On the third day he rose again...

There is a lot of media attention at the moment about the appointment of The Rev Dr John Shepherd as the interim director of the Anglican Centre in Rome.  The holder of the position essentially acts as an ambassador of the Anglican Communion to the Holy See - so it is a position of significant importance, and the holder of the post needs to be someone that can represent the official position of the Anglican church in ecumenical dialogue.  This should be a person that can be supported by the broad spectrum of Anglican churchmanship - and also by the Vatican.

The problem is that Dr Shepherd is not such a person.  Now I want to be clear I do not know Dr Shepherd personally, I do not make judgements about his general character as a man.  I'm sure he is a perfectly nice guy - I can however make a judgement, based on his publicly espoused beliefs, that he should not be in this post, and in my opinion, that he should not be in Holy Orders. 

Why? Because as reported in multiple places Dr Shepherd does not believe in the most fundamental of Christian doctrines - that Jesus rose from the dead.  In fact he has preached this openly - during an Easter service of all places! He has also shared his view in op-ed pieces in the West Australian Newspaper. Why does that matter? Because as St Paul makes it clear in his first letter to the Corinthians:

.... if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.  More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.  ... And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 
1 Corinthians 15:14-19 (NRSV)

Scripture then is clear - the resurrection of Jesus is absolutely fundamental to the Christian faith - and without that resurrection, the Christian faith is simply a waste of time.  

So that raises some problems for Dr Shepherd.   If he rejects the resurrection, he then declares Christianity and its teaching - as St Paul says useless - and the scriptures to be false. 

How then can he even be in holy orders? Surely if he no longer believes the faith he vowed to uphold at his ordination (assuming he believed it then) he should stand down.  Yet he doesn't stand down and instead he is rewarded for his blatant heresy, by being put into a high profile representative role.

This of course tells us a couple of things - the process for appointing someone to this significant role is very flawed, and there is also a fundamental problem within the Anglican Communion and within the Anglican Church of Australia which allows clergy who are openly espousing views in direct contradiction to their vows of ordination to not only get away with it, but get promoted into positions of authority and major significance.  Dr Shepherd should not have been the Dean of Perth, and he certainly shouldn't be director of the Anglican Centre..

This is not an isolated incident, we have seen this previously with clergy in the Australian church. Rod Bower in Gosford, who as David Ould has reported, openly says Jesus didn't die for our sins, and that there is no such thing as heaven or hell, and also that God isn't a divine being was rather than being disciplined for heresy, made an Archdeacon.  I could point to many more. 

I have no doubt that there are many Anglican (and other) clergy out there who over time may come to have views contrary to the position of the church.  Over non fundamental things this isn't really a problem, but when we find ourselves with clergy who stand up in church each Sunday and recite the Nicene Creed with their fingers crossed because they don't actually believe it, that is unacceptable.

It is unacceptable because it shows an incredible lack of integrity on behalf of the church leadership which stands by and lets these people lie to their congregations, to their colleagues and to the wider society they serve when in leadership roles.  It also shows an incredible lack of integrity from those who are happy to continue to stand in front of their congregation each week, and take the stipend (salary) which is paid for through their donations, while not actually believing in, or upholding the faith they vowed to uphold when they were ordained. 

To be clear, I am not asking for clergy to be perfect, and I am not asking for everyone to believe and behave identically - The Anglican tradition is broad, and we have room for evangelicals, Anglo-Catholics and Charismatics alike.  I understand that there are areas within the Christian faith which are more grey than black and white, and that we can agree to disagree on those, without compromising our faith or the Gospel message. But when an ordained man or woman no longer believes in the fundamentals of the Christian faith, when they can no longer honestly recite the creeds of the church, they need to stand down - and if they won't, then the church leadership needs to deal with it - by removing them from ministry.