It’s been a very long time since I’ve blogged about the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. Not so long ago, my spiritual life was centered at All Saints Church in Pasadena, where I served on the vestry and worked for many years as a youth volunteer. My faith journey, as it so often has, uprooted me from the comfort zone of that large and dynamic parish a little over a year ago. But I remain, in some sense, an Anglican.
The Communion is in turmoil. (A great collection of articles, written from a nearly-neutral perspective, can be found here.) Battles over the ordination of women (a fight that goes back more than thirty years), the consecration of women bishops, and over homosexuality in the church have hit a boiling point this summer. As has been widely reported, a loose coalition of conservative Anglicans (financed by disaffected traditionalists in the First World, but led by prelates from the Third) held a meeting last month in Jerusalem to plan a strategy for an “alternative” Communion. Other bishops are gathering in England this summer for the decennial Lambeth Conference under the auspices of the titular head of the Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The good Archbishop is besieged from all sides.
The most impressive church in the whole Anglican Communion, and perhaps the world, is to me the glorious Durham Cathedral. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the role of the prince bishops of Durham in the Anglo-Scottish wars, and spent much time in this loveliest of northeastern English cities. I never tired of visiting the stunning and majestic cathedral. The successor to my beloved medieval warrior bishops is the great N.T. Wright, author of a number of important works of popular theology and a leading evangelical voice within the church. I admire Bishop Tom, as he is known, and envy him his spectacular accomodations and his winsome writing style. I don’t share his traditional views on homosexuality, but have great respect for him regardless.
This past week, Tom Wright wrote to the clergy of the Durham diocese. (Hat tip: Kendall Harmon.) Writing of the famous Anglican penchant for subtlety and accomodation, but also of the importance of fidelity to Christ, Wright remarks:
The unity of God’s people is massively important in the New Testament, far more so than the western church has often realised. But it is never ‘unity at any price’. The ideal of Anglican comprehensiveness has meant seriously different things at different times and places; I hope we won’t be bombarded with people suggesting that Richard Hooker and the Elizabethan church believed that ‘anything goes’. Why would they have taken so much trouble over the Articles and the Prayer Book? It isn’t enough to say, with any new proposal on any topic, ‘we Anglicans are called to live with difference’. The question is, as I have said a thousand times, how do we tell the difference between the differences we can live with and the differences we can’t live with?
Bold is mine. It’s a good question. And as one who has been divorced three times in the past, I’ve often contemplated this very issue in regards to marriage. What compromises are worth making, and what compromises end up tragically compromising our essential identity? Sometimes divorce is necessary, I believe. Sometimes, the church needs to experience schism. But some marriages can be saved, and some communions can be held together. By the end of this summer, I suspect those of us in the worldwide Anglican Communion will have a clearer answer as to the way forward.
The essential equality of women with men is not an issue for compromise. Like most progressives, I don’t want to see women bishops sacrificed in the name of unity. I don’t want to see the right of gays and lesbians to have their unions blessed surrendered either, merely out of a desire to remain in relationship with those traditionalists who find women priests and gay spouses to be an abhorrent manifestation of modern perversity. When we prioritize unity over justice, we make an idol out of unity. The right-wing might well say the same about those of us on the progressive left; why should they be forced to live under the supervision of bishops whose authority they find unbiblical?
Rather than search for a compromise that will inevitably end up sacrificing the core dignity of one major constituency in the Anglican Communion, perhaps the time has come to do something really new and marvelous: have the world’s first loving, friendly, and entirely non-litigious schism. Let the traditionalists band together under their right-wing Third World prelates; let the progressives form a loose coalition centered on North America, the United Kingdom, and parts of Australasia. Let each parish decide with whom it will cast its lot, and let there be no recriminations or lawsuits. Let both traditionalists and progressives strive to outdo each other in fidelity to Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 6.
Unity is a good. It is a very high good. But I think we can all agree it is not the highest of goods, not up there with justice, with mercy, and humility. The Anglican Communion began with a schism, and it has enjoyed a fine run of nearly five centuries. Let it end with another schism, but this time a cheerful one, with no heads sent rolling and no martyrs burnt. I’m not willing to wait any longer for gay marriages for the sake of keeping a traditionalist in Uganda happy; I see no reason why that same traditionalist should be forced to remain in a Communion that sanctions what he finds anathema. Let’s say goodbye with affection, with charity, but for God’s sake, let’s say goodbye.
By the end of this summer, I suspect those of us in the worldwide Anglican Communion will have a clearer answer as to the way forward.
I suspect that similar assertions were made in 1054. This one is less grandiose (and bellicose), obviously, but little different otherwise, to my eye. Group A insists on Doctrine X, Group B disagrees, Groups A and B fail to reconcile and set up their own doctrines. Repeat ad nauseum.
Very well said.
Craig, “repeat ad nauseum” assumes that schism is somehow bad. I think it’s healthy. Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life — but we flawed creatures are incapable of agreeing on how best to follow that Way, how best to understnd the Truth, how best to live out that Life. We create churches and traditions that work for a while, and then they stop working, and we schism and come together with new folks. It’s life at its messy, glorious best: schism as healthy mitosis!
Dear Hugo,
We would live in a far more peaceable Anglican world if your vision became reality. There are two considerable obstacles to achieving that vision:
1. Communion with Canterbury — Although there are people on both sides who do not consider it essential to be in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, many other Episcopalians know the doomed nature of trying to create an Anglicanism apart from this historic office.
So far, both sides have drawn back from a full rejection of Canterbury’s importance. I’m afraid, though, that some of my fellow conservatives have shown the stronger tendency to walk away. Perhaps that will work for them, but most breakaway Anglican bodies soon find themselves on the margins of Anglican life. I think they are perceived, rightly, as the Lefebvrites of Anglicanism.
2. Property. With rare exceptions, both sides have been willing to invite secular courts to settle their respective claims to property. Sometimes the property is as gorgeous as the cathedral in Durham. Sometimes it is much plainer, but in all cases it’s a place where Christians have been baptized, married and remembered fondly at funerals.
Both sides justify their court battles in the name of Christian stewardship. Both sides are willing to spend millions of dollars to keep their property, if that’s what it takes.
My way of coping with this is to ask myself, regularly, what sort of vocation I may have as the member of a theological minority within The Episcopal Church. Some basic starting places are civility, patience and a determination to keep whining to a minimum.
Craig, “repeat ad nauseum” assumes that schism is somehow bad.
If all that a schism accomplished was to segregate irreconcilable factions, then I’d agree. The problem is what said factions tend to do after splitting. That’s why I specifically mentioned the East-West Schism, though I might have done better to reference the Baptist/Southern Baptist infighting (i.e. the latter’s steeplejacking campaign).
That said, it’s not like my complaints are coupled with any solutions (other than abandoning denominationalism, which obviously won’t happen).
Well said, Doug. Indeed, it seems that the Akinolas and Jensens of the world are more ready to dispense with Canterbury than the Jefferts Schoris and the Robinsons.
And the fights over property will be painful. They always are (as I’ve said, I’ve been divorced.) In the end, if both sides try and outdo each other in the effort to win the battle to appear more grace-filled, more irenic, more congruent with the agape love of Christ, the better off we’ll be. But I don’t pretend it will be easy.
but Hugo, haven’t you left us?
You’ve ditched All SS Pasadena, at any rate, for reasons of your own.
I myself an an imperfectly recusant liberal (AffCath) Episcopalian in a monderate-to-conservative diocese, so I have no grounds to criticize, except that I’m at Compline every Sunday.
Curious that you’d venture an opinion now.
I’ve left one parish, but darken the door of some local churches… especially for Evensong.
Hugo,
Good post. Giving me lots to think about.
I’m wondering now about the word “schism”. Maybe “schism” is always wrong, but that’s not what you’re proposing.
As one who agrees that denominations have run their course and may be a relic of a past expression of Christianity best left behind, I see their dismantling as a healthy thing. Perhaps, a better way to describe your proposal then is as a “dismantalist” (if I can coin a completely ridiculous new phrase). You are one who would like to see a previously helpful structure be taken apart in the face of its present unhelpfulness. So the question for the communion becomes how to deconstruct itself for the sake of justice (and maybe even unity), instead of blowing itself up tragically.
What a new metaphors would be for this process I don’t know (changing out the plumbing of an old house, or pulling down the Berlin Wall fall sort on both sides) but I’d be interested in your thoughts.
Long time reader, first time commenter.
Thank you making such an eloquent case for a kind, peaceful separation.
As a member of an Episcopal parish in the LA Diocese (a church far smaller than All Saints, but also quite progressive), I have come to believe that separating from the Anglican Communion is the best choice for all concerned. While I part ways with you on the matter of conservative American parishes, this post has given me a lot to think about.
Let’s look at the consequences.
1) The Anglican system of national churches in a communion of equals will end up discredited. That will leave the choice one between radical decentralization along Baptist lines, with every congregation in principle independent, or radical centralization along Roman lines.
2) Conservatives will add the destruction of the Anglican communion to their bill of particulars against progressives, another in their list of bad things that happen when you insist on equality.
3) Gay men and Lesbians will end up with no support at all in the new conservative grouping of churches. If you like the Southern Baptist view of sexuality and equality, you’ll love the Southern Anglicans.
If we have the love and charity to make a split bloodless, then logically we should have the charity to stay together in communion. I don’t think we have explored every possible means to stay together, and until we have done so, I consider it inappropriate to resign ourselves to such a split.