Canterbury in a Corner

by Charles Raven, SPREAD


I clearly recall being told by the previous Bishop of Worcester, Dr Peter
Selby, that I and my congregation had painted ourselves into a corner.
Following his public denunciation of Lambeth Resolution 1.10 in 1999 we had
felt unable to receive his episcopal ministry and it did not seem to occur
to him that there could possibly be an Anglican future independent of his
oversight - a future which the formation of GAFCON and the FCA has now made
much more secure. Some ten years on the same theological tensions have led
to a momentous week in which TEC has blatantly rejected the Anglican
Covenant process and the Archbishop of Canterbury himself is revealed as
having painted himself into a corner.
TEC's decision to overturn the moratorium on gay bishops and to push ahead
with 'gay marriage' liturgies, not to mention the Presiding Bishop's
description of personal salvation as a 'heresy', coming so soon after the
formation of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) underscores the
fact that profound underlying differences within the Anglican Communion are
now institutionally embodied in North America.
Once ideas take on institutional expression, it is much more difficult to
sidestep them. Since becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has
desperately tried to avoid coming to a point of closure, but there is now a
general recognition that he must now act decisively if he is not to be
overtaken by events since the fault line in North America runs through the
whole of Western liberal Anglicanism, not least in England itself.
The reality of this fault line has been somewhat obscured by the existence
of those who identify themselves as 'centrists' such as Fulcrum in England,
who have tried to hold together the institutional status quo and doctrinal
orthodoxy. As Anglican Churches on both sides of the Atlantic have, in their
different ways, come progressively under the sway of secular liberalism,
this synthesis has become increasingly unconvincing and this week Fulcrum
bishops Tom Wright and Graham Kings have finally acknowledged that TEC has
effectively put itself out of the Communion.
This will increase pressure on Rowan Williams to take a similar line with
TEC and, as a corollary, recognise the ACNA, but it will be very difficult
for Williams to do so because it presents him with a personal dilemma in a
way which it does not for Wright and Kings. Kendall Harmon Kendall Harmon
notes that in the debate on D025, the resolution affirming the right of
those in same sex relation ships to be ordained within TEC, 'speakers
insisted "This is who we are!"'. Dr Williams' problem is that he is not
being 'who he is'. Having protested shortly before his appointment to
Canterbury about the need to 'come clean' and accept practicing homosexuals
for ordination , it is hardly surprising that TEC's General Convention
humiliated him by ignoring his personal plea for restraint. He was asking
them not act on the very teaching which his writings and public statements
did so much to legitimize for over twenty years.
Although in a corner, there is a tactical way out . Rowan Williams is a
resourceful dialectician, on paper and in practice. So it would be
unsurprising if he were to bend to orthodox pressure and at least put the
wheels in motion for a process to recognise the ACNA, thus regaining the
initiative and gaining goodwill from the orthodox, while continuing to
recognise TEC.
Superficially, this would look like a win for the ACNA, but there would be a
price. It would be a step back into the murky world of Lambeth politics, so
thoroughly discredited at the last Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica,
and interminable TEC funded 'indaba' which only serves to give plausibility
to those with whom the orthodox should not be in fellowship. It would be
tragic if those who have made such a costly stand were to relativise and
undercut their position in this way.
The point becomes clearer when we think of the impact in England, which must
now be Rowan Williams' main concern. If both TEC and the ACNA have official
recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury, then it lends plausibility to
those who would set back reform by arguing that both 'extremes' have their
place in an Anglican mixed economy which may one day settle down into a new
synthesis. The attraction of such an argument should not be underestimated
given the English tendency to compromise and the particular pressures to
cultural conformity which come with the Church of England's establishment
privileges.
Archbishop Peter Jensen, speaking of the GAFCON Jerusalem Declaration,
reminded delegates at this month's launch of the FCA in Britain and Ireland
that 'the mark of a Christian statement, a statement which professes the
true faith, is that it also says 'No!'.. Its affirmatives take strength from
its negations.' A real 'yes' to the ACNA must therefore also involve a clear
'no' to TEC (and of course the similarly minded Anglican Church of Canada)
and with the present Archbishop of Canterbury this possibility must be
considered as belonging to the realm of the miraculous rather than the
probable.
So if Canterbury is in a corner, what is the way forward for the Communion
in general and the Church of England in particular? At its most essential,
it is to gather around the Jerusalem Declaration as a contemporary statement
of authentic biblical Anglicanism which gives a confessional rather than
institutional focus of unity. Canterbury may be painted into a corner, but
the Anglican Communion is not. The Bishop of Worcester was not essential to
our Anglican future; the Archbishop of Canterbury is not essential to the
Communion's Anglican future.

Charles Raven
18th July 2009