Chester Diocese
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The way forward into our Anglican future – by the Bishop of Chester
ANGLICANS urgently need to recover for the Bible a true place of honour in the life of the Church, the Bishop of Chester has told the Chester Diocesan Evangelical Fellowship. In a wide-ranging address, the Rt Revd Dr Peter Forster, also called for a “parallel recovery of the proper dignity of the creeds, and the classical Christian theology for which they stand”. And the Bishop, speaking to the fellowship on 23 February 2005, mounted a strong encouragement of Book of Common Prayer (BCP) use in services and called for greater reverence to be shown for the sacraments of baptism and holy communion in the Church. He added: “I am an Anglican, a member of the Church of England, Bishop of this Diocese. I love this Church : not, I hope, more than I love the Lord my God, but I am very attached to it. The Church of England was the place of my conversion, the Church which has largely nurtured my faith. I owe it a very great deal indeed. “I don’t want to be drawn into the all too fashionable trend today for folk to sit loose to the communities, or institutions, which have nurtured them, and to which they belong. Ours is the age of the individual, with his or her choices, rights, preferences and needs. At worst, and not uncommonly, it degenerates into the narcissism of ‘believe what you like and it’s true for you’, an idolatry of oneself.” The Bishop also said: “Our Anglican future, whatever form or forms it might take, must be a future which recaptures a theological seriousness which I judge to have been significantly lost. “It needs to be a future which concentrates more on the substance and content of the Christian faith, and is less obsessed with the questions of theological method which have so dominated twentieth-century theology. “The central message from the African Church to the Western Churches at the present time is that we are accommodating too much to an increasingly secular culture. But how will we resist this, without a clear and widely held appreciation of the distinct teaching of the Gospel?” * From a lecture by the Bishop of Chester. Read the full lecture here.
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The Rt Revd Dr Peter Forster
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