But it is frankly not clear what we have achieved. The last few days have involved a drafting group in spending many hours trying to write a reflection paper on the conference for all the bishops to take home with them. It describes our discussions and concerns in some detail. But on the big issues around how we hold things together in the future there isn’t yet clarity. This conference has passed no resolutions and issued no generally agreed statements. It is therefore uncertain as to what is the mind of the conference on some of the most difficult issues. Today we shall see the final version of the document which reports the conference, but there has been no process by which the members of the conference can agree the text!
So where do we go from here? I shall think about that in the next few days. I shall want to give an account of the conference to the diocese and to think through the implications of it for our overseas links. I shall also want to think about my own work as a bishop and how that has been enriched by all this. And I shall want to reflect of the design of this conference, because although it has been a rich experience it has not empowered the members to get their voice heard and to feel that the future direction of the Communion has been clarified.
I thought this bit at the end was also a significant reflection
[blockquote] One last point. The Archbishop of Canterbury certainly emerges from this with enhanced stature and authority. His standing in the Communion is beyond question. I hope he uses that to full effect in the months ahead. [/blockquote]
I’ve puzzled over what appears to be a shift in thinking about the body which makes this statement, and therefore the statement itself. I’m not Episcopalian/Anglican, so I wonder whether I’m just missing something.
The puzzle shows up in this statement:
[blockquote] The last few days have involved a drafting group in spending many hours trying to write a reflection paper on the conference for all the bishops to take home with them. It describes our discussions and concerns in some detail. But on the big issues around how we hold things together in the future there isn’t yet clarity. This conference has passed no resolutions and issued no generally agreed statements. It is therefore uncertain as to what is the mind of the conference on some of the most difficult issues. [/blockquote]
It’s that last sentence. My puzzlement is whether the bishops gathered at Lambeth are regarded as one organic body – or whether they are to be regarded as an aggregate.
If the gathered bishops are one organic body, then it makes sense for them to issue unified statements about matters to be dealt with in the life of the Anglican Communion. Presumably such statements would be regarded as having significant authority – given the dynamics of an episcopal polity. (Is that not so – bishops are regard as teachers who are to be learned from?)
On the other hand, if the gathered bishops are an aggregate, then the reflections document does in fact reflect the “mind” of the body. Because the body has a “mind” only in a highly indirect sense. What the body has is an aggregate of 600+ minds, each mind of equal value, each mind’s views to be given equal weight. The only way to chronicle the mind of a 600+ member aggregate is by means of some sort of survey. And from where I stand, it looks like the process for creating the reflections document was a sort of elaborate conversational survey process.
Presumably there are those who believe that the common mind of the Anglican Communion can only be established when all of the “Instruments of Communion” have spoken. All four of them. Or five. Or however many there might be at any particular moment.
Am I just off on all this?
If I’m right about this gathering being viewed (by some at least) as a grand aggregate of equally valuable individual opinions, then it feeds a larger concern I have that collectively, across our society, we have less and less ability to understand and rightly to value the social bodies of which we are a part. If my primary concern is my own autonomy, then social bodies can never be anything other than aggregates.