Finding Our Christian Identity

There is a wonderful essay at BabyBlue (link) discussing the recent comments of Cardinal Walter Kasper to the effect that Anglicans need to choose whether they are going to be Catholic or Protestant.  I love this prefatory comment from BB: "we may quarrel with the idea that our identity is in whether we are sufficiently Catholic or Protestant, but whether we are sufficiently identified with the cross of Jesus Christ."

BB later says: 

"The bridge over the chasm is so strong when he and other Christian leaders "get it" that we find ourselves meeting on that bridge and swapping stories like old friends.

It's such a contrast than what we find at so many General Conventions and Diocese Councils, where the heart-understanding that Jesus is first is almost considered "common." We then are aliens in our own land, Prayer Book in hand that still speaks the language of Jesus first - but with the imagery of the word "Christ" being reimagined into something so different renders us to polarizing sides. We are divided.

What appears to be before the bishops of Lambeth is whether they will embrace their love for Jesus first, that they may be filled with His Holy Spirit, that they will be converted and in that conversion repent and return to the Lord. The simplicity of the Gospel is so often lost on those of us who bear the name of Christ. If we can't agree Who is first, how can we agree on anything else?"

When pursued from this angle, the issues should indeed be simple.  As BB and everyone else knows, however, this approach is quickly rendered impossible when the agenda is personal political power and secular themes, and doing everything possible to force others to swallow what the liberal factions are peddling.  This is why I can only pray that those who are leading TEO and the Anglican Communion down the path to certain destruction have a "Road to Damascus" experience somewhere on that path and turn back to God and Jesus Christ.  The roadmap is there in the Bible and the BCP; it need only be read and followed.

BB, my kepi is tipped to you and I am bowing low to your prosaic work. 

BTW, if you can make it over to Stratford Hall this weekend, I will be there with a wonderful group of living historians presenting a program on the "Late Unpleasantness."  I would love to see anyone from the Virginia Eleven churches, or anyone else for that matter who is disaffected with TEO, and share my solidarity with you in this time of "Unpleasantness" for you.