Some Traditionalists 'addicted to despair'

Jim Naughton, a shrewd observer of the contemporary Anglican scene, says that reasserter expectations were “apocalyptic” going in to this Primates meeting. An exaggeration, to be sure, but for some, not by much. I tried to move people away from these unrealistic ideas before this meeting started, an attempt which seemed to bear little fruit.

But now we have apparently an equal and opposite reaction to a near nadir of darkness and despair in some quarters among reasserters. There has also been too much rejoicing and what is frankly schadenfreude by some reappraisers, and that surely has not helped matters.

I have mentioned a number of times that some reasserters have become addicted to despair. In the medieval church, they identified something called the sin of despair which was a quite serious matter in which people stepped so close to the edge of darkness and looked so far in that they lost any sense of God being in charge of the world.

Can I remind people that hope is one of the theological virtues? That hope in the New Testament means confidence grounded in the character of God? Read more