Once upon a time, some time ago, in different times, non-Evangelical Protestants were eager to come to together and sing Kum-bay-yah, doctrinal differences be damned. That’s how we got the UNITEDs (TM) – United Methodists, United Church of America Jr. (Canada), United Church of Christ and Christian Christians, etc. etc. Sometimes it made sense to pool resources and sometimes they merged to satisfy certain governments that were unsettled by all these unsanctioned denominables. But whatever the practical reasons, this was all justified in moral, theological terms: As the triune God is a unity of diversity, so should Christians be. The small doctrinal differences were not important enough to fight about. Heck, the average Protestant wouldn’t know a lick of difference between Presbyterian and Methodist anyway.
But in keeping with modern politics, unionism has lost its appeal these days. Recent years saw the break-up of the UMC into the UMC and not-UMC (the Global Methodist Church) over support for same-sex marriage. More recently, the Anglican Communion has started unraveling at a heightened pace. The beginnings of schism can be traced back to the founding of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in 2008 over – surprise, surprise – sexuality. GAFCON became a semi-official alternative to the four “Instruments of Communion” that united worldwide Anglicanism (incl. Episcopalians). The more recent – and boldest – rejection was that of authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
And now the Arch happens is woman (yay!) named Sarah Mullaly. This was somehow the final straw, not simply because she is an ally, but because “global” Anglicans apparently still prefer a male-only episcopate. For instance, see this Facebook comment from one of our listeners in Nigeria. So shortly after this great atrocity, the GAFCOM boys decided to give Christendom a true October surprise, announcing its intent to completely reorder the Anglican Communion away from “reformist agendas.” Ready to Harvest has a pretty good explainer on the current state of play.
One of the more regrettable similarities between the Methodist and Anglican defectors is that that the “global” moniker is not entirely wrong, since the energy behind these recent schisms is in the so-called “Global South.” Even as they rightfully bend the arc (of the Covenant) of history toward justice, progressive Christians must respect the the fact that their developing-world co-denominationalists will take a bit longer to get there. And they should be given break, given well all that [gestures in colonialism].
Fortunately, these schisms may not be all that big of a deal. Reactionary church politics are not a foregone conclusion in Africa, where ENS found some supportive voices admid the misandric loudmouths. And one polity expert believes the GAFCON statement is “wishful thinking” on the part of GAFCON leadership and misrepresents the diversity of opinions that may be found among and within GAFCON-friendly congregations; not all will so keen to split off.
To use a metaphor-cum-pub-trivia-answer, these splinter-groups are like LIV Golf. They are potent threats funded or encouraged rich assholes, but may not have the staying-power to usurp the PGA. Or maybe they will, given the rapid decline of Mainline Christianity in the developed world. Stupid times are definitely ahead.