October 9, 2007
Christopher Wells of the Covenant blog (http://covenant-communion.com) gives the following introduction:
Following is the first contribution to Covenant by our (at the moment only) non-Anglican “featured author,” Andreas Westergren, who is a priest in the Lutheran Church of Sweden and a doctoral candidate in theology.
I am especially grateful for this gift as our brother writes in his non-native tongue (he is also married to a German, and I understand that he and his wife regularly converse in that language; and his doctoral work especially demands aptitude in Greek, with some use as well of Syriac and French: may many of us achieve such multi-linguistic heights!). It is a passionate reflection on “communion” in an ascetical and ecumenical key, and graciously engages the Anglican situation from an international perspective.
An excerpt:
It was interesting to see how the Swedish church, after the controversial decision to bless same-sex partnerships (not formal marriages), was criticised by fellow-members of the “Porvoo Agreement,” namely the Church of England and the Church of Finland, for not letting them be more involved in the discussion. Bilateral critique like this follows from the premise of mutual accountability! And unless our agreements take such a shape, they run the risk of being little more than small-talk.
From my point of view there is much at stake in the Anglican Communion’s attempts to reshape itself, since it stands at the crossroad of many traditions. If it manages to find a new form of its own communion, it might be able to act as mediator between different strands in the Church; if not, it will still bear consequences for the whole Church, albeit negative ones. The question, as I understand it, pertains not only to the decisions that will be made but also to how seriously the different churches will take the debate—and each other—throughout this time of decision-making; or, to return to my initial reflection: it is a question not only of articulating an appropriate compromise but of the readiness to find oneself—and Christ—through the encounter with the other.
One Church?
Losing Identity
A couple of years ago I was one of the initiators of a symposium on the identity of the Church of Sweden. I especially remember one of the professors standing up and saying: in a post-modern context, we are not so fond anymore of speaking about identity….
Following this interesting assertion, it seems that it could be developed in relation to the question of the future shape of the Anglican Communion. Because a focus on the preservation of one’s own identity may be an equally distinguishing trait for both the allegedly conservative and liberal, as both fear that the views of the other may be superimposed upon them (in this sense, both are literally “conservatives”!).
Of course, concern about identity can be appropriate and even necessary at times. Sometimes one’s identity has to be defended vehemently against intruders. The problem, however, arises when such defenses are taken as the rule rather than the exception. They betray a typically modern understanding of freedom as something that has to be defended, negotiated and compromised, because its preconception is the market or politics. It is my identity against yours, your freedom against mine in a game where all are competitors, intruding upon the freedom of the other, where common space only can be a place for a hermeneutics of suspicion (so that my rights are not overlooked).
As common as this kind of understanding of identity and freedom may be, it is not sufficient because it does not account for the more fundamental experience of freedom taking place precisely in the interaction with someone, that one’s identity only finds its fullest expression and potential in relating to something else. On a personal level, our identities are never set; they evolve through the circumstances and the people that we meet. Theologically speaking, my identity can never be just mine, since my existence is ultimately dependent on God and can therefore find its goal only in (relation to) Christ. In this sense my identity is a calling to leave myself, entrusting myself to God in daily repentance—ultimately, a preparation for death, when I will lose everything, dependent on the same grace that gave me life. In this way, we are called to follow the path of kenosis through which Christ opened the mystery of God’s trinitarian self-giving love to us (Phil. 2:5-11).
The Shape of the Church
As already hinted, it seems to me that these questions about identity also pertain to the different churches that we live in. And what I would emphasize is how the given shape of any church can support or make the encounter with the “other” hard. We are, I think, used to the long-standing critique of the hierarchical and legalized structure of the Roman Catholic Church that the early Protestant churches, such as my own, emphasized (perhaps rightly) at the time of the Reformation—searching for a new structure on the basis of the old which would focus more closely on the centre and less on that which is adiaphora (or non-essential). But sometimes we forget that all church structures have particular consequences, even for those who claim no structure.
The Swedish Church, for example, soon lost itself inside another structure, that of the state, in a self-centeredness out of which it has only slowly been able to emerge during the 20th century. And in a way it still struggles with the same problem; for despite the fact of not being the church of the state anymore, its structure is so closely built on that of the state that the political parties remain actively involved in church policy! Likewise, despite the fact that the Swedish church has engaged in ecumenical dialogue for almost a hundred years, initiating the process that would become the World Council of Churches, the question still lingers: how serious is this commitment—as long as other churches do not have a voice (or even a vote!) in the decisions made in the Council of the church? It was interesting to see how the Swedish church, after the controversial decision to bless same-sex partnerships (not formal marriages), was criticised by fellow-members of the “Porvoo Agreement,” namely the Church of England and the Church of Finland, for not letting them be more involved in the discussion. Bilateral critique like this follows from the premise of mutual accountability! And unless our agreements take such a shape, they run the risk of being little more than small-talk.
From my point of view there is much at stake in the Anglican Communion’s attempts to reshape itself, since it stands at the crossroad of many traditions. If it manages to find a new form of its own communion, it might be able to act as mediator between different strands in the Church; if not, it will still bear consequences for the whole Church, albeit negative ones. The question, as I understand it, pertains not only to the decisions that will be made but also to how seriously the different churches will take the debate—and each other—throughout this time of decision-making; or, to return to my initial reflection: it is a question not only of articulating an appropriate compromise but of the readiness to find oneself—and Christ—through the encounter with the other.
That is my prayer for the Anglican Communion: that it may find a shape in which the different churches are bound to each other and a form of mutual decision-making.
A critical potential
Some final words about the vision of the One Church: is it really a realistic goal? Often I think it is not, despite the fact that as a member of a community of prayer I have bound myself to beg for it daily. Sometimes I am even catch myself suspecting, in (post-) modern fashion, that the realized vision would necessarily entail some kind of oppression. So why do I keep praying? One way of looking at it that still makes sense to me is to see the critical potential of the prayer. Repeating the prayer of Jesus Christ himself, “that all may be one” (John 17:20), we are continually lead out of our own contexts and problems to the one God, and the manifold witnesses of all the others: never satisfied with just ourselves; always struggling to understand our brothers and sisters across the world (and throughout time), as we likewise try to make ourselves understood; letting their views achieve a critical correlation with our own.
Finding forms for such an encounter is certainly not adiaphora but essential for our living identity as a Church. Its beginning and its proper place is the Liturgy, where we offer ourselves to the One God, praying that his Spirit will renew us again into the one body of his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord.
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