| [top new.asp] | |||
|
|
|
Anglican Communion or Federalist
Alliance? I write as a contributor to “To Mend the Net” and to the essay on “Conciliar Economy” which appeared in this digest and in The Living Church at Epiphany earlier this year. The former contains an excellent chapter on authority in the Anglican Communion and in the Primates Meeting; the latter does an accurate job chronicling the historical warrants for General Convention in the ECUSA. This includes an assessment of how certain decisions on same-sex blessings likely to be made at General Convention would clearly outstrip those warrants and render the Convention, for lack of a better word, forfeit. (I am pleased to see that the Bishop of SC has recently called for a meeting of those who likewise worry about the direction of General Convention in terms of legislating same-sex blessing rites. One must be prepared to face difficult times with a clear sense of direction and resolve.) I have read with interest and concern the flood of responses to the statement just released by the Primates Meeting; and to reactions to Bishop Ingham’s proceeding with same-sex blessing rites in the Diocese of New Westminster; and to the letter of Archbishop Peers clarifying his sense of the authority of the Primates Meeting, and his role in it, in the light of the New Westminster same-sex blessings. I think the simplest thing to say is that two conceptions of Anglican Christianity are on the table. There are those who view Anglican Christianity in terms of a Communion of accountability in Christ. For them, the Primates Meeting and the Archbishop of Canterbury have more than a vacuous “moral authority” (if there is such a thing, it has been forthrightly ignored in this case). For them, national boundaries are not on the same order as Scripture and the historical mind of the Church, as well as the formal deliberations of Anglicans as they have met in fellowship at Lambeth and the Primates Meetings. To these sources of authority—for that is what they are—appeals are therefore made. The final section of “True Union in the Body?” makes this very clear, and this booklet was front and center at the Primates Meeting. Others clearly see the Primates Meeting and the Archbishop of Canterbury as having no jurisdiction or authority in matters of faith and practice, in any truly catholic sense. The “authority” of these is genuinely local – indeed, it exists, apparently, only for the edification (if that is the proper way to state it) of those in attendance. From what I can gather, these Anglican Christians hold to some kind of federalist conception of anglicanism. Local Christians have the right and indeed obligation to act as they see fit, this action typically bolstered by some kind of appeal to ‘spirit authority’ (whatever that means in precise terms). No Anglican Christian from any region or judicatory except their own has any claim to speak, especially with appeal to a catholic (non-local) authority, like Scripture, the Church’s catholic faith and practice, or prior deliberations of the Communion. Logic demands asking, can these two conceptions co-exist? I doubt it. Those who wish to accept that Anglicans are in a world-wide Communion will surely be unable to adopt a view of federalist independence and local option over matters like the Church’s teaching on human sexuality. All this flies in the face of the direction of the Communion as now carefully reported in “To Mend the Net” and “True Union in the Body?” The hard question is what are Anglican Communion Christians to make of federalist (local-option) Christian leaders who are in their midst and who are now insisting on their view of federal anglicanism? If these two conceptions are not compatible, something is going to have to give. My own judgement is that, for the purposes of Communion meetings (Lambeth; Primates Meeting; Anglican Consultative Council), federalists should be given ‘observer status, without voice or vote’ (as argued for in To Mend the Net). By their actions, they have already insisted that they wish to have no part of an Anglican Communion of accountability and interdependence. Archbishop Peers stated it well when he concluded that the Primates Meeting he had just attended wrote a statement which should not have been taken as saying anything authoritative in New Westminster. On the face of it, this is preposterous. Why would the Primates have said they could not support liturgical blessing of same-sex unions, if they did not mean this to be understood as applying fully to the situation in New Westminster? One notes the immediate response of Nigeria’s Archbishop, who was of course in attendance at the Primates Meeting, severing Communion with the Diocese of New Westminster. This is appropriate, of course, and logical. But another way to say it is, the Diocese of New Westminster, and apparently also the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, reject the notion of an Anglican Communion as a fellowship of accountability, and have acted in a way consistent with this conviction. They have the freedom to act as they wish, of course, and by doing so have rejected the Anglican Communion and its instruments of unity. I would therefore encourage the Primates to meet this wish with a decision of their own: the declaration that for the purposes of Anglican Communion meetings, the Bishop of New Westminster and the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada are now “observers, without voice or vote.” Lambeth Conference called for enhanced responsibility for the Primates Meeting. It is time for that responsibility to be exercised. Respectfully in Christ, (The Rev’d) Christopher Seitz |
|
|
|||
Please
continue to pray for the Anglican Communion and those involved in
key events.
The Anglican Cycle of Prayer is
