After the debates at the American General Convention last summer, I wrote directly to all the primates of the Communion to ask about their reaction and the likely reaction of their provinces as to whether the resolutions of Convention had met the proposals of the Windsor Report for restoring something like normal relations between the Episcopal Church and others in the Communion. The answers were instructive. About eleven provinces were fairly satisfied; about eleven were totally dissatisfied. The rest displayed varying levels of optimism or pessimism, but were not eager to see this as a life and death issue for the Communion. Of those who took one or the other of the more pronounced view, several on both sides nonetheless expressed real exasperation that this question and the affairs of one province should be taking up energy to the near-exclusion of other matters.
The public perception, as we’ve been reminded by several commentators in the last week or so, is that we are a Church obsessed with sex. The responses I received to my letter to Primates suggests that this is what many within the Church feel as well – and I’d be surprised if many in this chamber did not echo that. It feels as though we are caught in a battle very few really want to be fighting; like soldiers in the trenches somewhere around 1916, trying to remember just what were the decisions that got everyone to a point where hardly anyone was owning the conflict, just enduring it (we don’t of course have to go as far back as 1916).So in short, I am commending the Primates’ communiqué, for all its inevitable imperfections, as representing a serious attempt to go beyond the surface problems and to give us some space to look at the underlying and neglected theological factors.
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams
So it is natural to want to say, ‘This is a war no-one chose; there must be a simple way of halting the conflict and getting the troops home.’ That simple protest has been forcefully expressed, in the media and within the Church, in terms of giving up on the Communion and concentrating on the independent health and integrity of each local church. Unhappily, though, the truth is that when conflicts have passed a certain point, simple solutions are unlikely to work, to the extent that they deliberately ignore the things that bred the conflict in the first place – and that have never been properly addressed. This is a recipe for the whole thing to start up again as soon as possible.
But I’d remind you too of something I said in this Synod last year. It is folly to think that a decision to ‘go our separate ways’ in the Communion would leave us with a neat and morally satisfying break between two groups of provinces, orthodox and heretics or humane liberals and bigots (depending on where you stand). Every province could break in several different directions. And if you look at parts of this week’s agenda, can you honestly say that our debates and their outcomes would be simpler if we didn’t have the Communion’s challenges as part of the background?
In my remarks today, I want to try and identify some of the factors which, if not addressed, will lead us into more of the same unedifying divisions – if not on this, then on other questions. And I want to outline why the final communiqué from Dar es Salaam might possibly leave open some constructive possibilities. But may I take the opportunity of thanking publicly the countless people who wrote to assure us of their prayers in the last fortnight? We were very deeply supported during our meeting, and that was a palpable blessing.
Two significant factors to start with. The debate triggered by certain decisions in the Episcopal Church is not just about a single matter of sexual ethics. It is about decision making in the Church and it is about the interpretation and authority of Scripture. It has raised, first of all, the painfully difficult question of how far Anglican provinces should feel bound to make decisions in a wholly consultative and corporate way. In other words, it has forced us to ask what we mean by speaking and thinking about ourselves as a global communion. When ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ fail, what should we do about it? Now there is a case for drawing back from doing anything much, for accepting that we are no more than a cluster of historically linked local or national bodies. But to accept this case – and especially to accept it because the alternatives look too difficult – would be to unravel quite a lot of what both internal theological reflection and ecumenical agreement have assumed and worked with for most of the last century. For those of us who still believe that the Communion is a Catholic body, not just an agglomeration of national ones, a body attempting to live in more than one cultural and intellectual setting and committed to addressing major problems in a global way, the case for ‘drawing back’ is not attractive. But my real point is that we have never really had this discussion properly. It surfaced a bit in our debates over women’s ordination, but for a variety of reasons tended to slip out of focus. But we were bound to have to think it through sooner or later.
