by Becky Robbins-Penniman
Becky275@cs.com, 275 Northmoor Pl., Columbus, OH 43214
The Anglican Communion
The Christian church in the 20th century is clearly going through some sort of "paradigm shift," and Anglicans are experiencing the pangs of this displacement within their own microcosm. Before addressing the problems of the Church, however, it seems advisable to start by remembering why there is a church at all: to be a community that follows Jesus as Lord. Anglicans see this as the bedrock of their identity, understanding that they are a particular (but not exclusive) body of Christians who are
living together in fidelity to the memory and hope of Jesus under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. In the present they are bound together as they remember the past and anticipate the reconciliation of all things in Christ at the end of time.1
Thus, at least in theory, the primary authority for all Anglicans is God, God’s revelation in Christ, and God’s vision for creation2 . As Anglicans struggle with how to exist in faithful community, ecclesiologists emphasize that the Church must remain a community that is ever mindful of God’s purpose, and particularly of Jesus’ loving, servant ministry3. In discussing the proper use and application of the Church’s laws, Daniel Stevick writes:
Human society necessarily takes on consciously determined forms, structures, and procedures. . . . So much is social structuring part of our humanness that in a sense an institutional church is the implicate of an Incarnational faith. In redemption, the divine lays claim to total humanity – involving social organization. Only a church living and persisting in history as institution could make contact with our humanness. . . . .4
This divine and eschatological focus is an essential component of any discussion of authority and doctrine, because for the Christian "good order" is not and cannot be an end in and of itself – not even for Anglicans.
Nonetheless, as Mr. Stevick notes, Christians organize themselves into some sort of "order," one expression of which is the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion is an easy thing to define, but a difficult thing to describe. The simplest working definition of an "Anglican" church is a church that is both in communion with the See of Canterbury, and considers the See to be the center of its unity with other Christians5. The remarkable aspect of this is that the definition is relational rather than doctrinal or dogmatic; the unity of the Communion is "personally grounded in the loyal relationship of each of the churches to the Archbishop of Canterbury who is freely recognised as the focus of unity."6
Most of the Anglican churches7 throughout the world were established either because of British colonization, or intentional missionary endeavors by people from Anglican churches. As more former English colonies gained political independence, the Canterburian focal point remained important. For example, American Anglicans may have revolted against Mother England politically, but they were not as eager to sever ties with their Mother Church, even while insisting that Americans would develop their church in their own particularly American way. The particular history of the Church of England likely fostered such an understanding, because the right to order its own affairs was "precisely the right claimed by the Church of England in its most formative period," and was reiterated by each of the new national churches as it claimed independence.8 Most independent Anglican churches have similar stories.
The role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the one who "gathers" the Communion but does not "command" it, was formalized in 1867 when the first Lambeth Conference met9. This Conference was held as an expression of unity through common belief, not through centralized governance. From the outset, both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of the Communion eschewed the idea that the Conference would have any legislative authority over the wider church. The invitation to the first Lambeth Conference stated that the gathering "would not be competent to make declarations or lay down definitions on points of doctrine. But united worship and common counsels would greatly tend to maintain practically the unity of the faith; whilst they would bind us straiter in bonds of peace and brotherly charity."10 Time and again, Anglicans have reiterated that purpose of the Lambeth Conference was to foster koinonia and to discern and develop a sense of the "common mind" of Anglicanism11 . As the Virginia Report stated, the most vital purpose behind gathering Anglican bishops from all over the world:
is to establish a communion of mutual attentiveness, interdependence and accountability to serve the unity and interdependence in mission of the Anglican Communion. The mutual attentiveness required when members from various parts of the Communion share the richness of their experiences also helps to form the mind of the Communion and is a reminder of the rich diversity of gifts which God has given us. The sharing of stories enhances and deepens the Communion's experience of interdependence at all levels.12
The American Church has adopted this same attitude amongst its own bishops. The bishops of the Episcopal Church meet periodically under the presidency of the Presiding Bishop. This bishop has only administrative authority over the affairs of the national church, and no personal power to direct diocesan affairs.13 Although Episcopal bishops have some authority to govern the internal affairs of their own body, the House of Bishops, they have no right to decide matters and impose the results on the rest of the members of the Episcopal Church.14 Mirroring the Anglican Communion as a whole, power in this Church is decentralized and counterbalanced amongst a number of diverse groups. When the bishops gather to discuss and debate and develop community, they then return to their dioceses to teach and lead at the local level.
Now, however, this Communion is being stretched to new limits. For a significant number of people, loyalty that cements relationships no longer seems to be a sufficient foundation community. In an irony that might have Richard Hooker spinning in his grave, the cohesiveness of the communion is being threatened by differences of opinion as to the doctrine of the Church. Anglicans have revered Mr. Hooker in part because he saw differences in Christian doctrine to be far less important than Christian commitment to worship. As Paul Avis noted, the
Church of England . . . emerge[d] from the struggles of the sixteenth century as a church in which lay persons, as well as clergy, of diverse views might stand side by side in their parish church and kneel together at the communion rail, united by a required minimum of outward conformity. Hooker stressed that the identity of the Christian church was to be found in its profession of the fundamental baptismal faith – 'one Lord, one faith, one baptism'. He pointed out that religious belief could not be legislated for . . . . Elizabeth reassured her subjects that she would force no one's conscience [and] . . . forbade that 'any of our subjects should be molested by examination or inquisition, in any matter, either of faith, so long as they shall profess the Christian faith . . . as long as they shall in their outward conversation show themselves quiet and comfortable.' . . . .15
Doctrine took a back seat to relationships within the Church as people united in the Body of Christ. It must be remembered, however, that in Mr. Hooker’s time, the queen was available as the voice of authority should there be controversies. However, the days are long over when the English monarch served as the "Supreme Governor" of all Anglicans. Thus, concomitant to confrontations over doctrine is a growing fissure concerning the proper locus and exercise of authority in the Church. Several factors are contributing to the crises concerning doctrine and authority. First, since Vatican II, there have been increased ecumenical efforts by both the Roman Church and many other historic denominations. The issues of Anglican doctrine and authority have been forced into forefront of conversation because of questions posed by various ecumenical dialogue partners, who want to know what it is Anglicans believe, and how decisions are made. Second, changes by the Episcopal Church and other progressive churches in the Anglican Communion have been resisted or even condemned by other members of the Communion. This begs the question: what is the doctrine of the Episcopal Church, or even the Anglican Communion? Who has the authority to set it?
Foundations
The heart of authority issue is lack of a unified or dogmatic Anglican theology grounded in the various sources. If Anglicans acknowledge that the source of the Church’s authority is God, the question still remains as to how the church knows what God wants. Neither the Bible, the creeds nor the Prayer Book dictate any particular theology,16 and as we have discussed, Anglican bishops do not function as a teaching magisterium. To discern what God is asking of the church, Anglicanism has used several interdependent sources. The first is the ancient documents of the "catholic" church, i.e. the Church through the first four ecumenical councils.17 These documents at a minimum include the Bible and the creeds of the early church. The second source is the worship of the church, especially the dominical sacraments, but also including the Book of Common Prayer as a whole. Finally, the Anglican Communion in some sense sees the historic episcopate as a source of authority. The first two sources of authority are claimed by many Christian groups, and Anglicans acknowledge the validity and faithfulness of these other denominations. The third is peculiar to three denominations as self-defining: Eastern Orthodoxy, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Communion.
Within these broad categories are specific attempts at an authoritarian establishment of doctrine. For example, at one point, the "Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion" were considered to be the backbone of Anglicanism. Most writers see the Articles as vitally important for understanding the position of the Church of England during the Reformation of the 16th century, especially for the Anglican self-identity as a "bridge" church between Roman Catholicism and the Continental Protestants.18 However, adoption of the Articles is not a required for a national church’s identity as "Anglican," and is not an issue in the various ecumenical dialogues between Anglicans and other denominations.19 The American version of the Articles was adopted in 1801 and is included in the "Historical Documents" section of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. However, they are not referenced in the Constitution or Canons of the Episcopal Church, and no one is required to subscribe to them in order to be ordained. Daniel Stevick does note, however, that the Articles are the only place where the Episcopal Church specifies the content of the Christian scriptural canon, which means that the Articles are not wholly irrelevant.20
Another uniquely Anglican focus is the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, which states that "acceptance of Scripture, Creeds, the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, and the episcopal ordering of ministry should provide the basis for effective union among Churches. . . . "21 In the past century, the Quadrilateral seems to have taken on a life of its own to become not only a platform for ecumenical discussions, but also an outline of the essential components of Anglican doctrine for internal use. The bishops’ court in the case of Stanton v. Righter appeared to do this by stating first that "Core Doctrine is understood as of the essence of Christianity and necessary for salvation, and is therefore binding on all who are baptized. Core Doctrine, therefore, is unchangeable."22 The opinion then further noted that the Quadrilateral was "a reflection of . . . Core Doctrine."23
As Dr. J. Robert Wright has noted, this claims too much for the Quadrilateral, because Anglicans never have stated that the historic episcopate is "necessary for salvation."24 Thus, Leonel Mitchell’s position appears to be more accurate. The Quadrilateral is the face that Anglicans use in their external relationships, but it "is even less of a definitive doctrinal statement than the Thirty-Nine Articles are. Rather, it is a platform for ecumenical action. . . . It is by no means intended to be a complete doctrinal statement, but it does deal with the points most at issue in contemporary ecumenical discussion. . . ."25 To see this as an external face is also consistent with the Anglican reality that use of the Scriptures, Creeds, Sacraments and historic episcopate is more in keeping with the nature of Anglican identity than is any particular understanding of the meaning of these facets.
As discussed briefly above, the experience of episcope has been different in the various national churches. In England and more monarchical countries, bishops have wielded a measure of direct personal power. In the United States and other countries with democratic secular governments, the role of the bishop has been more persuasive than authoritarian. In the Episcopal Church, the bishop’s duties and responsibilities are constrained not only by the Church’s national constitution and canons, and by also by diocesan legislation. Moreover, many of the bishop’s actions must be approved by diocesan committees.26 In the United States, the bishop is a focal point of unity but not a fulcrum of power. Thus, at least in this country, diocesan bishops have only the most limited personal authority.
Of the three facets of the Anglican source of authority, the one most often cited as the "truest" indication of particularly Anglican doctrine is the Book of Common Prayer. Daniel Stevick notes that "much of the distinctive doctrinal stand of the Episcopal Church is implied in the Prayer Book as a reformed and catholic liturgy."27 The 1948 Lambeth Conference, the report states affirms "the Book of Common Prayer as the standard of our worship. Liturgy, in the sense of the offering and ordering of the public worship of God, is the crucible in which these elements of authority are fused and unified in the fellowship and power of the Holy Spirit."28 Stephen Sykes points out, however, that the various Anglican churches do not use the same Prayer Book, nor do they necessarily consult each other when making revisions.29 At best, there is a "family likeness in common prayer expressed in many languages."30 The problem with this "family likeness" is that it is difficult to find anything doctrinal about it; the focus is formation of Anglican identity, unity and belonging based on "commitment to daily prayer, to systematic scripture reading, to praying the psalms and canticles, to regular credal confession of the faith, and to intercessory prayer for one another and for the needs of the world."31
Interestingly, the doctrine of any given national church in the Anglican Communion probably can be ascertained from its Prayer Book. In virtually every Province, adherence to a particular Prayer Book is required. The Constitution of the Episcopal Church provides that the "Book of Common Prayer, as now established or hereafter amended by the authority of this Church, shall be in use in all the Dioceses of this Church. No alteration thereof or addition thereto shall be made" to this book without following the procedures outlined in the Constitution and Canons.32 Thus, with regard to the Episcopal Church, it is true that "the doctrine of the Church is set forth throughout the Prayer Book. It is the Church’s book, and the Church that uses it is reflected on every page. . . ."33 As such, Lutherans and other ecumenical dialogue partners may validly rely on the Book of Common Prayer as a statement of the Episcopal Church’s position,34 Other members of the Anglican Communion, however, might validly express completely different positions based on different language in their Prayer Books. Stephen Neill asserts that
Every form of liturgical expression has theological implications. Every change in liturgy involves also a change in theology, though naturally some are much more serious than others. The wide variety of liturgical forms already existing within the Anglican Communion makes it impossible to refer to any of these liturgies as providing the same kind of theological standard as was provided for four centuries by the Book of Common Prayer. In is not always clear what form of theology these variant liturgies are intended to express.35
If variation in worship is possible, if there is no primary authority, and if there is no uniform meaning ascribed to Scriptures and the Creeds, then the thread that ties together Anglicanism seems thin indeed. As Stephen Sykes trenchantly observed, to "surmount internal diversity Anglicans are virtually compelled to celebrate the bare fact of orderly succession, even in the absence of any single (or coherent) theory about the apostolic office."36
Is the Anglican Church left to claim only a doctrine of historic succession? If so, the Communion may be on the verge of schism. Anglican koinonia is under direct attack both in the United States and in the Anglican Communion. The major lightening rod is the refusal of the Episcopal Church (so far) to discipline bishops who ordain non-celibate homosexuals to the diaconate and priesthood, although other sources of conflict are the ordination of women and the change from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Just recently, a retired regressivist37 bishop performed episcopal functions in another bishop’s diocese without permission, stating that he thought "it would be a badge of honor to be censured by the House of Bishops."38 Even more radical was the revelation that some regressivist parishes are considering seeking oversight by bishops from Africa.39 The justification stated for these actions is that the Episcopal Church is not conducting itself in accord with the Anglican Communion because it has not adopted the conservative resolutions passed at the 1998 Lambeth Conference.40 These Lambeth resolutions not only condemned the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals, they opposed the forced acceptance of the ordination of women.
By advocating the crossing of diocesan and Provincial boundaries without episcopal permission, the regressivist activists are challenging the very basis for the Anglican Communion. No longer are "collegiality" and "a charity which is patient and willing to defer to the common mind"41 as important as doctrinal positions.
Doctrine
The appeal to Richard Hooker and doctrinal tolerance, with which this paper began, was hardly a unique move. Indeed, numerous writers have noted post-Reformation Anglicanism’s reluctance to go "heretic hunting." As a result, Anglicans have held a wide variety of beliefs, some of which may appear mutually exclusive. Some see this freedom as the glory of Anglicanism, and others see it as its Achilles’ heel. Stephen Neill observes that "willingness for a certain amount of what appears to be error to continue to exist in the Church is not necessarily a sign of indifference to truth; it may arise rather from an awareness that underneath the appearance of error what is really a new discovery of truth may be concealed."42 David Holmes states that
no Episcopalian is obliged to believe that the sum of theological wisdom is found in one dominant figure or office, in a series of church councils, or in a confession of faith. Instead, the Anglican tradition places a high value on spiritual freedom and holds broad positions that will attract, rather than repel, the highest number of followers.43
Daniel Stevick maintains a similar posture. He considers doctrinal openness to be a great strength, noting that, by focusing on the processes for decision-making, "Anglicanism has avoided, on the whole, becoming doctrinaire or rigid. This feature of our heritage should give us inner resources to meet emergent situations with flexibility and imagination but also with that regard for law without which no community can endure."44 He goes on to say:
We insist on the indispensability – and hence in some sense the theological importance – of the Bible, the creeds, the sacraments, and the episcopate. Yet, we have no official interpretation of biblical inspiration, of sacramental theology, of episcopacy, and no single, binding dogmatic system. We have been for centuries trying within our won internal conversations to establish that some things are primary and others are secondary. . . . . The wholeness of the Christian revelation and of the life of man has always seemed bigger than any of the tidy, complete formulations available.
. . . .
[O]ur Anglican doctrinal formularies recognize no official interpretation of the credal statements. No theologian, party, or hierarch is in a position to say, in the name of Anglicanism, "I have the definitive interpretation of the creeds for our time . . . .45
Finally, Philip Thomas describes the situation this way:
At its best, Anglicanism’s doctrinal openness recognized that the mystery of God was not to be contained by a formula or by the victory of one biblical principle over another. Just how baptism related to faith, or bread and wine communicated the presence of Christ, or the historic episcopate mediated an apostolic ministry, was never explained in the classical period of Anglican development. Scripture and history keeps such questions alive within the Anglican consciousness and the tradition of continuing debate holds out the hope of increasing clarification of the issues involved. Ideally the Anglican understanding of Church secures to it the full variety of biblical models and metaphors by which it is described, and attempts to work out the significance of those descriptions in everyday, historical experience.46
(The point is made without any attempt at an encyclopedic survey of the writers on this issue.) This unwillingness to nail down doctrinal stances serves both the intellectually indifferent and the intellectually indefatigable equally well.47
The Virginia Report notes, however, that toleration of diversity does not mean that there are no limits to diversity48 . There are apparently some non-negotiable tenets that will at least limit who may act in an official capacity for the Church.49 The most recent attempt to define these tenets in the Episcopal Church was undertaken by the members of the Court for the Trial of a Bishop, convened to hear the case of Stanton v. Righter. In this case, a group of ten regressivist bishops filed a presentment against Bishop Walter Righter. The presentment alleged that Bp. Righter had failed to comply with the "doctrine, discipline and worship" of the Episcopal Church when he ordained a non-celibate homosexual to the diaconate. A promise to conform to the church’s "doctrine, discipline and worship" is part of the ordination vows of priests and deacons.50 Moreover, a member of the clergy may be disciplined for "holding and teaching publicly or privately, and advisedly, any doctrine contrary to that held by this Church."51 The sole issue of substance presented in the case was whether the doctrine, discipline, worship or teaching of the Episcopal Church forbade the ordination of an otherwise qualified non-celibate homosexual candidate.
The Righter court separated out questions of what constitutes "doctrine," versus "teaching" versus "discipline." Core Doctrine, according to the panel, "is derived from the Gospel preaching, kerygma . . .", while teaching or "didache, [is] those things necessary for our life in community and the world." "52 Discipline" has to do with the requirements of the Constitution and Canons of the national church. "Worship" did not enter much into the bishops’ deliberations. On all levels, the panel eventually held that the Episcopal Church had made no final decisions on the substantive issue. In the process, however, the court made observations as to what the unchangeable Core Doctrine or kerygma is:
The kerygma is found in the life and teaching of Jesus and the preaching and evangelistic action of the Church revealed in the New Testament and other early Christian documents. Sound and trustworthy biblical scholarship has identified the basic contents of the kerygma. See, for example, C.H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching (New York and London: Harper & Bros., 1936). They are:
This kerygma evolved during a period of controversy which culminated in the first four General Councils of the Church, and was given expression in particular through the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, in agreement with the formula of St. Vincent of Lerins, the so-called Vincentian Canon: 'What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.' (See F.L. Cross, ed., Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [London: Oxford, 1957], 1423).53
Notably absent from this list of Core Doctrine is anything regarding the establishment or nature of the church. Thus, at this time the ordering of the clergy falls within the Church’s "teaching" and "disciplinary" authority. Although this may constitute general "doctrine", it is not part of the Gospel kerygma.
The panel seemed particularly interested in this distinction as a matter of setting some issues as "off limits" for tinkering by the church members. Thus, the court held that the members of the Episcopal Church, at General Convention, were certainly free to adopt canons that either permitted or prohibited the ordination of any particular class of people.54 However, in the mind of the court, the tenets of Core Doctrine are apparently not a matter for legislation by General Convention.
Of course, the episcopal panel in the Righter case has no more authority to fix Core Doctrine than does any other group outside the General Convention. Unlike the polity of the United States secular government, there are not three branches of government with constitutionally independent sources of power. Thus, while grappling valiantly with questions of Core Doctrine and other issues of authority, the panel needed really only to determine whether the General Convention, through the Constitution, Canons and Book of Common Prayer, had spoken definitively on the substantive issue. The panel held that it had not.55
At this juncture, the potential fault line in the Anglican Communion becomes obvious: two church traditions regarding decision-making are on a collision course. One tradition is that of broad-based decision making undertaken by a group. The other is the tradition that a central, binding voice of authority is necessary both to keep the Church from error and to achieve Christian unity.56 The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Committee has recently released its third report, The Gift of Authority, which tries to blend the two traditions. However, in practice a blend seems improbable, if not impossible, because the two traditions utilize fundamentally different understandings of how the "mind of the church," or "consensus fidelium," is discerned.
On the one hand is a view of the consensus fidelium as
a dispersed, non-centralized structure such as synodical government [that] gives the laity as well as the clergy constitutional opportunity for the kinds of consultation, criticism, and comment which promote genuinely free consensus. Our Anglican experience is that the Christian church requires both the discriminating exercise of authority and the discriminating exercise of criticism if Christ’s work is to be done in the world. The tensions, conflict, and debate as well as the time required to make the consensus fidelium an essential part of keeping the church in the truth of Christ, spring from the theology of dispersed authority, and are part of a ‘charity which is patient and willing to defer to the common mind.57
On the other hand is a view of "consensus" as an exclusive position reached after listening to various points of view. Responsibility for this consensus is founded on a particular office, i.e., the Bishop of Rome. The person in this office is seen as having "a specific ministry concerning the discernment of truth, as an expression of universal primacy."58 The consensus fidelium is thus a definitive and binding declaration applicable to all in the church. In The Gift of Authority, the ARCIC group agreed that the ministry of the Bishop of Rome would be to:
discern and declare, with the assured assistance and guidance of the Holy Spirit, in fidelity to Scripture and Tradition, the authentic faith of the whole Church, that is, the faith proclaimed from the beginning. It is this faith, the faith of all the baptised in communion, and this only, that each bishop utters with the body of bishops in council. It is this faith which the Bishop of Rome in certain circumstances has a duty to discern and make explicit.59
In this view, it is insufficient to have symbolic unity founded on loyalty and collegiality, such as the Anglican Communion now enjoys with the Archbishop of Canterbury as its center.
Thus the Anglican Communion is facing a fundamental decision as to its trajectory: will it remain wedded to a method of decision-making that is thoroughly horizontal, or whether it will seek to develop a vertical line of authority? The tradition of Hooker and the Elizabethan settlement would seem to suggest that the true identity of the Christian church is in its laity, not in its hierarchy. E. J. Bicknell states the vision as follows:
The more ‘Catholic’ the Church becomes, the better-proportioned her hold upon truth will be. As the Church pursues her task of evangelizing the world, the more completely she will understand her own nature and message. In proportion as the Church grows in holiness and in fulness of life, she will grow in the true knowledge of God.60
Of course, no one could maintain that the Elizabethan church was actually "Catholic." Only educated men were invited to participate in deliberations as to what is "true."61 And, as noted before, a monarch who is the church’s "Supreme Governor" will weigh in with considerable authority. Yet, in the spirit of Hooker, the Communion recently has begun to see and remove its barriers to catholicity by inviting all sorts and conditions of people to consider the "proportions" of the church’s hold upon truth. This increased breadth threatens, in the short term, to be fatally divisive and communion-busting, as the stories in the first section of the paper indicated. If a break can be prevented, however, there is no argument that the Communion is now far more "Catholic" than it was in Mr. Hooker’s day.
Notwithstanding this appeal to the architect of Anglican thought, the vertical line of authority envisioned in The Gift of Authority shows a trajectory that seems to appeal to many participants in the Lambeth Conference. The Conference resolved that it:
welcomes warmly the invitation of Pope John Paul II in his Encyclical Letter Ut unum sint (1995) to consider the ministry of unity of the Bishop of Rome in the service of the unity of the Universal Church, strongly encourages the provinces to respond and asks the proposed Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations to collate the provincial responses.62
Considering the stunning lack of "catholicity" in the Roman Church’s decision-making councils, one primary question is whether the Bishop of Rome has much credibility in his teaching office. Dr. Wright, in his review of the previous ARCIC report favoring papal primacy, observed that "almost four out of every five Roman Catholics felt it possible to disagree with the present pope. . . ‘and still be a good Catholic,’ so it may be simply that Roman Catholics – like Anglicans – are willing to live with the ambiguities they already have!"63 Although this may be a valid description of how Roman Catholics in fact view papal authority, it is ludicrous to hold this situation up as any sort of ideal. One would hope that the quest for the unity of authority would guard the integrity and authenticity, rather than tolerating mere formal unity.
Dr. Wright further maintains that it would be a fundamentally unAnglican action to remove the laity – men and women – from the active process of considering, debating, and deciding the issues facing the Church.64 One could likewise contend that it would be just as unAnglican to remove duly ordained and qualified clergy from the process simply because of gender, orientation, or other indigenous classification. Yet, in its resolution, the Lambeth Conference stated that it
recognises that the process of moving towards full, visible unity may entail temporary anomalies, and believes that some anomalies may be bearable when there is an agreed goal of visible unity, but that there should always be an impetus towards their resolution and, thus, towards the removal of the principal anomaly of disunity.65
The question is, what did the participants mean by "anomalies"? If by this term the Conference contemplates a contraction in the "proportions" of the "Catholic" church, then it would seem that the ones who will suffer these "bearable" anomalies may be those who have only recently found their voices in the Communion.
Although The Gift of Authority speaks long and highly of conciliarity in the decision-making process to reach a consensus fidelium, the current structure and ethos of the Roman Church is not famous for fostering open inquiry and freedom of thought and expression. This would seem to be the opposite of the ethos of Anglicanism. Given the diversity of the Anglican Communion however, perhaps centralized authority is problematical only for those national churches with strongly democratic structures and progressive leaders. Those who appeal heavily on the content of tradition (rather than its attitude) will, like John Henry Newman, likely find great comfort and assurance in the "firm foundation" of infallible human authority.66
Implications
My biases against centralized authority and mandatory doctrine are probably clear. The struggles within the Episcopal Church against marginalization and oppression by the "status quo" serve as object lessons cautioning against too much "good order." The reflections of Edward Scott regarding the nature of Christian authority, which he commended to Lambeth 1988, speak eloquently of what is at stake:
Jesus was asked by what authority he did things. This was a question he never answered verbally; he answered it by the way he lived. Martin Bell in The Way of the Wolf (p. 107) writes:
There he is in the temple again, causing trouble. The broken one who cuts through our most stubborn defences and demands that we place our lives on the line. The fugitive who confronts us with direct authority. Make no mistake about it. This is a dangerous man.
What is the nature of this ‘direct authority’ which Jesus exercised and which the common people recognized? Is it not the authority of God? The authority of love incarnate? This is not an orderly, tidy, controllable thing. (Words used with reference to the Holy Spirit such as wind and fire are not particularly tidy words!)
This tough, hard, accepting, challenging love, expressed by Jesus Christ, is not a tidy thing. It leads to change, to transformation, to renewal. It is, surely, the energy of the loving God expressed in action. . . . The life and teaching of Jesus illustrate the authority of love, the power of love.67
With bias must also come humility; perhaps somewhere we have gone too far in our transformations, and they are no longer holy. More than one author has used the Cross as a metaphor for the Church’s life, the horizontal bar representing the relationships amongst the people in the community, and the vertical shaft representing our relationship with the Lord. May the Spirit preserve us all - regressive, progressive, male, female, Anglican, Roman, Lutheran, lay and ordained - from ever confusing the two.
1998 Lambeth Conference. Resolutions: Section III and Section IV. ACNS Releases Nos. 1755 and 1756. Anglican Communion News Service, 8 September 1998. Available: http//:www.anglicancommunion.org |
Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. The Gift of Authority: Authority in the Church III; An Agreed Statement by theAnglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. London: Anglican Book Centre, 1999. Available: http//:www.anglicancommunion.org |
Avis, Paul. Anglicanism and the Christian Church: Theological Resources in Historical Perspective. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989. |
Bicknell, E. J. A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, 3rd ed, ed. H.J. Carpenter. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1955 |
Bouman, Walter R. "Lutheran Recognition of the Book of Common Prayer." In Concordat of Agreement: Supporting Essays, ed. Daniel F. Martensen. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1995. |
Chittleborough, K. C., "Towards a Theology and Practice of the Bishop-in-Synod," in Authority in the Anglican Communion: Essays Presented to Bishop John Howe, ed. Stephen Sykes. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1987. |
Constitution and Canons for the Government of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, otherwise known as The Episcopal Church, The. Available: http//:www.dfms.org |
Grislis, Egil. "The Hermeneutical Problem in Richard Hooker." In Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of His Works, ed. W. Speed Hill. Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve Univ., 1972. |
Holmes, David L. A Brief History of the Episcopal Church. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press, 1993. |
Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission. Report. London: Anglican Consultative Council, 1997 [The "Virginia Report"] |
McAdoo, H.R. "Authority in the Church: Spiritual Freedom and the Corporate Nature of Faith." In Authority in the Anglican Communion: Essays Presented to Bishop John Howe, ed. Stephen Sykes. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1987. |
Mitchell, Leonel L. Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer. Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985. |
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