To accept without challenge the priority of local and pastoral factors in the case either of sexuality or of sacramental practice would be to abandon the possibility of a global consensus among the Anglican churches such as would continue to make sense of the shape and content of most of our ecumenical activity. It would be to re-conceive the Anglican Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent ”˜community of Christian communities’.
–Archbishop Rowan Williams yesterday
Kendall, interesting that you highlight this paragraph. It was the section of ++Rowan’s text that I highlighted and commented on in my first (of at least a dozen) comments on ++Rowan’s reflection yesterday.
Here’s what I wrote [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/24487/#387340]yesterday.[/url]
[blockquote]Bingo! This loose federation is exactly what TEC’s revisionist leadership claims the Anglican Communion is and should be. And that is exactly why they have pushed “local option†as they have and claim that American context trumps Catholicity. They don’t give a @$#& about Catholicity or Covenant. [/blockquote]
I apologize on one level if my language is unduly harsh. But having watched TEC’s leadership closely the past 6 years, I can come to no other conclusion.
I pray all those still within TEC who do care passionately about Catholicity will find some way of making their voices heard and staying connected to the larger Communion. I pray the leadership of the Communion will reach out to make sure those within TEC committed to Catholicity are given voice and strong representation.
I wonder about the word “challenge.” This word implies some action to counter the effects of the “local and pastoral factors” of TEC. To date, we have only seen action of the ABC countering the communion’s challenges to TEC’s innovation.
I would have preferred some description of the action contemplated to challenge TEC. Otherwise, I am left with the impression that the word “challenge” is used merely in a rhetorical sense.
🙄
But how can Rowan uphold theological coherence while, at the same time, advocate a “two-styles” accommodation? Is this just an apparent contradiction? or is it a fatal flaw?
Let’s be fair here. The vision of the Anglican Communion as no more than a loose federation of churches that share a common heritage and participate in a network of essentially bilateral intercommunion agreements between like-minded churches is not a TEC invention. It has obviously been adopted lately by the General Convention leadership because their hope that the existing Communion structures would accept their decisions has proven illusory.
However, they did not come up with the idea. This is precisely the vision that has been expressed for quite some time (and actually implemented) by the Diocese of Sydney in the Anglican Church of Australia. The diocese has an intercommunion agreement with the Church of England in South Africa (which is out of Communion with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa) and has declared itself in impaired communion with provinces that are Communion members.
This vision of the Anglican Communion as a loose federation tied together only by bilateral agreements obviously lies behind the pattern of declarations by various Anglican provinces that they are out of communion (or in only impaired communion) with some other provinces, while they are in communion with a non-Communion church operating in those countries.
It is not surprising that the Archbishop of Sydney is among the leaders of the movement stemming from the Global Anglicans Futures Conference. Without a revisioning of the Communion’s structure, the three Australian dioceses that favor the Lay Administration of Communion cannot implement that policy while remaining formally Anglican. Ironically, this is precisely the same restructuring that TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada need in order to implement their controversial policies while remaining formally Anglican.
It is this vision for the Communion that Archbishop Williams is protesting here. Everyone agrees that geese and ganders should both accept the same sauce. However, the sauce that Anglicans have historically favored is the notion of a Communion, as distinct both from a unitary global church and from a loose federation. It now seems that the preferred sauce for both reappraisers and reasserters is the federation idea, in which TEC can enjoy continued relations with its friends and ACNA can do the same.
Oops! noticed I dropped my original last paragraph:
If the Communion—as a Communion—no longer enjoys the support of many of its members, there is really only the alternative that Archbishop Williams has described. The group of centrist provinces that want to continue operating within something resembling the existing Communion structures can maintain them in a Covenant relationship. Outside and around this central core will be a cloud of self-identified Anglican churches including the provinces that prefer the federation ideal. This will include (at a minimum) a network of LGBT-friendly provinces and a separate network of provinces that find lay celebrations of the Eucharist acceptable. There may be further networks divided by their sacramental theology or their attitudes towards the ordination of women. This core-and-cloud model is probably the only way to preserve any part of the Communion in a recognizable form.
As much as I hate to say it, the comments of Dale Rye above are most perceptive, I think.