Kendall Harmon's Initial Thoughts - June 27, 2006

Each time I have read Rowan Williams statement today I have liked it better. I wish late this afternoon to highlight one simple aspect of it that I think is crucial: above all this is a theological question which has to be settled by wrestling with Holy Scripture.

Nine times in the statement the word Bible is used; three times the word Scripture. I was especially struck by this paragraph:

Unless you think that social and legal considerations should be allowed to resolve religious disputes – which is a highly risky assumption if you also believe in real freedom of opinion in a diverse society – there has to be a recognition that religious bodies have to deal with the question in their own terms. Arguments have to be drawn up on the common basis of Bible and historic teaching. And, to make clear something that can get very much obscured in the rhetoric about ‘inclusion’, this is not and should never be a question about the contribution of gay and lesbian people as such to the Church of God and its ministry, about the dignity and value of gay and lesbian people. Instead it is a question, agonisingly difficult for many, as to what kinds of behaviour a Church that seeks to be loyal to the Bible can bless, and what kinds of behaviour it must warn against – and so it is a question about how we make decisions corporately with other Christians, looking together for the mind of Christ as we share the study of the Scriptures

Read it carefully again and note the boldfaced sections. The leader of the communion is calling us back to the Bible as the common basis of our faith and that to which we need to be loyal. There is a devastating critique of The Episcopal Church under the surface here. Yes, we have been unilateral, that isn’t good, yes, we put the cart before the horse and did not settle the same sex unions question first, that isn’t good, but above all we as a province have not discerned this question as above all a theological question.

Arguments have to be drawn up on the common basis of Bible and historic teaching. I cannot say a loud enough amen to that–KSH.

Summary of The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Letter to the Faithful, June 27, 2006

Summary of main points from the Anglican Communion Institute

Archbishop Rowan Williams recently shared his views regarding the current “crisis” in the Anglican Communion and the way forward he believes we must follow if we are to surmount it.  The paper, entitled  “The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today: A Reflection for the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion”, provides a careful outline of some of the main elements in this crisis, a summary of his sense of Anglicanism’s identity and vocation as a Christian communion, and a proposed way forward that Anglican churches might adopt to maintain the evangelical integrity and vitality of this communion.

The Archbishop’s reflections follow lines of thought that are well-traversed in recent Anglican ecclesiology, especially the Windsor Report.  He offers, however, some uncharacteristically pointed applications of some of these theological perspectives, ones that will need careful consideration by all Anglicans.  At present we offer two summaries (one longer, one shorter), by no means exhaustive, of what we believe to be key points in the Archbishop’s theological applications. 

Shorter Summary

1. Commitment to the Communion’s teaching, on the basis of Scriptural and historic teaching reached in common council.

2. Recognition of the unacceptability, in communion terms, of TEC’s decisions and actions over the past 3 years.

3. Recognition of the inevitability of fracture this has caused.

4. Commitment to strengthening the doctrinal and disciplinary unity of the Communion through a Covenant.

5. Recognition that this will involve some Anglican churches “opting” for or against membership in the Communion.

6. Recognition that this may involve separations among and within churches.

7. Commitment to a “collegial and collaborative” decision-making process that itself marks the nature of communion.

Longer Summary  

1. General Convention’s response to the Windsor Report was “incomplete”:  at the least, the Convention did not answer all the questions;  at worst, perhaps, even what they did answer may not be adequate to the limited questions they did address.

2. General Convention’s responses must be evaluated and responded to by the whole church, not just by this or that individual or group, beginning with Primates’ responses.

3. The Archbishop makes a strong judgment against the deeply divisive disruption of the Communion’s life by General Convention 2003, with its consent to a gay bishop and permissive attitudes to same-sex blessings.  These actions, he says very clearly, were without ecclesial justification, either internationally or even locally.  No real theological reasoning was done, despite much discussion, to back up these actions, and they were pursued unilaterally in a fashion that was clearly opposed to the Communion’s consensual teaching.

4. The Archbishop also provides a strong defense of the theological appropriateness of the Communion’s teaching regarding homosexuality (which, although he does not mention the resolution, he describes in ways completely congruent with Lambeth I.10).  The Communion’s teaching was clearly based on the integrity of biblical, historical, and collegial reasoning.

5. Abp. Williams offers a clear judgment that the Episcopal Church’s contradiction of this teaching represents a “small minority” view within world and therefore can be promoted by the Episcopal Church only at risk to the larger church, and at great ecclesial cost to the local (American) church.  General Convention ‘06 at least recognized the “gravity” of the situation.  That gravity involves having put the Episcopal Church “outside or even across the central stream of the life they have shared with other Churches”.

6. The Archbishop gives a strong defense of conservatives around the world who have found the Episcopal Church’s approach unacceptable and disruptive of communion.  Their responses have not necessarily been motivated by bigotry against homosexuals (though this must be named and challenged where such bigotry is obvious), but has been founded on sound theological and ecclesial reasoning (i.e. on the “Bible and its [Bible’s?  Church’s?]  historic teachings”, or on “loyalty to the Bible”).  It should be said that the Scriptures form necessarily central platform of reasoning for the Archbishop throughout his reflections.

7. Truth is generally furthered through its pursuit in communion – reading the Bible together, and praying together --  and generally weakened in its apprehension when pursued in separation from other Christians.  The Anglican Communion has represented a means of furthering the pursuit of God’s truth, to the degree that the Communion’s order and responsibilities in sharing Word and Sacrament have been honored. The Episcopal Church has not so honored this pursuit;  but other churches, as they have broken away from communion-counsel, have also contributed to this dishonoring of our shared vocation. Overall, the Archbishop says that the current unraveling of the Communion through unilateral “propheticism” and purifying separations is weakening our grasp of the Truth of God.

8. The Anglican Covenant as the best way forward into a renewed communion life.  It should provide an “opt-in” (that is, uncoerced) gathering of “constituent” members to the Anglican Communion, and an opt-out relationship to “associated” churches who want to remain connected, but not “bound in a single and unrestricted sacramental communion, and not sharing the same constitutional structures”. 

9. This opting in and opting out of the Communion, on the basis of a shared Covenant, will involve hard decisions, internationally and locally.  It may even lead to “ordered and mutually respectful separation” between the two groups at all levels at some point.  But the call to Covenant may also prove a positive challenge to grow into a desire and practical commitment to true communion.  We should approach the Covenant with this positive vision.

10. What would the theological and ecclesial character of the “constituent” churches in the re-shaped Communion look like?  Something that retains the “distinctive historic tradition” of Anglicanism.  This tradition, as Williams describes it, resembles the proverbial “three-legged stool”, except that it is clearly ordered in an unequal fashion:  “a reformed commitment to the absolute priority of the Bible for deciding doctrine, a catholic loyalty to the sacraments and the threefold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, and a habit of cultural sensitivity and intellectual flexibility that does not seek to close down unexpected questions too quickly”.  But such a re-invigorated theological and ecclesial character for Anglicanism will require a new ordering of “visible and formal” commitments to one another, i.e. the Covenant and its elements of promised common teaching, mission, and disciplinary limits.

11. The means of moving into this Covenant and its two-tier possibility is obviously one that will take time.  It cannot be done by “decree” (not by the Archbishop and certainly not by anyone else), and requires – as “communion” implies and demands – collegial and collaborative counsel and work.  It should be addressed “directly and fully” at the next Lambeth Conference (2008).

12. In the meantime, there is a “shared” work of “assessing” the post-General Convention situation, including the actual responses of the Convention.  This is a work that the Archbishop will pursue “collegially” with his own bishops in England, with the Primates, and with the other instruments of communion.  Beyond this, his own powers are limited to “convening and presiding” in the Communion, and providing the Communion with theological leadership.

Bishop Duncan Responds to Archbishop Williams’ Statement