Two B.B.C. Radio Ulster programmes in December, Sunday Sequence
and the service which followed it, highlighted a fundamental
contradiction in faith between two Church of Ireland clergymen.
In Sequence the Rev. Andrew Furlong, Dean of Clonmacnoise
and rector of Trim, Co. Meath, denied the divinity of Christ
and questioned very much that which has been said or written
about Him. The Rev. Dr. Robin Eames, Archbishop of Armagh,
in his Christmas sermon in the service spoke of Christ's divinity
and declared Him to be the Lord and Saviour of mankind. Two
opposite, irreconcilable views of Jesus Christ and Christianity,
heresy and orthodoxy. Furlong's rejection of the beliefs of
Christians, clearly enunciated in this instance by the Archbishop,
began shortly after his ordination in 1973 when he said: "In
a nutshell. I found I was still believing in God, but no longer
in Jesus. None of the atonement doctrines seemed credible.
Arguments for Jesus's divinity or His resurrection held no
weight for me, and that God had come into our environment
to live as a human being no longer seemed plausible."
Faced with the choice of stay in or go from the church that
believed these things, was made and he served as a clergyman
in Ireland, North and South, Leeds in England and Zimbabwe,
so that for 25 years he was an Anglican priest, who in order
to perform his duties led his people in forms of worship which
were alien to his thinking on God, Jesus and the Christian
faith. How he managed to live with his conscience during that
time says something about the man. Whether or not he had reached
the stage where he could live no longer with the situation
as it was and determined to declare himself by spelling out
what he believed he used the church's internet to publish
his credo. The adverse reaction to that caused the Rev. Richard
Clarke, bishop of Meath and Kildare, to suspend him from his
post for three months to "reflect on his statements."
As we have indicated Furlong hit the headlines appearing on
radio and television and featuring in the press. "Reform
Ireland", an evangelical group in the Church of Ireland
with its chairman, Co. Armagh rector the Rev. Edmond Coulter,
made an immediate response in defence of the faith of an Anglican
when he criticised Furlong, denounced his theology as heresy
and blamed the poor training ordinands are receiving in the
theological college for the dissemination of such un-Christian
views of Christ and Christianity. Claims that other serving
clergymen believe as he does, has created a situation for
the Church of Ireland which demands an unequivocal denunciation
of a theology which is not Christian by a definition of Christian
faith and practice. There must be an exercise of the authority
vested in the church to demand that what it believes and teaches
in its forms and ceremonies must not be set aside by anyone
who believes and teaches that which is disagreeable to it
should be allowable by it. If there are clergymen who think
as Furlong does in the Church of Ireland they must be faced
with the consequences of their disloyalty and disobedience
to the authority of the church. The intention of Furlong to
reform the church from within is not remotely possible for
what he would finish with would not be a church reformed but
something else with another title and totally different from
what it has been for centuries. What the church needs is not
what this man wants by a renewed determination to fulfil its
obligation to proclaim Jesus Christ as the Lord and Saviour
of mankind. It is the good news of Jesus Christ that people
should hear and to be shown the evidence of His power to meet
their deepest needs. "None but Christ can satisfy ....."
It would be most remiss of us as members of a Christian organisation
if we did not declare ourselves, as we do now, for the Christ-centred,
Bible-based faith of the Church of Ireland which it holds
in common with the other churches of the Protestant Reformed
tradition.
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