Ecclesiological Fractures: Communion, Mission, and Empire in Global Anglicanism
Foundations of Anglican Ecclesiology: The Interlocking of Communion and Mission
Etymological and Theological Definitions:
Communion derives from the Greek term koinonia, translated in the New Testament as "fellowship," "sharing together," or "communion." It signifies an organic, participatory common life rather than a mere administrative association.
Mission originates from the Latin mittere ("to send"), mirroring the Greek apostello (from which apostoloi derives), echoing the commissioning of the risen Christ in John 20:21: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
The Problem of Reductive Parish Usage:
Common ecclesiastical parlance bifurcates these realities into an internal/external division: communion is perceived as an internal grace enjoyed within the congregation on Sunday, while mission is treated as an external activity directed toward outsiders on Monday.
This inward/outward division distorts Anglican ecclesiology:
Failure on the Communion side: A communion curved in upon itself (incurvatus in se) ceases to be healthy, becoming an expression of the Fall clad in liturgical vestments. Ecclesial borders must remain porous. The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 establishes this precedent by maintaining fellowship across diverse ethnic, cultural, and ritual backgrounds without erecting absolute barriers.
Failure on the Mission side: Reducing mission exclusively to evangelization among the unchurched obscures the full scope of ecclesial vocation, which encompasses liturgical offering, sacramental formation, and works of justice.
The Liturgical Dimension of Mission:
Mission is intrinsically liturgical. Christian initiation, spanning baptism to the celebration of the Eucharist, constitutes a prime act of missional embodiment.
The Eucharist is not a private refueling stop or emotional recharging station for believers; it is the public proclamation of the Paschal mystery from which all acts of Christian witness spring.
Because communion between churches is inextricably bound up with the Holy Eucharist, ecclesial communion is holy (set apart) and must never be severed or withheld lightly.
Three golden threads weave through the life of the church: gospel, sacrament, and service. Mission flows from communion, and communion finds its proper expression in mission.
The Trinitarian Dynamic of Missio Dei:
Theologically, the church does not own, direct, or define mission; it participates in the Missio Dei (the mission of God).
The Missio Dei is an eternal Trinitarian event of sending: the Father sends the Son, the Father and the Son send the Spirit, and the Triune God sends and empowers the church into the world.
The ultimate goal of this sending is the eschatological reconciliation of all created order into unity in Christ (Ephesians 1:10).
The church serves as both an instrument of that gathering and an outward sign and foretaste of the Kingdom of God.
The Lambeth 1920 Vision and the Dialectic of Unity and Credibility
The Lambeth Conference of 1920 and the Appeal to All Christian People:
The foundational theological premise of the Appeal is: "We believe that God wills fellowship." This fellowship was wrought by God in Christ, lives in the Holy Spirit, and is destined to manifest in an "outward visible and united society."
The Appeal formally defines the Catholic Church through the twin realities of unity and communion, characterized by three major features:
Trinitarian Foundation: Fellowship is willed by the Father, achieved by the Son, and sustained by the Spirit.
Visible Manifestation: Communion is not an invisible, abstract, or disembodied spiritual concept; it takes concrete shape in time and space through communities gathered in baptism, teaching, and common life.
Outward Mission: The visible society exists entirely for the worldwide service of the Kingdom of God.
Catholicity is not Uniformity: The Appeal explicitly outlines an ecclesial vision wherein separated communions, upon reuniting, retain their distinct methods of worship, ethos, and service. Catholicity demands communion with a richly diverse universal church rather than institutional or liturgical uniformity.
Communion as a Nurtured Practice:
Communion is not a static property that an institution permanently possesses or lacks; it must be continuously cultivated through conciliarity, deliberation, consultation, trust, and mutual forbearance.
Communion requires assuming positive intent in encounters across difference—seeking the underlying spiritual concern of the other rather than defaulting to acrimony.
Scriptural Imperative of Unity for Credible Witness:
The Johannine Witness:
John 17:21: "that they may all be one… so that the world may believe that you have sent me." The purpose clause ("so that the world may believe") establishes that the visible oneness of disciples directly impacts the world's capacity to receive the Christian message. Credibility is tied to the integrity of the messenger.
John 10:16: The Good Shepherd has other sheep not of this fold, whom He must bring so there will be "one flock, one shepherd."
John 11:51–52: Caiaphas unknowingly prophesied that Jesus would die not only for the nation, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God.
The 1937 Oxford Conference on Church, Community, and State:
Meeting under the gathering storm of totalitarianism and impending war in Europe, ecumenical leaders concluded that the prophetic witness of the church had been "discredited in advance" by its internal divisions and mutual persecutions.
The delegates declared that church renewal must begin with self-reflection and repentance within the house of God before addressing secular powers.
Five Facets of Johannine Unity:
Mystical: Grounded in the divine coinherence (perichoresis) of the Father and the Son, into which believers are drawn through divine love. This unity is mystical rather than merely "invisible."
Visible: It must be empirically observable to the watching world ("so that the world may know").
Missional: Modeled on the Incarnation (John 1:14), wherein the Word "dwelt" or literally pitched His tent (bivouacked) among humanity.
Ethical: Proven by bearing the fruit of the Spirit. The moral character and ethical life of the ecclesial body are far more persuasive than bureaucratic codes or institutional procedures.
Eschatological: Anchored in the tension of the "already and not yet." Love (1 Corinthians 13) serves as the indispensable bridge between present foretaste and ultimate fulfillment.
Mission, Empire, and the Missional Continuum
The Providential Ideology of the British Empire:
Anglican expansion was theological, justified primarily through the lens of providence:
In the early 1700s, the Bishop of Chester proclaimed that religion never looks so glorious as when enlarging its borders to establish a "rational and holy empire on the ruins of ignorance and superstition."
In the early 1800s, another bishop identified the expansion of the British Empire as the visible "finger of the Most High."
Under this framework, English civilization was equated with the pinnacle of Christian maturity, leading missionary efforts to demand the annihilation of Indigenous languages, customs, and identities as a prerequisite for Christian conversion.
Cooperation and Conflict in Colonial Mission:
Cooperation: Missionaries supplied schools and ecclesiastical structures that colonial administrators utilized for the "pacification" of local populations. In the early 1700s, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) was bequeathed two sugarcane plantations in Barbados, becoming a slave-owning missionary body that refused to advocate for abolition in the Caribbean.
Conflict: Many missionaries actively lobbied against colonial brutality, defended Indigenous peoples from administrative abuses, and translated scriptures into local tongues alongside Indigenous histories. Yet, these figures rarely advocated for the total dismantling of the imperial structure itself, operating entirely within its cultural horizon.
As late as the 1950s, the General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) delivered lectures in the United States calling for a revived "theology of imperialism."
The Four Steps of the Missional Continuum:
1. Imposition: A dominant Christian culture is exported under the assumption that its specific cultural packaging is identical to the gospel itself.
2. Enculturation: The message is translated into local idioms and cultural art forms (e.g., depicting Christ as Black), though European theological architectures (such as specific scholastic atonement theories) often remain rigidly non-negotiable.
3. Translation: Not merely the linguistic rendering of texts, but the dynamic recreation of the faith itself as it inhabits a new linguistic and conceptual world (paralleling the divine translation of the Incarnation into first-century Palestine).
4. Diversity in Dialogue: The ultimate ecclesiological goal: a decentered, multicultural, polycentric communion that embraces diversity rather than forcing absorption into sameness.
Syncretism and Cultural Imposition Across the Theological Spectrum:
At the Lambeth Conference of 2008, the Bishop of Colombo (Sri Lanka) concluded the opening cathedral Eucharist sermon with a chant in Sinhalese set to a traditional Buddhist musical mode. Conservative bishops denounced this as "syncretism," prompting the Bishop to observe that his liturgical setting was equivalent to Charles Wesley adapting secular tunes for hymns, or colonial editions of the Book of Common Prayer requiring prayers for the British monarch across the globe.
Imposition is not confined to a single theological wing:
Conservatives can elevate historical, European-conditioned patterns of doctrine and scriptural interpretation into untouchable dogma, remaining blind to their own enculturation within Western consumer capitalism.
Liberals can canonize Western social-democratic ideals and contemporary sexual ethics as universal imperatives for the global church, creating what theologians have termed a "new form of Constantinianism."
The Imperial Structure of the Instruments of Communion:
The structural apparatus of the Anglican Communion remains tied to English institutions:
The Archbishop of Canterbury is appointed by the British monarch on the advice of the British Prime Minister and sits in the UK House of Lords.
The Lambeth Conference convenes exclusively by personal invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury at an English palace.
The Anglican Communion Office is located in London.
English served as the sole official language of Communion gatherings until simultaneous interpretation was introduced at Lambeth in 1998.
Colonial ecclesiastical practice frequently displaced Indigenous leadership: in Nigeria, after the consecration of an Indigenous bishop in the 19th century, he was subsequently replaced by generations of British missionary bishops, leaving decades before Indigenous leadership was restored (a pattern mirrored in Kenya).
Exceptions to Empire: Anglican churches developed independently in territories that were never British or American colonies, such as Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nepal, Singapore, Chile, and Peru.
Postcolonial Ecclesiology and the Four Marks of Autonomy
Post-colonial vs. Postcolonial Terminology:
Post-colonial (hyphenated): Refers chronologically to the historical era following the achievement of national independence from colonial rule.
Postcolonial (unhyphenated): Denotes a critical hermeneutical posture, theoretical methodology, and theological commitment aimed at deconstructing colonial systems of knowledge, authority, and power.
Critical Postcolonial Tools:
Discourse: Structured systems of thought that define what is normative and conceivable, historically legitimizing Western civilizational superiority.
Binaries: Paired oppositions (e.g., rational/primitive, center/periphery, mind/body) wherein one pole is systematically privileged over the other (exemplified by Immanuel Kant categorizing colonized peoples as closer to animals than rational European men).
Power/Knowledge: Formulated by Edward Said, demonstrating that claims to "objective," non-political knowledge often obscure the political, colonial conditions under which that knowledge is manufactured.
Colonization of Identity: The psychological and ontological trauma inflicted when colonial hegemony severs Indigenous subjects from their language, temporal rhythms, and customs, forcing the question: "Who am I?"
Hegemony: Structural dominance maintained not merely through military or legal force, but through cultural, moral, and intellectual leadership.
Rethinking the Anglican "Three-Legged Stool":
Historiography: Standard accounts treated Anglicanism as English church history with foreign missionary outposts appended. The first comprehensive global study was Kevin Ward's A History of Global Anglicanism (2006).
Institutional Asymmetry: The Church of England's Declaration of Assent describes it simply as part of the "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church," omitting any reference to the Anglican Communion, whereas the Episcopal Church (USA) formalizes itself as a "constituent member of the Anglican Communion."
Scripture: For the Global South, the Bible arrived via the colonizer, functioning as both an instrument of liberation (Exodus) and a tool of imperial conquest (Canaan). African biblical scholars engage the text not as passive recipients, but as active interpreters who negotiate its liberating potential.
Tradition: Often experienced in the Global South as an imperial "bulldozer mentality" flattening local religious memory. A Ghanaian theologian termed this Anglicanism's "proximity to the castle."
Reason: Enlightenment reason was constructed against the supposed "irrationality" of the colonized. Theology must pivot to address the moral skeptic who evaluates the faith by its historical fruits rather than purely theoretical coherence.
Evaluation of Henry Venn's Indigenous Church Formula:
In the 19th century, Henry Venn (CMS Secretary) articulated the goal of foreign mission as establishing churches that were self-propagating, self-supporting, and self-governing. Later missiologists added a fourth criterion: self-theologizing.
1. Self-Propagating: Largely achieved. The demographic center of gravity has shifted decisively to the Global South, where the majority of evangelism is conducted by local agents, while Western churches frequently decline into insular introspection.
2. Self-Supporting: Largely unachieved. Pervasive financial disparities endure. Wealthy Western parishes (such as Trinity Church Wall Street in New York, whose endowment exceeds the operational budgets of multiple Global South provinces combined) exert economic leverage with ideological strings attached across liberal and conservative lines.
3. Self-Governing: Formally achieved, but practically compromised. Outside funding frequently turns local bishops into proxies for Western proxy conflicts. During the North American disputes of the early 2000s, conservative American dioceses broke from the Episcopal Church and sought episcopal oversight from primates in Rwanda, Nigeria, and Uganda.
4. Self-Theologizing: The most critical and least realized dimension. Liturgies that continue to intercede for a foreign monarch while ignoring local political realities reflect theological subjugation. The Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia stands out for producing an authentically contextual Prayer Book, though each province must develop its own theological vernacular rather than imitating others.
The Anglican Communion Covenant and Competing Ecclesial Visions
Catalysts for Structural Fracture (2002–2004):
In 2002, the Diocese of New Westminster (Canada) authorized a rite of blessing for same-sex unions.
In 2003, the Episcopal Church (USA) consented to the election and consecration of Gene Robinson, an openly partnered gay man, as Bishop of New Hampshire.
The Windsor Report (2004): Commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Rowan Williams), the report urged moratoria on same-sex blessings, cross-border episcopal interventions, and the consecration of bishops living in same-sex unions, while proposing an Anglican Communion Covenant to regulate inter-provincial communion.
Evolution of the Anglican Communion Covenant Drafts (2004–2009):
The Covenant process progressed through multiple drafts, attempting to decenter authority while managing ideological ruptures:
Nassau Draft (2007) / St. Andrew's Draft (2008): Attempted to balance the moral authority of the Primates' Meeting, the Instruments of Communion, and the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).
Ridley Cambridge Draft (Final Text, 2009): Established Section 4, outlining procedures for resolving disputes. A Standing Committee answerable to the ACC and the Primates' Meeting would assess actions "incompatible with the Covenant" and recommend "relational consequences."
Structural Weakness: Because the Covenant lacked coercive legal teeth or binding canonical mechanisms, participation remained voluntary, leading both progressive and conservative factions to view it as either an imperial encroachment or an ineffective compromise.
Postcolonial and Canonical Critiques of the Covenant:
Linguistic Constraints: A Japanese bishop objected to the term covenant, noting that in Japanese the concept translates only as contract, introducing a transactional, business-like framework alien to Anglican ecclesiology.
Clerical vs. Synodal Authority: In 2010, the Bishop of Alexandria (Egypt) resigned from the Covenant Standing Committee, protesting that a body composed of clergy and laity (the ACC) was improperly acquiring governing authorities that historically belonged solely to the bishops and primates.
Neocolonial Globalism: Centralizing dispute mechanisms within global committees risks eroding the intermediate authority of autonomous local dioceses and provincial synods.
Three Competing Ecclesiological Visions for Global Anglicanism:
1. The Covenanted Communion: A structured association of autonomous yet interdependent national provinces bound by mutual accountability, consensual limits, and institutional mechanisms to resolve disputes.
2. The Confessional Communion: An ecclesial body organized strictly around an explicit, binding theological statement (e.g., the Jerusalem Declaration), establishing clear doctrinal boundaries for who is within or outside communion.
3. The Federated or Storied Communion: A loose, decentralized fellowship of self-governing churches held together not by central legal covenants or confessions, but by a shared liturgical narrative, historic ties, conciliar habit, and common pastoral practice.
The GAFCON Movement and the Re-Centering Crisis
The Rise of GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference):
Convened in Jerusalem in 2008 as an alternative to the 2008 Lambeth Conference, which was boycotted by scores of Global South bishops following the consecration of Gene Robinson and the authorization of same-sex blessings.
The conference produced the Jerusalem Declaration, which GAFCON established as its foundational theological platform, emphasizing biblical inerrancy, traditional sexual ethics, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
October 2025 Communiqué on the Appointment of Dame Sarah Mullally:
Context: Following the announcement of the appointment of Dame Sarah Mullally as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Dr. Laurent Mbanda (Archbishop of Rwanda and Chairman of the GAFCON Primates Council) released an official response on October 3, 2025.
Substantive Content of the Statement:
Declares that Canterbury's decision "abandons global Anglicans" and deepens the existing schism within the Communion.
Reiterates the position of the Kigali Commitment (February 2023), declaring that GAFCON no longer recognizes the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Instrument of Communion or as the primus inter pares (first among equals).
Asserts that the majority of global Anglicans maintain that holy scripture permits only a male episcopate, thereby rendering Mullally incapable of serving as a focus of unity.
Charges Mullally with violating her episcopal consecration vows to "banish and drive away strange and erroneous doctrine" by actively promoting revisionist teachings on marriage and sexual morality.
Invokes Article 20 of the Thirty-Nine Articles ("Of the Authority of the Church"), asserting that the Church cannot ordain anything contrary to God's Word written.
Declares that the See of Canterbury has forfeited its moral and spiritual authority to lead, summoning bishops to a G26 Assembly in Abuja, Nigeria, in March 2026.
Analysis of The Future Has Arrived (Martyrs' Day Statement, October 16, 2025):
Symbolic Timing: Promulgated on October 16, 2025, commemorating the 1555 martyrdom of Oxford reformers Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, who were burned at the stake during the Marian persecution. This positions GAFCON leadership simultaneously as victims of institutional persecution and heroic defenders of the historic English Reformation.
Internal Canonical Contradictions:
The document explicitly rejects all historic Instruments of Communion (the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates' Meeting, and the ACC) as compromised and obsolete.
Simultaneously, it justifies its own theological posture by citing historic resolutions passed by those very instruments—specifically the 1867 Lambeth Conference and Resolution I.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference.
Ecclesial Claim: Frames the realignment not as a hostile breakaway, but as remaining on the true ship while Canterbury and Western provinces abandon historic orthodoxy.
Reordering Governance: GAFCON originally projected a Primates' Council model, but instead formed a Global Anglican Council, presided over by Laurent Mbanda (Rwanda) as Chairman, with an Archbishop from the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil serving as Co-Chair.
Confessional Terms of Communion: Demands assent to the Jerusalem Declaration as a nearly creedal confession, establishing that communion with Canterbury is incompatible with participation in this realigned Global Anglican body.
The Abuja Affirmation (March 7, 2026):
Promulgated at the conclusion of the G26 Bishops Assembly in Abuja, Nigeria.
Explicitly defines true communion as confessional rather than defined by institutional heritage, historical lineage, or canon law.
Elevates the Jerusalem Declaration alongside the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion into a binding confessional standard.
Asserts that scripture must be read in its "plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church's historic and consensual reading," while effectively granting GAFCON primacy the sole authority to determine what constitutes that consensus.
Charges Western ecclesial structures and the leadership of Canterbury not merely with administrative error, but with systemic apostasy and heresy.
Internal Divisions and Pushback within the Global South:
The Global South is not monolithic. Bishops and primates from Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Egypt pushed back against GAFCON's total rupture, refusing to sever ties with the wider Anglican Communion.
In North America, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)—along with its Canadian jurisdiction, the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC)—is fully aligned with GAFCON, operating in parallel competition with the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada.
Alternative Pathways: The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals and Synodical Defense
The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals (2024):
Formulated collaboratively by the conservative yet communion-committed provinces of Kenya and Egypt, seeking a middle way (via media) to avert total schism.
Explicitly rejects GAFCON's turn to a purely confessional model, insisting that the Anglican Communion is fundamentally conciliar, historical, and synodical, not confessional.
Proposes structural reforms to the Instruments of Communion to address Global South frustrations without severing visible unity:
Revising the timeline, locations, and agendas of the Lambeth Conferences and Primates' Meetings.
Decentering Canterbury by holding major summits across the global communion rather than exclusively in England.
Imposing concrete consultation requirements on the Archbishop of Canterbury before major theological determinations are advanced.
Deliberations at the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC-18 and ACC-19):
At ACC-18, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith, and Order (IASCUFO) was mandated to evaluate structures of communion and address institutional gridlock.
The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals were forwarded to ACC-19 (meeting in Belfast) for formal deliberation.
The Living Church hosted a symposial review featuring eight responses to the proposals, reflecting sharp divisions across global theologians:
Andrew Goddard and George Sumner: Argued that the proposals offer a credible, actionable path for institutional renovation and sustained conciliar dialogue.
Ephraim Radner: Criticized the proposals as theological mush that fails to reckon with the profound reality of structural, spiritual fracture and broken communion.
Benjamin Crosby: Analyzed the proposals through the sociological lens of the ongoing membership decline in the Episcopal Church and the shifting demographic realities of North American Anglicanism.
The Institutional and Synodical Defense by the Secretary General:
In response to GAFCON's communiqués, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion issued an official pastoral response emphasizing the nature of synodical governance:
Calls for patience, daily repentance, conversion, and prayerful discernment, warning against precipitous unilateral breaks.
Reiterates that the church is semper reformanda (always reforming), and that diversity across doctrinal, geographical, and regional groupings must be managed through mutual submission.
Insists that Anglican ecclesiology is rooted in canon law, provincial constitutions, and synodical governance where bishops, clergy, and laity together determine doctrine and order.
Highlights that no single archbishop, primate, or breakaway council possesses canonical authority to dictate terms to autonomous national synods, urging all provinces to participate in ACC-19 rather than abandoning conciliar consultation.
Questions & Discussion
Theological Implications of Divine Aseity for Mission:
Question: If Christian theology maintains divine aseity—that God is fully self-sufficient, complete, and in need of nothing—why is outward mission framed as essential to God's Church? Does asserting that the church must carry out mission imply that God has an unmet need?
Response: Framing mission as God's "need" is a theological category error. God does not act out of systemic lack, deficiency, or need. Mission is the spontaneous, generous outflow of God's internal Trinitarian life. A Triune God whose very essence is self-giving love naturally creates, sends, gathers, and reconciles. The Missio Dei does not diminish divine transcendence; it manifests the glory and boundless generosity of a God who invites human creatures to participate in divine life.
Self-Theologizing and Contextual Expression in the Canadian Church:
Dialogue on Autonomous Liturgy: Discussion centered on whether modern Anglicanism truly desires radical self-theologizing, given the tradition's avoidance of rigid, systematic dogmatics.
Indigenous Integration: Attention was drawn to the institutional tensions when Indigenous practices (such as liturgical smudging led by Indigenous leadership at the beginning of an academic term) encounter resistance from parishioners who perceive it as alien or un-Anglican. This illustrates the lingering absence of a coherent theological framework in many local parishes for understanding how Indigenous expressions operate legitimately within Anglicanism.
Structural Paradoxes of the National Indigenous Church: While the establishment of the self-governing Indigenous Sacred Circle and the office of the National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop represents meaningful institutional progress, structural limitations persist: the broader church often isolates this office, fails to allocate sufficient financial resources, and denies non-Indigenous parishes organic theological access to Indigenous episcopal leadership.
The West Coast Liturgy: A localized liturgical rite developed within the Diocese of New Westminster approximately a decade ago exemplifies authentic contextualization, yet its utilization remains largely confined to isolated parishes, illustrating how slow institutional structures are to normalize regional, inculturated worship.
GAFCON's Conflicting Hermeneutical Frameworks:
Dialogue on the Martyrs' Day Statement: Discussion examined GAFCON's simultaneous repudiation and appropriation of historical structures. GAFCON explicitly disavows the authority of the Instruments of Communion while relying on resolutions passed by those very instruments (e.g., Lambeth 1867 and Lambeth 1998 Resolution I.10) to validate its own orthodoxy.
Restoration vs. Reordering: Participants highlighted the contradiction between GAFCON's claim to be "restoring historic Anglicanism" and its actual practice of revolutionary reordering: elevating the Jerusalem Declaration to a confessional litmus test (alien to traditional Anglican reliance on the historic ecumenical creeds) and asserting that the Bible interpreted in its "plain and canonical sense" acts as the sole authority without acknowledging that GAFCON leadership has appointed itself as the authoritative interpreter.
The Closed Hermeneutic: A common dynamic inherited from evangelical and fundamentalist contexts involves celebrating historical reforms up to an arbitrary boundary, declaring that absolute truth has now been arrived at, and subsequently forbidding any further enculturation, interpretation, or theological development.
Ecclesial Conflict and Family Systems Theory:
Discussion on the Persistence of Schism: Addressing the reality of entrenched conflict within the global church, participants applied principles from family systems therapy.
Managing Ongoing Conflict: When opposing parties within an intractable conflict refuse to alter their convictions, health is achieved not by continually demanding that the other side change, but by managing one's own posture within the ongoing reality of difference.
Reference to Miroslav Volf: The theological necessity of unconditional reconciliation is articulated in Miroslav Volf's Free of Charge, which examines the discipline of extending forgiveness to the other even when forgiveness will never be requested or acknowledged.