Schism: it is the fact of the matter

From Anglican Mainstream via TitusOneNine:

Posted in: Anglican Communion, TEC

By Andrew Carey, CEN

Most religious affairs correspondents have struck the word ‘schism’ from their vocabulary in describing the state of the Anglican Communion. This is partly because every stage of turmoil and each new meeting of the Communion’s instruments potentially promises the final split. Yet it never seems to come.

My view is that the ‘schism’ took place in 2003 when the Americans explicitly broke with church tradition and teaching by consecrating a practicing homosexual bishop.

As a result a number of provinces declared themselves out of communion with The Episcopal Church, others were in a state of impaired communion.

Don’t forget that this is true of the Church of England’s own relationship to the Bishop of New Hampshire as well. Tellingly, Bishop Gene Robinson cannot conduct priestly or Episcopal acts when he visits England, and furthermore it is unlikely for the foreseeable future that any of the priests he has ordained would be licensed in an English diocese.

Each new meeting of the Communion now reinforces this impression that the ‘schism’ has taken place, because complete sacramental communion is demonstrably no longer possible. The most recent news, of course, is that an alternative province is being formed across North America bringing together the various acronyms and groupings we are coming used to: the Network, CANA, dioceses linked to the Southern Cone, and parishes under the oversight of Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, together with traditionalist continuing churches which long ago broke away.

In the absence of any meaningful overtures from the official American and Canadian leadership, and no proposals for any effective alternative oversight, and amid a determination to press on with scandalous and acrimonious litigation, there is probably no option now other than a third North American province. Furthermore, the level of theological heterodoxy in the Episcopal Church is worryingly high. A number of dioceses have rejected the moratoria which were called for with impunity and it looks clear that at the next General Convention it will be business as usual in the liberal drift of the denomination.

Apart from the sexuality issue, relativism both morally and theologically is normal theology in TEC. Very few Episcopal leaders will say with any confidence that Jesus Christ is the only way to God; instead they apologise for missionary activity in the past, and proclaim a muted, stunted, deformed Gospel to the world.

Yet the formation of a third province is not universally favoured by those who otherwise reject North American innovation. The Gafcon route is an ‘outside’ strategy that has given up on the ability of the Anglican Communion to discipline itself in accordance with Bible and tradition. There is however an insider’s strategy as well, which believes that the Windsor process is roughly the right direction for the Communion to go, that it will actually result in discipline. The insiders admire and trust the Archbishop of Canterbury to guide the Communion through the current impasse. They do not believe, as do his critics, that his strategy is one of endless delay and obfuscation, preferring instead to believe that he is nudging the communion with great patience to a more mature unity based on Windsor principles and founded on a covenant which might prevent such divisions in the future.

An Inevitable Realignment?

So where do we go from here? The next few months will be telling. If you believe, as do I, that the split has already occurred then reaching an amicable settlement of differences is the best that can be hoped for.

Perhaps we can somehow stay in relationship together in a ‘looser’ series of relationships, on different trajectories if we take to heart a significant phrase which the Archbishop of Canterbury has used —- a ‘mixed economy’ church. The geographically-based communion was always going to be challenged sooner or later.

The existence of networks which rival the dioceses, the outmoded geographical lines which were drawn-up centuries ago, and the inevitably of church closures and decline in the western provinces, while the southern churches grow apace, have probably made inevitable some kind of realignment in the Communion, even without the 2003 crisis.

Additionally, a Canterbury-centred Communion has been facing a gathering storm for at least half a century. There was always an uneasy relationship between Canterbury and New York which could at any one time have resulted in division. The United States does not easily belong to international bodies. Furthermore, the post-colonial growth of the Churches in the global south set a further test for the Communion.

Against these changes, the Anglican Communion had only two defining marks —- common prayer and universal ministry. Both have now gone, and while institutional attempts were made to settle the Communion on the basis of its relationships through the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meetings, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Archbishop of Canterbury, these bodies are now in a state of war. The only hope is that they continue to meet.