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The Incoherence of the Anglican Communion

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The Incoherence of the Anglican Communion 118_3 28/9/04 2:59 pm Page 235 235 The Incoherence of the Anglican Communion Andrew Atherstone Three tumultuous weeks in May and June, 2003 will go down in history as a defining moment in the development of the Anglican Communion. Three crises, in three separate countries, stirred up fiery debate about homosexual practice. Yet, more significantly, each has brought to light fundamental and irreconcilable divisions which exist between Anglicans. These distressing controversies have forced us to face the uncomfortable truth that the Anglican Communion, as presently organised, has no theological coherence. On 20 May, 2003, Downing Street announced that Jeff rey John (a vocal advocate for the blessing of same-sex unions) was to be the new Bishop of Reading, to the c o n s t e rnation of orthodox Anglicans in the Oxford diocese. Next, on 28 May, a gay couple in Vancouver had their relationship blessed using a liturgy authorized by Michael Ingham (Bishop of New Westminster), as mandated by his diocesan synod. This innovation, James Packer warned, undermines the Christian gospel and is ‘a watershed decision for world Anglicanism, for it changes the nature of Anglicanism itself’ .1 Then, on 7 June, the Diocese of New Hampshire elected Gene Robinson (who left his wife for a male partner) as its next bishop. His consecration went ahead despite protests from Christians around the world and the Anglican primates’ urgent warning that ECUSA’s action would ‘tear the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level’.2 These events are well documented. They have shaken the Anglican Communion to its core. For months words such as ‘schism’, ‘realignment’ and ‘disintegration’ have been on people’s lips. All are agreed that this is a critical juncture in the life of the Communion. There have always, of course, been theological disagreements and divisions between Anglicans. The first Lambeth Conference of 1867 took place against a background of controversy surrounding Essays and Reviews and the heterodox teaching of Bishop Colenso. Yet as Michael Marshall observes, the ‘theological gnats’ which troubled the Anglican Communion in the 1860s have now ‘grown into a stampede of elephants’.3 In recent decades Anglicanism in 118_3 28/9/04 2:59 pm Page 236 236 Churchman the West has suffered what Packer calls ‘an executive-level landslide into liberalism’. Liberal ways of thinking have gained control of policy, agendas and public discussion, dragging the Communion away from its Anglican heritage— the churches have been under pressure from within to embrace, among other things, relativism in theology, syncretism in religion, naturalism in liturgy, a unisex or feminist approach to women’s ministry, a positive evaluation of homosexual behaviour, and a socio-political view of the church’s world mission.4 The result is that the Anglican Communion is being torn apart from the inside. In the words of Bill Attwood, we now face ‘a crisis of apostolic order, a crisis of false teaching, and a crisis of courage’.5 In his study of the historical development of the Communion, William Sachs charts Anglicanism’s long but futile search for some form of coherent identity. He demonstrates that the last vestiges of unity have been ‘shattered’ in the decades since the Second World War, leading to confusion— Anglicans have no coherent sense of identity and no apparent means to resolve their uncertainty.…A cacophony of voices with equal claim to being normatively Anglican has arisen without a means to mediate among them. Thus the history of modern Anglican life reveals a bewildering profusion of claims to be Anglican.6 Anglicanism appears to be like the proverbial ‘wax nose’—it can be shaped to suit one’s personal tastes. Yet Anglicans have a perverse tendency, as Edward N o rma n notes, to paint their incoherence in positive terms: ‘there is an Anglican rhetoric of self-appraisal in which chaos is described as ord e r, ambiguity as richness of comprehension, patent diversity as a special kind of unity. ’ 7 P e rhaps this depressing conclusion is too hasty? Perhaps the Anglican Communion can be defended? Perhaps it does have some source of cohere n c e , some bond to hold it together despite sharp internal disagreements? Over the last c e n t u r y that coherence has been sought in a number of diff e rent areas—a c o m m o n c u l t u re, a common creed, a common liturg y, a common ministry, a common theological method and a common legislature. We will examine each in turn . 118_3 28/9/04 2:59 pm Page 237 The Incoherence of the Anglican Communion 237 A common culture? Ecclesia Anglicana—the Church of the English—has existed for centuries. However, Anglicanism is a recent phenomenon, originating in the early 1800s. The phrase ‘Anglican Communion’ can be traced back only to 1851.8 Because of its historical origins and etymological roots, being ‘Anglican’ was often identified with being ‘English’. For example, at the 1908 pan-Anglican Congress, Armitage Robinson (Dean of Westminster) declared: ‘The ideal function of the Anglican Communion is to express and guide the spiritual aspirations and activities of the Anglo-Saxon race.’9 Similarly Edwin Palmer (Bishop of Bombay in the 1920s) thought that to be Anglican was to be ‘typically English’: ‘Anglicanism is the Christianity of the early undivided Church taken into English hearts, practised by English wills, and stated by English brains.’10 Lord Plunket (Archbishop of Dublin in the 1880s) asked for the name ‘Anglican’ to be dropped, because Irish Roman Catholics were using it as evidence that the Anglican church was ‘the church of the Anglo-Saxon invaders’.11 It is likewise no coincidence that in the United States and Scotland—nations both keen, historically, to assert their independence from England—members of the Communion are usually known as ‘Episcopalians’ rather than ‘Anglicans’. Until the Second World War, the Anglican Communion could reasonably be described as ‘the British Empire at prayer’. As recently as 1960, of the 199 diocesan bishops around the world, 126 had been educated in England.12 Across the entire continent of Africa only four diocesan bishops were black.13 Thus William Jacob argues that at this period, ‘the most significant element in the cohesion of the Anglican Communion was the Englishness of its bishops’.14 Many provinces clung to English expressions of their faith—English worship, English church arc h i t e c t u r e, English ecclesiastical titles and dress, and theological colleges modelled on Cuddesdon, Mirfield or Westcott House. As Alister McGrath observes, ‘Too often in the past, international Anglicanism has been seen as a safe haven for expatriates in alien cultures, or a gathering point for culturally alienated Anglophiles with a taste for Trollopian characters or Tudor church music.’15 Much of that, thankfully, has now changed. The Communion has begun to b reak free from the chains of what John Pobee calls its ‘Anglo-Saxon c a p t i v i t y ’ . 1 6 In recent decades Anglicanism has grown significantly in 118_3 28/9/04 2:59 pm Page 238 238 Churchman francophone Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, and we have seen the rise of movements such as ‘Afro-Anglicanism’. More than half the dioceses in the Communion today are outside the British Commonwealth. It is thus no longer tautologous to speak of Anglo-Anglicanism—in other words, that We s t e rn subsection of the Anglican movement which remains English-speaking. The centre of gravity of the Communion has been moving steadily from the North and West to the global South. In 1950 there were just twelve Anglican provinces, inhabited largely by the British and their descendants (England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the West Indies, as well as China and Japan). By 1980 there were 27 provinces. Today there are 38. And while orthodox Anglicans in the global South continue to prosper, liberal Anglicans in the West continue to empty churches. There are now more Anglicans in Nigeria than in the whole of Europe and North America put together.17 As evangelist Michael Green observes: ‘The latter may have more degrees, more finance, more learning, more managerial expertise, but their dioceses are less effective in bringing others to Christ. It is the churches from Asia and Africa that are in the vanguard of Christian advance today.’18 The average Anglican today is aged between twenty and thirty, poor, lives in the two-thirds world and is evangelical. At last these orthodox Anglicans in the global South are beginning to be heard in the rest of the Communion, not least through the Primates Meeting. Anglican Encounters in the South have also proved influential, making clear reaffirmations of the biblical gospel and its ethical imperatives (such as in the 1997 Kuala Lumpur Statement). At the turn of the twentieth century it was automatically assumed that the ‘Anglican Communion’ meant simply ‘those churches in communion with the Church of England’. This was soon seen as dissatisfactory. Surely Anglicans worldwide had more in common than just their historic links to England? Therefore the 1930 Lambeth Conference attempted a new definition of the Communion, which remains significant— The Anglican Communion is a fellowship, within the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted Dioceses, Provinces or Regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, which have 118_3 28/9/04 2:59 pm Page 239 The Incoherence of the Anglican Communion 239 the following characteristics in common: (a) They uphold and propagate the Catholic and Apostolic faith and order as they are generally set forth in the Book of Common Prayer as authorized in their several Churches.
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