| Archbishop's reflections on the Anglican Communion 27th June 2006 The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican
Today: A Reflection for the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican
Communion The Anglican Communion: a Church in Crisis?
What is the current tension in the Anglican
Communion actually about? Plenty of people are confident that they know
the answer. It’s about gay bishops, or possibly women bishops. The
American Church is in favour and others are against – and the Church
of England is not sure (as usual). It’s true that the election of a practising
gay person as a bishop in the US in 2003 was the trigger for much of the
present conflict. It is doubtless also true that a lot of extra heat is
generated in the conflict by ingrained and ignorant prejudice in some
quarters; and that for many others, in and out of the Church, the issue
seems to be a clear one about human rights and dignity. But the debate
in the Anglican Communion is not essentially a debate about the human
rights of homosexual people. It is possible – indeed, it is imperative
– to give the strongest support to the defence of homosexual people
against violence, bigotry and legal disadvantage, to appreciate the role
played in the life of the church by people of homosexual orientation,
and still to believe that this doesn’t settle the question of whether
the Christian Church has the freedom, on the basis of the Bible, and its
historic teachings, to bless homosexual partnerships as a clear expression
of God’s will. That is disputed among Christians, and, as a bare
matter of fact, only a small minority would answer yes to the question. Unless you think that social and legal considerations
should be allowed to resolve religious disputes – which is a highly
risky assumption if you also believe in real freedom of opinion in a diverse
society – there has to be a recognition that religious bodies have
to deal with the question in their own terms. Arguments have to be drawn
up on the common basis of Bible and historic teaching. And, to make clear
something that can get very much obscured in the rhetoric about ‘inclusion’,
this is not and should never be a question about the contribution of gay
and lesbian people as such to the Church of God and its ministry, about
the dignity and value of gay and lesbian people. Instead it is a question,
agonisingly difficult for many, as to what kinds of behaviour a Church
that seeks to be loyal to the Bible can bless, and what kinds of behaviour
it must warn against – and so it is a question about how we make
decisions corporately with other Christians, looking together for the
mind of Christ as we share the study of the Scriptures. Anglican Decision-Making And this is where the real issue for Anglicans
arises. How do we as Anglicans deal with this issue ‘in our own
terms’? And what most Anglicans worldwide have said is that it doesn’t
help to behave as if the matter had been resolved when in fact it hasn’t.
It is true that, in spite of resolutions and declarations of intent, the
process of ‘listening to the experience’ of homosexual people
hasn’t advanced very far in most of our churches, and that discussion
remains at a very basic level for many. But the decision of the Episcopal
Church to elect a practising gay man as a bishop was taken without even
the American church itself (which has had quite a bit of discussion of
the matter) having formally decided as a local Church what it thinks about
blessing same-sex partnerships. There are other fault lines of division, of
course, including the legitimacy of ordaining women as priests and bishops.
But (as has often been forgotten) the Lambeth Conference did resolve that
for the time being those churches that did ordain women as priests and
bishops and those that did not had an equal place within the Anglican
spectrum. Women bishops attended the last Lambeth Conference. There is
a fairly general (though not universal) recognition that differences about
this can still be understood within the spectrum of manageable diversity
about what the Bible and the tradition make possible. On the issue of
practising gay bishops, there has been no such agreement, and it is not
unreasonable to seek for a very much wider and deeper consensus before
any change is in view, let alone foreclosing the debate by ordaining someone,
whatever his personal merits, who was in a practising gay partnership.
The recent resolutions of the General Convention have not produced a complete
response to the challenges of the Windsor Report, but on this specific
question there is at the very least an acknowledgement of the gravity
of the situation in the extremely hard work that went into shaping the
wording of the final formula. Very many in the Anglican Communion would want
the debate on the substantive ethical question to go on as part of a general
process of theological discernment; but they believe that the pre-emptive
action taken in 2003 in the US has made such a debate harder not easier,
that it has reinforced the lines of division and led to enormous amounts
of energy going into ‘political’ struggle with and between
churches in different parts of the world. However, institutionally speaking,
the Communion is an association of local churches, not a single organisation
with a controlling bureaucracy and a universal system of law. So everything
depends on what have generally been unspoken conventions of mutual respect.
Where these are felt to have been ignored, it is not surprising that deep
division results, with the politicisation of a theological dispute taking
the place of reasoned reflection. Thus if other churches have said, in the wake
of the events of 2003 that they cannot remain fully in communion with
the American Church, this should not be automatically seen as some kind
of blind bigotry against gay people. Where such bigotry does show itself
it needs to be made clear that it is unacceptable; and if this is not
clear, it is not at all surprising if the whole question is reduced in
the eyes of many to a struggle between justice and violent prejudice.
It is saying that, whatever the presenting issue, no member Church can
make significant decisions unilaterally and still expect this to make
no difference to how it is regarded in the fellowship; this would be uncomfortably
like saying that every member could redefine the terms of belonging as
and when it suited them. Some actions – and sacramental actions
in particular - just do have the effect of putting a Church outside or
even across the central stream of the life they have shared with other
Churches. It isn’t a question of throwing people into outer darkness,
but of recognising that actions have consequences – and that actions
believed in good faith to be ‘prophetic’ in their radicalism
are likely to have costly consequences. Truth and Unity It is true that witness to what is passionately
believed to be the truth sometimes appears a higher value than unity,
and there are moving and inspiring examples in the twentieth century.
If someone genuinely thinks that a move like the ordination of a practising
gay bishop is that sort of thing, it is understandable that they are prepared
to risk the breakage of a unity they can only see as false or corrupt.
But the risk is a real one; and it is never easy to recognise when the
moment of inevitable separation has arrived - to recognise that this is
the issue on which you stand or fall and that this is the great issue
of faithfulness to the gospel. The nature of prophetic action is that
you do not have a cast-iron guarantee that you’re right. But let’s suppose that there isn’t
that level of clarity about the significance of some divisive issue. If
we do still believe that unity is generally a way of coming closer to
revealed truth (‘only the whole Church knows the whole Truth’
as someone put it), we now face some choices about what kind of Church
we as Anglicans are or want to be. Some speak as if it would be perfectly
simple – and indeed desirable – to dissolve the international
relationships, so that every local Church could do what it thought right.
This may be tempting, but it ignores two things at least. First, it fails to see that the same problems
and the same principles apply within local Churches as between Churches.
The divisions don’t run just between national bodies at a distance,
they are at work in each locality, and pose the same question: are we
prepared to work at a common life which doesn’t just reflect the
interests and beliefs of one group but tries to find something that could
be in everyone’s interest – recognising that this involves
different sorts of costs for everyone involved? It may be tempting to
say, ‘let each local church go its own way’; but once you’ve
lost the idea that you need to try to remain together in order to find
the fullest possible truth, what do you appeal to in the local situation
when serious division threatens? Second, it ignores the degree to which we are
already bound in with each other’s life through a vast network of
informal contacts and exchanges. These are not the same as the formal
relations of ecclesiastical communion, but they are real and deep, and
they would be a lot weaker and a lot more casual without those more formal
structures. They mean that no local Church and no group within a local
Church can just settle down complacently with what it or its surrounding
society finds comfortable. The Church worldwide is not simply the sum
total of local communities. It has a cross-cultural dimension that is
vital to its health and it is naïve to think that this can survive
without some structures to make it possible. An isolated local Church
is less than a complete Church. Both of these points are really grounded in
the belief that our unity is something given to us prior to our choices
- let alone our votes. ‘You have not chosen me but I have chosen
you’, says Jesus to his disciples; and when we gather to celebrate
the Eucharist, we are saying that we are all there as invited guests,
not because of what we have done. The basic challenge that practically
all the churches worldwide, of whatever denomination, so often have to
struggle with is, ‘Are we joining together in one act of Holy Communion,
one Eucharist, throughout the world, or are we just celebrating our local
identities and our personal preferences?’ The Anglican Identity The reason Anglicanism is worth bothering with
is because it has tried to find a way of being a Church that is neither
tightly centralised nor just a loose federation of essentially independent
bodies – a Church that is seeking to be a coherent family of communities
meeting to hear the Bible read, to break bread and share wine as guests
of Jesus Christ, and to celebrate a unity in worldwide mission and ministry.
That is what the word ‘Communion’ means for Anglicans, and
it is a vision that has taken clearer shape in many of our ecumenical
dialogues. Of course it is possible to produce a self-deceiving,
self-important account of our worldwide identity, to pretend that we were
a completely international and universal institution like the Roman Catholic
Church. We’re not. But we have tried to be a family of Churches
willing to learn from each other across cultural divides, not assuming
that European (or American or African) wisdom is what settles everything,
opening up the lives of Christians here to the realities of Christian
experience elsewhere. And we have seen these links not primarily in a
bureaucratic way but in relation to the common patterns of ministry and
worship – the community gathered around Scripture and sacraments;
a ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, a biblically-centred form
of common prayer, a focus on the Holy Communion. These are the signs that
we are not just a human organisation but a community trying to respond
to the action and the invitation of God that is made real for us in ministry
and Bible and sacraments. We believe we have useful and necessary questions
to explore with Roman Catholicism because of its centralised understanding
of jurisdiction and some of its historic attitudes to the Bible. We believe
we have some equally necessary questions to propose to classical European
Protestantism, to fundamentalism, and to liberal Protestant pluralism.
There is an identity here, however fragile and however provisional. But what our Communion lacks is a set of adequately
developed structures which is able to cope with the diversity of views
that will inevitably arise in a world of rapid global communication and
huge cultural variety. The tacit conventions between us need spelling
out – not for the sake of some central mechanism of control but
so that we have ways of being sure we’re still talking the same
language, aware of belonging to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic
Church of Christ. It is becoming urgent to work at what adequate structures
for decision-making might look like. We need ways of translating this
underlying sacramental communion into a more effective institutional reality,
so that we don’t compromise or embarrass each other in ways that
get in the way of our local and our universal mission, but learn how to
share responsibility. Future Directions The idea of a ‘covenant’ between
local Churches (developing alongside the existing work being done on harmonising
the church law of different local Churches) is one method that has been
suggested, and it seems to me the best way forward. It is necessarily
an ‘opt-in’ matter. Those Churches that were prepared to take
this on as an expression of their responsibility to each other would limit
their local freedoms for the sake of a wider witness; and some might not
be willing to do this. We could arrive at a situation where there were
‘constituent’ Churches in covenant in the Anglican Communion
and other ‘churches in association’, which were still bound
by historic and perhaps personal links, fed from many of the same sources,
but not bound in a single and unrestricted sacramental communion, and
not sharing the same constitutional structures. The relation would not
be unlike that between the Church of England and the Methodist Church,
for example. The ‘associated’ Churches would have no direct
part in the decision making of the ‘constituent’ Churches,
though they might well be observers whose views were sought or whose expertise
was shared from time to time, and with whom significant areas of co-operation
might be possible. This leaves many unanswered questions, I know,
given that lines of division run within local Churches as well as between
them - and not only on one issue (we might note the continuing debates
on the legitimacy of lay presidency at the Eucharist). It could mean the
need for local Churches to work at ordered and mutually respectful separation
between ‘constituent’ and ‘associated’ elements;
but it could also mean a positive challenge for Churches to work out what
they believed to be involved in belonging in a global sacramental fellowship,
a chance to rediscover a positive common obedience to the mystery of God’s
gift that was not a matter of coercion from above but of that ‘waiting
for each other’ that St Paul commends to the Corinthians. There is no way in which the Anglican Communion
can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment. Neither the liberal
nor the conservative can simply appeal to a historic identity that doesn’t
correspond with where we now are. We do have a distinctive historic tradition
– a reformed commitment to the absolute priority of the Bible for
deciding doctrine, a catholic loyalty to the sacraments and the threefold
ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, and a habit of cultural sensitivity
and intellectual flexibility that does not seek to close down unexpected
questions too quickly. But for this to survive with all its aspects intact,
we need closer and more visible formal commitments to each other. And
it is not going to look exactly like anything we have known so far. Some
may find this unfamiliar future conscientiously unacceptable, and that
view deserves respect. But if we are to continue to be any sort of ‘Catholic’
church, if we believe that we are answerable to something more than our
immediate environment and its priorities and are held in unity by something
more than just the consensus of the moment, we have some very hard work
to do to embody this more clearly. The next Lambeth Conference ought to
address this matter directly and fully as part of its agenda. The different components in our heritage can,
up to a point, flourish in isolation from each other. But any one of them
pursued on its own would lead in a direction ultimately outside historic
Anglicanism The reformed concern may lead towards a looser form of ministerial
order and a stronger emphasis on the sole, unmediated authority of the
Bible. The catholic concern may lead to a high doctrine of visible and
structural unification of the ordained ministry around a focal point.
The cultural and intellectual concern may lead to a style of Christian
life aimed at giving spiritual depth to the general shape of the culture
around and de-emphasising revelation and history. Pursued far enough in
isolation, each of these would lead to a different place – to strict
evangelical Protestantism, to Roman Catholicism, to religious liberalism.
To accept that each of these has a place in the church’s life and
that they need each other means that the enthusiasts for each aspect have
to be prepared to live with certain tensions or even sacrifices –
with a tradition of being positive about a responsible critical approach
to Scripture, with the anomalies of a historic ministry not universally
recognised in the Catholic world, with limits on the degree of adjustment
to the culture and its habits that is thought possible or acceptable. The only reason for being an Anglican is that
this balance seems to you to be healthy for the Church Catholic overall,
and that it helps people grow in discernment and holiness. Being an Anglican
in the way I have sketched involves certain concessions and unclarities
but provides at least for ways of sharing responsibility and making decisions
that will hold and that will be mutually intelligible. No-one can impose
the canonical and structural changes that will be necessary. All that
I have said above should make it clear that the idea of an Archbishop
of Canterbury resolving any of this by decree is misplaced, however tempting
for many. The Archbishop of Canterbury presides and convenes in the Communion,
and may do what this document attempts to do, which is to outline the
theological framework in which a problem should be addressed; but he must
always act collegially, with the bishops of his own local Church and with
the primates and the other instruments of communion. That is why the process currently going forward
of assessing our situation in the wake of the General Convention is a
shared one. But it is nonetheless possible for the Churches of the Communion
to decide that this is indeed the identity, the living tradition –
and by God’s grace, the gift - we want to share with the rest of
the Christian world in the coming generation; more importantly still,
that this is a valid and vital way of presenting the Good News of Jesus
Christ to the world. My hope is that the period ahead - of detailed response
to the work of General Convention, exploration of new structures, and
further refinement of the covenant model - will renew our positive appreciation
of the possibilities of our heritage so that we can pursue our mission
with deeper confidence and harmony. © Rowan Williams 2006
ENDS
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