SERA- Society for Eastern Rite Anglicanism

Discussion in 'Church Strands (Anglo-catholics & Evangelicals)' started by Ide, Jan 21, 2015.

  1. Cameron

    Cameron Active Member

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    We're thinking on that very same wavelength. I do not receive communion from women at the altar, unless she is an instituted Eucharistic minister (allowed to distribute the Body and Blood of Our Lord). Never from a female priest. And, it's not an issue of sexism or bigotry - its simply that women cannot receive orders, theologically.
     
  2. Ide

    Ide Well-Known Member

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    I fully agree with you. I myself am a woman, so it's not an issue of sexism or authority or misogyny. I simply don't agree with WO- I believe that deacons, priests and bishops should remain a male. The entire foundation of the church is set up as a marriage- sex and gender of male and female matter deeply to the Christian tradition. It's not arbitrary.

    Now, if I go a Baptist church or a Non-denominational church and they have a woman preaching, I leave that up to them to decide how to handle the situation. In that case, it's not an issue of apostolic succession but Biblical interpretation. I'm also not a member of that community so I don't really have much valid input.
     
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  3. Fidei Defensor

    Fidei Defensor Active Member

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    I’ve heard of this branching into other denominations like Eastern Orthodox Evangelicalism. I never knew there was a Eastern Anglicanism.
     
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  4. JoeLaughon

    JoeLaughon Well-Known Member Anglican

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    While it seems much of the response here has been negative, I will say that I think cautiously it can be a good development. Anglicanism is a missionary church and will eventually reach more into areas with a historically eastern or oriental presence (Ethiopia, the Near East, Eastern Europe). Adapting it seems in the spirit of the Anglican concept of common prayer, locally adapted.
     
  5. jschwartz

    jschwartz New Member

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    There are Episcopal churches that incorporate elements of EO liturgy into the worship. I think it would be more fruitful to look at Orthodox theology, spirituality, etc., than to co-opt the liturgy.
     
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  6. Dave Kemp

    Dave Kemp Member Anglican

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    Why do people constantly try to change the guiding principles of Anglicanism? We left Rome and have a godly church for the most part. I’m interested in Orthodox Christianity but I bought a book to read instead of trying to bring different rites in to the church.

    People seem attracted to our way but the go off on mad tangents.
     
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  7. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    The Church of South India and the Mar Thoma Syrian Church are basically Anglican churches using a Syriac-derived and a West Syriac liturgy, respectively. Actually the Mar Thoma Syrian Church exists due to an unpleasant incident wherein the British East India Company conspired with a rogue bishop to steal the gold the Jacobites had deposited with them and use it to set up a “Reformed Mar Thoma church.” :zipped:
     
  8. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Homosexuality is viewed as a sin in all Orthodox churches, and Orthodox churches will not ordain an unrepentant homosexual or consecrate them as a monk. Indeed, I know of two jurisdiction which make a point to screen from holy orders anyone who has struggled with homosexual temptation, due to the risk they might pose for the youth.

    This is by the way a case where I think the Episcopal Church is really playing with fire. We’ve seen the problems caused in Rome just by closet homosexuals; the picture posted by Stalwart in another thread showing a “Drag Queen Story Time” amounts to a form of child abuse in my opinion.
     
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  9. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Anglicanism is already present in those areas. But my desire is that intercommunion occurs, as opposed to the Anglicans implementing Eastern liturgical rites. Anglicanism is a missionary church but in the case of the Orthodox and Assyrians, there is nothing to convert (I think the errors referred to by the 39 Articles in Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch refer to the embrace of Arianism in those cities for much of the fourth century).

    Also in a sense Anglicanism is already using parts of the Eastern liturgy; the Prayer of St. Chrysostom is in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy recited (usually silently) by the priest while the choir sings Psalm 145 followed by the creedal hymn Ho Monogenes, and it was brilliant of Cranmer to incorporate it into the Divine Office. The Non Jurors who I much admire likewise took the Epiclesis from the Divine Liturgy of St. James.

    So Anglicanism is actually really a liturgical hybrid which is a blend of Roman, Gallican, Byzantine and Alexandrian liturgical influences. The Sarum Rite Eucharist is of the Roman form, as is its calendar, but in other respects it was largely Gallican, and at one time the Gallican Rite was used in Brittania and Hibernia. The same is true of the York, Hereford and Durham Rites, and the other rites in England before the Reformation (Dominican, Carthusian, Carmelite, Norbertine) with the exception of the Greyfriars (Franciscans), who alone used the Roman Rite in a somewhat pure form before Trent.
     
  10. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    That said, there is an Eastern Catholic church which is becoming a prime mission field for another liturgical church due to Rome alienating its members with dreadful liturgics. That of course being the Maronite Catholic Church. And the Anglican Communion already contains a West Syriac Rite church in the form of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church in India, and that church is in communion with one of the three Syriac Orthodox jurisdictions in India (the Malankara Independent Syrian Church). So Lebanese missionaries could be trained in India by those two churches and then set up a Maronite Apostolic Church as part of the local Anglican province, or perhaps better yet as a separate entity in the Communion, with an Archbishop from the Mar Thoma hierarchy.

    This church could probably enter into full communion with the Orthodox with relative ease, since for whatever reason, to my extreme frustration, neither the Syriac nor Antiochian churches are really doing anything about this prime mission field. I suspect this is due to the extreme political instability in the region and the special constitutional privileges the Maronites enjoy in Lebanon, which the Orthodox as minorities lack (for example just as the Prime Minister must be a Muslim, the President must be a Maronite).
     
  11. Jeffg

    Jeffg Active Member

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    So I've noticed on multiple comments on this entire web sight a lot of discussion around the Orthodox and Oriental Churchs. Sounds like many per say "orthodox" Anglicans like/respect/etc the Orthodox perspective/Church/Liturgies/etc. Wonder if those who no longer are technically in Communion with Canterbury would be willing to fall under an Orthodox bishop/archbishop/Patriarch. Also with all the admiring about Orthoxy I read, seems to me that those who do should seek more opportunities to be in Communion, or seek an Ecumenical Council with them.
     
  12. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    That already exists in the form of the Western Rite Vicarates, but that’s not a solution, nor even an attempt at evangelization; rather it represents a pastoral accomodation to extreme Anglo Catholics, high church Lutherans and frustrated Roman Catholics who were unable to find a Western church they were comfortable with, or who believed that their baptism and who also liked Orthodox mysticism, but did not want to change to the Eastern liturgical rites (which is not unreasonable; it was a shock to me to find myself spending two or three hours in church rather than one hour). But these vicarates are not proselytizing; they are not like the Anglican Ordinariates, and indeed one of them, that of ROCOR, may be abolished or further Byzantinized (it is already on the Julian calendar). Traditionalist Anglicans also have to be chrismated, at a minimum, sometimes baptized, which I think is utterly absurd given the fourth century church received Arians by confession, and what is more, I don’t believe there is any need for Eastern Orthodox churches to receive traditional Anglicans formally, at all, as they in my opinion form a continuum with the Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrians; indeed this was the state of Episcopalian-Russian and Antiochian Orthodox relations in the United States in the early 20th century.

    The liberal non-Anglicans who are trying to ruin our church are another matter; if someone like Spong were to mercifully repent, their repentance would include a desire for their sin to be washed away by baptism or chrismation, but this would also equally apply if they remained in the Anglican church (liberals who have committed heresy which borders on apostasy, and incurred anathema according to the ancient canons, ought to be required to be received via Confirmation, which since antiquity has been repeated in the case of returning apostates, and the Western form of confirmation with its catechtical questions, asked by a pious and discerning bishop aware of the possibility of insincerity and deceit, would ensure their true repentance).

    And I think all of us would like to see the hereticical non-Anglicans who have infilitrated our communion repent and commit to making amends, out of the limelight, through, for example, assistance on missions, and by forfeiting their generous pensions (by ecclesiastical standards, not counting the super-rich celebrity pastors of the megachurches, but realistically, someone like John Shelby Spong, as the author of several well published books and as a retired bishop, is well off financially, much better off than even seems decent for a cleric; one is reminded of the scandals involving the sale of benefices which resulted in reform of that system with new laws against simony, IIRC, in the 19th century).

    ~

    Returning to the original question, The solution is for the Global South and the Anglicans to stand firm, unite in organizations like the Prayer Book Society and Forward in Faith, and also cooperate with the Orthodox to the extent possible. But Orthodox Christians on the whole are too busy being martyred to stand up to the Episcopal Church; Anglicans, including liberal Anglicans, make substantial financial contributions to the Orthodox, although a PR campaign against the Russian Orthodox heating up over homosexuality might cut that off, but for the time being, the Orthodox Churches are not in a position to intervene in Anglican politics.
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2019
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  13. Shane R

    Shane R Well-Known Member

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    In Continuing and Old Catholic circles, the ROCOR vicariate is well known to be currently proselytizing.
     
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  14. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I was not aware of that, and have to admit to a certain animadversion to such activities, except, and I think you will agree with me in this point, among the liberal Old Catholic Union of Utrecht, as opposed to the traditionalist Old Catholics such as those of the Union of Scranton.
     
  15. Jeffg

    Jeffg Active Member

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    ~

    Returning to the original question, The solution is for the Global South and the Anglicans to stand firm, unite in organizations like the Prayer Book Society and Forward in Faith, and also cooperate with the Orthodox to the extent possible. But Orthodox Christians on the whole are too busy being martyred to stand up to the Episcopal Church; Anglicans, including liberal Anglicans, make substantial financial contributions to the Orthodox, although a PR campaign against the Russian Orthodox heating up over homosexuality might cut that off, but for the time being, the Orthodox Churches are not in a position to intervene in Anglican politics.[/QUOTE]

    So why not a new Patriarch from the Global South or something along those lines? A place for Anglicans and others to go instead of Canterbury ? Obviously the AofC is not doing much, otherwise the Global South and GASCON (hope I got that acronym right) would not have formed
     
  16. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

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    You don’t need a Patriarch to have an autocephalous church, under Orthodox and Anglican principles. Take Cyprus, it has an archbishop and I think some minor diocesan bishops and it has always been recognized as autocephalous. And the idea of having one Patriarch to be in communion with is basically Papalism (hence the current furor with the EP).
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2019
  17. Jeffg

    Jeffg Active Member

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    Whatever.. in any case.. how about a new auocepalous Anglican church then ?
     
  18. Botolph

    Botolph Well-Known Member

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    Surely novelty and orthodoxy are difficult to hold in one breath, or indeed in one communion.
     
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