It's the end of the Communion as we know it!

Two articles about what happens after Dublin, one taking a pretty sanguine approach, the other rather more pessimistic.

What makes it interesting is that they are both in agreement on the forthcoming shape of the Communion. Their only real disagreement is on the extent to which this matters to the Church.

Meanwhile, here in England I would venture to say that almost no members of Anglican churches have a clue about any of this.

The Anglican Communion is, to most of them, what Europe used to be to most Englishmen. When the Channel was foggy, it was Europe that was 'cut off'.

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Another 'must read'

George Conger is usually worth a read. This piece from the Church of England Newspaper, however, is outstanding - not least because it signifies an historical moment. As he identifies, the Primates' Council, which was once crucial for the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion, has pretty much voted, in a very un-Turkey like fashion, for the ecclesiologial equivalent of Christmas: "Dr. Williams has now effectively gathered the authority once held by other instruments of the communion into his own hands, and into those of a London-based bureaucracy."

This is the new real politik of the Communion, and must equally be the signal for a new self-understanding of the Church of England:

Dublin primates meeting marks an ‘end to the communion as we know it’

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Ten (not really very good) Reasons Why the Proposed Anglican Covenant is a Bad Idea

Lacking anything more useful to do, I’ve been looking through the ‘Ten Reasons Why the Proposed Anglican Covenant Is a Bad Idea’ posted on the Comprehensive Unity blog.

Why bother? Because, if it is to stand any chance of success, the Covenant process needs clarity of thought. Looking through the Ten Reasons, however, one finds confusion and, indeed, a certain lack of logic.

Reason 1, for example, begins by stating that,

The proposed Anglican Covenant would transform a vibrant, cooperative, fellowship of churches into a contentious, centralized aggregation of churches designed to reduce diversity and initiative.

Every time I read this — and there have been several — I wonder how anyone could describe the present Communion as “a vibrant, cooperative, fellowship”. I honestly can’t see that. And apparently neither can whoever wrote this document, since under Reason 9 we read,

The proposed Anglican Covenant .... is advanced in an atmosphere of anger, fear, and distrust ...

So which is it? The answer would seem to be that it depends on what point you’re trying to make: one here against the Covenant or one later against Covenant advocates.

Reason 2, meanwhile, rests on a massive ‘beg the question’:

Under the Covenant, churches will be inhibited from undertaking new evangelical or mission initiatives for fear of offending other Communion churches and becoming embroiled in the disciplinary mechanisms set up by the Covenant.

Of course, it could be said one region’s ‘evangelical initiative’ is another’s departure from the ‘evangel’ itself, but isn’t that the whole issue the Covenant is set up to address?

Reason 3 is an assertion based, apparently, on special pleading regarding a particular understanding of management:

In an era in which power and authority are being distributed in many organizations in order to achieve greater efficiency, responsiveness, and accountability, what has been proposed for the Communion seems out of step with current thinking regarding large organizations.

This sounds fine, but if authority is ‘distributed’, could a diocese not depart from its province? This is not what one is hearing advocated currently in TEC. The point may (or may not) be valid, but its application needs to be more tightly defined.

Reason 4 is another of those statements which makes one wonder if one has not been living in a parallel ‘Communion universe’ for the past decade:

[The Covenant’s] immediate effect is to create divisions.

Like there aren’t any at the moment? The point continues:

Churches that cannot or will not adopt the Covenant automatically become second-class members of the Communion.

Well, yes, but won’t that be because of those divisions which have brought about the need for the Covenant in the first place?

Reason 5 might actually have some substance:

The proposed Covenant is dangerously vague.

Surely, however, another possible response, rather than rejecting the Covenant, is to suggest ways to tighten up the vague bits? The challenge may be valid, but the solution does not automatically follow.

Reason 6 is just piece of theological silliness, relying on a blatant tu quoque argument:

The proposed Covenant runs counter to the gospel imperative of not judging others. It is all too easy for Communion churches to complain about the sins of their sister churches while ignoring or diverting attention from their own failures to live out the Gospel.

If churches within the Communion are truly failing to live out the Gospel, the answer is not to let everyone else do it as well!

Reason 7 relies on another special pleading which has run throughout this whole dispute:

The proposed Covenant encourages premature ending of debate.

What we know, of course, is that the only ending of the debate which will not be rejected as ‘premature’ by those who want to keep it going is an acceptance of homosexual practice. This is actually made clear in what follows:

[The Communion] has too quickly concluded that “homosexual practice” is “incompatible with Scripture” and that adopting the Covenant is “the only way forward,” neither of which is either intuitively obvious or universally agreed upon.

Fine — but do those opposing the Covenant in this way really accept that it could, after debate, be universally agreed upon? If not, let them be honest and say so.

Reason 8 seems invoke phrasing from the Windsor Report of 2004, where it was envisaged that the Covenant would “make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection” holding together the Communion. However, it turns on a re-interpretation of ‘forceful’ to mean ‘using force and coercion’, which is not at all the same thing;

The notion that we need to make “forceful” the “bonds of affection” is fundamentally flawed. If we need force and coercion to maintain relationships between Communion churches, there is no true affection, and the very foundation of the proposed Covenant is fraudulent.

Reason 9 again relies on giving a particular word a desired ‘spin’:

The proposed “Covenant” seems more like a treaty, contract, or instrument of surrender than a covenant. In the ecclesiastical context, a covenant is usually thought of as an agreement undertaken in joy and in an atmosphere of trust—baptismal and marriage covenants come to mind.

One is tempted to point to the example of Suzerainty Treaties, which had parallels with the biblical Covenant between God and Israel. These were not exactly ‘undertaken in joy and an atmosphere of trust’. More importantly, however, it is the existing lack of joy and trust which has brought about the need for the Covenant — and which, as has already been observed, point 9 actually recognizes:

The proposed Anglican Covenant .... is advanced in an atmosphere of anger, fear, and distrust, and with the threat of dire consequences if it is not adopted.

That is regrettable, but not having a Covenant is not going to change matters.

And finally Reason 10 reveals the objections themselves to be somewhat disingenuous:

The Anglican Communion would be better served by remaining a single-tier fellowship of churches, allowing disaffected members to leave if they must ...

So in fact the objection to the Covenant is not that some Anglicans will “become second-class members of the Communion” (Reason 4). Indeed the idea of ‘business as usual’ causing some people to leave the Communion is regarded as entirely acceptable — so long as it is the ‘right’ people who leave (those who are “threatening to walk away”).

Thus, ultimately, what the objectors to the Covenant want is exactly what those in favour of the Covenant also clearly want: a Communion to their own liking.

And there is nothing wrong with wanting that. But if even those objecting to the Covenant don’t seem to recognize the truth of their own position, what hope is there for real dialogue and real understanding?

John Richardson
18 December 2010

PS: Sitting here a day later, I'm actually quite sorry to have had to write this piece No one really likes criticism and no one should enjoy dishing it out. But I couldn't look at these ten 'reasons' without reacting to the perception that they lack, well, 'reason'. Illogicality and self-contradiction is something to be avoided, whatever the field you're writing in. If the author can go back and come up with some alternatives, maybe I'd think again.

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

The Covenant (good God y'all) what is it good for? Absolutely something ...

Up until a week ago, I was of the view that the Anglican Covenant was a complete waste of time and effort. What had started as a promised way of bringing some kind of doctrinal order and discipline to a fracturing Communion had been delayed past its sell-by date and watered down to homeopathic dilutions.

Well, it seems I was wrong.

There is now an international coalition against the covenant, led by bloggers, no less! And we have a ‘No to the Covenant’ logo turning up all over the place.

Why? Because apparently the Covenant would destroy everything it means to be an Anglican and propel us back into a theological ‘dark age’. (If you think I’m exaggerating, have a look at comments on the topic on the Thinking Anglicans website.)

What this tells me personally, however, is that the Covenant is clearly better than I thought. Of course it will not bring about what the ‘No to the Covenant’ coalition suggests. Their alarmism is, I suspect, just that, and deliberately so. And neither will it achieve what was hoped when it was first put forward, back in the days when there was still some hope of heading off the present crisis.

But it is not the ‘paper tiger’ I’d begun to assume. After all, anything that the typical ‘Thinking Anglican’ thinks must be stopped cannot be all bad.

So let’s bring on the Covenant — not in the expectation that all our problems will thereby disappear, but certainly because it must be good for something.

John Richardson
11 November 2010

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Rowan's Roman Bluff

For a man hardly renowned for his robustness, the recent speech given in Rome by the Archbishop of Canterbury was remarkably robust. Of course, it was given partly in response to the announcement from Rome on October 20^th of effectively a ‘safe haven’ for Anglicans disenchanted by the policies of the Church over which Rowan Williams presides. Few will forget his somewhat glum and deflated appearance at the press conference called for that purpose, which must have been an intensely difficult and embarrassing moment for him.

Could it be that the man has feelings just like the rest of us, and that his visit to Rome came as a personal opportunity to put a few things straight? Despite its donnish language, there are elements of the speech which are decidedly ‘in Rome’s face’, and some will welcome this.

Yet in the present climate, it is necessary to look at any such speech not only in terms of how it challenges Rome, but how it accords with the nature and doctrine of the Church of England. And here, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is of as little comfort to the Anglican as it is to the Roman orthodox.

Williams begins with a claim that there has been real ecumenical progress and convergence. Indeed, his theme throughout is that Rome and Canterbury are so close as to be almost touching. What, then, is keeping them apart? He responds that there are three key issues, whose significance must therefore be considered.

... the major question that remains is whether in the light of that depth of agreement the issues that still divide us have the same weight — issues about authority in the Church, about primacy (especially the unique position of the pope), and the relations between the local churches and the universal church in making decisions (about matters like the ordination of women, for instance).

Over against these issues, there is substantial agreement on what Williams feels are the things which really matter. And this is not just a question of theorising. The life of the Church is suffering whilst we delay:

When so very much agreement has been firmly established in first-order matters about the identity and mission of the Church, is it really justifiable to treat other issues as equally vital for its health and integrity?

But to show the difference between ‘first order’ and ‘second order’ issues, we must understand the nature of the Church itself. And this, Williams argues, mut be defined ‘theologically’, not ‘institutionally’, not set up by divine command establishing a ‘chain of command’ but ‘emerging’, as it were, from the nature of God and the incarnation.

Briefly, but importantly, Williams sums up the underlying theology of the Church as being that God is a Trinitarian community, the incarnation opens up the possibility of people being drawn into this community and the Spirit makes this actual. The Church is then constituted by a ‘filial’, godward, relationship and ‘communal’, human, relationships.

So, regarding the sacraments there is a substantial, if not always acknowledged, overlap:

The whole discussion of sacramental life is centred upon how the believer is established in filial communion through the act of the triune God; there is little to suggest that outside the Roman fold there is any ambiguity over this priority of the divine act, or any separation between the act of God in salvation and a purely or predominantly human activity of recalling or expressing that act through human practices. (Emphasis added.)

In the light of this understanding, which Williams clearly believes should be a matter of common agreement, he argues that current ecumenical debate is not really about the essential shape of the Church but “about where the fullest realisation of communion is to be found.” So we return to his three key issues three key issues, on which he poses a series of questions. On authority and the magisterium:

Is there a mechanism in the Church that has the clear right to determine for all where the limits of Christian identity might be found?

On primacy:

Is the integrity of the Church ultimately dependent on a single identifiable ministry of unity to which all local ministries are accountable?

On the universal Church:

Is it an entity from which local churches derive their life, or is it the perfect mutuality of relationship between local churches – or indeed as the mysterious presence of the whole in each specific community?

For Williams these are, it seems, the remaining stumbling blocks in the way of fuller ecumenical recognition. Yet his answers in each of these areas are confusing. On authority, he speaks of how responsibility is distributed amongst “the communion of the baptised”. But on reaching agreement, he says simply that we have different ways of expressing this.

On primacy he says, starkly, there are two options regarding the present papal model: either it is essential, or it is not ‘fit for purpose’. Yet in its place he offers“a recognition of a primatial ministry” that is “not absolutely bound to a view of primacy as a centralized juridical office”, and appeals to the Anglican covenant as an example of communities bound by what he refers to earlier as “terms of lasting loyalty, shared theological method and devotional ethos.”

On the ‘local’ and the ‘universal’, he argues that, “the church is local community gathered around the bishop or his representative for eucharistic worship not as a portion of some greater whole but as itself the whole,” whilst nevertheless recognizing it exists in connection with the other parts. Thus,

... the question here becomes one about what criteria help us establish that the same Catholic life is going on in diverse communities.

To this, he poses a further question:

The facts of corporate reading of Scripture, obedience to the Lord’s commands to baptise and make eucharist, shared understanding of the shape and the disciplines of what we have called filial holiness — can these be utilised as they stand or do we need a further test — visible communion, say, with a universal primate?

The answer lies in decision making processes — say, for example, on the ordination of women. And on this, Williams poses a direct question to Rome:

... the challenge to recent Roman Catholic thinking on this would have to be: in what way does the prohibition against ordaining women so ‘enhance the life of communion’, reinforcing the essential character of filial and communal holiness [the ‘godward’ and ‘human’ elements] as set out in Scripture and tradition and ecumenical agreement, that its breach would compromise the purposes of the Church as so defined [in terms of reading Scripture, baptism and eucharist]?

Williams answers with a further question, but appeals to Anglican experience:

Even if there remains uncertainty in the minds of some about the rightness of ordaining women, is there a way of recognising that somehow the corporate exercise of a Catholic and evangelical ministry remains intact even when there is dispute about the standing of female individuals? In terms of the relation of local to universal, what we are saying here is that a degree of recognizability of ‘the same Catholic thing’ has survived: Anglican provinces ordaining women to some or all of the three orders have not become so obviously diverse in their understanding of filial holiness and sacramental transformation that they cannot act together, serve one another and allow some real collaboration.

So far, the structure of Williams’ argument is clear: we are almost at full, ecumenical, agreement. Fundamentally, we agree on the shape of the Church and the nature of its sacramental life. We are kept apart only on what are apparently second-order issues, and within Anglicanism itself, we have found a way to organize our life which can overcome our own internal tensions. But then, still on this issue of women’s ordination, he becomes completely unrealistic, if not downright disingenuous:

It is this sort of thinking that has allowed Anglicans until recently to maintain a degree of undoubtedly impaired communion among themselves, despite the sharpness of the division over this matter. It is part of the rationale of supplementary episcopal oversight as practised in the English provinces, and it may yet be of help in securing the place of those who will not be able to accept the episcopal ministry of women. There can be no doubt, though, that the situation of damaged communion will become more acute with the inability of bishops within the same college to recognise one another’s ministry in the full sense. Yet, in what is still formally acknowledged to be a time of discernment and reception, is it nonsense to think that holding on to a limited but real common life and mutual acknowledgement of integrity might be worth working for within the Anglican family? And if it can be managed within the Anglican family, is this a possible model for the wider ecumenical scene?

The problem, of course, is with the phrase ‘until recently’. For what Williams presents as a successful balancing act, which might be “a possible model for the wider ecumenical scene” is, of course, likely to come crashing down, and is precisely the reason Rome acted in the way it did via the offer of the Personal Ordinariate.

Moreover, it is surely exactly the experience of the Church of England at this point which demonstrates it is not the way to go. Extraordinarily, Williams says that this is “still formally acknowledged to be a time of discernment and reception”. Yet as we know, the decision making processes of the Church of England mean that process has been pushed forward by facts on the ground —not least the avoidance of consecrating traditionalist bishops —and is now dominated by a ‘kill everybody’ mentality on the part of the pro-women’s ordination lobby.

Like the desperately-unhappy John and Mary O’Leary in Father Ted, he seems to hope that a smiling face will conceal our domestic conflicts from the visiting priest. Yet if there is deceit, it is one which Williams himself seems to believe, for he asks, in apparent seriousness,

At what point do we have to recognise that surviving institutional and even canonical separations or incompatibilities are overtaken by the authoritative direction of genuinely theological consensus, so that they [the divisions] can survive only by appealing to the ghost of ecclesiological positivism?

“Are we missing something?” he seems to be saying, “Or are we just waiting to clear up some trivial difficulties between Rome and Canterbury in the way that the Anglican communion is already doing so successfully?”

All I have been attempting to say here is that the ecumenical glass is genuinely half-full – and then to ask about the character of the unfinished business between us. For many of us who are not Roman Catholics, the question we want to put, in a grateful and fraternal spirit, is whether this unfinished business is as fundamentally church-dividing as our Roman Catholic friends generally assume and maintain. And if it isn’t, can we all allow ourselves to be challenged to address the outstanding issues with the same methodological assumptions and the same overall spiritual and sacramental vision that has brought us thus far?

And at this point, the reader may wish to pause for breath, for it is nothing if not a bold take on the ecumenical venture and on the issues which have divided us for the last 450 years.

Yet if we simply survey it from a confessionally Anglican perspective, it is a vision which raises as many questions for Anglicans as it must for ecumenists.

To begin with, is Williams right in his claims regarding what truly divides the Church of England from the Church of Rome? Is it our understanding of the nature and function of the Church, or is it rather, as it was when we divided, still the nature of grace and our response to it, and in connection with that, that nature of sacrament and the ‘sacramental’ priesthood?

A glance through the Anglican formularies would suggest it is still the latter. And the test of this will surely be the liturgical traditions which Anglicans will be allowed to carry over into the Personal Ordinariate. Will this include the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, rubrics and all, or will it only allow the non-sacramental services? And what about the requirement that the standard of belief will be set by the Roman Catechism? One only has to look at the sections on justification and grace to know that Catholic and Protestant are still as deeply divided as ever on this subject, where the Church of England is committed via Article XI to justification by “faith only”.

Again, Williams’ doctrine of the Church, whilst couched in terms of episcopal and sacramental significance that would appeal to many in the Anglican hierarchy, is a long way from Article XIX’s understanding of the Word of God preached as being fundamental to the Church’s nature.

And aside from all this, one must ask why, if the ordination of women and their consecration as bishops are second-order issues which we are so effectively resolving, they generate so much heat and so much potential for real division. Why, if they represent a ‘glass half full’, are so many saying that there must finally be a ‘like it or lump it’ acceptance by those who, as Williams puts it, are still possessed of some ‘uncertainty’ on the subject?

For all its robustness of tone, Williams speech represents what happens when a ‘fuzzy’ theology encounters institutionalized clarity. His appeal, in the end, relies on the acceptance of the same fuzziness. But perhaps because this is its intellectual centre, it seems blind to its own inherent contradictions. Not only is it fundamentally un-Anglican in key areas, it is not even a reflection of the realities on the ground, in the parishes, in the dioceses and in the decision-making bodies of our own national church.

It is a bold try. But Williams does not have the substance behind him to back it up.

John Richardson
21 November 2009

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select 'preview', then close the preview box. When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

The Thirty-nine Articles and the Church

(Ed: In an effort to keep the ball rolling on the subject of Anglicanism as a theological system, I thought I'd reprint the following, which was a talk given to an evening meeting of our own congregations a couple of years ago.)

Introduction 

That the Thirty-nine Articles were designed to benefit both the church and the state by settling religious disputes is evident from the Royal Declaration of 1562:

Being by God’s Ordinance, according to Our just Title, Defender of the Faith, and Supreme Governour of the Church, within these Our Dominions, We hold it most agreeable to this Our Kingly Office, and our own religious Zeal, to conserve and maintain the church committed to Our Charge, in Unity of true Religion, and in the Bond of Peace; and not to suffer unnecessary Disputations, Altercations, or Questions to be raised, which may nourish Faction both in the Church and Commonwealth.

That is the Anglican ideal, based on the model of church and state conceived at the English Reformation. There are to be no disputations, altercations and questions. Instead there is to be unity and the bond of peace, in state and in church.

The nature of the Church

But what is the Church? Article XIX tells us:

THE visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.

Notice first, the reference to the visible Church, as distinct from the invisible Church. The invisible Church is the company of faithful believers known only to Christ. And indeed the Westminster Confession of 1647 began its definition of the Church there:

The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect ... [emphasis added]

But of course the membership of the invisible Church is known only to God, and the Articles leave that aside, concentrating only on the visible. And what is visible is the preaching of the Word of God and the ministering of the Sacraments according to Christ’s commands. Where you have those, you have the Church.

Church and diocese

But here we hit a modern political issue. In his book The Anglican Understanding of the Church, Paul Avis, who is a very influential writer in these matters, denies that Article 19 means that the local congregation is the fundamental unit of the Church.

He argues from the fact that the Latin version of this article refers to a coetus fidelium — an assembly of the faithful — which he says refers to “a national church made up of dioceses” (p77). He concludes,

The ‘local church’ in Anglican ecclesiology denotes ... the community of word and sacrament gathered, governed and led by the bishop. For Anglican ecclesiology , the ‘congregation’ in the strict sense is the diocese. (Avis op cit)

Not unnaturally, this conclusion has made Avis very popular amongst bishops, but whilst Avis is right in saying that the Article has a wider view than the local congregation, he is, I would argue, wrong to say it is the diocese.

Particular and national churches

The reason I believe he is wrong is because the Articles themselves don’t think of the Church in this way. The critical Article is 37, Of the Civil Magistrates, which says this:

THE King’s Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other his Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain ...

The administrative boundary of the Church, within which its spiritual affairs are ordered, is not the diocese under the bishop, or even the province under the archbishop, but the nation, under the King, under God. Then, just as the civil administration is broken down into smaller units, so is the church’s administration broken down into dioceses and parishes. As Thomas Cranmer himself wrote,

The ministers of God’s word under his majesty be the bishops, parsons, vicars, and such other priests as be appointed by his highness to that ministration: as for example, the bishop of Canterbury, the bishop of Duresme, the bishop of Winchester, the parson of Winwick, &c. All the said officers and ministers, as well of the one sort as of the other, be appointed, assigned, and elected in every place, by the laws and orders of kings and princes. (‘Questions and Answers Concerning the Sacraments and the Appointment and Power of Bishops and Priests’ in Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, Ed J E B Cox [Cambridge: The Parker Society, 1846, reproduced by Regent College Publishing], 116, emphasis added)

Insofar as the word ‘local’ means ‘belonging to a particular place’, the smallest place the Church of England recognizes where the Word of God is preached and the Sacraments administered to the people of that place is thus the parish, not the diocese. In fact the Word of God is never preached to the people of a diocese, nor are the sacraments ministered ‘diocesanly’.

The understanding of the ‘particular’ Church as essentially national is seen in the second part of Article 19, which refers to Churches where, it would be presumed, the pure Word of God is not preached and the Sacraments not duly administered:

As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.

The same thing is also reflected in Article 34, Of the Traditions of the Church. This explicitly recognizes that because of the variations in customs according to time and place

Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish, ceremonies or rites of the Church ...

According to the Articles, therefore, it is the national boundary which defines the organizational boundary of the Church.

Erastianism

And this is because the Articles work from a very specific understanding of society. According to the thinking behind the Articles, as shown in Article 37 Of the Civil Magistrates, authority in society devolves from God to the monarch and then to the other instruments of government. Indeed, this understanding, at its application, might arguably be seen as the Church of England’s unique contribution to the Reformation.

In essence, it is Romans 13:1 applied to the maximum: “The authorities that exist have been established by God.” Paul Avis calls it an Erastian paradigm, on the basis, as he puts it, that “it gives the state a rôle in spiritual oversight.” But Erastianism is generally thought of as a secular state controlling the Church, and that is not at all what the Articles have in mind. What they envisage is a godly Prince (Article 37) controlling both state and Church for the promotion of godly, Christian, living.

Without a doubt the arrangement between Church and State in England has become Erastian, and (almost) without a doubt the Church of England will eventually be disestablished. But we must not accuse the Articles of something they don’t in fact contain.

Authority

However, the relationship between Church and monarch envisaged by the Articles has massive implications for authority within the Church, which is the subject of Articles 20 and 21.

Article 20, Of the Authority of the Church, says first of all that the Church “hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies”. But remember, this would apply on to a ‘particular or national Church’. It is not an individual power — that is denied in Article 34, because, in a godly state, the individual does not have such authority. That can come only from the monarch. So, according to that Article, if the individual does presume to “break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church” it not only offends the order of the Church, it challenges “the authority of the Magistrate”.

Authority in the congregation

And remember, again, according to Article 37, the authority of the magistrate is the monarch’s authority. However, the same principle applies to authority within the Church. The authority of the Church’s officers also derives from the monarch, as we can see in Article 23 Of Ministering in the Congregation.

This takes some unpacking. First, it says,

IT is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of publick preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same.

Notice, first of all, what this doesn’t say. It doesn’t say “Only priests have the power to celebrate communion.” The important word here is ‘lawful’ — it may be possible, but it is not lawful to preach and administer the Sacraments unless you have been lawfully called.

But who are we to recognize as lawfully called? The second part of the Article gives this answer:

And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have publick authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.

The lawfully called are those who have been called and sent by people who have been given public authority to call and send.

But who are they? The Articles do not say the bishops. In fact, the words bishop, priest and deacon are remarkably rare in the Articles and entirely absent here, where we might expect to see them.

The simplest and most obvious thing for Article 23 to have said would have been,

It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching or ministering the sacraments in the congregation, before he be ordained a deacon or priest by a bishop.

That is what happens in practice, so why is the language of Article 23 so convoluted? The answer is that we are talking about the authority of the Church, not the nature of the ministry. And at the back of this is actually the Lutheran, which was simply this:

Concerning ecclesiastical orders they teach that no man should publicly in the church teach or administer the sacraments unless he be rightly called. (The Augsburg Confession)

But of course for Luther, the local congregation could rightly call someone to the public office of teaching and administering the sacraments. Moreover, for Luther every Christian was able to do this by merit of being a Christian. The issue was only how someone might rightly be authorised to do it publicly, in the congregation.

The Anglican Articles started life at a time when the Church of England and the Lutheran churches were in negotiations to see if they could reach an agreement. And even after these negotiations broke down some features of Lutheran theology were allowed to remain, and this is one of them. Public ministry in the congregation is allowed to the person who is properly called. In England people who do the calling are the bishops. But who gives them not just the ecclesiastical office but the public authority to do this? The answer is, the monarch. It is the monarch who has the power to confer public authority on the bishops lawfully to call and send ministers into the Lord’s vineyard, because all public authority comes from the monarch.

We see this in the Homily against Rebellion which says this:

[Christ] and his holy Apostles likewise ... did forbid unto all Ecclesiastical ministers, dominion over the Church of Christ.

The important word there is dominion. According to the homily, Christ refused dominion over the Church. When the people came to make him king he fled because his kingdom was not of this world.

By contrast, though, God has,

... constituted, ordained, and set earthly Princes over particular Kingdoms and Dominions in earth ...

So dominion belongs to the monarch. But the monarch may delegate lawful authority to the officers of the Church, just as he does to the magistrate. And so the bishop, as the King’s officer, is given power to call and send ministers. But it is a limited power — limited by the fact that it depends on the monarch for its lawful authority in the public realm.

General Councils

This limitation of authority, though, is most spectacularly seen in Article 21, Of the Authority of General Councils, where it says this:

General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes.

The reference to General Councils is those councils of the Church whose deliberations can be seen as binding on the whole Church, not just the particular or national church.

But the thinking behind the Article is very cautious about this, not least because such Councils can’t be guaranteed to get it right, as the second part of the Article says. So the authority of General Councils of the Church was limited in two ways. They couldn’t prescribe anything contrary to Scripture, and they couldn’t meet without the approval of the godly Princes, because those Princes had the responsibility for governing the national Churches under them.

The function of the Church 

So what can the Church do in its own right? The answer is, proclaim the Word of God, guard the faith and administer the Sacraments.

To do this Article 24 says the language used in the congregation should be one that the people understand. (Incidentally, contra Avis, the clear understanding here, when it talks about "public prayer in the Church", is that the Ecclesia is actually where people physically gather to hear God’s Word, to pray and to receive the Sacraments.)

It is allowed in Article 32 that bishops, priests and deacons may marry as they judge it will better serve to godliness.

Article 33 lays down that the Church may excommunicate people until they are received back by someone with appropriate authority.

Article 35 gives approval to the Homilies, which provided ready-made teaching material for those that couldn’t prepare their own.

Article 36 recognizes that the forms of consecration and ordination found in the Ordinal from the time of Edward VI are effective and lawful. The duties of a minister are laid out in that Ordinal. The details of Christian living are to be worked out in the day-to-day life of the Church. It remains only to remind ourselves that the Church, according to the articles, is made visible where there is true preaching and administration of the sacraments.

That is not only where the Church is, but that is where the Church is most visibly.

John P Richardson
31 October 2009

Anonymous users wishing to paste in the comments box need first to select the 'Anonymous' profile, then type in a couple of letters, select 'preview', then close the preview box and delete these letters.

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may be deleted.

Richard Holloway and the limits of Anglicanism

Ed: I'm reproducing this article from Geoffrey Kirk as it sits very well with my own series on unity and Anglicanism.

Just when you thought it was safe…Richard Holloway is back! The white hope of the Loughborough Conferences, founder member of Affirming Catholicism and former Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church has come a long way. The campaigner for women’s ordination who once described opponents as ‘seeking to sweep back the tide of God’ has now taken leave of the deity to whom he once appealed. Holloway no longer believes in God – but he continues to function as a bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church, celebrating the sacraments and preaching the word (not, of course of God; but presumably of …Richard Holloway).

Like Jack Spong before him, Holloway is making a splash on the lecture circuit. ‘A bishop rethinks…’ ‘Agnostic bishop challenges churchmen…’

However offensive it may be to the rest of us, Holloway has grasped that there is money to be made from being an unbelieving prelate; a notoriety not readily available to a private individual. Richard Holloway ‘the Voltaire of Morningside’ would be nowhere near as marketable a commodity as an atheistical bishop of the Episcopal Church. And so he hangs on to the mitre he once cast into the Thames; to the eternal shame of the Church to which he belongs.

Vain and self-serving though this atheistical posturing is, Holloway has characteristically touched a raw nerve. ‘The worldwide Anglican Church has made room for "happy clapping" evangelicals, bells-and-smells Catholics, women priests and, in the United States, openly gay clergy and even practitioners of other faiths,’ he is reported as saying. ‘So surely, he argues, it can find room for people like him - Christians who don't believe in God.’ The challenge is to define and justify the limits of Anglican comprehensiveness; and he knows that it will be no mean task.

Outsiders might well conclude that Anglicans can only get agitated about second order issues – women’s ordination, same sex marriages and gay bishops. When it comes to dogma (even at the most fundamental level) they exhibit a culpable coyness. Why does the appointment of an openly gay bishop result in threats of schism and actual infringements of provincial boundaries and the continuance in episcopal orders of a Spong or a Holloway do nothing of the sort? It is a good question.

The answer (as Richard Holloway has astutely grasped) is that there is, and always has been, a strain of theological levity at the heart of Anglicanism. The price of being a comprehensive (or as they now say ‘inclusive’) church has been to come dangerously close to not being a church at all.

This theological levity is most readily apparent in two related areas: the Eucharist and Holy Orders.

Anglicans believe (or have said that they believe) that orders are an effective sign of communion in the Church. In particular they have maintained that episcopacy operates to enhance koinonia in three modes: geographically (from diocese to diocese), historically (down the ages) and locally (within each diocese). At the same time they have maintained a doctrine of provincial autonomy such that orders are thought to be at the disposal of each local church, without reference to others or to the Church Universal.

It does not take a genius to see that these understandings are mutually exclusive. Nor is it difficult to grasp the ecumenical consequences of such confusion. Anglicans have traditionally sought to establish with other churches what has been called ‘full visible unity’, a unity necessarily involving full recognition and interchangeability of orders. They have sought, in other words, in relationship with other churches, what they will not and cannot establish amongst themselves!

Things are no better with regard to the Holy Communion. What is the Anglican doctrine of the Eucharist? The honest answer must be that no such thing exists (as the studied and self-conscious ambiguity of Anglican liturgies serves to demonstrate). The ‘family meal of Christians’ is for Anglicans a battleground of incompatible theologies, from Transubstantiation to Zwinglianism with all the cosy ambiguities between. One party has it monstrances and the other pours the leftovers back into the bottle. The very best that can be said is that on a matter that should unite them, Anglicans agree to be divided.

Richard Holloway has seen all this. Here is his Eucharistic theology as recently reported in an Australian newspaper:

‘It very much depends on the interpretation you put on it,’ he explained. ‘I still very much believe in the community of the church. One of the most fundamental strengths of the church, or any religious community, is that it is still an expression of the human family. The eucharist [communion], in my understanding, is the family meal. It is the way you express your identity and membership of that body. I happen to believe that it is a beautiful art form as well.’

What, he wants you to ask yourself, could be more Anglican than that - where institutional loyalty replaces doctrinal certainty, and the aesthetic takes precedence over the theological?

The tragedy of those who are seeking to defend some sort of orthodoxy in the Anglican Communion is that Holloway has unerringly identified the wound of Anglicanism, and that no one seems capable of cauterizing it. GAFCON, FoCA, the Anglican Province of North America: all embrace the mixed economy of orders and the brand of theological fudge which has precipitated the present crisis. And - which is further grist to the Holloway mill - they all seem to be held together, not by doctrinal agreement but by mere prurience.

Against such a background it is all too easy for the likes of him to preen themselves as ‘courageous’, ‘open’, ‘inclusive’, ‘Christian’ even.

Geoffrey Kirk+ (FiFUK)

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may not be posted.

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

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may not be posted.

Unity, the Church and denominations

What is to prevent the fissiparation from which Protestantism has historically suffered? What is to provide the way back into that unity which is the essence of the gospel and the subject of so many urgings from Christ and the Apostles?

To quote a traditional Irish saying, “If I was going there, I wouldn’t start from here.” But here is where we are, so how might we get there?

I have suggested in previous posts that we need to be very careful about ‘private judgement’. Though this is much beloved of Protestants (linked as it often is to the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture), it is a grave error to suppose that the individual should be encouraged to make decisions about doctrine —especially the untrained and inexperienced individual.

As history has shown, sometimes individuals —Athanasius or Luther —must indeed take a stand, and some individuals —Augustine, Calvin, etc —have made massive contributions to doctrinal understanding. But history has given us the chance to sift their contributions and generally doctrine is something for us to receive, not to discern.

To move from our divided ‘here’, to a united ‘there’, then, our first need is humility and our second need is historical awareness. We need to know what the Church has said in the past and learned from the past. And in this respect, if the ‘Gamaliel principle’ has any validity at all it must suggest that history is on the side of the theological conservatives.

A classic example of theological history in action would be our acceptance of the Creeds —particularly the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds, which are the most widely known and used. The issues they addressed were deeply controverted at the time, and the conclusions they reached on the nature of the Trinity do not follow immediately from a ‘plain’ reading of Scripture. Yet they have stood the test of time and resisted efforts to reject or recast them, and we now expect Christians to understand doctrine and read Scripture in the light of them.

This is not to set the Creeds above Scripture. The Anglican Articles, for example, say they are only to be believed because they may be proved from Scripture. But they do set aside alternative —for example, non-Trinitarian —readings of Scripture. And they do this with the general agreement of the vast majority of Western Churches and Christians.

This brings us, however, to a third ‘stepping stone’ from here to there, which is the recognition for many of us that we also stand in a denominational tradition which ought to provide an agreed theological basis for unity.

Historically, denominations have generally arisen over differences in our understanding of the truth —what it is, and how it should be applied. When these differences have become too great for an institution to cope with them, a split has taken place. That being the case, however, we would expect to find within the denomination a substantial agreement on the truth and thus a high degree of unity. We must, therefore, take very seriously the fact that this is observably not the case in many Protestant denominations, including, of course, the Church of England. Indeed, Robbie Low writes,

Anglicans have no common doctrine, no common liturgy and no common orders. In short, Anglicanism lacks the fundamental qualifications to make the bold claim that it is a Church.

Gerald Bray has similarly written in the same vein:

Incompatible beliefs about the ministry, the sacraments and almost anything one cares to name can and do co-exist under the Anglican umbrella, and nobody seems to be able to say what the boundaries of the church’s faith are.

This situation is, frankly, ridiculous! What is the point of being a denomination if the disagreements amongst ourselves are greater than our differences with those outside our supposed ‘boundaries’?

And there is another insidious factor arising out of this. For if unity is not maintained ‘in the truth’, then it must be maintained, ultimately, by force. The denomination which tolerates an ‘anything goes’ approach to belief must, in the end, use its institutional rules, regulations and sanctions to preserve its unity despite disagreements.

We need to remind ourselves —certainly Anglicans need to remind themselves —that our denominations do, for the most part, have confessional origins. In the case of the Church of England, this produced not only the Thirty-nine Articles but also the Book of Common Prayer which expressed a theology in sharp contradistinction to what had gone before.

In short, in denominations with a confessional basis, we are entitled reassert the importance of the confessional statements in the interests of gospel unity. Anglicans should be especially glad that the GAFCON Jerusalem Statement and Declaration reassert doctrinal significance of the Thirty-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal, and those of us in the Church of England with a concern for the gospel should do all we can to align ourselves with this, because they give a clear signal both that we do not embrace unlimited theological diversity and also that we do not regard such diversity as inherently Anglican.

GAFCON, however, also reminds us that provided the boundaries of the Church have some substance and definition, you can actually work with a diversity of expressions of the faith. So, to the annoyance of many of its critics, GAFCON saw Anglo-Catholic Africans sharing the same platform as Puritan Australians.

Some saw this as a betrayal of principle. I would want to argue, rather, that it is entirely principled, provided there is a common acceptance of a shared confessional heritage. In the same way, evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in this country can work together —albeit in a sometimes-limited way —provided we do so as confessionally committed Anglicans.

Unity in the truth, however, does not come automatically. It has to be deliberately sought and systematically maintained through the structural provisions of the institution, and ultimately the responsibility for it rests with those who are empowered to be the doctrinal ‘gatekeepers’.

In short, the clergy of a denomination are the first line of defence regarding the unity of the Church. Or at least they should be! Yet in some denominations —sadly including Anglicanism —the clergy are the last people to whom one would look for an understanding of the historic confessions and formularies. Indeed, ordination seems to be regarded as an official license to believe and teach whatever takes your fancy.

This is the ‘elephant in the living room’ for liberal Protestantism. Disunity is fostered and caused by the very body charged with establishing unity in the faith through the teaching office. What might be done about this will be the subject of a later post.

John P Richardson
28 May 2009

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may not be posted.

Love's Labours Lost - the end of the Covenant?

Anglican Down Under has a very interesting comment, under the title 'Much Ado about Nothing', on the attitudes being taken in (and towards) TEC over the issue of diocesan autonomy, raised by a number of bishops there recently. The 'Schori-supporters' line is that dioceses cannot go against the line of their 'church' or 'province'. The bishops' line is that, certainly as regards TEC, it is a conglomeration of independent dioceses with no Metropolitan or hierarchy over the dioceses. So, says ADU,

It would ... be extremely odd, would it not, for the following scenario to occur: the Communion as a whole proposes and circulates a covenant; Anglican church X rejects the covenant, but Diocese Y within X accepts the covenant; X then seeks to discipline Y. Presumably X's grounds for discipline of Y would be some kind of illegality with respect to Y's constitution. But Y's grounds for signing to the covenant would be commitment to Anglicanism. At this point the true bearer of Anglicanism would by Y and not X. Morally, at least, X would cease to be Anglican in the substance of its faith!

In my view, the sheer possibility of such chaos reinforces my own point that the 'game' (keeping TEC and similar variants of Anglicanism within a global Communion) is well and truly over, not least because there is de facto division in their own backyard. The whole thing has become totally incoherent, and it is impossible for a 'covenant' to draw it back together.

In further support of this, I would refer to the complete lack of response on the Fulcrum forum to a thread about the bishops' statement started two days ago. Healthy discussion continues there in a thread started by my own post here on the cross and the resurrection (not, though, vs. the resurrection) and there is a thread on the Covenant itself, but that is going round in circles and off at tangents (if such a thing is possible).

The silence surely speaks volumes. Who, any longer, can unravel anything of this? And what difference will it make? And finally, and most importantly, who really cares?

Certainly not TEC, which carries on regardless.

John Richardson
24 April 2009

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may not be posted.

GAFCON - Game Over or New Game?

One of the most interesting people I ever listened to was an advertising executive, talking to a class studying Fashion and Design with Marketing, back in the 1980s. This man had a better grasp of human motivation than anyone I’ve ever met, before or since.

The reason, however, was self-evident: his livelihood depended on understanding what made people tick. Hence he knew (for example) that because 80% of men’s underwear was bought by women, the advertising and packaging needed to be aimed at them.

Another social group with an excellent grasp of human nature is journalists, and for much the same reason: they need a nose for a story, without which they cannot sell the papers that pay their wages. And it is this light that we might interpret the absence of journalists at the recent GAFCON primates press conference.

Some have read this as indicating that GAFCON is washed up. Personally, I believe it is rather because the national press now recognize there is no story in the division of the Anglican Communion — not because the Communion has survived the pressures of recent years but because it quite evidently has not. As a headline, ‘Anglican Communion Faces Split’ is now entirely on a par with ‘Dog Bites Man’.

In fact, the lack of press interest was already evident at the Alexandria Primates’ Meeting in February this year where, according to the Changing Attitude Blog, there were only seven people in the press briefings (including the blogger himself).

This lack of interest from those whose job it is to sniff out what is interesting is as profound as the silence of a canary in a coalmine. It is a sure sign that something has already happened, even though many people may not have noticed.

In case there is any doubt about this, let us remind ourselves that following that meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury appointed a group of Pastoral Visitors “commissioned by him to conduct personal and face to face conversations in order to assist in the clearest discernment of the ways forward in any given situation of tension”.

One of those situations of tension is, presumably, North America. What, then, have the Pastoral Visitors achieved so far in that area? Does anyone know? Or care? The question is not entirely rhetorical, but the answer for most of us is undoubtedly ‘No’ to both.And the point is, this applies to Communion Conservatives as much as to anyone. I doubt very much that, for example, Bishop Tom Wright has any confidence in the scheme, even if he knows much about its workings. And certainly no-one in the hierarchy of TEC gives a hoot.Which brings us to the Windsor Process. If ever there were an argument for mercy-killing, the prospect of putting a bullet in this sad saga must be the best. Chinese Communism used to refer to the West as a paper tiger. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence must see that the Anglican Covenant is not merely paper, but soggy paper. It is to church discipline what Eeyore’s balloon was to birthday celebrations: “You did say balloon? One of those big coloured things you blow up? Gaiety, song-and-dance, here we are and there we are?” Or in the case of the Covenant, one of those things that is going to set boundaries, and define the faith and the faithful?

Those who believe the Windsor ‘Process’ is going to deliver what the Primates’ were demanding four years ago are fooling no one but themselves. Indeed, it cannot deliver, since the Anglican Communion as it was in 1998 is no more. In a few years time, that will be recognized as the date of the last true Lambeth Conference of the old, Empire based, gathering of global Anglican bodies. 2008 was not the year of the breakup, but it was the year in which the breakup could no longer be denied.

The old game is over, and that is sad (in my view). But the new game is beginning. We must look to the future. And it is not ‘Windsor shaped’. The journalists who stayed away from the GAFCON meeting knew this. They will not, I suspect, be there in droves when the Covenant is finally launched either.

The reality is that Anglicanism is now a mixed economy: Canterbury, GAFCON, the FCA, TEC, the ACNA will all vie for position, and it will be the economics of church growth, not reports and formal processes, which will decide the outcome. Our Lord Jesus Christ said that he would build his church. Time will now tell which that is.

Revd John P Richardson
21 April 2009

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may not be posted.

Too late for Anglicanism?

Well, if there is one thing that Liberals and Traditionalists agree on in the Anglican Church, it is that we should ‘expel the immoral brother’. The trouble is, they disagree totally as to what qualifies as ‘immorality’.

Is it immoral for the Church of Nigeria to support the criminalizing of same-sex relationships (as used to be the case in all Western societies until very recently)? Or is it immoral for the Church in North America to sanctify those relationships (and at the same time to shift the boundaries of what may be believed doctrinally so as to threaten any connections with the church’s received faith)?

The truth is, it hardly matters any more as far as the Communion is concerned. St Paul’s warning has finally come true: “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.”

The sad truth is that, even if the Church of Nigeria might need to hear a word of correction, Western Anglicanism is hardly in a position to deliver it. Why should anyone listen to a Church which scarcely has any theological coherence whatsoever? And similarly, how can the Western Church expect to be listened to by the Church in Nigerian, given that it is unwilling to listen itself to a rebuke from that quarter?

In any case, a brief flick through the usual suspects in the blogosphere suggests to me that the last thing anyone wants is for the ‘enemy’ to act out of character. How terrible it would be for us if the opposition failed to live down to the expectations we have of them!

One of the striking things that has been said about the possibility of a resurgence of violence in Northern Ireland is that there are some people who miss the bloodshed and the hatred. The same is surely now true of Anglicanism. There are too many people now who relish the fight.

Love your enemies? Do good to them that hate you? Bless them that curse you? Of course we will. Provided they are not Christian enemies, provided they are not brothers and sisters that hate us or whom we hate, provided they are not fellow Anglicans that curse us or that we still haven't got round to cursing. For them, there can be no mercy, nor forgiveness, only judgement and condemnation - and don’t we love to judge and condemn?

For of course, they deserve it!

Well, I truly believe Jesus has a word for us:

Remember the height from which you have fallen!
Repent and do the things you did at first.
If you do not repent,
I will come to you
and remove your lampstand from its place.

Revd John P Richardson

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may not be posted.

Not Anglicans but Episcopalians - a new clarity in the USA?

An article from The Durham News, USA, provides incidental endorsement of the lines along which the TEC has divided. In an article about students at the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Duke University the two sides are referred to as ‘Episcopalian’ (those remaining within TEC) and ‘Anglican’ (those who have left TEC).

Thus, the article refers to "[t]he approximately 50 Anglicans and Episcopalians at AEHS" (emphasis added), rather than simply "students". The article also quotes the Director of AEHS, Englishwoman and former Tutor in Old Testament at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, Jo Bailey Wells, referring to "Anglicans" on the one hand and "Episcopalians" on the other:

‘"The Anglicans assume that the Episcopalians are not disturbed by the split, [that] they’ll march forward with their new policies," she said. "And the Episcopalians assume that [American] Anglicans are not disturbed by the split because they’re marching on and creating new churches and building new buildings. There isn’t a great deal of communication or at least real understanding between the two."’

Thus it would seem that, within the United States at least, a new clarity is emerging, with ‘The Episcopal Church’ and ‘Anglicans’ becoming accepted labels for now-divergent approaches to Christian understanding.

Read the Durham News article here.

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may not be posted.

Suddenly it’s over for the Anglican Communion

Like a dam that has been under pressure for some time, the Anglican Communion has, I believe, suddenly and irrevocably broken. They think its all over? It is now.

As evidence of this, I would ask the reader to consider what happened at the last Primates’ meeting. Indeed, as a ‘starter for ten’, I would ask if you can recall when it was held and where. (Answers: February, Alexandria.) The key outcome was the appointment of a team of Pastoral Visitors to act, in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as “consultants in situations of stress and conflict” across the Communion (as if we still can’t admit what that really means).

The verdict of traditionalists involved in the conflicts in North America, however, is “too little, too late.”

But in any case, who is interested? Who cares? Who is getting excited by these attempts to address the issues that first gave rise to what is still being called the Windsor Process?

Compared with Dromantine or Dar es Salaam, the Alexandria Primates’ Meeting was a ‘fizzle’. There were no boycotts, there were no fireworks and, most importantly, there were almost no press. That is to say, those with an instinct for a story realized that there was ‘nothing to see here’.

Meanwhile, despite warnings to the contrary from earlier meetings, legal actions continue unabated in the United States, and in both the US and Canada, plans for integrating same-sex relationships and blessings into the theology and liturgy of the Anglican churches continues almost unabated.

In short, at the structural level in North America, the revisionist ‘Liberals’ have won.

They have called the bluff of the Communion as a whole, and they have simply by-passed the reconciling posture of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Knowing that, in the end, they can do what they like and get away with it they are, unsurprisingly, pressing ahead. If the election of a Buddhism-practising bishop can be accepted without a whimper both within TEC and beyond, then clearly the end of the moratorium on consecrating those in active gay relationships cannot be far off.

Looking at the ‘Thinking Anglicans’ website — a useful bellwether for these things — it is clear that no one really believes in the fight any longer. Not that the revisionists have given in, but rather that no one is really bothered. Eventually, and inevitably, TEC and the Anglican Church in Canada will resume ‘business as usual’ on the sexuality agenda. Indeed in my own view the Canadians are currently ahead of the Americans in this regard. Meanwhile, traditionalists have taken their own structural steps which mean that eventually their attention will have to return to the ‘mundane’ subjects of preaching, teaching and spreading the gospel. A church cannot live on controversy alone.

GAFCON was a great illustration of what global Anglicanism could have been, but there is no clear path ahead for the movement. The Nigerians want to get on with mission their own way, in their own backyard, as do those from Sydney, who are pressing ahead with their ambitious, but intensely demanding, outreach. Get-togethers are great, but they cannot provide the daily agenda.

And the truth is, since global Anglicanism is no longer the prize, there is nothing really left to fight over. And if there is nothing over which to fight, who will bother fighting? I don’t believe Dr Katharine Jefferts-Schori really gives a fig what Rowan Williams or anyone else thinks of her. In the end, TEC will become an increasingly independent body, at the centre of its own network. The global agenda for TEC will be the expansion of its influence in Africa, not the need to remain in Canterbury’s good books.

In North America, there will, for a time at least, be two competing ‘Anglicanisms’, one recognized by GAFCON/FCA, the other embraced by Canterbury and claiming the moral high-ground as the non-separatists. This will become a matter for sheer ‘economics’ — numbers and income deciding who is eventually left standing where. Much the same will happen in Canada.

The real question for us in these islands is what will happen here, and specifically what will happen in England. It is clear that Wales and Scotland are already realigning theologically with TEC/Canada. There are many who hope and expect that England will do the same.

The launch in this country later this year of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans therefore has an urgent question to address, which is how to deal with the new situation of realpolitik. We are no longer looking to ‘save the Communion’. It is lost. The urgent question is whether we can save ourselves.

Revd John P Richardson
9 March 2009

When posting your comments please give a full name and location. Comments without this information may not be posted.