In essence, [Rowan] Williams and [katharine] Jefferts Schori are having a very old argument over local autonomy and central authority, Butler Bass said ”” two extreme and perhaps irreconcilable interpretations of Anglicanism.
“He’s trying to find coherent Anglican identity and enforce it in a top-down way, and she’s saying we’ve always been democratic, local, grass-roots.”
That argument seems to have reached a breaking point, the historian said.
“Scholars will look back on these letters in 150 years and say, ‘This is it. This is when it all went away,'” [Diana] Butler Bass said. “The Anglican Communion is not going to make it.”
[David] Hein agreed, saying, “A path has been chosen. It seems (Jefferts Schori) has prepared to pack her bags and go off on her own.”
“Jefferts Schori firmly rejected the push to centralize power and discipline, saying that Anglicanism, and the Episcopal Church, were founded by Christians who wished to escape the strong hand of an established hierarchy.”
….glad she feels that way, because at least half of her own flock no longer recognizes or respects her authority either. Even if they remain in one of her Churches for the time being, her opinions are no longer relevant to them whatsoever. Christians will continue to escape her strong hand tactics, and her followers will likely be in the 6-figures by the time she’s done.
I see this is from the St. Louis Post Dispatch. I’m sure that some of the members in my former parish are wondering what this is all about and why their rector hasn’t told themabout it. La-de-dah and fiddle-dee-dee.
No. 1: You suggest a paradox that I hadn’t noticed in connection with her statement: It is TEC that has unquestionably been engaged in a centralization of authority over recent decades.
What I tried to get across to this reporter was a striving toward Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence within the Anglican Communion since 1963 or so and also a greater realization–embodiment–of the AC as an international communion since the Second World War and the succession of Lang by Geoffrey Fisher. But all that ended up on the cutting-room floor.
” … and her followers will likely be in the 6-figures by the time she’s done.” TEC’s actual membership could indeed stand at 999,999 today.
She must take up the sword now precisely because of the declining membership. She has decided, clearly, that she would rather be a dead lion than a dead dog. This is understandable. Moreover, she knows an aggressive posture plays well in the US where it is widely conceded that the best defense is a strong offense, and such deployment of strength may actually cause an uptick in membership. Iin short she has nothing to lose and perhaps much to gain.
Now #1’s insight is important here because it gives her status vis a vis the ABofC. She MAY see herself as an American Caesar at the Rubicon. She is marshalling her forces and this requires a centralized authority. Larry
“She has decided … she would rather be a dead lion than a dead dog.” I don’t see her as a lion no matter how loud her roar.
Her letter preaches to the people who are already inclined to agree with her. It doesn’t do anything to win the hearts and minds of any new people that TEC needs to reverse the trend.The interesting remark about TEC being democratic is kinda of funny. If anything we are a republic with elected representatives making decisions for the whole church. If TEC was more grass roots it would have more people of color in positions of authority and dioceses would be left to decide how they want to handle the property problems in their dioceses. Samuel Johnson said this about the leaders of the American revolution: ‘isn’t it strange that the people crying out for freedom are the very people, that hold others in chains?” Isn’t it funny, that the very people that cry out for autonomy from the rest of the Anglican Communion are the very people that deny it to dioceses and parishes within their own province?
Well said, Keith! I see the same reality oozing forth, much like the “capped” well in the Gulf.
I guess that this is KJS’s argument for this particular audience anyway. Not exactly what she is arguing in the U.S. courts though, is it?
Or did she really mean that liberal Episcopalians only don’t like hierarchy when they are not in control of that hierarchy, and that “democratic, local, grass-roots” is just fine so long as it doesn’t challenge the liberal Groupthink?
Does a mouse roar?
[blockquote]”Scholars will look back on these letters in 150 years and say, ‘This is it. This is when it all went away,'” Butler Bass said. “The Anglican Communion is not going to make it.”[/blockquote] Butler Bass is a false prophet.
No. 10: Agreed. Surgery could still save the patient. Perhaps the prep has already begun.
Would that Kate and the HOB gang had the gonads between them to pack their bags and leave. They want the benefits of being “Anglican” while none of the responsibilities. As the current Bishop of Missouri George Wayne Smith said to me, “We’ll be as Anglican as we can be.” NOT is the new can be, apparently.
“Would that Kate and the HOB gang had the gonads between them to pack their bags and leave.”
Why? Might they not in the long run be doing Anglicans a great deal of good? She’s certainly helped to bring things to a point.
Fr. Dale,
I don’t see much difference between Bass’s statement and Alan Guelzo’s incisive little article “Ritual, Romanism, and Rebellion: The Disappearance of the Evangelical Episcopalians, 1853-1873.” Describing the gulf that separated the pre-Civil War Episcopal Church from its post-Civil War incarnation, Guelzo argued that the era was defined not just by the formation of the Reformed Episcopal Church, but by twenty years of leakage of Evangelical Anglicans into other branches of American Protestantism. By 1873, the Episcopal Church had largely ceased to imitate its English parent, in terms of nurturing even a comatose Evangelical wing. Had the REC schism occurred prior to 1860, things might have been very different.
Coming back to the present, over the next few decades there are still going to be at least two global bodies that claim the title “Anglican Communion,” but neither are likely fully to embody that organic “growing into unity” of the MRI era. In the sense that this phase of the Anglican Communion experiment is now over, Bass is more right than wrong. She doesn’t offer a prophecy about the ultimate success or failure of the Global South and like-minded Anglicans in the Global North (though I’m sure she has one). That’s a different issue.
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
#14. Jeremy Bonner,
[blockquote]over the next few decades there are still going to be at least two global bodies that claim the title “Anglican Communion[/blockquote]I’m not sure what you mean by this statement since you don’t list the two global bodies. Additionally, I am uncertain why you would call the Anglican Communion an “experiment”. I would call the Shakers an experiment. It is also possible that the Anglican Covenant will offer a re-confection of Anglicanism and the liberal elements within Anglicanism will form their own communion. At any rate the statement that the Anglican Communion is not going to make it because KJS and her ilk are at odds with the vast majority of the Anglican Communion is simply wrong and possibly wishful thinking. As a matter of fact, maybe the Shakers and TEC will have something in common.
One body will be GAFCON-centered, one – unquestionably shrinking in size, but still present for a while longer – will coalesce around the United States and Canada. It’s certainly conceivable that the Covenant – especially if Section 4 were revived in some form – could inform how the first group organizes itself, but I’m not entirely convinced now that it will. The real question is what the non-GAFCON Global South and the Church of England will do – you might easily end up with a Communion Partners-style body in communion with GAFCON and yet apart from it.
I used the term “experiment” for the Anglican Communion rather in the way that I might describe the expansion of the British Empire – unplanned and yet purposeful. 🙂 It’s not an accident, I think, that the Anglican-Methodist unity talks of the 1970s – on which Michael Ramsey set such store – failed because the Church of England didn’t want to deal, or that the Episcopal Church’s participation in the Consultation on Church Unity was so half-hearted. English-speaking Anglicans have always found it hard to engage with the drive toward institutional unity.
The Anglican Communion, by contrast, was premised – at least until the last couple of decades – on notions of mutuality and growing into unity, and on a willingness of the various participants to self-limit. Until 1976, one could take for granted a fundamental Anglican doctrinal consensus across the globe (regardless of the eccentric individuals who might pop up); until 2003 (or perhaps until 1998), one could assume that provincial autonomy was always conditional. No longer.
John Milton wrote the script that KJS is following:
[blockquote]Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. [/blockquote]
#17: Satan’s speech is what I meant by its being better to be a dead lion than a dead dog. Mr. Hein misunderstood my expression, in a way.
Schori CAN roar when at last she owns her own veldt. Larry
!8. Larry Morse,
She who rides the lion cannot dismount. (With apologies to the Chinese proverb)
The only Chinese proverb like this I am familiar with concerns legendary Chinese wives: He who takes a Chinese wife has a wolf by the ears. Larry
Did we notice how the PB signs this letter?
[b]PRESIDING BISHOP and PRIMATE[/b]
But she is concerned about creeping authoritarianism…