SQUARING THE CIRCLE

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

Archbishop Cranmer has a recommendation for Rowan Williams. Stop pretending that you can save the Anglican Communion and start focusing on your regular job:

If His Grace is honest, he is a little tired of all this: we are not at a moment of historic schism like those of 1054 or 1517. Let the Worldwide Anglican Communion go the way of the British Empire, of which it is but the spiritual ghost. The Archbishop of Canterbury should be wholly concerned with leading the Church of England, not distracted hither and thither in cobbling together endless formulae by which mutually exclusive provinces may continue to perpetuate the perception of communion. You can’t pour new wine into old wineskins: the factions have already decided their courses and will not put aside their differences. The moment a province decides to appoint to the Episcopate Katharine Jefferts Schori and then Mary Glasspool, it is clear that they don’t give a damn about acting ‘with diligence, care and caution in respect of any action which may provoke controversy’.

His Grace’s initial point cannot be emphasized too strongly. We’re not talking about the mutual excommunications of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches with all both those mournful events implied. Nor are we talking about the split between Roman Catholics and Protestants.

We’re talking about a 142-year-old Protestant Christian association of churches whose single oldest province is around 500 years old. All its other provinces are far younger than that. So we’re really not talking about churches with genuine historical pedigrees assuming that sort of thing is important to you.

Let’s be honest. Nobody can say with any certainty just exactly what “Anglicanism” or “the Anglican tradition” really means. If “Anglicanism” is whatever the Anglican Communion says it is and if the Anglican Communion has never formally expelled any of its member churches for any reason, those Anglican churches who ordain women, for example, are just as “Anglican” as those who do not.

After all, quite a few Anglican bishops opposed to women’s ordination continued to attend Lambeth Conferences with those bishops in agreement with the practice. If there was a serious move in the Communion to discipline the Americans over the 70′s innovations, I’m not aware of it. And while there were quite a few individuals and the odd parish here and there who left, there was certainly no mass split over the issue.

What about New Westminster’s same-sex marriages? What about Gene Robinson and Mary Glasspool? What about them? As things stand now, the same logic applies. Both churches were Anglican before 2003 and both remain Anglican now.

No serious effort has been made to expel either church since that time; in fact, as we have all seen, Dr. Williams has bent over backwards to keep both in the Anglican Communion. QED, the Episcopal Organization and the Anglican Organization of Canada are both still Anglican. Argue whether that should or should not be the case but the syllogism is perfect and you know it.

Where are you going with this, Johnson? Here. If you seriously want to end the Anglican Communion controversy, stop pretending that there’s still an “Anglican Communion” anymore and stop caring whether or not an “Anglican Communion” still matters.

Because there isn’t. And it doesn’t. There is no more Anglican Communion.

So put it out of its misery.

We can’t do that!! That will mean the end of Anglicanism as a world-wide Christian presence!! No it won’t. Does the success and vigor of Anglican Christianity in places like Uganda, Nigeria, Rwanda and elsewhere in the Third World depend on its long and prestigious history or how impressive its international structure is? Or does it depend on what it does for people here and now?

And my gracious lord of Canterbury needn’t worry about a loss of international stature because he’ll still have plenty of that. Anglican churches around the world will still identify themselves in terms of the Church of England regardless of whether or not they’re “officially” part of a 142-year-old international Protestant Christian association.

Counterintuitive as it might seem but get clear of the cold, dead hand of the Anglican Communion and Dr. Williams and his successors may actually find their international stature enhanced rather than diminished. Archbishops of Canterbury will never lack an “Anglican” pulpit anywhere in the world they care to go.

Do you want to preach to a General Convention of Episcopalians or a General Synod of Canadian Anglicans? Go right ahead. Do you want to deliver a keynote address to a GAFCON or Anglican Church in North Americameeting? Do that too. Have you been invited to address some Continuing Anglican gathering or other? Go for it.

Once the Archbishop of Canterbury stops concerning himself over who’s “officially” Anglican and who isn’t, the sky’s the limit for Anglican Christianity. It’s kind of like this. Shakespeare is performed and revered in places that aren’t British and haven’t been for hundreds of years.