The present crisis in Anglicanism is a difficult but highly creative moment. This is the belief of the leading Anglicans from different backgrounds who are the contributors to this book edited by Kenneth Stevenson.
159 pp. Darton, Longman & Todd. To purchase this book online go to www.dltbooks.com
CONTENTS
Preface
Contributors
Part One – Worked Examples
Part Two – Unfinished Business
CONTRIBUTORS
WORKED EXAMPLES
CHAPTER ONE : THE LOCAL AND THE UNIVERSAL AND THE MEANING OF ANGLICANISM: KENYA
JOHN GLADWIN
The Anglican settlement
I was brought up to believe that the Reformation, among other things, achieved four things for the Church of England. First, it affirmed the primary authority of the Scriptures as God’s word leading us to Jesus Christ. This is the text that gives the Gospel to us. Second, it restricted the credal foundation of the church to the historic creeds, as set out in the 39 Articles of Religion. These together with the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal defined the doctrinal and ecclesial character of the Church of England. Not all the Councils of the Early Church were accepted as carrying authority within the life of the church. Third, by a variety of historical incidents and the English rejection of the Puritan demand for further reform, the Church of England held on to the historic shape of its three-fold ministry. Fourth, it removed the power of the Bishop of Rome over the church, thereby emphasising the local character of the government of the church. All these characteristics of the church have endured and help define the Anglican inheritance. The Chicago/Lambeth Quadrilateral in the twentieth century is formed in this classic Anglican manner. These four simply stated boundaries of that Statement define Anglicanism in its international form.
This is how the Windsor Report puts it:
… as inherent parts of this sacred deposit, and therefore essential to the restoration of unity among the divided branches of Christendom, we account the following, to wit:
a. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the revealed Word of God.
b. The Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith.
c. The two Sacraments, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution and the elements ordained by him.
d. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church (1).
That is it!
To be in full communion with Anglican churches, local churches have to evidence these marks within their life and order. It is interesting to note that the Chicago/Lambeth Quadrilateral is a short and very flexible document. It defines the Scriptures and their authority but not how they are to be interpreted beyond faithfulness to the Nicene Creed. It does not set out any particular model for the historic episcopate. So within these boundaries churches may order their lives and affairs and their pastoral oversight as they think fit. Thus, on a whole variety of matters churches within the Anglican family have different disciplines and practices. These include women and holy orders, orders affecting marriage and family life, and the size, authority, and power of dioceses and their bishops. A core set of commitments making us identifiably Anglican allow a great diversity of experience in the local church. The Church of England is itself a demonstration of this truth in the variety of histories and traditions in our 44 dioceses.
Both in terms of law and doctrine we have resisted the route of maximal defining statements. We are neither bound by the books of Catholic Dogma nor the fulsome Calvinist Westminster Confession. The Church of England’s Canon Law is bound in a small and basic document which when read carefully gives those under canonical oaths of obedience plenty of room for choice. If we then ask the question as to the nature of the local church we have to consider, within Anglicanism, a variety of levels of life. We now have the Anglican Communion. But that is a gathering of the Provinces of the Communion with no power of governance vested in it. We have the regular meeting of the Primates. This has no constitutional structure. It is a gathering of people in their shared role. Of longer endurance we have the Lambeth Conference which, again, has no juridical authority but is a recognition of the pivotal nature of Episcopal ministry within our tradition. Resolutions of this conference have moral but not governmental authority. Provinces and/or national churches may well have crucial structures for the governance of the church but even these have to recognise the Episcopal order of the church. That leads to our understanding that the diocese is the basic form of the local church. As we know, in the variety of experience across the Communion, that can take many forms. Dioceses and their bishops can be very powerful and directive agencies, or they can work in a highly devolved manner through parishes and the church in its immediate locality. In England we tend to have large dioceses, giving a great deal of scope to the parishes and the church within them. In places like Nigeria many dioceses are hardly any larger than English deaneries and the bishop may carry a great deal of immediate authority over them.
It is this sense of our history that shapes the way I approach the present challenges within Anglicanism. We need to exercise great care and not a little caution in looking at ways forward for us all. There are real dangers to our character and inheritance in trying to resolve our problems by new definitions of faith that seek to close down debate and the capacity of local churches to carry forward the mission of Christ within their own context. We should be very cautious of any proposal for new structures of power within the wider Communion drifting us in the Roman and pontifical direction. The moral and pastoral authority of statements made by the bishops of the Communion or by the Primates is much more important than any legal and disciplinary authority attached to them.
Kenya
There are two examples from my experience of visiting our partners in the Church of the Province of Kenya last year. These have much to teach us. Indeed, we all have much to learn from one another. The stereotyping of different parts of the Communion is both untruthful and unhelpful. Africa is not made up of old-fashioned and reactionary churches struggling to catch up with the enlightened wisdom of the northern and western churches. The northern and western churches are not cesspits of rational unbelief and moral disorder. Every church, in the proper continuity of Anglican life, is working hard at making sense of the meaning of the Gospel within its cultural and social setting. All face challenges and all have real problems.
It is well known that when it was made public that I had agreed to become a patron of Changing Attitude, the Archbishop of Kenya issued a direction that our visit should come to an end. We did eventually sort this out and the visit was completed with the Archbishop’s office agreement and help. The Archbishop did, however, indicate that he would raise the issue at the Provincial Council a few weeks later. I understand that this did come on the agenda. The bishops of the four dioceses with which Chelmsford has a historic link made it clear that the matter belonged within the jurisdiction of the dioceses not of the Province. That carried the day. Links are therefore established primarily between dioceses. That underlined the character of the Kenyan Church whose constitution works on a strong diocesan model. There is a bottom-up sense to its history and governance – the Province being a gathering of the dioceses to ensure good governance for the church. The bishop within the diocese is the focal point of authority and for the pursuit of the mission of the church.
The second interesting experience from our visit to Kenya gave me a much deeper sense of how much we can learn from one another. In the midst of the public controversy surrounding our visit – at its height – we were in the Diocese of Kirinyaga in the Samburu region. This flat land beyond Mount Kenya, which you can see on a good day in the distance, is suffering severe drought. Meeting its nomadic village people and sharing in the ministry of confirmation with them was one of the most moving experiences of my life. One of our groups of curates spent some extra time visiting these villages. They had to come to terms with the presence of polygamy within Christian villages.
It so happened that at the same time as these encounters were making our people think again, I was meeting Archbishop David Gitari, the former Primate and a very courageous leader of the Church in East Africa, who gave us an insight into the character of the Kenyan Church. He also gave me a copy of his latest book on ‘Responsible Church Leadership’. In this book I learnt about the Kenyan Church’s journey of pastoral theology in relation to the question of polygamy. It is clear that Archbishop Gitari believes that the resolution of the 1888 Lambeth Conference forbidding the baptism of people in polygamous relationships is a piece of imperialism by a church which was then dominated by white English bishops. Let me quote to you a paragraph of what he says:
Godly discernment is needed to determine which customs, though not ideally Christian, are nevertheless tolerable to the gospel. The criteria of the tolerable customs are that: there is no clear teaching against it in the scriptures; and that it is likely to die a natural death when the Christian church is firmly established. In one case, of great importance for Africa, the Anglican Church has failed to recognise a tolerable custom. 1988 was the centenary of the Lambeth Conference’s decisive, and I believe mistaken, refusal of baptism to polygamists. The issue of polygamy meets our suggested criteria: the New Testament contains no implicit or explicit statement on
polygamy, unless it is Paul’s instruction that bishops and deacons should be married to one wife (1 Timothy 3:2, 12). However, polygamist men who want to become Christians have been handled as if their condition were intolerable to the gospel (2).
The Archbishop goes on to a long discussion of the issue and then sets before us the measures adopted by the Anglican Church of Kenya in 1982. I will not list them but suffice it to say they do not conform to the 1888 Resolution of the Lambeth Conference. Local needs being met by a careful process of theological and pastoral discernment for the sake of the mission of the Gospel. The Archbishop was manifestly disappointed that the Lambeth Conference did not revoke its 1888 Resolutions. He did not, however, see the Kenyan Church as bound by them.
It is clear that the Kenyan Church looks to the international gatherings and instruments of the Communion to provide a forum of assistance in which a great deal of mutual listening happens. They are not looking for the wider church to control or direct their decisions but to hear, to discern in a theological manner, and receive them. The issues facing us today, though different, are not a thousand miles from this sort of pastoral challenge. If the Communion is to work it needs to be a place where churches, holding within the boundaries of the Chicago/ Lambeth Quadrilateral, can without threat share their different challenges and journeys and find help and encouragement. The Kenyan story has much to teach all of us. Dare one say that we might also learn some important things by listening carefully to the pastoral and theological experience of our brothers and sisters in North America? The message is that Resolutions of the Lambeth Conference have not always been good news for the mission of the Gospel across our very diverse world. That is why, after the 1998 Conference and having observed the 1988 Conference, I came to the conclusion that Lambeth Conferences have been too dominated by the political process of passing resolutions and not enough by the offering of pastoral and theological support, advice, and comment to the churches of the Communion and to our wider ecumenical friends. All of that is rooted in an understanding of our Anglican tradition of ecclesial order. We take the local church very seriously as at the heart of our order. In an international and global world we need to be careful not to undermine this vital character of our identity.
Some questions
The Anglican order may, therefore, have something rather crucial to contribute in the modern world. This is about how we maintain communion across difference in an international world without compromising the pivotal significance of the local. The last quarter of the twentieth century witnessed a huge shift into global experience. Contemporary systems of communication and the workings of a global and liberalised economy mean that we are all utterly interconnected. We cannot conduct our affairs as if we can cocoon ourselves from the wider human community. In even more recent times, we have become all too aware of our total interdependent nature when thinking of the issues of the future of the planet – global warming and the stewardship of creation. So we need each other and we need to be in real relationship.
What we are not succeeding in is the nurturing of the vitality and self-worth of the local in the face of the growing power of the international. There are struggles around institutions like the structure of the World Bank and real concerns about the weakness of the global south within it. There are proper concerns about the way both northern and Asian economies are developing and having a destructive effect upon the future of the planet and upon the capacity of smaller developing nations to become genuinely self-governing. In Christian Aid we watch the impact of the systems of the global economy on small and highly vulnerable local communities. Often we see local communities unable to sustain their own chosen and needed patterns of life in the face of the power of our global order. We cannot live as if this process of globalisation has not happened and we must not let it ride roughshod over local autonomy and the choices of ordinary people and their communities.
The twentieth century has seen a massive movement in which power centralises, and with it the growth of powerful states and powerful corporate institutions both of a public and a private character. That is not to suggest that these are of themselves evil and corrupt. Many have the highest standards and values. But it does suggest that the way things work in the relationship between the large and global institutions and the small and local organisations and communities brings constant pressure on the local. The issues we face in the UK and elsewhere in western economies concerning the impact of ever-growing retail giants – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s, and Asda in the UK – on the wider retail market, are embedded in the challenges facing the international order. Is the genuinely local being squeezed by the operations of the international economic order?
We have yet to find answers to all of this. Part of the problem is that we are operating in a new global environment with old post-war-shaped institutions that were established when the need was to order and control. Now the need is to build relationships and enable diversity and flexibility to flourish. What we must not do in the Anglican Communion is to find twentieth-century structural solutions to twenty-first-century challenges. We too need to enable diversity within flourishing relationships. That does mean taking the local and the diocese with much greater seriousness than some of our conversations suggest. It also means that we need to use the opportunities of our global relationships to listen carefully to one another about how our interrelated world is affecting all of us and how we can better exercise our responsibility towards one another. Thus the agenda centres on the movement of our culture at the foundation of our mission rather than the presenting issues on the surface. The task is to create a process of mutual support rather than one of enforcing an outmoded conformity.
What we have in the Anglican Communion is a model of how on a large and diverse field you put down the boundary markers:
On that playing field self-governing churches can inhabit their own space and at the same time engage with one another. They may need instruments to enable this process of mutuality and a common inheritance. These can change as the needs change. The Windsor Report clearly sees the need for changes in the structure and processes of the Communion. This needs to build on an ever-evolving history. So we have seen the development of the Lambeth Conference, the ACC, and the Primates’ Meeting. These are not institutions of governance. They are instruments to enable mutual engagement and shared experience. They should also be places that enable the churches to work through moments of conflict and difference on the basis of their living within the borders as agreed. We have quite a good record in these matters, as is evidenced by the way the question of women and the episcopate has been handled. The autonomy of churches has been respected, enabling the development of the ordained ministry of women without imposing it upon churches against their will. Churches must make their own decisions and these have to be mutually respected, provided they do not breach the boundaries established and a sense of mutual obligation.
In other words, the process of change within the Communion needs to strengthen the life of the local church and enable the communion of churches to flourish in the context of this rich history and diversity.
Conclusion
In summary, the task must remain essentially Anglican in culture. That means building relationships rather than institutions. We should be very cautious about any solution to difference that seeks to give power to institutions and gives up on the patient work of nurturing relationships and keeping conversation alive and well. The same truth applies to statements of faith. We have rather a lot of them in the history of the church. In one sense their existence is evidence of a failure in communion and in conflict resolution.
An Anglican Covenant could be seen in that light. We resort to words as a way of settling difference. If the words capture the essential communion we all share they help us move forward together. If they exclude, they further divide the church. We will need to exercise real caution here. To use another phrase of Archbishop Gitari, we must never allow the urgent to take us away from the important.’ Exploring relationships and building communion takes time and requires patience. In a culture dominated by the immediate, we need to watch lest we rush to solutions which later the church will regret.
Let me give an image of the significance of all of this – an encouraging snapshot of what diversity means for us. A friend found himself worshipping in one of the most conservative and traditional catholic parishes in ECUSA. The church is opposed to the ordained ministry of women. It has not, however, broken its communion with its bishop. The service includes baptism. The baptism includes baptism of the adopted children of same-sex couples. No one thinks there is anything unusual or unorthodox in a same-sex couple bringing their adopted child for baptism. That is diversity and difference at work. Dividing the church up into ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ factions fails to understand what is really happening at a time when human life is beginning to learn to accept and then enjoy its diversity.
Bishop Tom Butler put the challenge well in his Presidential address to his Diocesan Synod in March 2007. Responding to the demand of the Anglican Primates’ Meeting in Tanzania earlier in 2007 he comments:
And here I believe lies the fundamental flaw. The Primates have misunderstood the nature of our communion. From the consecration of the first overseas Anglican bishops there was no intention of creating a kind of soviet bloc Communion where each province had to march in step with one another. Listen to this letter of the English Bishops to the Philadelphia Convention in 1786 when they had been requested to consecrate an American priest as bishop. They wrote: ‘We cannot but be extremely cautious, lest we should be instruments of establishing an ecclesiastical system which will be called a branch of the Church of England, but afterwards may possibly appear to have departed from it essentially, either in doctrine or discipline.’
There was no intention of creating a branch of the Church of England in America … I would like us to return to our roots and ask ourselves, is it our calling to be a Communion where we must march in step and if one province departs from the others in doctrine or discipline, they must depart from the Communion? … Or is it our calling to be a Commonwealth of Anglican provinces, uncompromised by the beliefs and behaviours of other provinces, trusting that they know what is best for the Church and world in their particular culture with their particular history and tradition? I don’t hear that argument being made. Perhaps it should (4).
Either we rejoice in our Anglican inheritance or we slump back into these centralising universals that belong to an age that, for the moment, has passed. The twenty-first century needs something different from us.
NOTES
