Tea or Tanks on the Lambeth Palace Lawn?

 This week, seven ‘Communion Partner’ bishops from The Episcopal Church  made a private visit to the Archbishop of Canterbury. We might well imagine them enjoying a cup of tea in the Lambeth Palace gardens and little more imagination is needed to guess the reason for their call. Dan Martins, a priest whose Bishop, Ed Little of Northern Indiana is one of the seven, speculates with some confidence in his blog, spotted by  Stephen Sizer  that they are anxious  to have their dioceses fully integrated into the Communion  as part of  ‘track one’ in the ‘two track’ structure proposed by Rowan Williams after their Church’s effective rejection of the Covenant process at General Convention in July. 

By allowing individual TEC Dioceses to sign on to the Covenant, which Martins believes TEC could never do,  the idea is that a realignment will happen by default within TEC, with the revisionist majority finding themselves in ‘track two’ on the outer fringe of the Communion.

This kind of thinking , which is mirrored by Fulcrum on the other side of the Atlantic, has obvious appeal because it seems to enable bishops and clergy to maintain a reasonably clear conscience without the sacrifices that so many in the newly formed Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) have had to make.  But this is almost certain to turn out to be an exercise in wishful thinking for two reasons.

Firstly, it ignores the capacity of revisionists to bend words to their own ends. For instance. Giles Goddard of Inclusive Church writes  ‘unless it [the Ridley Covenant Draft] contains radical strengthening of any judicial measures, it seems to me that TEC would be able to sign it, as a sign of its mutual commitment and in the context of its present policy of ensuring that it is open to LGBT people both single and in relationships. Result; a Communion strengthened and affirmed in its breadth and diversity and once again bearing a global witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.’  In other words, ‘as long as we can get away with it we will interpret the Covenant as we want’. So the Communion Partner Bishops could find that TEC does sign up and the Covenant is thereby effectively rendered meaningless.

More importantly – and this is the focus of my concern in this article – it ignores the fact that revisionists on both side of the Atlantic are throwing caution to the winds and seem determined to put their tanks on the Lambeth Palace lawn.

The trigger was Rowan Williams’ clear articulation of orthodox teaching on sexuality in his reflections on General Convention “Covenant, Communion and the Anglican Future”  – coolly stating the very opposite of his personal views. This was a serious setback for the revisionists because his writings had given theological respectability to their case for treating committed same sex unions as on a par with heterosexual marriage for over twenty years.  So previously friendly commentators took on a bitter tone.

 For instance, Giles Fraser writes in the  Church Times   ‘Another kick in the teeth from the Archbishop of Canterbury comes this week in his reflections on the US General Convention’ and Jonathan Clatworthy , General Secretary of the Modern Churchpeople’s Union  describes  the Archbishop as a dogmatic authoritarian, criticising his ’hierarchical, hieratic and dogmatic doctrine of the church, with no interest in what the laity think and no real place for change.’

It has to be said that these comments seem designed  simply to be as vicious as possible and bear very little relation to the Archbishops’ actual manner or theology. In fact much of the criticism of his theology is that it is insufficiently dogmatic and too open to change – precisely the opposite of Clatworthy’s charge.

These personal attacks on Williams presage a more aggressive strategy, even if not entirely consistent. So Giles Fraser, somewhat unconvincingly for a prominent ‘progressive’, goes on to argue the merits of  a ‘little Englander’ attitude in the Church of England, distinguishing between being ‘Church of England’ – which means being tolerant of difference – and ‘Anglicanism’ as an alien post colonial ideology which other parts of the Communion now want to impose. For him, the real two tiers are not to do with the Covenant as Williams thinks, but ‘One tier is called the Church of England; the other is called Anglicanism. Ordinary people in the pews are members of the former; those with “representative functions” — bishops and the like — are often of the latter’. And the clear implication is a call to renewed Synodical activism, with those laity and clergy who agree with him doing their best to increase their representation vis a vis the bishops.

Sharing the same sentiments, but with a somewhat contradictory thought process, Giles Goddard of ‘Inclusive Church’ writes   of his ‘sense that in many ways the Episcopal Church (TEC) has a clearer understanding of what it means to be Anglican than the Church of England’ and sets out a strategy of closer co-operation with TEC in England (thereby doing what they have condemned the orthodox for doing in relating to the Global South)  and seeking deliberate confrontation with the English bishops by raising the profile of clergy in same sex unions through a survey covering the whole of the Church of England.

This is the thinking behind  a statement issued by thirteen liberal groups in the Church of England on 4th August, which prompted  Ruth Gledhill of the London Times to  comment  that ‘Liberals in the Church of England’ had ‘declared war on conservatives including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.’

Bishop David Anderson subsequently wrote an open letter to Rowan Williams in which he warned ‘This is a strategy that TEC has been working on, and it is diabolically brilliant – use TEC money to pull in additional dioceses offshore from the United States and make them part of TEC, then call TEC an international organization. Next, link up with or plant TEC churches in England, right under the Archbishop of Canterbury’s nose, and bring the TEC heterodoxy and chaos all the way up to the wall surrounding Lambeth Palace’. 

In this context, the presence of Gene Robinson at Greenbelt is no surprise. His case  for same sex unions, based on ‘appropriate vulnerability’ and with its pseudo-traditional rejection of ‘anything goes’echoed Williams’ own writings. The unspoken message seemed to be ‘If you won’t lead, I will’ and the standing ovation he received will have given him every encouragement to carry on in that role.

So there are good reasons to think that  Mrs Jefferts Schori’s tanks are heading for the Lambeth Palace lawn, supported by willing recruits from the Church of England itself. And this is why Rowan Williams’ two track proposal will not work. It relies upon a willingness to accept mutual co-existence, but it is becoming increasing obvious that there is a fundamental theological flaw.

The Archbishop’s ideal ‘is that both ‘tracks’ should be able to pursue what they believe God is calling them to be as Church, with greater integrity and consistency’, but for ‘being Church’ to have any meaning at all, there must be a framework of fundamental presuppositions held in common. As events unfold, this is clearly not the case, especially over what constitutes authority –  is the biblical revelation decisive or not?

 Under the pressures of international leadership since 2002, he has split off his personal – and well publicised – opinions from the affirmations required by his of office on the key question of sexuality. The aggression of TEC and its allies is therefore not just a political threat to the Archbishop; it is also an existential threat because he holds within himself the contradictions upon which the crumbling institutional unity of  the Communion is based.

He cannot wholeheartedly withstand the liberal agenda because he himself has done so much to inform  and shape it; and by the same token, he cannot with conviction promote unity based upon the orthodox position because as I have demonstrated , elsewhere  his doctrine of revelation undercuts any workable notion of biblical authority. It is essential to him personally as well as for the institutional unity of the Communion that closure is avoided, but that is precisely what the liberals on both sides of the Atlantic are now seeking to bring about.

In this context, nuance is a vice not a virtue. ACNA Archbishop Robert Duncan saw this immediately and  commented   on Williams’ two track model that “the archbishop of Canterbury has given us another nuanced statement in the midst of a crisis” and  “The Communion needs clear leadership at the moment and sadly, others will fill the void.”

 In rather sad contrast, Nicky Gumbel of the Alpha movement during an interview  just a week ago expressed the complacency of many English Anglicans when he opined “Rowan is very nuanced, he is brilliant, and I am personally a great fan of Rowan Williams. Jane, his wife, is on our staff here. They both teach at the theological college. I think he’s absolutely brilliant. He is very nuanced, but not everyone can be in the Rowan Williams league – he’s probably one of the greatest brains in the country.”

It is unlikely that this great brain will enable Williams to give the leadership the Church of England needs, let alone the wider Communion.  This becomes clearer if we imagine that the plan by Inclusive Church and others to raise the profile of clergy in same sex unions leads to calls for such clergy to be subject to formal disciplinary procedures, as would clergy involved in a heterosexual relationship outside marriage.

Is it tenable to think that Rowan Williams could support such action when he himself has admitted to once ordaining a man he knew to be in a same sex union? And if he did, would it not be argued by liberals that church legislation was being used to force conscience by imposing a morality that he himself admitted had no clear biblical ground, but was simply the majority opinion in very different cultural settings? And how effectively would he as Archbishop defend the Church’s position before a UK parliament, from which General Synod derives its legal powers, if that parliament were minded to challenge clergy discipline on the basis of equality legislation?

Under the pressure of events, Rowan Williams’ ecclesiology, as revealed in his two track model, is ultimately one of ungrounded optimism in a process. Confronted with two visions of Christianity which are fundamentally opposed to each other, paralysis sets in. One of the ‘Lambeth seven’ is  reported  to have said that as a result of their meeting with the Archbishop they will have “something forthcoming soon” but it is difficult to see how that could be more than a temporary breathing space which enables them to live with false teaching, in contrast to the ACNA which has given solid institutional form to orthodoxy.

That is not to say that the orthodox should give up on seeking to encourage the Archbishop to articulate the apostolic faith. In this they have met with a measure of success, but it is to recognise that as England itself becomes the battle ground for the future of Anglicanism, spiritual leadership of the Communion must come from elsewhere. GAFCON in Jerusalem last year broke new ground in recognising a GAFCON Primates Council not dependent upon the Archbishop of Canterbury for its authority and it is to be hoped that the publication of the Commentary on the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration later this month will give new impetus to that vision.

Charles Raven

4th  September 2009