Communion, Covenant and our
Anglican Future
Monday 27 July 2009
Reflections on the
Episcopal Church's 2009 General Convention from the Archbishop of
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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
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.
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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.
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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'.
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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.
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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
© Rowan Williams 2009