Now the Archbishop of Canterbury is being hammered from both liberal revisionist and orthodox conservative quarters. At the bottom of all this is a lack of previous leadership effort on his part, so that both revisionist and orthodox Anglicans see much of the present Anglican mess as his fault. Scripture says something about letting your yes be yes and your no be no, and really, when you do that, it is so much easier to remember what you said, and to act on what you said.
Dr. Williams has danced around the issues and we can think of only two reasons for that, and whatever the real reason is in a sense doesn’t matter, since the bottom line is, he has no track record of really leading. He favors the Hegelian approach of letting both sides battle it out, and then the result will be a compromise that represents a best way forward. That could be the reason for what looks like no leadership skills.
Alternatively, he could actually have no leadership skills, and an internal inability to stand up and deliver.
Other than satisfying those of us who always want to know why things work out the way they do, it is really a distinction without a difference; no leadership is no leadership.
What a sad affliction the instinct to speak and teach in Hegelian dialectic has become in our time not only for professional humanities and social science academics, but also for the current Archishop of Canterbury. The late Archbishop Michael Ramsay also had a left-leaning heart and mind, yet he was direct, clear, and persuasive about why he believed in what he lived for and about where he stood.
Hmmm. I’m not at all sure that ++RW’s approach is fairly described as “Hegelian” or that the late, great ++Michael Ramsay is fairly described as having a “left-leaning” heart and mind, contra #1. Both charges seem imprecise and wide of the mark to me, but that’s a minor quibble.
I think +David Anderson is fundamentally right. Alas, the fate of historic King’s Chapel in Boston has become the fate of a great deal of TEC, where an implicit Unitarianism and universalism has become rampant and reached epidemic levels. But instead of having the integrity to leave Anglicanism and Christianity openly behind, TEC’s current heretical leaders have adopted a more covert and disingenuous approach. +Anderson’s harsh words are actually fully justified: “[i]They aren’t Christians any longer.[/i]”
His historical litany of folks who left TEC without being harrassed amd hounded by lawsuits is also apt, particularly in the case of the REC.
But most of all, I think his basic criticism of ++RW is fully justified, i.e., that the esteemed theologian has completely abdicated his responsibilities at the helm of Anglicanism. He may be great at presiding over graduate seminars, but he has utterly failed to exercise any leadership worthy of the name, but rather he has merely sought to block and thwart the attempts of GS leaders to fill the vacuum he has created by failing to steer the ship. There may be more plausible explanations for that disastrous failure than a supposed Hegelian predisposition, but the basic charge sticks.
I’m not impressed by ++RW’s Pentecost letter at all, and not satisfied in the least by it. +Anderson is right: leadership is what is called for in a crisis like this, not what Martin Luther King scorned as “[i]the paralysis of (endless) analysis.[/i]”
I wish the ABoC would heed the old adage:
“Lead, follow, or GET OUT OF THE WAY!”
David Handy+
I did not know that on more than one occasion my pastor has visited spiritual violence upon my person. I always thought it to be conviction. At any rate, a little spiritual violence never did me no harm.
Actually David Handy, my own sense is that Bp Anderson has it perfectly correct. The ABC’s a quite brilliant Hegelian; moreover, one who has decided that Gillian Rose’s reading of Hegel is the way also to lead. Lambeth 2008 was simply an extended seminar of her method. Sources for this judgement are primarily his Modern Theology article of 1995, now republished in [i]Wrestling with Angels[/i]. Finally, the Hegelian “violence†extends of course to one NOT having to decide between Anderson’s # 1 or # 2 – for all will become washed up in the “synthesis†[i]vom Geist[/i], of the Spirit. Now; make of all this what you will …! But its analysis I reckon is pretty close to the mark.
A fine article by +Anderson – right on the money at so many levels.