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Abp. Foley Beach on Diversity

From Archbishop Foley Beach’s sermon at the service of his investiture as archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, held October 10 in Atlanta:

You know, Anglicanism has never been uniform — it is actually always been one of our strengths as a movement and as a Tradition of Christian Faith. When I think back to the English reformation — it depended on who was the King as to whether you stayed alive.

I think about Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Jewell, Lancelot Andrews, Hooker, Whitfield, Wesley, Newman, Keeble, Pusey, C.S. Lewis, John Stott, J.I. Packer, Oz Guiness. We have always been a diverse lot! And we are today.

The flags you see before you were brought here tonight to represent all the countries from where we have guests here for the service. But upon further reflection, it is clear that we actually have people from all those nations who are now citizens of the U.S. or Canada or Mexico and are active members in our churches in the Anglican Church in North America.

In reality — if we had a flag from every country where this is the case, there would a lot more flags. We are a diverse lot. We are united, but not uniform. We are Evangelical. We are Anglo-Catholic. We are Charismatic. We are high church. We are low church. We are contemporary. We are traditional. We are classical.

Read the rest [PDF].

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