wfn.org | Reflections on the Episcopal Church's 2009 General Convention

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> Communion, Covenant and our Anglican Future

Posted On : July 28, 2009 3:11 PM | Posted By : Webmaster
ACNS: http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2009/7/28/ACNS4641
Related Categories: Lambeth

Reflections on the Episcopal Church's 2009 General Convention from the
Archbishop of Canterbury for the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the
Anglican Communion.

> 1.

1. No-one could be in any doubt about the eagerness of the Bishops and
Deputies of the Episcopal Church at the General Convention to affirm
their concern about the wider Anglican Communion. Their generous welcome
to guests from elsewhere, including myself, the manifest engagement with
the crushing problems of the developing world and even the wording of
one of the more controversial resolutions all make plain the fact that
the Episcopal Church does not wish to cut its moorings from other parts
of the Anglican family. There has been an insistence at the highest
level that the two most strongly debated resolutions (DO25 and CO56) do
not have the automatic effect of overturning the requested moratoria, if
the wording is studied carefully. There is a clear commitment to seek
counsel from elsewhere in the Communion about certain issues and an
eloquent resolution in support of the 'Covenant for a Communion in
Mission' as commended by ACC13. All of this merits grateful
acknowledgement. The relationship between the Episcopal Church and the
wider Communion is a reality which needs continued engagement and
encouragement.

2. However, a realistic assessment of what Convention has resolved does
not suggest that it will repair the broken bridges into the life of
other Anglican provinces; very serious anxieties have already been
expressed. The repeated request for moratoria on the election of
partnered gay clergy as bishops and on liturgical recognition of
same-sex partnerships has clearly not found universal favour, although a
significant minority of bishops has just as clearly expressed its
intention to remain with the consensus of the Communion. The statement
that the Resolutions are essentially 'descriptive' is helpful, but
unlikely to allay anxieties.

3. There are two points which I believe need to be reiterated and
thought through further, and it seems to fall to the Archbishop of
Canterbury to try and articulate them. To some extent they echo part of
what I wrote after the last General Convention, as well as things said
at the Lambeth Conference and the ACC, but they still have some
pertinence.

> 2.

4. The first is to do with the arguments most often used against the
moratoria relating to same-sex unions. Appeal is made to the fundamental
human rights dimension of attitudes to LGBT people, and to the
impossibility of betraying their proper expectations of a Christian body
which has courageously supported them.

5. In response, it needs to be made absolutely clear that, on the basis
of repeated statements at the highest levels of the Communion's life, no
Anglican has any business reinforcing prejudice against LGBT people,
questioning their human dignity and civil liberties or their place
within the Body of Christ. Our overall record as a Communion has not
been consistent in this respect and this needs to be acknowledged with
penitence.

6. However, the issue is not simply about civil liberties or human
dignity or even about pastoral sensitivity to the freedom of individual
Christians to form their consciences on this matter. It is about whether
the Church is free to recognise same-sex unions by means of public
blessings that are seen as being, at the very least, analogous to
Christian marriage.

7. In the light of the way in which the Church has consistently read the
Bible for the last two thousand years, it is clear that a positive
answer to this question would have to be based on the most painstaking
biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the
Communion, with due account taken of the teachings of ecumenical
partners also. A major change naturally needs a strong level of
consensus and solid theological grounding.

8. This is not our situation in the Communion. Thus a blessing for a
same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even
of the Communion as a whole. And if this is the case, a person living in
such a union is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a
sexual relationship outside the marriage bond; whatever the human
respect and pastoral sensitivity such persons must be given, their
chosen lifestyle is not one that the Church's teaching sanctions, and
thus it is hard to see how they can act in the necessarily
representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the
episcopate, requires.

9. In other words, the question is not a simple one of human rights or
human dignity. It is that a certain choice of lifestyle has certain
consequences. So long as the Church Catholic, or even the Communion as a
whole does not bless same-sex unions, a person living in such a union
cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a
Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle. (There is
also an unavoidable difficulty over whether someone belonging to a local
church in which practice has been changed in respect of same-sex unions
is able to represent the Communion's voice and perspective in, for
example, international ecumenical encounters.)

10. This is not a matter that can be wholly determined by what society
at large considers usual or acceptable or determines to be legal.
Prejudice and violence against LGBT people are sinful and disgraceful
when society at large is intolerant of such people; if the Church has
echoed the harshness of the law and of popular bigotry - as it so often
has done - and justified itself by pointing to what society took for
granted, it has been wrong to do so. But on the same basis, if society
changes its attitudes, that change does not of itself count as a reason
for the Church to change its discipline.

> 3.

11. The second issue is the broader one of how a local church makes up
its mind on a sensitive and controversial matter. It is of the greatest
importance to remember this aspect of the matter, so as not to be
completely trapped in the particularly bitter and unpleasant atmosphere
of the debate over sexuality, in which unexamined prejudice is still so
much in evidence and accusations of bad faith and bigotry are so readily
thrown around.

12. When a local church seeks to respond to a new question, to the
challenge of possible change in its practice or discipline in the light
of new facts, new pressures, or new contexts, as local churches have
repeatedly sought to do, it needs some way of including in its
discernment the judgement of the wider Church. Without this, it risks
becoming unrecognisable to other local churches, pressing ahead with
changes that render it strange to Christian sisters and brothers across
the globe.

13. This is not some piece of modern bureaucratic absolutism, but the
conviction of the Church from its very early days. The doctrine that
'what affects the communion of all should be decided by all' is a
venerable principle. On some issues, there emerges a recognition that a
particular new development is not of such significance that a high level
of global agreement is desirable; in the language used by the Doctrinal
Commission of the Communion, there is a recognition that in 'intensity,
substance and extent' it is not of fundamental importance. But such a
recognition cannot be wished into being by one local church alone. It
takes time and a willingness to believe that what we determine together
is more likely, in a New Testament framework, to be in tune with the
Holy Spirit than what any one community decides locally.

14. Sometimes in Christian history, of course, that wider discernment
has been very fallible, as with the history of the Chinese missions in
the seventeenth century. But this should not lead us to ignore or
minimise the opposite danger of so responding to local pressure or
change that a local church simply becomes isolated and imprisoned in its
own cultural environment.

15. There have never been universal and straightforward rules about
this, and no-one is seeking a risk-free, simple organ of doctrinal
decision for our Communion. In an age of vastly improved communication,
we must make the best use we can of the means available for consultation
and try to build into our decision-making processes ways of checking
whether a new local development would have the effect of isolating a
local church or making it less recognisable to others. This again has an
ecumenical dimension when a global Christian body is involved in
partnerships and discussions with other churches who will quite
reasonably want to know who now speaks for the body they are relating to
when a controversial local change occurs. The results of our ecumenical
discussions are themselves important elements in shaping the theological
vision within which we seek to resolve our own difficulties.

16. In recent years, local pastoral needs have been cited as the grounds
for changes in the sacramental practice of particular local churches
within the Communion, and theological rationales have been locally
developed to defend and promote such changes. Lay presidency at the Holy
Communion is one well-known instance. Another is the regular admission
of the unbaptised to Holy Communion as a matter of public policy.
Neither of these practices has been given straightforward official
sanction as yet by any Anglican authorities at diocesan or provincial
level, but the innovative practices concerned have a high degree of
public support in some localities.

17. Clearly there are significant arguments to be had about such matters
on the shared and agreed basis of Scripture, Tradition and reason. But
it should be clear that an acceptance of these sorts of innovation in
sacramental practice would represent a manifest change in both the
teaching and the discipline of the Anglican tradition, such that it
would be a fair question as to whether the new practice was in any way
continuous with the old. Hence the question of 'recognisability' once
again arises.

18. To accept without challenge the priority of local and pastoral
factors in the case either of sexuality or of sacramental practice would
be to abandon the possibility of a global consensus among the Anglican
churches such as would continue to make sense of the shape and content
of most of our ecumenical activity. It would be to re-conceive the
Anglican Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies
with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent
'community of Christian communities'.

> 4.

19. As Anglicans, our membership of the Communion is an important part
of our identity. However, some see this as best expressed in a more
federalist and pluralist way. They would see this as the only
appropriate language for a modern or indeed postmodern global fellowship
of believers in which levels of diversity are bound to be high and the
risks of centralisation and authoritarianism are the most worrying.
There is nothing foolish or incoherent about this approach. But it is
not the approach that has generally shaped the self-understanding of our
Communion - less than ever in the last half-century, with new organs and
instruments for the Communion's communication and governance and new
enterprises in ecumenical co-operation.

20. The Covenant proposals of recent years have been a serious attempt
to do justice to that aspect of Anglican history that has resisted mere
federation. They seek structures that will express the need for mutual
recognisability, mutual consultation and some shared processes of
decision-making. They are emphatically not about centralisation but
about mutual responsibility. They look to the possibility of a freely
chosen commitment to sharing discernment (and also to a mutual respect
for the integrity of each province, which is the point of the current
appeal for a moratorium on cross-provincial pastoral interventions).
They remain the only proposals we are likely to see that address some of
the risks and confusions already detailed, encouraging us to act and
decide in ways that are not simply local.

21. They have been criticised as 'exclusive' in intent. But their aim is
not to shut anyone out - rather, in words used last year at the Lambeth
Conference, to intensify existing relationships.

22. It is possible that some will not choose this way of intensifying
relationships, though I pray that it will be persuasive. It would be a
mistake to act or speak now as if those decisions had already been made
- and of course approval of the final Covenant text is still awaited.
For those whose vision is not shaped by the desire to intensify
relationships in this particular way, or whose vision of the Communion
is different, there is no threat of being cast into outer darkness -
existing relationships will not be destroyed that easily. But it means
that there is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in
view in the middle distance: that is, a 'covenanted' Anglican global
body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should
be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith
dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer
formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various
kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with
'covenanted' provinces.

23. This has been called a 'two-tier' model, or, more disparagingly, a
first- and second-class structure. But perhaps we are faced with the
possibility rather of a 'two-track' model, two ways of witnessing to the
Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to
be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal
structure. If those who elect this model do not take official roles in
the ecumenical interchanges and processes in which the 'covenanted' body
participates, this is simply because within these processes there has to
be clarity about who has the authority to speak for whom.

24. It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we
think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic
terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are - two
styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need
working out but which would not exclude co-operation in mission and
service of the kind now shared in the Communion. It should not need to
be said that a competitive hostility between the two would be one of the
worst possible outcomes, and needs to be clearly repudiated. The ideal
is that both 'tracks' should be able to pursue what they believe God is
calling them to be as Church, with greater integrity and consistency. It
is right to hope for and work for the best kinds of shared networks and
institutions of common interest that could be maintained as between
different visions of the Anglican heritage. And if the prospect of
greater structural distance is unwelcome, we must look seriously at what
might yet make it less likely.

25. It is my strong hope that all the provinces will respond favourably
to the invitation to Covenant. But in the current context, the question
is becoming more sharply defined of whether, if a province declines such
an invitation, any elements within it will be free (granted the explicit
provision that the Covenant does not purport to alter the Constitution
or internal polity of any province) to adopt the Covenant as a sign of
their wish to act in a certain level of mutuality with other parts of
the Communion. It is important that there should be a clear answer to
this question.

> 5.

26. All of this is to do with becoming the Church God wants us to be,
for the better proclamation of the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ. It
would be a great mistake to see the present situation as no more than an
unhappy set of tensions within a global family struggling to find a
coherence that not all its members actually want. Rather, it is an
opportunity for clarity, renewal and deeper relation with one another -
and so also with Our Lord and his Father, in the power of the Spirit. To
recognise different futures for different groups must involve mutual
respect for deeply held theological convictions. Thus far in Anglican
history we have (remarkably) contained diverse convictions more or less
within a unified structure. If the present structures that have
safeguarded our unity turn out to need serious rethinking in the near
future, this is not the end of the Anglican way and it may bring its own
opportunities. Of course it is problematic; and no-one would say that
new kinds of structural differentiation are desirable in their own
right. But the different needs and priorities identified by different
parts of our family, and in the long run the different emphases in what
we want to say theologically about the Church itself, are bound to have
consequences. We must hope that, in spite of the difficulties, this may
yet be the beginning of a new era of mission and spiritual growth for
all who value the Anglican name and heritage.

> + Rowan Cantuar:
> >From Lambeth Palace, Monday 27 July 2009
> (c) Rowan Williams 2009

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