Oh well

Flicking through Thinking Anglicans, Preludium, and even Fulcrum, in respect of Communion matters, and in particular with the ACNA question coming before the C of E General Synod on Wednesday, it is not at all clear that much will emerge at this time which will build Communion. ACNA has many critics. But if the criticism is deserved, might there nevertheless be some grace shown to them by the "Communion" (i.e. by people called into being through forgiveness and mercy).

Oh, wait, I know from comments made to some things I have said that ACNA has not been particularly nice to Episcopalians, so why should anyone be nice to ACNA?

Yet Anglicanism was always about width, accommodation, tolerance, and latitude. But here's the thing - touched on recently by Archbishop Mouneer - Anglicanism is not very good at tolerating those it deems to be narrow, exclusive, intolerant, and puritanical. So one can find this kind of comment on an Anglican blog, "... fundamentalist evangelical. We hate them ...".

Is the key to a renewed Communion a new learning for Anglicans: how to tolerate the intolerant? Or is Anglicanism basically a club for "people like us" - the us, according to the West, being the liberal majority - so no new learning required, just persistent eradication of the ones not like us?

Despite all the justifications for excluding ACNA from a seat at the Anglican table, I am left wondering whether the wood is being missed for the trees. This is an opportunity for the Communion to show ACNA what a big, generous Anglican heart is all about.

It looks like the C of E will not be paving the way this week. TEC will not do so at this time.

Oh well.

Changes in Auckland

Do not come here for the news if you want to read it early!! Last Friday I was on a very pleasant bus trip with work colleagues touring some churches in my new diocese. But up in Auckland the news was breaking that Glynn Cardy, world famous for the controversy over the Christmas billboard at St Matthew's-in-the-City, will no longer be Archdeacon of Auckland. Only yesterday did I learn this news which is reported here:

"Auckland's Anglican Bishop denies sacking the Archdeacon who sparked controversy with a Christmas billboard depicting Joseph and Mary in bed.

In a letter to a parishioner, Bishop John Paterson says many people found the billboard by Archdeacon Glynn Cardy offensive.

He writes he discussed the matter with the Reverend Cardy at length and asked him to write a letter of apology to his fellow clergy ... and adds he will no longer be the Archdeacon of Auckland.

However Bishop Paterson says the position of Archdeacon was always going to come up for renewal in April and Glynn Cardy's departure has nothing to do with the billboard."

[UPDATE: in a comment below Glynn Cardy disputes aspects of this report, and explains the resignation as archdeacon as customary (i.e. upon the resignation of his bishop, pending the new bishop making reappointments).]

Let's take this at face value. The non-renewal has nothing to do with anything other than (say) time to give another priest a turn in the role ... nevertheless it is a good thing that a priest willing to publicly question the doctrine of the church with the twist of it taking the form of mocking God while sending up a belief that no one actually holds (that God impregnated Mary with divine sperm) is not in a leadership position which is at the discretion of the Bishop.

But wait, there is more. Yesterday I also learned of an interesting sea-change at St Johns College, Auckland (ACANZP's main residential theological college). Until the end of last year most students at the College enrolled for theological degree studies were enrolled for the University of Auckland's B. Theol. degree (a few were enrolled for other theological qualifications obtainable in Auckland city or by distance elsewhere, and a few are enrolled for other courses). But over the summer a signal that there would be a shift in emphasis to the B. Theol. of the University of Otago has been converted to reality: I understand that as many as twenty students at SJC are now enrolled with Otago University (i.e. the university cited in Dunedin).

Otago University for many years has provided distance learning access to its theological degrees, and it has a physical presence with some buildings in other cities. Students taking up this option at SJC will be learning via audio conferences and online communication, associated with face-to-face tutorials with SJC staff members. This is a sea-change at the College. It means that few, maybe in time no students will be learning theology away from the SJC precincts - Auckland's degree studies requiring students to commute into inner city Auckland has been a source of much discussion in our church over the past decade or so.

There is also an element of 'full circle' in this move: once upon a time students at SJC could either take L. Th. courses with SJC lecturers, or, if wishing to obtain a degree, could study for the Otago B.D. at a distance. But in those days distance learning was rudimentary: a course outline, a reading list, and turn up for examination at year's end. A man in Christ I know well decided in those days that he would be better off actually living in Dunedin and attending lectures in the Otago B.D.!!

My own professional interest in the extent of this change relates particularly to the fact that as of Monday 22nd February this year, Theology House, Christchurch will be hosting audio-conferences for Christchurch students enrolled in Otago theological courses. Start in Christchurch, finish in Auckland is a distinct possibility for Christchurch ordinands!

Is Anglicanism a contempt-free zone?

Following on from posting a verse yesterday which caught my eye, here is another which I suggest is pertinent to Anglicans today the world over:

"He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt" (Luke 18:9).

Anglicanism's Pauline Problem

Anglicanism in the twenty-first century: diversity is good, autonomy of member churches is bottom-line.

Paul in the first century:

"I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and same judgment." (1 Corinthians 1:10)

Five Minutes to Midnight

One way to think about the Anglican Covenant is that it constitutes a measure of our willingness to be autonomous Anglican churches in communion together in the face of the possibility of formal schism or schisms occurring across the Anglican world. With one measure of the closeness of the world to nuclear conflagration in the background, I suggest that if midnight is the point when we are in schism, then we could assess the arguments for and against the Covenant in terms of minutes before midnight.

In my reading of criticism of the Covenant, most of the criticism stems from an unwillingness to let go of even one iota of autonomy. So when criticism waxes rather than wanes, the likelihood is that Anglican churches, in the end, will go their own way and schism will take place. Right now my assessment is that we are five minutes from midnight!

There is an alternative to schism (as I have been pushing in recent posts): we agree on one thing together, that we are not in fact a Communion and so we will call ourselves something else ... the World Anglican Association, perhaps.

Salient points

The Anglican Communion Institute is characterized by its critics as "four men and a website". Well, I am not sure whether it is the four men or the website, or both, but they must amount to something, otherwise why the vitriol? (I amount to one man and a blog, but no one bothers with me -:) The reality, of course, is that the ACI has the ear of significant leaders in the Communion, so I imagine some of their critics think they may have undue influence. Except the point of the ACI's post, drawn attention to in my previous two posts, is that they do not have undue influence: some aspects of the Covenant have reached a point where the ACI feels the need to point out the influence of others has been "undue". My cursory survey of the blogosphere is that the ACI has a point: in the midst of a welter of 'when will they (ACI, Mouneer, many other conservatives) stop whinging and whining about not getting their own way' there are observations that all may not be well within the (possibly) shadowy world of Communion bureaucracy.

As a matter of my own evaluation I do not think ACI etc are whinging and whining! What is going on is an attempt to openly discuss the present version of the Covenant and its merits, offering critique of argued deficiencies. If the critique is wrong, argue back and praise its efficiencies rather than mount ad hominem attacks (some of which are involving schoolboy boorishness ill-befitting followers of Christ).

Ephraim Radner (one of the four) has risen to the defence of the ACI, albeit with a personal rather than collective response. I note the following salient points:

"When the Covenant’s fate was given over to groups, like the ACC and its Standing Committee, that were disproportionately made up of those whose stated convictions were anti-Covenant, not so much as to determine the content of the Covenant itself as to control its dissemination and adoption process, there was every reason to be concerned and certainly vigilant. When the outcome to this adjudication has been procedural chaos (at the last ACC meeting) punctuated by autocratic resolution, the insertion of new processes based on committees and rules whose provenance is either unknown or questionable, that is cause for disturbed dissent. For the “process” to which the Covenant is now thereby consigned is one that is inevitably shaped by the Covenant’s own enemies. And when that process is itself veiled, only partially declared in its authority, necessarily misunderstood and mistrusted by many, it is faithful common sense to resist it. So I do."

"Thinking through matters in this light and making such proposals is hardly a matter of either attempting to stage a coup or playing footsy with corrupt powers. Rather, I believe it to be a responsible path to follow in what we all know to be a longer, more challenging, and difficult journey in our Communion’s vocation. I do not reject the ACC or its members and leaders; I will question vigorously those of their actions I think are ill-advised; I will resist strongly actions that appear to be improper. But the ACC are not my enemies; they are a part of the church of which I am a part. I do not reject the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is in fact someone whose heart and mind I deeply respect in Christ. I will question vigorously, however, judgments he makes or actions he takes that I think are ill-advised; I will even resist those that appear to be improper, as I would any within the church. But he is someone, quite apart from my personal views, whose role I honor in my very office as an Anglican priest. I do not reject the leaders and members of FCA – among them are individuals I do indeed respect and, out of a similar bond of ecclesial affection and shared ministry, I honor. But I will resist vigorously judgments and actions that seem ill-advised; and I will resist ones that seem improper. I do not reject TEC itself, of which I am formally a member and in whose ordering my ministry is placed. But I do maintain the calling of honesty, necessary dissent, and active resistance where called for."

It is important, if possible, that we Anglicans get these things right. My final observation from Radner concerns the alternative if we do not find a way, however long, to adopt the Covenant:

"throw out the continuities of our common life on the front end, and the hope of reconstituting them at the back end is vain."

The Covenant is nothing without a common approach to truth and a clear structure of authority

We now appear to have neither!

Bishop Mouneer Anis' resignation from the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, along with the significant concomitant criticism from the (normally Covenant supporting) ACI of aspects of the (recently revised) fourth section of the Covenant, particularly highlighting the confusing use of Instruments of Unity (if not inventing one or more as we go along), suggests that a common approach to truth in the Communion is now a fading hope, and that the possibility of some coherent authority for administering the Covenant is all but reduced to zero. Sarah Hey, for example, highlights pertinent aspects of the situation in this post.

Archbishop Mouneer gets to the heart of the matter which disrupts a meaningful sense that a common approach to truth undergirds our Communion when he observes that despite the majority view of the Anglican Communion being expressed in Lambeth 1998 1:10 in this phrase,

"homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture",

it appears to Anglicans such as Mouneer that, "the aim of the Listening Process is to convince traditional Anglicans, especially in the Global South, that homosexual practice is acceptable."

Is homosexual practice compatible with Scripture? Some say No, some say Yes. But together we have not yet agreed to one of two things which would accord with a common approach to truth: either that it does not matter if an open contradiction on this matter is a feature of Anglican life, or that it matters that there is an open contradiction but nevertheless we can live with the contradiction.

Perhaps we should put the Covenant on the shelf for a while and address how we might reach a common approach to truth. Then we might address the question of a clear structure of authority for the Communion. Four Instruments of Unity was always going to be a recipe for confusion when a really difficult contradiction in Anglican thinking was raised. That we muddled through (say) the rise of Anglo-Catholicism or the ordination of women is not a testimony to how brilliant Anglican Communion authority is, but to the low level of difficulty posed by such issues.

But I am not holding my breathe waiting for decisive leadership which demands that the Communion confronts the issue of whether it really wants to be a Communion or not. For the time being I shall try to consistently refer to the so-called Communion as a Confederation. That would be accurate. [UPDATE: I acknowledge Bosco Peters' point that 'Confederation' might not do ... so I shall think of another word].