Is the liberal tide in the Church of England beginning to ebb?

In contrast to the bad natured meeting of July last year, this week’s General Synod of the Church of England has passed off not only peacefully, but also with a significant step forward for those who want to see the Church of England recover its confidence in the gospel. A motion (1) by lay member  Paul Eddy affirming the uniqueness of Christ  was agreed with 283 votes in favour and only 8 against.

Its significance was not lost on journalist Ruth Gledhill of the London Times  who was quick to claim, under the headline ‘Anglicans called on to convert non-Christian believers’, that  ‘The established Church of England put decades of liberal-inspired political correctness behind it in a move that led one bishop to condemn in anger the “evangelistic rants”. ‘

There was much resistance to this motion even coming to Synod, which is hardly surprising bearing in mind that in a 2002 poll of nearly 2,000 of the Church’s 10,000 clergy by Cost of Conscience, only half believed faith in Christ to be the only route to salvation. Paul Eddy himself in an interview shortly before the debate said ‘’there is good evidence to suggest that in many dioceses they [the diocesan bishops] say all faiths lead to God, therefore leave them [members of other faiths] alone.’ 

The success of the motion is all the more remarkable in that it goes against the grain of the general culture. Official attitudes to Christian witness in the UK are hardening and,  to take one example of many, only today the London Daily Telegraph carries the story of a  primary school receptionist now facing dismissal for seeking support from her church after her five-year-old daughter was reprimanded  for talking about Jesus in class.

So are we seeing a turn of the tide? Only time will tell, but if such a process is indeed underway in the Church of England, sadly it will be inhibited by the influence of Archbishop Rowan Williams. It is not of course that he would oppose the idea of the uniqueness of Jesus, but that it would lose its force and clarity in the broad delta of Dr Williams’ mind. For instance he has written ‘the Jewish people, as victims of Christian and post-Christian ideological closure, speak for Christ to Christians in the name of God who is not a Christian’(2).  This elasticity in who may represent Christ, not to mention the notion that God can be considered apart from Christ, flows naturally from a theology which, having no secure basis in biblical revelation, has a deep resistance to making judgments which may lead to any sense of exclusion.

Exclusion from the Church is always a cause of pain and as the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said in the debate earlier today on the latest draft of the Covenant, “The main purpose of the Covenant is inclusion rather than exclusion”. However, he also went on to add “ We cannot forget, nevertheless, that these questions have arisen for us because of the need for adequate discipline in the Communion on matters which affect everyone.” Not surprisingly,  the Archbishop disagreed, responding “We mustn’t have excessive expectations of the Covenant” and “It’s part of an ongoing inquiry of what a global Communion might look like. At every stage it is something which churches voluntarily are invited to enter into.”

So here are two very different understandings of a Covenant and the Church – one which sees unity as based on apostolic and biblical truth, the other hoping for truth to emerge from a given institutional unity. It is very difficult to see how a Covenant acceptable to Rowan Williams could ever move beyond the ‘empty tolerance and endless conversation’ so roundly criticised in Archbishop Peter Akinola’s recent reflection on the Primates meeting in Alexandria.

The ‘deeper communion’ envisaged by the Primates in Alexandra cannot happen without deeper agreement and the continued determination of TEC and the Anglican church of Canada to push forward with heretical innovations renders a Covenant without discipline futile and irrelevant.
So where lies the future? GAFCON and the proposal for Conciliar leadership of the Communion were precipitated by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s unwillingness to exercise godly discipline and act with the Primates as a whole. That reluctance was not for lack of courage, but was simply consistent with his basic theological commitments, so it makes little sense to look to Canterbury for solutions now.

And what of England? Wednesday’s vote in the General Synod should be a cause of thanksgiving, but many leaders remain much more comfortable with questions than with convictions. Sustained renewal within the Church of England will mean changing many deeply ingrained attitudes and it is in this that the GAFCON movement and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans have such a vital part to play, establishing partnership with the spiritually dynamic Churches of the global south and revitalising  the Church in the riches of its Anglican doctrinal inheritance .

Charles Raven
12th February 2009

[1] ‘That this Synod warmly welcome Dr Martin Davie’s background paper ‘The witness of Scripture, the Fathers and the historic formularies to the uniqueness of Christ’ and request the House of Bishops to report to the Synod on their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in Britain’s multi-faith society, and offer examples and commendations of good practice in sharing the gospel of salvation through Christ alone with people of other faiths and of none.’

[1] ‘On Christian Theology’ p102. I am indebted to the Rev’d John Richardson’s talks on Rowan Williams’ theology for this quotation