December 14th, 2007
The Archbishop’s much anticipated Advent letter came out today. In it he explains the nature of the Anglican Communion. It is not a hierarchy.
“The Communion is a voluntary association of provinces and dioceses; and so its unity depends not on a canon law that can be enforced but on the ability of each part of the family to recognise that other local churches have received the same faith from the apostles and are faithfully holding to it in loyalty to the One Lord incarnate who speaks in Scripture and bestows his grace in the sacraments.”
We are a family. We are a voluntary association.
“we have no single central executive authority”
We have great difficulty resolving this sort of crisis because
“At the moment, the question of ‘who speaks for the Communion?’ is surrounded by much unclarity and urgently needs resolution”
This is one of the important questions that Lambeth 2008 must answer. The bigger issues at Lambeth will be the Anglican Covenant that formalizes the tradition of what it means to be Anglican and the status of The Episcopal Church within the Anglican Communion.
Archbishop Williams writes that a full relationship of Communion involves three common acknowledgments:
- that we stand under the authority of Scripture as ‘the rule and ultimate standard of faith’…Understanding the Bible is not a private process or something to be undertaken in isolation by one part of the family. Radical change in the way we read cannot be determined by one group or tradition alone.
- an authentic ministry of Word and Sacrament. We remain in communion because we trust that the Lord who has called us by his Word also calls men and women in other contexts and raises up for them as for us a ministry which can be recognised as performing the same tasks – of teaching and pastoral care and admonition, of assembling God’s people for worship, above all at the Holy Communion.
- that the first and great priority of each local Christian community is to communicate the Good News. When we are able to recognise biblical faithfulness and authentic ministry in one another, the relation of communion pledges us to support each other’s efforts to win people for Christ and to serve the world in his Name.
He goes on to make very clear that this crisis is not about sex. It is about fidelity
“to Scripture and the moral tradition of the wider Church, with respect to blessing and sanctioning in the name of the Church certain personal decisions about what constitutes an acceptable Christian lifestyle.”
When I wrote The Anglican River I was charitable towards the General Convention when I wrote that the blessing of same sex unions was approved before consensus on the Scriptural basis was achieved. Archbishop Williams is a bit more direct. (emphasis mine)
This is why the episcopal ordination of a person in a same-sex union or a claim to the freedom to make liturgical declarations about the character of same-sex unions inevitably raises the question of whether a local church is still fully recognisable within the one family of practice and reflection. Where one part of the family makes a decisive move that plainly implies a new understanding of Scripture that has not been received and agreed by the wider Church, it is not surprising that others find a problem in knowing how far they are still speaking the same language. And because what one local church says is naturally taken as representative of what others might say, we have the painful situation of some communities being associated with views and actions which they deplore or which they simply have not considered.
Where such a situation arises, it becomes important to clarify that the Communion as a whole is not committed to receiving the new interpretation and that there must be ways in which others can appropriately distance themselves from decisions and policies which they have not agreed. This is important in our relations with our own local contexts and equally in our ecumenical (and interfaith) encounters, to avoid confusion and deep misunderstanding.
The letter contains many more important points and thoughts, all of which are of import. I encourage you to read it several times.
It is ironic that The Episcopal Church is arguing before the courts that we are a hierarchy when it is only the fact that we are not that is keeping it within the Anglican Communion.
This letter effectively puts the burden of resolution of the crisis on the Lambeth Conference. The question on many people’s minds is “will the Lambeth Conference resolve this next summer, or will we need to wait for the next General Convention in 2009, or the next Lambeth Conference in 2018? Will this ever end?” In response I ask another question: “Is Anglicanism, with its structures that rely on a commitment to interdependence and so model Christ’s command to ‘Love one another’, worth saving?”
Will the Lambeth Conference act in such a way to bring resolution to this crisis? If the bishops attending are half as tired of this as we are I think so. The thought of acting in such a way that leaves the crisis unresolved for another 10 years is too much to bear.
Posted in Anglicanism, St. Edward's | 2 Comments »
