I don’t know if you’ve been following the story about gluten free bread and non alcoholic wine in CofE Communion. Well the Church of England have now issued a press release saying that it’s all okay because it is possible for churches to serve these alternatives.
However, I am not convinced that this resolves things so neatly, not least because it doesn’t give the full picture.
First of all, it doesn’t take into account all of the health issues concerned. Supplying gluten free bread may help Coeliacs but there are a number of other serious food allergies that might still prevent you from sharing that bread and wine. Secondly, it doesn’t consider the risks of cross contamination which are significant when bread or wafers are given out by hand and a shared cup passed along, sometimes having bread dipped in.
Secondly, it doesn’t give the full story about how the Church of England works. Yes, alternatives are possible but are seen as exceptions and so properly speaking must be agreed by the bishop.
Thirdly, what this story showed is that there are significant numbers of clergymen who believe that they would be committing some form of heresy by serving gluten free bread and non alcoholic wine.
This means that your ability to take communion could vary from church to church and change on a whim at your own church if the bishop or vicar changes or if they change their mind.
Now on one level this looks like an example of a nitpicking debate with bigger issues affecting the Church but there is a sense in which this gets to the heart of the problems with the Anglican Communion.
You see we have been told so often that the episcopal system is a fantastic and vital protection against false teaching and idiosyncracy. Yet all the evidence on multiple counts shows that the protection is about as strong as a chocolate fire guard.
In this particular case, it became clear that whatever the “official” position was or wasn’t that not only are there vicars who hold a peculiarly strict, legalistic understanding of what is permitted at communion but that their basis for this was a rather abhorrent mishandling of God’s Word. The result has been for them to make one of the means of grace ineffective and to model a wrong and unhealthy way to approach Scripture.#
The Church of England’s response has been to treat it as a mere PR/Comms issue. Their press release is purely concerned in “clearing up confusion!” in order to dampen down media and social media outrage but ignores the underlying issues including both idiosyncratic interpretations of Scripture and ignorant and offensive “anti-woke” commentary. Both of these issues should have bene challenged head on. The result is that the response fails to deal with pastoral and doctrinal concerns.
And, that, frankly is how the Church of England has been functioning for as long as I can remember. All of the protections of a denomination and an episcopal structure have failed to protect and care for the church.
Faithroots 