Archbishops of Canterbury through the centuries have explained the genius of Anglicanism as subsisting in its nature as a “broad” but catholic church, universal in its inclusivity.The last three archbishops have all told the same jokes: “The Church of England is like a swimming pool, all the noise is at the shallow end.” Or the one about the evangelical, liberal and catholic wings: “Low and lazy, High and crazy, Broad and hazy.”
Then came the debate over homosexuality, and everything changed, not just in England but throughout the 44 provinces and churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
After the consecration of the gay Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, in 2003 against the wishes of the primates or archbishops of the Communion, schism seemed inevitable as evangelicals stopped being lazy, if they ever were, and began campaigning — with an energy unprecedented among Anglicans in the modern era — for Gospel orthodoxy.
Liberals stopped being quite so broad, and began giving evangelicals a hard time, especially in North America.
The few old-style Anglo-Catholics left after women priests wondered how to cope with a debate that threatened not only their historical interpretation of orthodoxy but also to stigmatise those shy homosexuals among them who had for years simply got on quietly with a life of ministry and mission, with or without partners.
This weekend there is a lull between two key meetings at which some of these issues are being resolved, and where extraordinary solutions to the crisis are being considered. Historians may look back on this time as a new reformation as Anglican canon lawyers, theologians and bishops struggle to find a formula for a Church that can remain at once reformed and catholic, inclusive and orthodox, without formal schism.
This week, at their meeting in Alexandria, the primates have been debating the Covenant, a new document that is at the heart of the solution and sets out a Bible-based orthodoxy that the provinces will be invited to sign up to. Some provinces may well refuse to do so. These include Canada, where one diocese, New Westminster, has already authorised same-sex blessings, and another, Toronto, is expected to follow suit within a year.
The Episcopal Church of the US might also have difficulty giving full support to a document that does not do full justice to the ministry of clerics such as Bishop Robinson, now an establishment figure who is friendly with President Obama — he prayed the invocation at the start of the inauguration celebrations last month.
The result will be not schism but a two-tier communion, with all provinces in communion with the “mother church” in England and its primate, Dr Rowan Williams, primus inter pares or first among equals, but some having a lesser status and not being in full communion with each other.
At the same time the new “church” formed by conservative evangelicals in the US, led by the deposed Bishop of Pittsburgh, Bob Duncan, which is seeking recognition as a new province, is likely to be granted some extra-provincial status allowing the thousands of Anglicans it represents to remain within the Communion. This would lead to two parallel Anglican provinces operating in the US, one free to pursue its mission of inclusivity including the consecration of bishops of different sexualities, the other mandated to preach its own gospel of what it believes to be “orthodoxy”.
Complex, yes, but no more so than the mind of the present Archbishop of Canterbury, who kept the ship afloat at the Lambeth Conference last summer, in spite of boycotts by conservative archbishops. Dr Williams succeeded at this week’s Primates’ meeting in Alexandria at persuading all the primates to gather and even share Communion at the daily Eucharists in the land where the very first Christian Creeds were formulated, where monasticism has its roots and where the heretic Aries, on whom Dr Williams is an expert, conducted his own mission.
The architect of the Covenant is Canon Gregory Cameron, Dr Williams’s former chaplain in Wales and a top canon lawyer. A twinkly Friar Tuck figure, Cameron moved to the Anglican Communion Office in London after the new Archbishop’s translation to Canterbury. He has just been poached back by Wales, however,to be the new Bishop of St Asaph. He is widely tipped to succeed Barry Morgan as the next Archbishop of Wales and, still young at 49, is even being talked of as a future Archbishop of Canterbury.
Cameron, who has been with the primates in Alexandria, was cautiously optimistic about the future.
“The mood has taken a lot of people by surprise. There was a worry it was going to be hugely confrontational. The primates are being realistic, they are being honest, they are being patient with each other. There is a spirit of charity and careful listening. People’s positions have not shifted but the mood has changed.”
All the provinces, including the Church of England, see that the three mantras of the Windsor Report, the initial report intended to resolve the crisis, are being disregarded. Same-sex blessings are continuing, as are cross-border interventions from countries such as Africa into the US. Some US dioceses have even opted out completely and instead sought refuge in Argentina’s Province of the Southern Cone, which is led by an English-born primate, Bishop Gregory Venables.
The new realism from the primates, said Cameron, is that they now accept that same-sex blessings are not going to cease, that Bishop Robinson is not going to disappear and that the orthodox in the US and Canada in particular are not suddenly going to change their minds about the nature of Gospel truth and acquiesce to the liberal majority in their provinces. So the goal of the Covenant process is to establish, in this changed landscape, what it actually means to be Anglican, and what if anything unites everyone in one communion.
In this context next week’s meeting of the General Synod at Church House in Westminster has more significance than usual. The synod is debating women bishops, which Cameron fears could ultimately prove more divisive in England than the gay debate because of the Church of England’s special status in the Communion, and as an established church with the Queen as Supreme Governor.
The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, is leading the debate on the Covenant. Key among his proposals is that the 39 Primates should have ultimate authority in deciding who is in breach and who not, who is in the top tier of the re-formed communion and who in the second tier.
This was the proposal in the first, Nassau draft. The second, St Andrew’s, draft currently on the table proposes that the Anglican Communion Office itself, the executive entity at the centre of Communion government, should have this authority. Dr
Nazir-Ali, a conservative evangelical, believes an episcopal church should ultimately be episcopally governed.
“As always it is a balancing act,” he said. “What we need to do is keep as many people together as possible but in a principled way.” The synod will move on to discussing the Covenant next Thursday after hearing from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-
O’Connor, on the nature of communion. Dr Nazir-Ali intends to make the case for a strong under-girding, so the Communion does not just become a disparate entity with a vague identity. “I will remind them of the basis for fellowship in the Church,” he said.
He will also reassure members that the Covenant will not supersede the authority of synod, nor of the Crown in Parliament. It will be like the Porvoo agreement between Protestant and Lutheran churches in northern Europe — so-called after the Finnish town where discussions were held in 1989-92.
Prophecies in this arena are about as safe as economic forecasts, but it could be that after years of teetering on the brink of schism, unity is about to break out in the Anglican Communion.
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(Source: TTUK )