The Late, Lamented Anglican Communion

EASTER, 2006

THE LATE, LAMENTED ANGLICAN COMMUNION

The obituaries for the Anglican Communion are some of the longest-running in history. For three years now, and more, we’ve been reading new editions of them on a regular basis. Since the 2003 General Convention ratified the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, the post-mortems have consistently identified acceptance of homosexuality as the immediate cause of death. At the same time, bands of faithful believers, encouraged perhaps by the delay in the official funeral, have hoped and prayed for a resuscitation of the corpse, a la Lazarus.

Three years ago, in a series of articles, I opined that “In the United States, we have become two churches… those who became socially and theologically liberal in response to the injustices of the first half of the twentieth century, and those who became Evangelicals in response to the social upheavals of the second half.” My conclusion regarding the Episcopal Church in the U. S. was that “We are not going to split because we want to become two denominations. We are going to split because we already have.” The issue, I argued, is not really the role of homosexuals in our church (for that is merely the present manifestation of an ongoing conflict), but the struggle for dominance between those who are “selectively literal” in Biblical interpretation, and those who are “selectively figurative.”

The process has continued. I would submit that what has really been going on for these several years is not so much CPR on the patient as it is preparation for contesting the will. Even as the Columbus General Convention approaches, I can’t say exactly at what point death will be pronounced. But I have now become convinced that the Anglican Communion, as we have thought of it, is a thing of the past. Here’s why.

Last fall, having found that I am to be a member of West Virginia’s clergy deputation to General Convention this June 2006, I expressed the hope that this Convention would be less eventful than the last, that we could “try to focus on our mission in the world rather than being totally distracted by one divisive and unresolved issue.”

The issue is still unresolved, but it seems less and less likely that the coming Convention will be less eventful or less divisive. In fact, it seems as if circumstances are developing to make the General Convention of 2006 in some ways a replay of ’03, but perhaps ultimately more decisive. For one thing, I believe that positions have hardened, and that the angst of 2003 has turned into anger. But other processes are at work as well.

The House of Bishops, in response to the Windsor Report, called for a moratorium on the election and consecration of any new bishops prior to this Convention, to forestall, for a while, any precipitous and provocative elections while we were digesting the actions and reactions of the year past. That time is now up, and elections are underway in several dioceses. In the Diocese of California, where Bishop Bill Swing (formerly of West Virginia), is retiring, of the seven nominees, three are partnered gay or lesbian priests. The General Convention will have the task of ratifying that election. We therefore have the possibility of being right back in the place we were in at the 2003 Convention, with all the attendant theatrics and press hyperventilation one would expect.

I don’t know how that situation (if it presents itself) will play out, primarily because I don’t know yet how the House of Bishops would respond this time. I know they have been doing a great deal of work lately on their relationships and their strategies for dealing with just such a conflict-producing development. However, that scenario may not be the only or most dangerous dilemma we have to deal with. There is also the Windsor Report itself, and the Convention’s response to it.

The House of Bishops (which meets between Conventions) has already expressed regret over the lack of any consultation with other provinces in the Anglican Communion prior to the consecration of Bishop Robinson, and for the “pain” that action caused others within the Communion. It did not express regret at the consecration itself, nor did it vow never to perform such a consecration again. Leading figures in the traditionalist African church, as well as among American traditionalist bishops and clergy, have declared that nothing short of repentance and amendment of life on the part of the General Convention, especially the House of Bishops, will satisfy them. To be quite frank, I cannot imagine either House of the General Convention this year making any such declaration. That means that, even if we do avoid affirming a second non-celibate gay bishop, the long-impending schism and realignment of the Anglican Communion may be inevitable.

Now the shocking revelation: I have decided that the dissolution of the Anglican Communion is an historical inevitability, that it is actually a necessary step toward an eventual reconciliation within Christianity.

Of course, in a way, the Anglican Communion never existed. It has no Constitution, no Incorporation, no Articles of Confederation. Every national church of the Communion is completely independent of all others. (Notice the concept of “national” church, original to us Anglicans.) The Archbishop of Canterbury, accorded respect as “first among equal” bishops, nevertheless has no authority whatsoever outside of England. We are one communion only as long as we speak and act as if we are (which we quit doing in about 1977). We are, at best, a voluntary association of nationally-based denominations with an historical and forcibly-imprinted cultural tie to England.

And we love it inordinately. We point proudly to the colored blotches on the world map, which promote the fiction that we are a world-wide, and therefore “catholic,” communion. We get all teary-eyed remembering when we attended an Anglican congregation in some far-off corner of the world and somehow felt at home again in the familiar order of the liturgy--in English, of course, whatever the official language of the country in question. We take solace in the fact that, despite our paltry numbers here in the United States, the masses of African Anglicans pump us up into the third most numerous communion of Christians in the world. (We need them for that, if nothing else.) All of these things are solace to our institutional ego. But they do very little to promote the Good News of Christ.

The sad fact is that those colored blotches do not really occur all over the world map, but only on those lands which the British swept by military might into their Empire, with a few later accretions through American colonialism. Anglican churches outside the Anglo-American sphere itself occur in two types: first, in Europe, South and Central America, and Asia, there are the Anglican congregations which are really mere chapels for Anglo-American business and government interests at prayer, and they could scarcely exist on their own. They have little native constituency. Second, primarily in Africa, there are congregations and dioceses which are composed almost entirely of a native constituency. These churches are very different from the “mother” (i. e. “white”) provinces of the U. S., U. K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They are more hierarchical and more clericalist, with lay people having little influence; they are much less democratic in their church structures; they are overwhelmingly Evangelical in their theology and spirit; they are far more communal in their attitudes, having very little room for the individual rights so ascendant in Western societies; and they are much more highly male-centered, with very subservient roles for women. In other words, they reflect African culture, as our church reflects European culture. These provinces are where the energy generates for resisting American and Canadian “laxity” in enforcing the Biblical injunction against acceptance of homosexuals and women in church leadership.

What this means is that, in addition to the gulf dividing the “selectively figurative” and “selectively literal” interpreters of scripture, which unites African and South American Anglicans with our North American traditionalist Anglicans, there is also the gulf dividing the wealthy global North and the impoverished global South, which will ultimately divide those elements of the church. Resentment of the formerly-colonized at being made subordinates even in their own churches has been increasing. There has been an undercurrent of struggle for influence among the provinces of the Anglican Churches for quite a while now, which has little to do with anyone’s sexuality. Hence, the Anglican Communion, if it ever existed, has been falling apart for quite a long time. When you scratch the surface, it turns out to be about power, and its long-time companion, wealth, just as everything always is.

We of the northern hemisphere claim superiority due to our prosperity, our intellectualism, our technologies, and our supposed cultural superiority. The Anglicans of the southern hemisphere have begun to notice that there are a great many more of them than there are of us, and they claim that as a source of superiority. In addition, they claim their energy and devotion, their emotional spirituality, and their supposed Biblical faithfulness as a contrast to the seeming lethargy of European and American Anglican churches.

African and South American religious leaders do not want to be told that, in time, their culture will evolve to embrace equal rights for women and individual liberties for all kinds of people, including gays—even if that is true. They are in the mood to draw a line in the sand and resist any further cultural encroachment from the free-wheeling and individualistic north. Tired of having to dance, or refuse to dance, as the case may be, to the tune of the United States and Canada, some of their leaders want to select melodies with a more local flavor, and conduct the orchestra as well. What they have feared to risk in the past is loss of American money. Now, they are happy to use the present state of conflict within the American church over the role of homosexuals to accomplish their political goals. By carving out a like-minded and well-heeled segment of our church to lure into their sphere of influence, they believe they have found a way to have both increased power and the wealth to support it.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has been a keen disappointment from a leadership point of view. He could have made clear from the outset that the question at hand is not whether the church in Nigeria, for example, is in communion with ECUSA or not, but whether they are in communion with him or not. What makes a bishop and his diocese a member of the Anglican Communion is being in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that brings with it all the other bishops who acknowledge that connection; impairment in the one relationship brings with it impairment in the other! Williams has not done that. He appears to be paralyzed by fear of having the Anglican Communion fall apart on his watch. But it seems to me that what is really happening is something far more to be feared by the See of Canterbury, and that is that he has allowed his office to become irrelevant. Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria has much more energy and speaks with much more conviction than the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is now clearer than ever that the Primate of England, whoever occupies that bishopric, has been set up by earlier Anglicans overseas as a sort of Pope-facsimile. He has most of the pomp and ceremony, with little of the power. Power wielded imprudently (as it always is, at some point) is destructive and counter-productive. We do not need or truly want a pope, British or Nigerian. But if he lacks real power, and fears to use even the personal authority he has, he becomes useless—or reveals the inherent uselessness of his office for the world-wide communion.

What surprises me most about this, now that it is coming to pass, is that any of us should be surprised.

WHY GOD WILL BREAK UP THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION

A simple realignment of power within the Anglican Communion won’t work, of course, perhaps even in the short term. It will not just fracture the Anglican Communion, it will obliterate it. One of the facts about schism is that one fracture always results in further fragmentation within the breakaway body, as egos once in conflict with the parent organization then turn upon one another in their struggle to be supreme. I wonder, though, if it isn’t part of God’s amazing and exceedingly patient plan. I wonder if Anglicanism has not reached the limit of its usefulness in promoting the Kingdom of God, so that it must now partly die in order to become something much greater and more fruitful for the twenty-first century.

For that to happen, we must be purged of our original sin. Every church has a besetting sin that it is born in.

For example, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, it is the fact of being the successor to the Roman Empire, which brings with it the evils of all-powerful hierarchy (the Pope as Emperor), with a rigid, all-encompassing legalism. For Lutheranism, it is their continuing fixation on every word ever penned by their hero and founder, Martin Luther. For various Protestant sects, it is such characteristics as exclusivism, narrowness of vision, self-righteousness, judgmentalism, works-righteousness, xenophobia, and so forth.

In the case of Anglicans of all continents and nationalities, it is our Anglophilia, with the extreme nationalism, ethnocentrism, and elitism, and sometimes militarism that go along with it. (Racism has been part of it in the past, but oddly, black Anglicans of the West Indies and Africa are often greater Anglophiles than anyone!) Our communion was not born out of a desire to make the church more Christian, but out of a desire to make it more English. What it comes down to for us today is that we do not love the Anglican Communion, or even our own Episcopal Church, because it is catholic, or even because it is Christian, but because it is English.

I confess to being in the front line of sinners in this regard. When I considered becoming an Episcopalian, it did not hurt a bit in the sight of this English Lit major that the Episcopal Church is the church of Shakespeare and Donne, Herbert, and Austen. I instantly loved such features as Anglican chant, English choral vestments, and that great repository of English language treasures, the Book of Common Prayer. Even the design of Episcopal church buildings, so many of them looking as if plucked out of the English countryside and planted on American soil, is attractive to me. I am only partly joking when I refer to my trips to the British Isles as “pilgrimages to the Holy Land.” Unfortunately, a lot of heavy baggage comes along with our self-identification as an English church.

Not long ago, I learned of a very faithful and congenial church member, exactly the sort of person we would love to have in the Episcopal Church, who declined to be received into the Anglican Communion from the Roman Catholic Church, at least in part, because—with an Irish background—she has always thought of the Church of England as “the church of the oppressor.” To the Irish, that is exactly what we are! The English conquerors, and their church, have behaved abominably toward the Irish in earlier years. “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland may be mostly about politics and economics today, but their origin is in England’s forced colonization of Ireland by Scottish Protestants for the purpose of establishing a bulwark against Catholic insurgency. The story of England’s tinkering with Scottish religion is, itself, not a pretty one.

The situation is similar to the north of us. The ancestors of French Canadians were conquered militarily by the English, who suppressed them, their language, and their Catholic Church for a couple of centuries. It is only through threat of secession that Quebec has begun, in recent years, to gain better treatment from Anglo-Canada. Suppose a French Canadian wanted to be catholic, but not Roman Catholic. How attractive would the Anglican Church of Canada, or the Episcopal Church here—branches of the “church of the oppressor,” be to her?

Add to the mix Australia and New Zealand, India, Hong Kong, and a host of African nations, perhaps most notably South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, and you have a considerable list of “things done and left undone” with on-going ramifications. Were the abuses all perpetrated by the Church of England? Largely not. But the problem is that, with the monarch as the head of the church, there is no distinction between the church and the state in Britain, and little distinction between church culture and British culture anywhere else in Anglicanism.

On more than one occasion, my Inquirers Class has come to an untimely halt for a prospective church member when we got to Henry VIII. Though I do not present him as in any way the founder of the Church of England, the idea of his particular dispute with the Vatican resulting in the initial break between Canterbury and Rome has been more than some sincere Christian seekers could take. I can’t say I blame them!

This is the realization that has dawned on me recently: once we get over the shock of becoming something less than Anglican, we will be able to live into the new hope of becoming something much greater, something truly catholic and far more true to the Gospel.

THE COMING REFORMATION

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I don’t know if the Episcopal Church will get kicked out of the Anglican Communion or not. I don’t know if, failing to get us kicked out, some of the African provinces will break with Canterbury or not (they have already broken with us.) I don’t know if a handful of American dioceses will withdraw from the Episcopal Church or not. I don’t know if the recent trend for traditionalist congregations to affiliate with the Church of Rwanda will continue or not, in the short term (that deal can’t last long, in any case). But I know now that the myth of the world-wide Anglican Communion is dissolving.

Having observed a moment of silence in its memory, I am ready to begin visioning what can be forming out of the baskets of broken pieces of bread and fish remaining. I think what comes next may be one of the more exciting developments in Christian history. We’ll have our own besetting original sin, to be sure. But I think we have the opportunity coming to be absolved of a great many sins that have persisted from the previous Reformation.

One characteristic of the Episcopal Church that will survive the break-up of the Anglican Communion will be the very one that precipitated that break-up. That is the fact that we are a church that takes a more scholarly and figurative approach to Holy Scriptures rather than the more doctrinal and literal approach taken by the group that calls itself “orthodox Anglicans.” Another will be our strong sense of sacrament. Another will be our Incarnational mind-set—the way that we find the living Christ dwelling in ourselves, in others, in every situation, no matter how trying, in which we find ourselves. Those characteristic will be the basis for a realignment of denominations, a new Reformation that will eventually sweep the world. All of the mainline Christian groups are heading down the same path of conflict that we have been on. There will be several others experiencing schism, and looking for new partners, very soon. Our experience will equip us for a role of servant leadership among our fellow sojourners.

To prepare for the role of leadership the hour presents us, we must take some decisive steps very soon.

• We must renounce Englishness as the basis of our church culture and embrace diversity of race, ethnicity, and culture as normative for Christians. We should no longer refer to ourselves as Anglicans, but, until another name for us is revealed, just be plain Episcopalians.
• We must renounce nationalism and chauvinism in all forms. Nationalism is a destructive delusion, the cause of the most devastating wars in human history. There are no nationalities in heaven, and heaven is the reality we strain toward in all of our earthly existence. Toward this end, we must argue forcefully for the separation of church and state, not only in the U. S., but everywhere Christians live, including England. The Church must never be an agent of government, or of any political party, but must continually call governments and politicians to higher standards of behavior in their treatment of both their own citizens and those of other nations. We should redefine our church’s identity, eliminating the clause “in the United States” from our name and our understanding of ourselves. I’d like to see us merge, not only with some other denominations (or parts of them), but with some other national churches, too, forming a communion that is truly universal. It dawned on us in the 1960’s that diocesan boundaries could cross state lines! It is time for us to realize that denominational boundaries have nothing to do with national borders, either.
• We must actively seek, as a top priority, concordat with Christians of other traditions, both in this country and abroad. Our present accord with the Lutherans, though troubled, holds promise. Perhaps the example of overcoming our fixation on Englishness will inspire them to work on theirs with German-ness (and Luther) as well. We should not stop there, however. We need to be persistent and energetic in our conversations with Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and all of the black denominations. We must look toward other Christian groups in terms of what attracts us to them, not what has historically separated us from them—especially ethnicity, language, or national origins.
• We might as well admit openly that one of our goals, perhaps our primary one, is to become a truly catholic church. We want to be a world-wide communion. We want to be a church for all times and for all peoples. We want to be a progressive and reforming catholic church, struggling to put aside paternalism and hierarchialism, elitism and ethnocentrism. We will honor the tradition of the church, while recognizing that contemporary experience is constantly becoming part of that tradition. Toward that end, we will seek to persuade the Roman Catholic Church to begin dismantling its Imperial system of government and move toward a more democratic and less legalistic one, for we deeply desire to be one with them as well. In the meantime (for this is a project for centuries), we should actively seek to embrace, as individuals and groups, those of the Roman fold who desire to continue to be faithful Catholic Christians while casting aside the yoke of the Vatican and the Roman Magisterium.
• We must resist the temptation of making the Prayer Book an unofficial “fifth plank” of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. Our 1979 Book of Common Prayer broke new ground in offering greater variety in worship forms. In the future, we will still need to insist upon “authorized liturgies” to prevent all manner of heretical forms from proliferating. But we will need far more than would fit into any one book, along with the flexibility to develop new ones much more rapidly. The future will bring Books of Common Prayer, drawn from a variety of denominational sources.
• To be truly catholic, we must hold to the office and order of bishops. But we must recognize that the role and culture of that order is subject to change, just as it changed when the American church broke with the English one in the late eighteenth century.

Many of the bits and pieces that form the church we become will be leftovers from our own Episcopal tradition, for we have much to contribute, far more than our small size in the U. S. would normally entitle. But I do not suggest that we negotiate or argue for those things. I deeply believe in the truth of Jesus’ statement that if we want to have our life, we must lose it. Those elements of our worship, theology, organization, and practice that are worthy and useful will be discovered and embraced by others for their own merit. As the householder takes out of her basket things that are old and things that are new, it soon becomes clear which are to be kept and which are to be put aside.

In these exciting and challenging times in which we live, I don’t know exactly what the Episcopal Church will become. I know we won’t be the church of the past century, any more than it was the church of the nineteenth. I’ve made a couple of decisions for myself, though. I’m not an Anglican anymore, just an Episcopal Christian. The head of my church is not Queen Elizabeth, or Rowan Williams, or even Frank Griswold (or his successor), but “just” Jesus. I think he still has a vital and rewarding role for us to play in the unfolding of his Kingdom into the coming era. We will yet bear much good fruit, and by that fruit we will be known as his.