IN THE end it held together, but only just. The 650-odd bishops who attended the once-a-decade Lambeth conference went home with open schism between the liberal and conservative wings of the worldwide Anglican Communion averted. A split may prove no more than postponed, as the agreed mechanisms for making minds meet are oh-so-slowly put in place (see article). But at least the unedifying spectacle of comrades in Christ tearing strips off each other over gay sex will vanish from the headlines for a bit.
Does it matter if Anglicans fall out? Most churches are riven by tensions: it is not so long ago that the Roman Catholic Opus Dei glared at liberation theologists, and Moscow’s Orthodox still squabble like mad with Constantinople’s. But Anglicans lack the glue that binds those churches together: the power of the pope to impose discipline on straying Catholics; the body of undisputed theology that unites Orthodox believers even when they quarrel. Anglicanism works through relationships, a sense of belonging to a family with a shared inheritance. That now has waned. Despite the apparent reprieve, this year’s Lambeth conference could well be the last of its kind.
As a secular newspaper that supports gay marriage and believes in a firm line between church and state, we can hardly claim to be a neutral observer in this. Yet trying to look at the Communion from an Anglican perspective (or that of most of them), two things stand out. First, schism might not be a bad thing. And disestablishment would be a very good thing.
Disestablishment is the big step required for this sexuality question to sort itself out. Once the CoE is cut loose from the British government, selection of the ABC will evolve into something more democratic. At that point, TEC and the ACoC will know their days are numbered.
I’m afraid that “disestablishment” will happen just after the CoE ends being Christian at all.
I think that’s what was made in Sweden, and it really works for (non Christian) liberals.
Let’s see. CEC attracts something less than a million butts on the bench on a given Sunday out of a claimed ~25 million CEC baptised members. I’m not persuaded Britain will even notice that CEC has lost the franchise.
I think we need to hear from the antidisestablishmentarians on this.
Well, I’m an American, not a Brit, so perhaps my opinion really doesn’t matter, or is so uninformed as not to count for much. But as regular readers of T19 will know, I strongly favor the disestablishment of the C of E. It has already ceased to be a real national church, since it has indeed lost the allegiance of most of the citizens of highly secularized England. A state church is as obsolete in a post-Christendom era as the Model T car, or perhaps the horse and buggy etc.
As I never tire of saying, “The only thing worse than a state church is an ex-state church that still pretends to be a state church.” Or an ex-state church that simply can’t conceive of any other way of being a church.
Granted, habit that are 1500 years old are hard to break. But we absolutely MUST break those outdated, counterproductive Erastian, Constantinian habits of thought and action. We must relearn how to be “in the world, but not of the world.”
But I too would love to hear from any English readers eager to defend the institution represented by that famously long word: antidisestablishmentarianism. At 28 letters, it may well be one of the longest words in the English language. But I suspect that the word, like the institution itself, is both cumbersome and more of a liability than an asset.
David Handy+
Passionate advocate of high commitment, post-Christendom style Anglicanism of an unashamedly sectarian, Christ-against-culture sort.
An unusually biased and badly informed article from the Economist. The application of the words “homophobes” and “misogynists” to those who wish to submit themselves to the authority of God in scripture, even if that goes against their social instincts (as in the case of yours truly), is distasteful and taken straight from LGBT demagoguery. I’m used to much better from this paper.