Southwark and the coming Anglican crisis

In a sermon preached at Southwark Cathedral on Sunday 13^th June, Dean Colin Slee described recent reactions to the visit there of the Presiding Bishop of TEC, the Rt Revd Katharine Jefferts-Schori, as a “kerfuffle”. And indeed ‘mitregate’ — so-called because Ms Jefferts-Schori carried her mitre down the aisle rather than wore it on her head — has certain ‘kerfuffley’ elements, not to say an air of petulance on one side or the other (or maybe both).

The problem with ‘kerfuffle, however, is that it can distract from serious issues, and in this case it is the Dean’s evening sermon, rather than the Presiding Bishop’s celebrations in the morning, that really matters in the whole affair.

The sermon begins with the background to the Presiding Bishop’s visit (and a little dig at the those who have since objected), in which the Dean points out, quite rightly, that this was arranged some time before the events surrounding the consecration of Mary Glasspool. Interestingly, he even says of the Archbishop of Canterbury, “I have kept him informed at all times, I would not act without courtesy [ie towards him], nor he towards us” — though these last words are somewhat at variance with the recorded reactions of the Presiding Bishop.

We also get an insight into the Dean’s own sermon preparation:

I have to tell you that I had intended to ignore all this kerfuffle this afternoon, until ... I read the lessons and the Collect set for the day and used by the Presiding Bishop at this morning’s Eucharist.

So not much advance planning there! But we must be grateful for the Dean’s change of heart, given the revealing nature of his subsequent comments.

The collect, with its focus on love, allowed the Dean to justify the invitation to the Presiding Bishop as an expression of love, but also as her due as “our sister in Christ”.

It is with the lesson from Genesis 13, however (what the Dean calls “the lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures”), that we come to the heart of the matter, for Dean Slee sees in the account of Abram and Lot a parallel to what is happening in the Anglican church. “Disaffected Anglicans,” he declares, “have been threatening to ‘walk separate ways’ for many months.” Thus he goes on,

Abram and Lot travel together and their herdsmen bicker and fight, in modern translation there is ‘strife’ between them. They reach agreement to take separate paths and settle down and so their mutual belonging as members of one family is secured.

Thus he concludes (via a brief discursus on Sodom), in a similar way, “It may be that some Anglicans will decide to walk a separate path.”

Now, notwithstanding questions of exegesis, we should pay close attention to what the Dean is saying. For although his preparation may have been a bit ‘last minute’, we need have no doubt that his sermon reflects a carefully considered position.

The first thing to notice is the open recognition of the possibility of separation in the Anglican communion. Though Dean Slee does not specify who are the “disaffected” (perhaps he applies this to both ‘sides’), he acknowledges the threat that they will indeed “walk separate ways”.

In his application of Genesis 13, however, he seems to suggest this would be a good thing, for the agreement between Abram and Lot is presented as a way in which “their mutual belonging as members of one family is secured.” The reasoning would seem to be that by walking separate ways, the ‘disaffected’ members of the Anglican communion could similarly ensure an end to their own comparable ‘strife’, whilst remaining ‘family’. To recognize the possibility of separation, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has done, is one thing. Virtually to advocate it is another.

This, however, brings us to the most significant statement of all, for having acknowledged that threats of separation may turn into reality, and having indicated that this might be not only necessary but helpful, the Dean states quite clearly his own conviction:

I believe the Chapter and congregation of this church will walk the same path as the Episcopal Church of America, the links are deep in our history, especially here.

Thus, according to the Dean, the Chapter and congregation of Southwark Cathedral are ready, when the time comes, to separate from others in the Anglican Communion, and to do so in line with TEC.

And here we come to the crisis.

The Diocese of Southwark is currently without a bishop. When that bishop is chosen, however, he will either have to align himself with the public position of his Dean (which the Dean claims is the position of the cathedral Chapter and congregation), or align himself against it.

It should also be remembered that, although it is a mere formality, the Chapter of a cathedral is still required by congé d’elire to ‘elect’ the bishop chosen by the Crown, so that, at least on paper, the bishop has the Chapter’s ‘approval’. Thus if the bishop decides against his cathedral Chapter, there will be a difficult conflict for him at the top of the diocese. If the bishop decides for his Chapter, however, the situation within the diocese may become impossible, for there are others in Southwark who would undoubtedly find the ministry of a bishop committed to the position put forward by Dean Slee simply unacceptable — not least, one presumes, those who put their names to a recent letter criticizing the visit of TEC’s Presiding Bishop.

Something close to open warfare between either the bishop and the Chapter, or the bishop and sections of the diocese thus seems inevitable.

Yet what if the incoming bishop, by some diplomatic ingenuity, manages to put off the immediate confrontation? Even then we must remember that Dean Slee cannot be acting alone — indeed, he says he is not. On the contrary, he is confident of the support of his Chapter and the cathedral congregation, and undoubtedly he can also be sure of support from many of the Southwark clergy. But if my own experience is anything to go by, Dean Slee will also be networking (whether formally or informally) with others around the country. If he feels confident to say what he has done, and explicitly to align his cathedral with TEC as he has chosen to, we may wonder how many others are in the same position.

Indeed, we may actually be at the ‘tipping point’ where numbers of senior clergy, who can call upon a considerable degree of support, are similarly ready to declare their hand and to call the institutional bluff.

Dean Slee must know (or at least now be reflecting) that what he has said throws down something of a gauntlet to the Crown Nominations Commission. Either they chose someone who will conflict with his own cathedral, or they pick someone who will not — either because he is willing to compromise and allow the Dean’s pronouncements to go unchallenged, or because he himself is in agreement with the Dean’s own views.

If they choose conflict, the Dean undoubtedly has many allies, and who can tell how such a scenario would unfold? If they choose compromise, they will only buy a temporary peace and in any case will alienate others in the same diocese and elsewhere.

We continue to live in interesting times.

John Richardson
21 June 2010

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FCA unity and Anglican 'communion'

Just a thought, but one of the objections being levelled against the FCA is that it is an ‘unholy alliance’ of Catholics and Evangelicals, sharing a widespread opposition to ordained women and homosexual practice, but divided on almost everything else that matters, such as ecclesiology, theology of priesthood and ministry, doctrine and use of scripture, sacrifice of the mass, praying to the saints and for the dead, lay presidency at the eucharist, episcopal authority, Mary, etc (I quote from elsewhere).

Now maybe I’m missing something here, but isn’t this almost exactly what the opponents of the FCA think the Anglican Communion ought to be —a church which unites people who can disagree completely about absolutely all the above, but who are united in their commitment to the purposes of the Church?

So what is the difference? Isn’t unity in disagreement just what they want from the Anglican Communion? Why does FCA attract the ire of Anglican ‘inclusivists’ for forming an alliance which embraces exactly the kind of breadth they think Anglicanism should include?

My guess is because they can see that FCA types are different from themselves, in that in the different ‘wings’ present at the FCA launch, these things have been seen as issues of what Francis Schaeffer used to call ‘true truth’ —issues on which there is a right or a wrong —whereas for themselves they are a matter, ultimately, of ‘opinion’, where I am entitled to mine and you are entitled to yours.

What annoys them is what they (rightly) see as a possible inconsistency —people who ought to disagree acting as if they agree. And as I have said already, there are deep and serious issues here.

But what they fail to see is their own ‘beam’, that this is just the kind of Church they want: one where we can all ‘disagree in unity’ —with maybe a bit more prominence for women priests and a bit more acceptance of homosexuality, but without even (in some cases) insisting on these. That, after all, would be the Open Evangelical position, would it not?

Perhaps the real difference then is the understanding of truth —that, and the view of what are the purposes of the Church. The real problem is surely that the unity of the FCA is seen as a threat to the unity of those who dislike the FCA. Both want unity, but it is the kind of unity, and the issues of unity, which are creating the hostility.

Revd John P Richardson
11 July 2009

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Overcoming schism - the nettle Protestantism must grasp

Recently I spent an hour looking at (as it happens) the Ship of Fools discussion forums —but the same would be true of numerous Protestant blogs and websites —and I have come to the conclusion that what we see represented there is not Christianity, in the strict sense, at all. Rather, what Cardinal Newman said in the 19^th century is undoubtedly true of many modern believers who think of themselves as Christian:

“Protestants, generally speaking, have not faith, in the primitive meaning of that word ...”

The problem is, we do not see ‘faith’ as trusting in a received tradition passed on to us through others, as it originally was. Instead, ‘faith’ has come to mean a completely individualistic, ‘pick and mix’, self-made religion. It is ‘my faith’, not ‘the Church’s faith’, around which I organize my life. Pretending to be disciples —learners —of Christ, we have enthroned ourselves as the final aribiters of what is true.

The result is chaos, at the individual and corporate level. The present-day struggles of Anglicanism are simply the logical outcome of allowing everyone, doctrinally, to do ‘what is right in his or her own eyes’.

In this post I’m going to try to sum up my thoughts about the causes, and possible cure, of this disunity within Protestantism. Here are the key points so far:

1. The gospel demands unity. There is ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.’

2. Christian unity is, however, ‘unity in the truth’, not in ‘structures’. It is possible to be baptized and enjoying fellowship in the Lord’s supper, yet outside the truth (1 Cor 10:1-6).

3. Historically, Protestantism is inherently divisive. This is clear evidence that something is wrong, since the gospel is inherently unifying.

4. This divisiveness is due not to the principle of sola scriptura, as some have suggested, but to an overestimation of ‘private judgement’.

5. The individual is not the author of doctrine.

6. The Christian is, first and foremost a learner.

7. Christ himself instituted the office of teachers in the Church, from whom Christians should learn the faith.

8. The task of the teacher is faithfully to hand on, and defend, the Apostolic tradition.

9. Teachers therefore need to be as fully aware as possible of the history of the Church and its established doctrines.

10. Theological history helps us discern ‘dead ends’ and ‘positive trends’ (the ‘Gamaliel’ principle). Theological history favours contemporary conservatism.

11. Creeds and confessions represent the past work of the Church in attempting to establish sound doctrine in accordance with the Apostolic tradition.

12. Churches may rightly expect their members to have due regard to their own formularies.

13. A Church (denomination) which does not have proper regard for its formularies will become authoritarian since, in the face of doctrinal division, it will use its disciplinary measures to enforce structural unity.

These things are true, I would suggest, for most Protestant churches, but from here on I’m going to be very ‘Anglican’ in suggesting how things might be improved.

Since the unity of the gospel is ‘unity in the truth’, and since the truth of the gospel is, by Christ’s own devising, entrusted to and imparted by the teaching ministry of the Church, the Church which wishes to prevent internal disunity must look first to the quality of its teaching ministers. In the case of the Church of England, this should mean looking to the bishops, above all, as the ‘gate keepers’ of the ordained ministry.

Unfortunately, the bishops have largely bought into the idea that their role is not to define and defend doctrine, but to ‘referee’ the various doctrinal positions within their dioceses. In others words, they are actually upholding Protestantism’s divisiveness. Far from making things better, they are, in most cases, actively making them worse.

This is not, I must emphasise, because they are bad people. For the most part, they are good people and well-intentioned. But the well-intentioned maintenance of structures which are antithetical to the unity of the gospel is not a Christian action. Nor can it be depicted as the fulfilment of episcopal ministry.

Now this is not to introduce some alien notion into Anglicanism. Rather it is to recall the Church to its founding principles. It is well known that in the Ordinal which forms part of the Church’s formularies, both bishops and priests are required to teach sound doctrine and contradict error. The bishop or the priest who therefore takes a laissez faire attitude at this point is the true ‘alien’ to the Church of England.

Moreover, the parameters of true doctrine are also clearly established within the formularies. The Thirty-nine Articles and the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer include some doctrines and exclude others. And whilst it is undoubtedly true that this is widely disregarded in the Church, that does not make such disregard ‘Anglican’ —rather, it is itself a disregard of Anglicanism.

There would, moreover, be little that could stand in a bishop’s way should he decide to urge both his ministers and the people in his diocese to take these doctrinal boundaries more seriously. There is surely no-one who could claim he was exceeding his episcopal prerogatives by doing so!

It would thus, for example, be entirely appropriate for the bishop to demand from potential candidates for ordination some demonstration of an awareness of, and engagement with, the Anglican theological heritage. At present, many such candidates are required to write an essay on their understanding of the priesthood. It might be rather more challenging to them, and more useful to both them and the Church in the long term, if they were required to write a similar essay on their responses to the Thirty-nine Articles. Certainly, every training course ought to include a section devoted to their consideration.

Similarly, it would be extremely valuable if the standard liturgy at theological colleges, on training courses, and for Continuing Ministerial Education events were the Book of Common Prayer. The reason is simple: on the one hand, there are many parishes where the BCP is hardly used (sometimes for good, missiological, reasons), and yet, on the other hand, the BCP enshrines (in a way that later liturgies often deliberately do not) the fundamental reformed Anglican understanding of divine service.

Many ordination candidates have almost no experience of this. It is not in their bloodstream, nor will it ever be through their normal liturgical usage. Therefore the college or course ought to make up for this deficit by giving them as much exposure as possible to this heritage.

These three suggestions —that bishops should call their clergy and people back to the Anglican heritage, that ministerial candidates should have engaged with the theology of the Articles, and that those candidates should also be made practically familiar with the Prayer Book —would go some considerable way to establishing that Anglicanism is a confessional faith. The denial of this is surely one of the great myths of our time. Indeed, the suggestion that Anglicanism is not a confessional faith, and specifically a Protestant confession, would have come as a surprise to the compilers of the Articles and the Prayer Book, the Marian martyrs and, not least, to John Henry Newman, who once wrote,

... it is notorious that the Articles were drawn up by Protestants and intended for the establishment of Protestantism ...

This is why the establishment of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is so important. It is not just about ‘politics’, it is about theology —or rather two theologies, one that sees the individual as the final judge in matters of faith and doctrine, to be decided privately between himself and God, the other that sees the individual as the recipient of both faith and doctrine through means instituted by Christ, but reliant on others.

This, I suggest, is the nettle Protestantism needs to grasp if it is to overcome its schismatic nature and regain one of the true marks of the Church —that we are united in the truth of God’s holy Word.

Revd John P Richardson
1 June 2009

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Unity, schism and private judgement

I’ve not touched the blog for the past couple of weeks as, between other commitments, I’ve been preparing a paper for the Oak Hill School of Theology, which this year was on the subject of ‘Truth, Unity and Schism’.

My brief was to look at some of the practical issues from a ‘grass-roots’ level. What I presented in the end was an attempt to look at the issue of unity and schism from an ecclesiological perspective. How we live the life of the Church, I suggested, affects fundamentally how we handle and, if possible prevent, division.

My starting point, however, was an acknowledgement of the divided nature of Protestantism, observed by my old friend Robbie Low in an article he wrote for New Directions, back in 2004. “The curse of Protestantism,” he declared then, “is division.” And this is because, according to him,

The very nature of [Protestantism’s] origins, self-understanding and approach to the Word of God are inherently schismatic.

And this he blamed on Protestantism’s problem with authority:

In rejecting the authority of the Pope the Western reformers did not abolish autocracy but rather set in train a process the logical end of which is that every man is a pope in his own parish or in his own front room.

The chaos resulting from this is familiar to many:

The upshot is hundreds of ‘churches’, most of them with their own bizarre subdivisions (low, strict and particular, Southern, open etc, etc). In addition, there are thousands upon thousands of one-man band conventicles brought about by the falling out of Brother Smith with Pastor Jones. Pastor Smith, as he has now appointed himself, has the ‘real’ truth and hopes shortly to be needing to rent a bigger Scout Hut than the gravely misled Pastor Jones, his former guru.

Robbie blamed this on the principle of ‘sola scriptura’ —the Bible alone as the Church’s authority. I’m sure this is one reason why he and his wife Sara have now become Roman Catholics. Whilst his criticisms are fair, however, I find myself disagreeing with this part of his analysis. I am sure the problem has to do with our understanding of the truth. However, I find myself rather more drawn at this point to the critique of another Anglican turned Roman, namely John Henry Newman.

In 1849 Newman had published a collection of Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations (‘mixed’, in this context, meaning ‘made up of Catholics and Protestants’). In one of these, ‘Faith and Private Judgement’, he made this stark assessment:

Protestants, generally speaking, have not faith, in the primitive meaning of that word ... and here is a confirmation of it. If men believed now as they did in the times of the Apostles, they could not doubt or change.

But, as Newman observed, people (or at least Protestants) undoubtedly do change their beliefs, and this he attributed directly to the combination of Scripture and private judgement:

Since men now-a-days deduce from Scripture, instead of believing a teacher, you may expect to see them waver about; they will feel the force of their own deductions more strongly at one time than at another, they will change their minds about them, or perhaps deny them altogether; whereas this cannot be, while a man has faith, that is, belief that what a preacher says to him comes from God.

Once again, the criticism seems fair enough —and not least when it comes to evangelical Protestants, who fancy themselves to be completely committed to the ‘authority’ of Scripture, but who seem to be rather prone to change their minds about what Scripture ‘authoritatively’ says. Now it teaches penal substitution, now it doesn’t. Now it is anti-homosexuality, now it isn’t, and so on.

By contrast, according to Newman, the primitive Apostolic preaching called for obedient faith:

Immediate, implicit submission of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the necessary token of faith; then there was no room whatever for what is now called private judgement.

Compare this, Newman argues, with the person who goes by their own estimation of the Bible:

Now, my dear brethren, consider, are not these two states or acts of mind quite distinct from each other; —to believe simply what a living authority tells you, and to take a book such as Scripture, and to use it as you please, to master it, that is, to make yourself the master of it, to interpret it for yourself, and to admit just what you choose to see in it, and nothing more?

Is this not exactly what we see in many Protestant churches and amongst many evangelical individuals? Previously ‘received truths’ about what Scripture says have been in overturned as a person has ‘seen the (new) light’ and decides they can no longer believe as they once did.

There is much about Newman’s approach which may be criticized, but there is something in it, and particularly in what he wrote about the attitude of new converts and the rôle of the Church in relation to them:

... when they entered the Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put before them.

This is not, frankly, an attitude much in evidence today. Instead, we have taken as our guiding principle that advocated by J C Ryle, writing at almost the same time as Newman:

Reader, this is private judgment. This is the right you are to exercise if you love your soul. You are not to believe things in religion merely because they are said by Popes or Cardinals, —by Bishops or Priests, —by Presbyters or Deacons, —by Churches, Councils, or Synods, —by Fathers, Puritans, or Reformers. You are not to argue, “Such and such things must be true, because these men say so.” You are not to do so. You are to prove all things by the Word of God.

Now I am much more a fan (and a reader) of Ryle than Newman, but I think Ryle is mistaken. It is true that we mustn’t believe something just because someone ‘in authority’ says so —the Apostle Paul gives the same caution in Galatians 1. And it is also true that we must “prove all things by the Word of God.” But we cannot always and invariably look, finally, to our own private judgement for a verdict.

On the contrary, as Gerald Bray has recently written,

What is easy to overlook in the history of Christian doctrine, though it becomes clear once it is pointed out, is that no individual has ever been given the authority to determine what orthodoxy is.

That being the case, we must surely check our private judgement against the authority of the wider Church, rather than the other way round.

Our problem, in other words, is not that we give too much credence to the Bible, nor is it (as Newman and Low both suggest) that we don’t give enough to the Pope. It is rather that we give too much to our own opinions. After all, if not just those naughty popes and cardinals, but bishops, priests, presbyters, deacons, churches, councils, synods, the Fathers, the Puritans and the Reformers all come down one way, and I come down another, where does the balance of probability lie?

I hope to post later on what I went on to say this means in practice.

John Richardson
21 May 2009

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