“The Archbishop of Cape Town has written to the Primates of the Anglican Communion issuing a strong call to uphold the ‘broad rich heartlands of our Anglican heritage’ He argues that this must be ‘the territory on which we debate our future’.”

A taste of the Archbishop’s words:

“At its best, our living faith draws on the strengths of all three threads of what Archbishop Rowan describes as our reformed, catholic and intellectual/cultural components. It is not that we draw singly on one or another, as we find it most appropriate to some particular situation. Rather, in all circumstances we find a richly-textured, maturing faith flourishes as we allow God to meet us through the creative interplay of insights, encouragements, challenges, even admonitions, from all three elements taken together.

Anglicanism is not a tradition that has operated through binary polarities and sharp distinctions – this versus that, in versus out, us versus them. Rather, Scriptures, creeds and historic formularies, together with the ordered sacramental life of worship, and with careful, prayerful reflection, provide the magnet that continually draws us toward the centre – one baptism, one church, one faith, and most of all one Lord ‘in whom all things hold together’ (Cor 1:17).

It is because Jesus Christ, second person of the Trinity made flesh, is our goal, our end, our telos, the central focus and direction of our lives, that Anglicanism has found through the ages that we can afford to live with messiness, ambiguity and anomaly at the edges. Through that permeability many have found a warm invitation to come closer, and so to recognise and accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

Let no-one imagine that to speak of this Anglican middle ground implies a bland and mediocre faith. By no means! This is no shallow, casual approach.”

Read the rest here: Media Release from the Archbishop of Cape Town – South Africa

(Via ACNS Digest.)