What are the two extreme ‘edges’ that the Anglican Communion needs defending against today? It seems to me that they are the ‘autonomous rootless liberalism’ that too often has undergirded the actions of The Episcopal Church and the ‘independent relentless puritanism’ that ignores the pivotal, gathering role of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both positions, in effect, have tried to trump the ‘interdependence’ of the Communion with their pre-emptive actions and reactions.
Immensely learned and biblically founded, Hooker drew on a hinterland of classical literature, patristics and ‘natural law’. His works were read by Roman Catholic and Puritan theologians. Sounds familiar? Oliver O’Donovan is Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh. Formerly he was Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology in the University of Oxford, and a member of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission. It was he who coined the phrase concerning the Windsor Report, ‘the only game in town’, and this was echoed by Rowan Williams in his speech to General Synod in February 2005.
Like Hooker, instead of reacting with an instant tract on the current crisis in the Anglican Communion, O’Donovan responded with a series of seven monthly articles for Fulcrum. They provide crucial, challenging and nourishing background reading for this week.
Our third central theologian on ‘edge’ is Samuel T Coleridge (1772-1834). In his Aids to Reflection, he referred to ‘the venerable Hooker’ and quoted him ‘on the nature of pride’.[5] On 26 October 1831, near the end of his life, the poet, philosopher and theologian of genius, had dinner with his friends. His son, Hartley Coleridge, recorded some of his conversation, which included discussion of the ‘point’ and the ‘edge’ as the difference between ‘Keenness and Subtlety’:
Few men of genius are keen; but almost every man of genius is subtle. If you ask me the difference between keenness and subtlety, I answer that it is the difference between a point and an edge. To split a hair is no proof of subtlety; for subtlety acts in distinguishing between differences – in showing that two things apparently one are in fact two; whereas, to split a hair is to cause division, and not to ascertain difference.[6]
In our present double-edged context of response after 30 September 2007, it may be that Anglicans in the USA are more called towards the ‘distinguishing between differences’ – staying and arguing from within The Episcopal Church[7] – rather than the ‘common cause of division’ – splitting and forming another church.[8] As we saw Andrewes echoing Hebrews 4:12, perhaps we can see Coleridge echoing Hebrews 5:14 – which in turn reinforces the text preached before Kings James I in 1607, ‘But solid food is for the mature, for those who faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.’
“In our present double-edged context of response after 30 September 2007, it may be that Anglicans in the USA are more called towards the ‘distinguishing between differences’ – staying and arguing from within The Episcopal Church[7] – rather than the ‘common cause of division’ – splitting and forming another church.”
Called by whom? & who actually ‘form[ed] another church’ – one that Andrewes certainly wouldn’t have recognized as ‘catholic’ in any sense? Graham, do you understand how things are in the American church? the inhibitions, depositions, seizures of property, the secret shoehorning of gays and lesbians into leadership? What do you think Lancelot Andrewes would do?
The problem with this analysis is that it fails to see the impact the failled leadership of Rowan Williams has had on the American situation which has led in large part to people feeling compelled to “leave” TEC. Many faithful episcopalians do have some sense of the church but when the Archbishop gave the invitations to Lambeth to everyone, and when he has failed to provide for any possible group in TEC to stay connected to the Communion and to have any meaningful protection, many feel they have no other option.
Well “many” will of course “feel” that they must do many things, steveatmi5; and “they shall run their course, persons and impulses together,” as Radner has said. “May God,” however, “at least and in the meantime, grant us the grace, at some loose moment or another, to be still, to weep for the Church of Christ Jesus, to ask forgiveness, and to pray for those we do not yet love unto death.”
I rather think this is the sort of thing Andrewes would have said and done also, Gordian (http://covenant-communion.com/?p=139#comments), as Newman apparently thought as well(http://covenant-communion.com/?p=141)
# 3: Any Anglican citing Newman must do so with chutzpah or irony. I have no particular affection for Andrewes and his royal sycophancy, but it’s absurd to cite such a figure as patron, knowing what we do about the chaotic doctrinal and moral state of Tec.
Graham doesn’t face the kind of coercion that reasserters in the US and parts of Canada do, so he can write precious rhetoric, like a WWI general sending his men ‘over the top’ with a stirring speech.
… let me also add that if I knew a woman whose husband was repeatedly abusing her and acting in an adulterous way, I don’t think I’d be telling her she was ‘called to stay and argue within’ a sham marriage.
Whilst you, Gordian make your feelings clear, and are, presumably stampeding for the exit, there are many, who as it comes to the crunch are not, simply because they feel God is calling them to continue to minister where they are, whatever the cost. That does not make them greater or lesser Christians than you, even though they cannot follow the call that the Network is giving. The concern is increasingly that the Network is failing to recognise the position (and faith) of those who are staying simply because God is calling them elsewhere.
I think Graham’s article is spot on, and I do not find in my English brother the voice of the WWI general demanding sacrifice from above, but the voice of a fellow-soldier in the trenches, working with me to move the Gospel into the world, past the scandal of a divided Church.
I would suggest to Gordian that those of us who choose to remain in TEC, and are used to being humiliated here in all kinds of ways, have come to the place where we simply accept this as the cost of the Gospel. We do so because we believe that it is God who will break open and shake out the ecclesial structures of our own time, as He is already doing, and we trust Him to do it in His own time and His own way. In the meantime, we preach Christ and Him crucified from our pulpits, (for most of my congregants, it is the first time they have ever heard this word), teach our people to pray, love them in Christ, move forward to connect them further with clergy and congregations and bishops who have similar priorities, insulate them from those who do not, and pray that in no way might we be a stumbling block to them, that they may never find in our own temptation to party spirit, to divisiveness (however righteously justified) an impediment to the Gospel. We don’t expect to get affirmation from the right or praise from the left for this method. That’s not the point. We’ve been called much worse than “collaborators” from one side and “fundamentalists” from the other. We do pray that it is the right course, and as long as God continues to call us in it, we hold to it.
What I find exhausting in this time is that people come to different discernments and put so much emotion and energy into it that they then conclude others who decide differently are “wrong,” or compromised, etc., etc.
There needs to be more mutual charity and when there are judgments made and questions raised, they need to be done in such a manner as not to impugn others as less than faithful or less than ourselves.
Kendall I am grateful to you for that statement. One of the areas I think we need to be working on is how we preserve, foster and grow relationships between those who may be in a different sphere of work in the future but who with us claim the name Christian and then Anglican and for some of us perhaps still Episcopalian. This calls us not merely to refrain from bitter comments but to discover concrete ways in which we may cooperate. The future seems to offer a certain amount of chaos, no strange situation for Anglicans in the past or now, but as we do have experience of chaos, of informal networks binding like-minded people together across borders, we need to find concrete ways to put this experience to work for the Kingdom. After all, our tactical judgements are provisional. We do not claim, as some do, that the Holy Spirit is the author of our strategy and tactics anymore than we believe that majority votes in a General Convention are Spirit-informed infallible statements binding on the consciences of all. As poor maligned +Rowan reminds us, patience is an Anglican virtue, one which none of us finds easy to assume in these days of instant comment and reaction.
Yes, #9, your sentiments are correct and conventional, but do you really wish to cooperate with TEC? Really? If you do, what do you expect to get from it? That they will, in the name of cooperation, moderate their demands and reach some kind of middle way? Do you really believe that they understand compromise? Some people and some groups you do not want to cooperate with because they are social, moral, or intellectual poison ivy. TEC is such a one.
Kendall’s remarks are unexceptional and we all agree with him. The difficulty is that there are some people one does not want around, and their negative characteristics are not intellectual, but the result of bad character, so that one cannot speak of their deficiencies without speaking of them personally. Moreover, contrary to what Kendall implies, some people and some positions are wrongedy wrong wrong wrong, and the failure to speak directly to such a one is not the virtue of charity but, more likely the result of moral cowardice.
And patience? Is there no limit to patience? If there is no limit to patience, then you will never have the nerve to defend what needs to be defended.
Of course, I agree with Kendall re: civility, but charity, like patience, must have an outside boundary. Larry
Dear 10:
I have no idea what you mean by “cooperate with TEC.” You may not want some people around and of course you may like those disciples who Jesus nicknamed “Sons of Thunder” wish to summon thunderbolts. I see no reason why one cannot be infinitely patient and proclaim -I see nothing in the NT about defend -the Gospel unless one is muzzled and even then one is called to bear the Cross not thwack one’s oppponents with it!