This is an extremely helpful article, including a number of links to some of Archbishop Rowan’s writings over the years. I am very grateful to Andrew Goddard for his efforts in tracking down all of these things so we can read them on-line. As someone who in the parlance of this blog would be considered a very strong re-appraiser, there is a great deal of Williams’ theology with which I can agree–and I suspect (or maybe hope) that the same will be true of folks on the reasserter side like Professors Goddard, Radner, etc. If this is true, then are we not closer to having ‘a language in which to disagree” as Williams has put it, than we are to having two sides who think the others are not ‘real Christians’, as Andrew Brown put it recently? Why are theologians who might, broadly speaking, be said to be working within the theological perspective of Williams, but who disagree on the presenting issue of sexuality (I can think of folks like Sarah Coakley, Gerard Loughlin, Graham Ward, Katherine Tanner on the re-appraising side) not having open conversations with Radner, Seitz, Goddard, etc. right now to show that there is a way for things to move forward, for conversation to continue, as Goddard prays for at the end of his excellent piece? I am still confounded by why we theologians are not speaking publicly to one another right now, even though it would come with some risk. The Anglican Communion desperately need a sign right now that honest dialogue by Christian thinkers can occur without the kind of hysterics that we see all too often on the blogs on both sides of the fence.
Perhaps these dialogues have been going on in private. If they have, I plead with those who are having them to bring these conversations out of the academic closet into the light of day, so as to give a glimmer of hope to those of us in the church who refuse to accept that the ‘other side’ is not committed to Christ. I know that my brothers Sumner and Radner, for example, are so committed. George Sumner was the rector at Trinity Church Geneva New York before I took the post and that, I believe, binds us with cords of kindness and loving commitment to a dearly beloved parish which is an icon of Christ. I pray and hope that George and my friends at Wycliffe feel that I too am a brother in Christ. Is it not high time for some of us to meet in person and bear witness to the vision of a disciplined theological conversation grounded in our love of our savior Jesus Christ? I for one long for such a meeting and pray for it every day.
Your brother in Christ’s relentless healing love,
Clark+
Some heavy lifting by Goddard–good work. But in contrast to all the deep words, I remember a little InterVarsity Press booklet by John Stott that said, in straightforward language, that Christian unity must be on the basis of truth. Of course, that was the sixties or seventies of the last century. Now, truth would be deconstructed.
There can be no “truth” because “. . . the repercussions of recent events is, I think, that it has weakened if not destroyed the sense that we are actually talking the same language within the Anglican Communion.” (ABC) Pluriform truth results in pluriform languages. Everyone maybe speaking English, but the language of each speaking means something different.
The ABC goes on to say, “Rightly or wrongly, and there will be very different views in this chamber on this subject, that has been what has happened. People are no longer confident that we are speaking the same language, appealing to the same criteria in out theological debates. And the deep lost-ness and confusion that arises from that and the anger that arises from that is something that does not in any sense help the long- term health of the body or our search for truth together in the Body.” Presently, the Body of the AC is near death. The only question remains is whether the ABC is up to the task of taking the medicine and thus, recover that part of the Body that is still alive in the Word of God and bearing fruit.
Re: Clark West
The problem is that there have been such eirenic moves as you ask for. I think of a publication such as [i] The Way Forward? [/i] edited by Tim Bradshaw with contributions from Gerald Bray, Jeffrey John, Elizabeth Stuart, Michael Vasey, Oliver O’Donovan & Rowan Williams. About as broad as you could get.
[b] But [/b] that was 10 years ago and things have moved on a lot in the meanwhile.
If I were a reappraiser, I suppose I’d say that the normal development of Anglicanism has been hijacked in the last 10 years by conservatives who have chosen the homosexuality issue as the one they want to use to remould the church into their narrow image.
As I am a reasserter, my perception is that the revisionist bandwagon rolls along by putting facts on the ground (Gene Robinson is the most obvious) and has no intention whatever of slowing down to talk things through in a calm and eirenic way. They are only interested in pushing their agenda forward by whatever means – and that’s the fatal flaw in Clark West’s plea. There are reappraisers properly so-called (i.e. people whose main concern is genuinely to think ideas through and then act on the basis of the results) but the driving force is people quite properly called revisionists (i.e. their interest is in taking action to get things revised and changed).
Really interesting comments here all. William S., that’s a fascinating distinction you make between “reappraisers” and “revisionists.” You might be on to something.
(Cross-posted at Mr. Goddard’s blog)
Mr. Goddard, at least on the US side of the pond, a cursory reading of current blog comments, both reasserter and reappraiser, to say nothing of reading those archives since 2003, will make starkly clear the fact that religious liberals will brook no questioning, let alone opposition, to the enforcement of their agenda, and that religious comnservatives (myself included) see the issues of Scriptural interpretation and authority and of Christology as either precluding or enabling eternal salvation. When the overwhelming majority of TEC’s bishops and clergy change the faith given once for all to the saints and inhibit and depose orthodox clergy, is there any common ground left to call communion? Be filled with the Heliege Geist or the Zeitgeist?
William S,
I do see what you mean and I agree that things have gotten well past the days of A Way Forward?, which i read years ago as well. In my haste to comment, I wasn’t entirely clear. I certainly don’t believe that more theological discussions will have any ability to stop the impending ‘divorce’ between re-asserters and re-appraisers (or revisionists–I’ll admit to being both!). Kendall has been charitable enough to post an article (twice!) from my blog in which I argue that this divorce is necessary and may well be of God. I suppose that is the kind of discussion I am pleading for now–how can we understand, in Christian theological terms, our current and impending divisions, without reducing it to Hosea versus Gomer or the sheep and the goats! I tried in my post to suggest a way. I suspect that Ephraim Radner, with his remarkable work on the pneumatological divisions of the church, can suggest another.
It seems to me that this is what theological discussion ‘across the aisle’ ought to be doing these days. Recognizing that a massive shift has indeed taken place in the Anglican Communion, we need to get about the business of putting our minds and hearts to the task of discerning God’s presence in our broken ruined midst. That job, I trust, is one both sides can be about at the same time that we are celebrating that though we are divided in many ways, Christ’s overarching reality in our lives means that we are still straining forward to what lies ahead–redemption in the love of our triune God, whose own traumatic tearing apart on Good Friday was certainly not the last word.
Your brother in Christ,
Clark+
I do not think that the great weight of opinion has been against discussion and debate. It has been that discussion and debate cannot take place in an environment of oppression of one side by the other. TEC is not the world, but it is an important part of it, and the position of the leadership of TEC and the great majority of its bishops has been to remove (where it can get away with it) or wait out until departure of, any orthodox clergy, replacing them with revisionist clergy. Any parish in a revisionist diocese joining the Network (and recall that in some diocese membership in the Network was forbidden) was under suspicion, and effectively in a lower class of member of the diocese. Orthodox parishes have been faced with departing from TEC or losing members. Many in TEC would prefer they just lose all their members, but many such parishes have opted to depart. A parish (or now a diocese) threatening to leave TEC is sued, without regard to the relative strengths of TECs legal position in various states, primarily for the purpose of inimidation. Efforts by moderate bishops to negotiate settlements (since, in many cases the revisionists have no use for the property even if the dicoese owns it) have been scuttled by the Presiding Bishop herself so as not to let any orthodox think they could escape punishment. Even lay volunteers have been individually sued by TEC and threatened with ruin for no purpose other than intimidation (though, the Virginia courts have dismissed those so far, thankfully).
In this environment, any real discussion is not possible. It simply isn’t.
There have always been two parts to the current debate. What to do about TEC’s innovations (and whether they are scripturally right or wrong), and what to do to protect the orthodox. Failure to address the latter, though a matter of “urgency” for years, makes it impossible to find space to debate the former. If someone were really interested in pursuing a discussion, they would do something to make it possible.
Also, the article includes an interesting remark about the September 2003 meeting in Lambeth and the ABC suggesting the “confessing” part of its name. I had heard the same thing, though don’t recall having seen it in writing before. However, I had also heard complaints that the ABC had thereafter backed off from the Network as TEC communicated that it was not acceptable to it.
I certainly appreciate how the lawsuits, depositions have made it well nigh impossible for discussion to take place and I for one would like to see it stop and have written to that effect a number of times.
ON the other side, however, gay and lesbian persons have also a right to be protected from the hateful and often life-threatening vitriol which spews forth from some, including bishops in the church! I know there are many on the re-appraising side who deplore this kind of verbal violence (would that it were limited to verbal violence, but alas, we know that it is not). Archbishop Rowan has spoken repeatedly about this problem, but for those of us willing to make the break with our brothers and sisters on the other side of the issue, I think it is often the failure of the re-asserting church to lay lives on the line for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters that is the crux of the issue. I hear about political realities in islamic dominated parts of the world, for example, being justifications for either supporting or ignoring repressive laws against gay persons–there is real violence taking place in many places and the church not standing in the breach, not risking itself for the sake of these children of God. This failure to oppose violence against gay persons, for some of us, trumps the issue of losing some property or even a pension when it comes to issues for which the church will have to give an account.
Yours in Christ,
Clark+
This is an extremely helpful article, including a number of links to some of Archbishop Rowan’s writings over the years. I am very grateful to Andrew Goddard for his efforts in tracking down all of these things so we can read them on-line. As someone who in the parlance of this blog would be considered a very strong re-appraiser, there is a great deal of Williams’ theology with which I can agree–and I suspect (or maybe hope) that the same will be true of folks on the reasserter side like Professors Goddard, Radner, etc. If this is true, then are we not closer to having ‘a language in which to disagree” as Williams has put it, than we are to having two sides who think the others are not ‘real Christians’, as Andrew Brown put it recently? Why are theologians who might, broadly speaking, be said to be working within the theological perspective of Williams, but who disagree on the presenting issue of sexuality (I can think of folks like Sarah Coakley, Gerard Loughlin, Graham Ward, Katherine Tanner on the re-appraising side) not having open conversations with Radner, Seitz, Goddard, etc. right now to show that there is a way for things to move forward, for conversation to continue, as Goddard prays for at the end of his excellent piece? I am still confounded by why we theologians are not speaking publicly to one another right now, even though it would come with some risk. The Anglican Communion desperately need a sign right now that honest dialogue by Christian thinkers can occur without the kind of hysterics that we see all too often on the blogs on both sides of the fence.
Perhaps these dialogues have been going on in private. If they have, I plead with those who are having them to bring these conversations out of the academic closet into the light of day, so as to give a glimmer of hope to those of us in the church who refuse to accept that the ‘other side’ is not committed to Christ. I know that my brothers Sumner and Radner, for example, are so committed. George Sumner was the rector at Trinity Church Geneva New York before I took the post and that, I believe, binds us with cords of kindness and loving commitment to a dearly beloved parish which is an icon of Christ. I pray and hope that George and my friends at Wycliffe feel that I too am a brother in Christ. Is it not high time for some of us to meet in person and bear witness to the vision of a disciplined theological conversation grounded in our love of our savior Jesus Christ? I for one long for such a meeting and pray for it every day.
Your brother in Christ’s relentless healing love,
Clark+
Some heavy lifting by Goddard–good work. But in contrast to all the deep words, I remember a little InterVarsity Press booklet by John Stott that said, in straightforward language, that Christian unity must be on the basis of truth. Of course, that was the sixties or seventies of the last century. Now, truth would be deconstructed.
There can be no “truth” because “. . . the repercussions of recent events is, I think, that it has weakened if not destroyed the sense that we are actually talking the same language within the Anglican Communion.” (ABC) Pluriform truth results in pluriform languages. Everyone maybe speaking English, but the language of each speaking means something different.
The ABC goes on to say, “Rightly or wrongly, and there will be very different views in this chamber on this subject, that has been what has happened. People are no longer confident that we are speaking the same language, appealing to the same criteria in out theological debates. And the deep lost-ness and confusion that arises from that and the anger that arises from that is something that does not in any sense help the long- term health of the body or our search for truth together in the Body.” Presently, the Body of the AC is near death. The only question remains is whether the ABC is up to the task of taking the medicine and thus, recover that part of the Body that is still alive in the Word of God and bearing fruit.
Re: Clark West
The problem is that there have been such eirenic moves as you ask for. I think of a publication such as [i] The Way Forward? [/i] edited by Tim Bradshaw with contributions from Gerald Bray, Jeffrey John, Elizabeth Stuart, Michael Vasey, Oliver O’Donovan & Rowan Williams. About as broad as you could get.
[b] But [/b] that was 10 years ago and things have moved on a lot in the meanwhile.
If I were a reappraiser, I suppose I’d say that the normal development of Anglicanism has been hijacked in the last 10 years by conservatives who have chosen the homosexuality issue as the one they want to use to remould the church into their narrow image.
As I am a reasserter, my perception is that the revisionist bandwagon rolls along by putting facts on the ground (Gene Robinson is the most obvious) and has no intention whatever of slowing down to talk things through in a calm and eirenic way. They are only interested in pushing their agenda forward by whatever means – and that’s the fatal flaw in Clark West’s plea. There are reappraisers properly so-called (i.e. people whose main concern is genuinely to think ideas through and then act on the basis of the results) but the driving force is people quite properly called revisionists (i.e. their interest is in taking action to get things revised and changed).
Really interesting comments here all. William S., that’s a fascinating distinction you make between “reappraisers” and “revisionists.” You might be on to something.
–elfgirl
(Cross-posted at Mr. Goddard’s blog)
Mr. Goddard, at least on the US side of the pond, a cursory reading of current blog comments, both reasserter and reappraiser, to say nothing of reading those archives since 2003, will make starkly clear the fact that religious liberals will brook no questioning, let alone opposition, to the enforcement of their agenda, and that religious comnservatives (myself included) see the issues of Scriptural interpretation and authority and of Christology as either precluding or enabling eternal salvation. When the overwhelming majority of TEC’s bishops and clergy change the faith given once for all to the saints and inhibit and depose orthodox clergy, is there any common ground left to call communion? Be filled with the Heliege Geist or the Zeitgeist?
William S,
I do see what you mean and I agree that things have gotten well past the days of A Way Forward?, which i read years ago as well. In my haste to comment, I wasn’t entirely clear. I certainly don’t believe that more theological discussions will have any ability to stop the impending ‘divorce’ between re-asserters and re-appraisers (or revisionists–I’ll admit to being both!). Kendall has been charitable enough to post an article (twice!) from my blog in which I argue that this divorce is necessary and may well be of God. I suppose that is the kind of discussion I am pleading for now–how can we understand, in Christian theological terms, our current and impending divisions, without reducing it to Hosea versus Gomer or the sheep and the goats! I tried in my post to suggest a way. I suspect that Ephraim Radner, with his remarkable work on the pneumatological divisions of the church, can suggest another.
It seems to me that this is what theological discussion ‘across the aisle’ ought to be doing these days. Recognizing that a massive shift has indeed taken place in the Anglican Communion, we need to get about the business of putting our minds and hearts to the task of discerning God’s presence in our broken ruined midst. That job, I trust, is one both sides can be about at the same time that we are celebrating that though we are divided in many ways, Christ’s overarching reality in our lives means that we are still straining forward to what lies ahead–redemption in the love of our triune God, whose own traumatic tearing apart on Good Friday was certainly not the last word.
Your brother in Christ,
Clark+
I do not think that the great weight of opinion has been against discussion and debate. It has been that discussion and debate cannot take place in an environment of oppression of one side by the other. TEC is not the world, but it is an important part of it, and the position of the leadership of TEC and the great majority of its bishops has been to remove (where it can get away with it) or wait out until departure of, any orthodox clergy, replacing them with revisionist clergy. Any parish in a revisionist diocese joining the Network (and recall that in some diocese membership in the Network was forbidden) was under suspicion, and effectively in a lower class of member of the diocese. Orthodox parishes have been faced with departing from TEC or losing members. Many in TEC would prefer they just lose all their members, but many such parishes have opted to depart. A parish (or now a diocese) threatening to leave TEC is sued, without regard to the relative strengths of TECs legal position in various states, primarily for the purpose of inimidation. Efforts by moderate bishops to negotiate settlements (since, in many cases the revisionists have no use for the property even if the dicoese owns it) have been scuttled by the Presiding Bishop herself so as not to let any orthodox think they could escape punishment. Even lay volunteers have been individually sued by TEC and threatened with ruin for no purpose other than intimidation (though, the Virginia courts have dismissed those so far, thankfully).
In this environment, any real discussion is not possible. It simply isn’t.
There have always been two parts to the current debate. What to do about TEC’s innovations (and whether they are scripturally right or wrong), and what to do to protect the orthodox. Failure to address the latter, though a matter of “urgency” for years, makes it impossible to find space to debate the former. If someone were really interested in pursuing a discussion, they would do something to make it possible.
Also, the article includes an interesting remark about the September 2003 meeting in Lambeth and the ABC suggesting the “confessing” part of its name. I had heard the same thing, though don’t recall having seen it in writing before. However, I had also heard complaints that the ABC had thereafter backed off from the Network as TEC communicated that it was not acceptable to it.
I certainly appreciate how the lawsuits, depositions have made it well nigh impossible for discussion to take place and I for one would like to see it stop and have written to that effect a number of times.
ON the other side, however, gay and lesbian persons have also a right to be protected from the hateful and often life-threatening vitriol which spews forth from some, including bishops in the church! I know there are many on the re-appraising side who deplore this kind of verbal violence (would that it were limited to verbal violence, but alas, we know that it is not). Archbishop Rowan has spoken repeatedly about this problem, but for those of us willing to make the break with our brothers and sisters on the other side of the issue, I think it is often the failure of the re-asserting church to lay lives on the line for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters that is the crux of the issue. I hear about political realities in islamic dominated parts of the world, for example, being justifications for either supporting or ignoring repressive laws against gay persons–there is real violence taking place in many places and the church not standing in the breach, not risking itself for the sake of these children of God. This failure to oppose violence against gay persons, for some of us, trumps the issue of losing some property or even a pension when it comes to issues for which the church will have to give an account.
Yours in Christ,
Clark+