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ACNS 1872 · 15 September 1999 · Dundee [ACC-11/11]
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
to the 11th Meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, Dundee, Scotland
Wednesday 15 September 1999
As President, I welcome you all to this 11th meeting of the Anglican
Consultative Council. On your behalf, I would like to thank the Primus of
the Scottish Episcopal Church, Bishop Richard Holloway; Bishop Neville
Chamberlain, all those in the local Church and the national Church who have
been involved in the preparations, and the staff of the University of Dundee
for the warmth of their welcome.
Our last meeting took place in Panama in 1996 - a memorable conference, in
which we dealt with a number of important issues on behalf of our Communion,
a number of which feature on the agenda this time, as do some of the vital
matters which focused our attention at the Lambeth Conference last year. So
I hope you will all feel a sense of continuity about our discussions.
It is very good to be here in Scotland as guests of the Scottish Episcopal
Church. If there are occasions when some Scots feel overshadowed by their
southern neighbours, few will deny that this year Edinburgh has had a pretty
good share of the headlines, both in the political and the ecclesiastical
spheres! I am sure I can speak for us all in offering our best wishes to the
new Scottish Parliament in these early days of its life, as it seeks to
promote a renewed sense of identity for the Scottish people, and to make a
very significant contribution to the political life of these islands. It was
good last night to be reminded in Aberdeen of the important part which the
Scottish Episcopal Church played in the formation of the Anglican Communion.
It was a church ready to take risks in the 18th century, and clearly the
tradition continues! The lively debate on morality to which your Primus has
contributed in a substantial way, though not un-controversially, is a very
important one, and a little later in this address I will offer one or two
reflections of my own as well as offering some thoughts concerning how we
should handle matters where there is substantial disagreement among us.
Just recently, I have seen again a film I saw first a number of years ago.
It moved me then, and it moved me again this time. It is called 'Mr
Holland's Opus'. It tells the story of a young composer whose dream is to
produce one great piece of music. In order to survive financially, he takes
a temporary job teaching music in a school whose pupils have little interest
in the subject. After a difficult start, he warms to his task, and over the
years he manages to enthuse successive generations of pupils with a love for
music; but his great opus remains a distant dream. He tinkers with it, jots
down a few notes and phrases from time to time. Suddenly, retirement is in
view, and all his frustration and bitterness boils over. At a retirement
party given by his past pupils, it transpires that they have got hold of the
manuscript, and Mr Holland is persuaded to conduct the orchestra in a
performance of the work; but the punchline is spoken by one of the pupils.
"Mr Holland", she says, "we are your great Opus; we are your work of art."
In the letter to the Ephesians, there is a similar reflection which has
always caught my imagination. In Chapter 2 verse 10, the writer says: "For
we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
Or, as the New English Bible has it, "we are his handiwork". The Greek word
is 'Poema' from which our word 'poem' comes. It means that the body of
Christ is God's 'work of art', created to set forth God's love and God's
good news. Isn't that a beautiful image? We, God's people, created and
called by him, are crafted by him to be what he wants us to be, to do what
he wants us to do. We are not required to be good and to do good in order to
gain God's favour, or to placate him. Quite the opposite. It is God's
intention in moulding us in the first place that we should walk in his way.
God's grace takes us as we are and forms us in the image of the Creator. We
are the 'clay in the potter's hand' (Jeremiah 18:6), the handiwork of God.
In other words the impulse for mission, the living and preaching of the word
of God, is not something that we decide to do. It is what we do, it is what
we are created to do; and if we do not do it - either as individuals or as
the Christian community - we are being rebellious, we are breaking the mould
in which we have been made.
Of course, that is easy to say. We know, and scripture constantly reminds
us, we are a rebellious people. God has given us the freedom to choose our
path, and how readily we accept that freedom. The world in which we live
offers us a myriad of temptations - to selfishness, to greed, to immorality
of so many kinds. But God has also given us everything we need to 'choose
life' in Christ Jesus, The Word made Flesh, the Way, the Truth and the Life.
And even when we turn away from God, and choose ways other than the One he
has given us, we are freely offered a way back. God always restores those
who are penitent and turn to him. So the extraordinary truth of our faith is
that God gives us everything we need to be faithful disciples.
We know only too well, however, that it is not as simple as that. The
struggle to discern what is right and what is wrong, what is of God and what
is not is the story of the human race from the beginning of history, as the
stories in Genesis so dramatically remind us. But the fact that we are
constantly facing an apparently insurmountable challenge does not excuse us
from it. The search for a 'godly morality' is of the essence of what it is
to be part of God's handiwork, not because it is imposed on us by some
dictatorial and judgmental divinity, but because we have been given the gift
of creation in the image of God and the grace to explore the call to full
humanity.
Last time many of us met was in Canterbury for the Lambeth Conference. The
more I reflect on the Conference, the more I am sure that it achieved a very
great deal. On many things there was considerable agreement. Central to all,
of course, was prayer, worship and Bible study. We paid attention to one
another; we were drawn into new experience and new understanding of the
struggles of our brothers and sisters in different parts of the world, and
so much of what was framed in the resolutions demonstrated clearly that
longing to be faithful instruments of God's love in the world. I felt that
from that meeting of bishops there was a longing for the Church to be more
effective as 'God's workmanship'.
For example . . . There was energy and determination in the resolution on
International Debt, not just to preach to others about their
responsibilities but to challenge ourselves. I know of one Church at least -
the Church of Ireland - that has taken that seriously and resolved to
increase is giving; and the campaign has continued and developed throughout
the world. The Archbishop of Cape Town has continued to give a lead - and so
has the Presiding Bishop of the United States - and I know that many
Provinces have taken action with their governments. The huge demonstrations
in London - which I was able to share in - and in Cologne around the time of
the G7 summit in June have again made a profound impression on political
leaders.
And, then, our concern, so powerfully expressed during the conference, about
our relations with Islam has been further explored in a very important
consultation hosted by the Church of Nigeria, under the auspices of the
Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion. I believe this was a very
positive experience for all involved and it underlines the importance of
working together and supporting one another as we explore our developing
relations with other faiths, which can vary so much around the world. It is
vital work, not just for our own comfort as a Communion, but for the
well-being of the world, for which all faith communities bear such a
responsibility. So I want to underline my support for work in this area. I
will be making a return visit to the University of Al Azhar in Cairo later
this year, at the invitation of His Grace the Sheikh, to further our common
search for the right way to relate to one another as faithful Christians and
Muslims.
Another important ministry flagged up by the Lambeth Conference was that of
how we relate to young people and minister to them. In all Provinces this is
a huge challenge. But Lambeth gave fresh inspiration to us and has led to
several initiatives. For example, I was delighted that, at my invitation,
four thousand young English Christians came to London, with their bishops -
fifty seven of them! - for a weekend of celebration and encounter, the main
priority being to signal to the rest of the Church the importance of young
people and the enormous contribution they can make to God's kingdom. We all
learnt a lot! And we enjoyed ourselves as well, though whether St Paul's
Cathedral has recovered from the experience, you must ask the Dean! I know
that other gatherings are being planned - in the United States, for
instance, next year and in Latin America in 2001.
And then, mission and evangelism. Section 2 of Lambeth 98 offered very
significant challenges to us all and warned against putting mission and
evangelism on the back burner. In a real way the 'decade of evangelism'
never ends. We are constantly called to be a missionary church proclaiming
Christ until he comes again. Thus it behoves ACC to ask: How may we take
forward the mission of the Church? How may we deepen learning and teaching
in this area? So I am glad that in the course of ACC-11 we shall have the
opportunity to hear more - from MISSIO about their work and the whole
question of how we develop our mission and evangelism in the future; (and in
this context, I am especially looking forward to our visit to Glasgow, and
to hearing from the Scottish Episcopal Church about their Mission 21
project). We shall hear about urbanisation, and the challenge to learn from
one another as we seek to meet the challenges of the dramatic process of
urbanisation in every part of the world; about the continuing developments
in technology and their implications for matters of life and death, into
which the Christian tradition must make a contribution. All these are
examples of how the Lambeth Conference can initiate, share and encourage the
common task of fulfilling our role as the 'handiwork of God', and there are
many more.
It doesn't need me, however, to tell you that there is so much more to do.
The world over the past year has faced so many crises and disasters. Natural
disasters, as in Central America and Turkey, and the renewed threat of
famine in Ethiopia and Somalia, stretch global compassion to its limits. It
is a stark and urgent task for our Communion, together with all people of
goodwill, to keep that compassion alive and to feed it. The violent eruption
in the long-running political sore of East Timor is a potent reminder to us
today of the knife-edge on which humanity treads, between just and peaceful
development and chaos. The people of Kosovo, the people of Sierra Leone, the
people of Kashmir and of Ireland need no reminder of the precipice on which
they stand or have stood. And still the wars in Sudan, the Great Lakes
region and so many other places continue. If these are some of the crises
which have horrified us all, each one of us will know many other stories of
struggle within our own countries and communities. All of them call for
Christians to enter the struggle and to wrestle, in all humility, with the
challenges they present, not in order to cast the stones of judgement, but
so that the vision of God and his Kingdom that he offers, and which he has
created us to pursue, may be realised.
But we do not always agree. In some of these problems which tax us, right
and wrong appear easy to identify. In others, as a body, we are unable to
discern an agreed course of action. There are many reasons for that -
sometimes cultural, sometimes theological, sometimes contextual. Whatever
the reason, the fact of division and disagreement is very uncomfortable to
live with.
Some months ago, I had the opportunity to give a lecture to a gathering in
Charleston, South Carolina. In that address which sought to address this
matter of how we cope with disagreement, I referred back to that classic
book of Michael Ramsey's, The Gospel and the Catholic Church. He was
addressing the wider problem of Christian Unity, and he said this: 'The
movement towards the problem of the reunion of Christendom is also compelled
to see its problems in close connection with the Passion.' He goes on to say
that the unity question will not be solved through easy humanistic ideas of
fellowship and brotherhood but by the hard road of the Cross, and he
concludes his passage with these words:
'The Cross is the place where the theology of the Church has its meaning,
where the unity of the Church is a deep and present reality, and where the
Church is already showing the peace of God and the bread from heaven to
mankind.'
He might have gone on to say that where Christians are able to meet with the
cross at the centre of conflict they will find sufficient resources to meet
in understanding - even if, for some time, they will not find agreement.
You see, the process of opening ourselves to the creative will of God, of
being the clay in the potter's hand, must inevitably lead us into difficult
areas, which may indeed bring us into conflict with others; and the more
strongly we hold our faith, the clearer our minds are about lines between
belief and unbelief, between heresy and orthodoxy, the sharper will be the
challenge. Now, some have said the idea that the 'diversity' and
'comprehensiveness' that have been our bywords can be held up as the
defining characteristic of Anglicanism. I do not accept that. Of course we
rejoice in our diversity, our openness, our blurred edges. That denotes a
generosity of spirit which can sometimes be lacking in other parts of the
Christian family. It is also a recognition that we cannot claim the whole
truth for any one part of the church. We need each part to enrich the whole.
We are all searching for that wholeness and fulfilment. We readily recognise
the common but diverse search for truth, and we welcome honest seekers.
However, we do not live by the principle 'Anything goes'. I, and I guess
most of us, do not accept that there are no cardinal doctrines, beliefs or
limits to orthodoxy. The Virginia Report, which will be the focus of much
debate later on, emphatically contradicts this mischievous notion and makes
it clear that the limits of diversity are precisely conformity to the
'constant interplay of Scripture, tradition and reason'. So we must be very
wary of any understanding of comprehensiveness that masks doctrinal
indifference. Instead we need to view it as the breadth of a Communion
exploring the fullness of a faith rooted in Scripture, anchored in the
creeds, expressed in faithfulness to the Dominical sacraments and embodied
in a faithful episcopally-led Church.
This means that we are a Communion constantly being moulded into God's
handiwork, immersed in scripture, and the Church's teachings and exemplified
in the life of the Master we seek to follow.
And, such a Communion will always be asked to be charitable and generous in
our treatment of one another and also, on the other hand, to be under God's
word and teaching.
Two things have crossed my desk recently which relate very closely this
tension which we are experiencing at the moment. I made a light-hearted
reference to Bishop Richard Holloway's recent exposure to the media in my
introduction. His book, Godless Morality, is generous in intention. He is
concerned to understand our world and make the gospel relevant. I find
myself in agreement with some parts of it, but have to say that I disagree
with his central thesis that God must be left out of the moral debate. In
his introduction, he comments that "By claiming divine authority for the
commandments and prohibitions, with eternal punishment for those who disobey
them, religious moral systems operate on the basis of fear". It is certainly
true that in history some parts of the Church have behaved in this way and
some sects, even today, continue to operate on the basis of fear. But,
surely, to conclude that we must turn our back on scriptural insights and
teachings, the body of doctrine in the Church formed over the years and
theological learning is an unacceptable option for us. If there is a
'godless morality', it cannot be a fully formed Christian morality. But all
of us will have ample opportunity to talk this over with Bishop Richard
informally during our Conference.
The other thing that has crossed my desk is the decision of Archbishop Moses
Tay, a member of the Primates Standing Committee, to absent himself from
ACC-11. In his letter to me, he expressed profound disappointment with the
way that some parts of the Communion appeared to be ignoring or rejecting
key resolutions of the Lambeth Conference. The heart of his concern, which I
know is shared by others, is that the Communion is deviating from its
traditional roots of faith. Now I sincerely hope that no one is in any doubt
as to where I stand in these matters. For the nine years that I have been
Archbishop of Canterbury, I have made the encouragement of a Church,
confident in expressing its faith, outward looking and missionary in its
vision a central theme of my ministry. But I am under no illusion that the
process of arriving at such a position of confidence in the fundamentals and
openness to the world in all its pain and all its glory has been or ever
will be easy. Nor were we ever promised an easy ride. Even less were we
assured that we would always get it right, or that the church would be
protected from error, and we hardly need to explore our history very far to
see the truth of that. I said earlier that we need to approach one another
and the world in humility. There is no place for triumphalism of any sort.
The great philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote:
"A Church triumphant is nothing but a sham. In this world we can truthfully
speak only of a militant church. The Church Militant is related to and feels
itself drawn to Christ in humble obedience. The Church triumphant, however,
has taken the Church of Christ in vain … The triumphant Church assumes that
the time of struggle is over; that the Church, because it has expanded
itself, has nothing more about or for which to struggle … This is not the
way of Christ … Christ's Church can only endure by struggling - that is by
every moment battling the world and battling for the truth."
Now, we might want to take issue with that style of language, but in essence
what he says rings true. Once any church or any part of the church steps
away from the struggle, divorces itself from our continuing search, it loses
part of what it is to be Christian. If we start to build fences around our
particular perception of the truth, and to cut ourselves off from others who
are different, we are in danger of saying to God 'We are your perfect
creation, there is no more need of your craftsmanship'. But none of us would
say that; and it is, at least partly, in that encounter with one another,
with the crucified Christ at our heart, that God continues his process of
moulding us into what he wants us to be.
Does this then mean that truth no longer matters? By no means. Some have
said to me, following my address in the United States, that truth must take
precedence over unity, and therefore the 'status quo' of the Communion or of
a province must be challenged. To that I say, challenge by all means.
Vigorous debate and healthy intellectual engagement on the basis of the
faith we share are important ingredients of informed Christians struggling
to share their faith with the world around. I have made it clear that we
must engage in the reality of the life of the church and of the world.
But unilateral action is different. Let me remind you of what I said in that
SEAD Address. No-one has the right to take decisions which affect the whole.
The moment the 'local' wrests decisions from the whole, it is engaging in
division. No diocese should take unilateral action which impairs the life of
the whole province. Every House of Bishops must seek unity of vision for the
sake of the Province it leads - and deviation from agreed constitutions will
only weaken the Church bishops claim to serve. No Province should take
unilateral action which affects and impairs the whole Communion - that only
denies the nature of communion and declares that we are in reality no more
than a federation of independent Churches. That clearly is not our
ecclesiology and we have to say so, again and again and again.
And let me take that one step further, to engage in division is itself to
undermine truth. The call to unity is at least as strong in Scripture as is
the call to purity and holiness. 'I believe in one holy catholic and
apostolic church'. It is there as a fundamental tenet of our faith. So I
hope that those who are tempted to go their own way, wherever they are, and
for what ever reason they feel frustrated with the Communion will hold back,
and have faith in the loving purposes of God. The unity of the Church is,
after all, God's gift to us. It is not of our making. It is we in our
disobedience who have fragmented, and fragmented again and again.
My brothers and sisters, we require a much bigger doctrine of the Church
than we currently possess. The unity of the body is so precious that those
who risk undermining it are hurting the One whose body it is. I have often
been struck by St Paul's doctrine of the church in Ephesians. He says later
in the epistle, 'Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her'. How
can we despise what he loves? How can we turn our back on a 'handiwork' he
has created; and the opus which he is composing? We are God's handiwork, and
he has crafted us for a purpose. He has assured us over and over again that
in his Son Jesus Christ he will be with us always even to the end of time,
so the process of moulding continues in order that his mission will grow and
develop. We are like clay in the potter's hand, and if we are to do the work
of the Gospel and further the vision of the Kingdom of God, we have to
engage with all the challenges which present themselves to us whether
internally or externally. Each one of us here has been called and has
responded freely to that call. We are not slaves of some perverse dictator
in the sky who likes nothing better than punishing us when we go wrong. Our
faith in God is a liberating faith. 'God is rich in mercy, and because of
his great love for us, he brought us to life in Christ when we were dead
because of our sins.' (Ephesians 2:4, 5) The message which we are called to
proclaim is life-giving, it is a message of freedom from that which enslaves
us.
We need to recognise and own our history - which, again, should prompt us to
the greatest humility as we approach our missionary task. But to recognise
and repent of our failings, and to seek with God's help to be more effective
and true in our task is our constant quest. I cannot see how Christians can
with integrity take God out of the equation. Our faith is in God the creator
who seeks the fulfilment of everything that is. As we seek to collaborate in
the building of that kingdom, we have been given a glorious and life-giving
message. The challenge is not to leave God out of the search for good and
truth, but to redouble our prayer, our waiting on God, our readiness to be
crafted for the task to which God calls us.
Why? Because our God is about, to paraphrase that most beautiful of passages
in Philippians, 'whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious ...'. And that is
a vision for the world which is worth battling for, it is worth struggling
for.
I am reminded of a beautiful story which I came across some months ago. A
woman in a dream imagined a shop where God the Holy Spirit gave the fruits
of the Spirit free of charge. In her dream she went along and said to the
shopkeeper, 'I want peace, and love, and joy - and while you are at it,
perhaps some holiness as well'.
God the Holy Spirit beamed at her and said. 'I think you have been
misinformed, We don't offer fruits here - just seeds'.
So, as we get this 11th ACC meeting underway, perhaps we may be sowing a few
seeds of the Spirit which in many different ways will grow into fruits of
the Spirit in our Communion. There is no need for fear because God has not
given us the Spirit of fear, but of power and a sound mind. Let us use that
collective mind together for the sake of God's body, his handiwork, his
'Opus' and for his glory.