August 2006 - Evangelicals Now - Christian Newspaper

Post the General Convention of Anglicanism in the USA, Chris Sugden sees power struggles and reversion to tribal religion.

The General Convention of The Episcopal Church (TEC, formerly known as ECUSA), which met recently, did not meet the requirements of the Windsor Report to place a moratorium on blessing same-sex unions or electing and consecrating bishops in same-sex relationships.

Both those in favour and those against active same-sex relationships in Christian discipleship rejected any attempt to produce a fudge. The final resolution only calls upon Standing Committees and bishops to ‘exercise restraint’ in refusing consent to episcopal candidates ‘whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion’. The manner of life of conservative candidates would present a challenge to liberal-minded dioceses. This resolution was immediately disowned by 30 liberal and 14 conservative bishops.

Archbishop’s suggestion

Following the General Convention, in reflection on the future of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Williams suggested a covenant of shared common Anglican belief and practice. Those who cannot agree to it because they are developing new approaches could be associate members.

On July 11, the outgoing Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church responded to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s suggestion as follows:

‘Such a two-tiered view of our common life suggests to me amputated limbs and severed branches without any life-giving relationship to the One who is the source of all life. A pragmatic solution in this regard is at the expense of the deeper truth that the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you’.

Earlier in the week an English colleague who has lived in the US for some time told me: ‘Americans are not pragmatists. They are ideological activists’.

Unity and truth?

Archbishop Williams regularly ex-presses the view that unity is a prerequisite of arriving at the truth. This is in contradistinction to the traditional evangelical view that as we abide in the truth of the Scriptures we discover unity with one another. Archbishop Williams holds that all parties, especially those in opposition to each other, must take part in the search for the way forward. So the Anglican Communion is the scene for an experiment about the way to remain united in order to find truth. This experiment is as likely to bring further disagreement and discord as convergence and reconciliation.

The reason is that, while some see the process as an intellectual exercise, others see it as an exercise in power. In the situation of a power struggle, convergence and compromise are not a process of discerning the truth, but of bargaining to achieve what is possible. Participants will not focus so much on being convinced by others’ arguments in a common search for truth, as on what they might gain or lose. In ECUSA, whose central authority claims ownership of all church buildings, this has to do with holding property.

Struggle for leadership

We have a struggle for the leadership of the Anglican Church. Those who hold the levers of power in ECUSA, the Church of England and the Anglican Communion in many cases are liberal in theology and ethics. The Archbishop himself acknowledged that those who hold liberal views on sexuality are in the minority in the Communion, yet the Anglican Consultative Council and its office is largely controlled by people of a liberal persuasion.

Meanwhile, as one church attender told me at a baptism service recently: ‘Our one village church is not going to split over homosexuality’. Quite — they will follow where the leadership takes them. That is why the struggle for leadership is so crucial.

The struggle is not about the survival of the Anglican Communion as such. TEC is making it a power struggle for the leadership of the Communion. They provide significant funds for the Anglican Communion Office (The Living Church of December 29 2005 reported that ECUSA provided $672,000 dollars of the ACC budget of $2.3 million) and other provinces such as Brazil.

They have so far been content for the Archbishop of Canterbury to lead it, but what will be their attitude if he sponsors a process by which TEC is excluded? Will TEC be tempted to form a counter-communion? There are already signs of this with TEC’s emphasis on its global links. When the Presiding Bishop explained what he meant by ECUSA’s global mission, he said: ‘By mission I mean, the restoration “of all people to unity with God and each other in Christ”. The setting aside of a significant portion of our national church budget in support of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, along with a number of programmes already in place, is a very clear and concrete sign of our global commitment to Christ’s ministry of reconciliation. Poverty, hunger and disease threaten and undermine the dignity and wellbeing of brothers and sisters around the globe. Our ministry of reconciliation is exercised in how we live with, and care for, one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.’

What is the future?

How will Archbishop Williams fare in a leadership struggle? It could be significant that when the English House of Bishops came to consider carrying forward ‘Transferred Episcopal Arrangements’ for those who could not in conscience accept women bishops, the opponents of such arrangements were able to force a retreat. The grounds were that the proposals entrenched the view that women bishops would be second class bishops in some cases, since there would be areas, where people did not accept women bishops, over which they would not have jurisdiction, It was after this happened that the Presiding Bishop publicly rejected the Archbishop’s two-tier approach to the Anglican Communion. The lesson TEC will take is that Archbishop Williams buckles under pressure.

What is at issue is not the future of the Anglican Communion itself, but the continuance in the Western world of a biblically orthodox Christian faith which is both ‘Reformed’ and ‘Catholic’. Anglican churches are the only Reformed churches with Episcopal leadership derived from the one global Catholic Church. Since the average Anglican globally is evangelical, that means that Anglican churches are the only evangelical churches with bishops in the Catholic tradition. If orthodox Anglican churches disappear in North America, the British Isles and Australasia, the only churches in the reformed Catholic tradition in the Western world will be liberal in theology and sub-biblical in practice.

It will then be difficult to see how other global churches in the Catholic tradition, which continue to teach on matters of marriage and sexuality in ways that are universal, might have fellowship with them. The door in Western Anglicanism is open to different versions of Christian faith in different societies and locations. We hear this being advocated in such statements as, ‘we live in different cultural contexts, and pastoral questions which are deeply sensitive might have different solutions in different places’, by the outgoing Dean of St. Paul’s, London and in Gene Robinson’s sermon at the General Convention that he was preaching to homosexuals and those who were homosexually challenged could listen in. This is a reversion to the religious tribalism of the first century world from which Jesus came to liberate humankind.

Anglicans on the brink

Archbishop’s suggestion

Unity and truth?

Struggle for leadership

What is the future?

Chris Sugden

Main Articles

Other articles