Editorial: An Invitation to Grow Up

From The Living Church via Thinking Anglicans:

Posted on: June 4, 2010

There is a rhythm to the Anglican Communion when Archbishop Rowan Williams makes any new statement regarding our decades-long divisions. Progressives generally accuse the archbishop of being power-hungry, more papal than Anglican, or selling out the gay-sympathetic principles he expressed as the theologian behind “The Body’s Grace,” a lecture he delivered in 1989 as the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. Conservatives grumble some variation of “Mush from the Wimp,” to borrow the now infamous reference to President Jimmy Carter that appeared briefly (and accidentally) in The Boston Globe.

People experience a common temptation, in times of crisis, to blame the topmost leader, whether of a city, state, nation, parish, diocese, province or global arm of the Church. We kid ourselves: “If only [this leader] would [express my favorite ideas] then those enemies of [the nation, the Church, truth] would be [shamed, intimidated, ennobled] to [come over to my side] and live in [peace, harmony, unity].”

Many moreover struggle to grasp every subtlety of the archbishop’s carefully constructed reflections, and “Renewal in the Spirit,” his letter marking Pentecost 2010, will prove no exception to this rule. But readers should not miss the significant disciplines that the archbishop here encourages and undertakes.

If the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting follow the lead the archbishop has taken, by “proposing” that representatives of provinces that have disregarded the Windsor Report serve as less than full members (if they serve at all) on Anglican bodies, up to 30 leaders could be affected.

This would be painful for all affected provinces, to be sure, and could mark the beginnings of a formally reconfigured Communion, perhaps along covenantal lines. Pain is not an evil in itself, however. In anyone’s body, it can call attention to the need for intervention and healing. For Christians, it can be a discipline of sharing in the suffering that the Lord himself predicted would be the lot of any disciple.

It could be that the archbishop is testing the will of Anglicans across the theological spectrum. Do we love the Anglican family enough to sacrifice for it? Do we love our theological concerns enough to pay a price for them? Do we truly believe that what unites us, as Anglicans, is greater than what divides us? Do we want the Communion to find ways to stay together, honorably? Do we love justice only when it is something done to somebody else? Do we care at all about reconciliation, or do we simply want to prevail?

Nothing in the archbishop’s Pentecost letter is likely to make much immediate difference in the Episcopal Church’s deliberations about bishops in same-sex relationships, or pastoral blessings for same-sex couples. His words are unlikely as well to affect the Anglican Church in North America’s ministry among former Episcopalians. Only an archbishop with supernatural powers could hope to deter either of those juggernauts.

What the archbishop’s letter does achieve is the continuation of a conversation about Anglicanism, bounded by a disciplined order, for everyone else —for the Anglicans who know that the global Communion is not an accident of history or merely a federation of Christians who love unfettered pluralism. Anglicans have an identity, and a godly calling, to grow into. The archbishop’s letter points us toward one way of behaving as adults rather than irate children deprived of their toys.