Conger

The Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Dr. Idris Jones told the opening session of the Church’s General Synod the Anglican Communion must adopt an inclusive posture toward the world, engaging in a witness of social activism.

The SEC’s three day synod, held June 7-9 at Palmerston Place Church in Edinburgh, focused on becoming a more “inclusive” church. Synod adopted a resolution authorizing its Faith and Order Board to finalize a response to the Anglican Covenant, and organized pre-Lambeth meetings for its bishops to hear the concerns of church members going into the July-August conference of Anglican bishops next year.

The Christian faith is continuously unfolding revelation, Dr. Jones told Synod in his charge, one that is gradually revealed to the believer over time. “The bench mark is the life and teaching of Jesus, but my reading of St. Paul is of someone who began a journey on the road to Damascus but whose journey in faith went on throughout his life - his theology worked out on the hoof so to speak, and we can see evidence of that in his letters.”

“We join in that journey and honesty forbids that we say of our own lives that we feel we have completed the journey and certainly not that we feel that our church does not have some way to go in obedience to that faithful remembering of the call of Christ. God is working his purpose out, and we strain to get nearer to seeing it all the time knowing that there remains much work to be done - on earth as in heaven,” he said.

The call to the Anglican Communion at this time, he said was to turn aside from our “internal squabbles” and focus on inclusive “human rights” such as the eradication of “extreme hunger”, “universal primary education”, the “empowerment of women”, and combating “epidemic diseases”.

The church’s call to “inclusion then is to see how we can make accessible to all people the knowledge of salvation and the love of God. To do this, we have to be aware of how our normal church practices can change to include those who are excluded by them,” he argued.

The SEC’s deliberations on the Anglican Covenant would be grounded in this model, ensuring that it is “something that invites into relationship rather than repels from it.”