ACI Spring Conference Opening Remarks
Anglicanism: History and Hope
Colorado Springs, Colorado
by the Reverend Professor Christopher Seitz
President of the Anglican Communion Institute
That the Anglican Communion, and the Episcopal Church in this country, is at a crisis point is a reality. We are all trying to adjust to that. Part of the point of this conference is to shed light on the various mechanisms that are up and running and trying to face into this crisis. We have in our midst scholars and churchmen from around the world who see the crisis, and are involved in projects aimed at its resolution. The situation is sufficiently messy, and unstable, and changing from moment to moment, that if one were to produce a tidy paper in preparation for this event, it would likely be dated by the time we assembled. Such is the volatile, confusing, indeed rather frightening, reality we now find ourselves in as Anglican Christians.
To help shed some light on this reality, tomorrow we will hold a panel discussion on the Lambeth Commission, which is a kind of epicenter, clearing house, or dumping ground of our present problems and confusions. On the one hand, its timeliness as a meeting is obvious and essential, whatever one�s hopes for its outcomes or effectiveness. On the other hand, it serves the purpose of changing the subject if but for a brief season. For it is by no means clear that the now-annual Primates Meeting would have been able to be a meeting, as members from around the globe would have found it impossible to sit down and discuss, much less break bread or celebrate The Lord�s Supper, with Frank Griswold or Michael Peers of Canada. The last emergency meeting in October led to an appeal for forbearance which, before the ink was dry, was ignored in the name of protecting the human rights and decision processes of a small diocese in a small American church, in a state whose motto is �live free or die.� Live free they did indeed. In the aftermath of that decision have come wave after wave of reaction and counter-reaction, so that the work of the Commission is super-heated beyond anyone�s imagining.
The Panel tomorrow will discuss the Commission as such, but will also try to understand it within the dynamics unleashed and at work around us. Several members of the panel are not working directly or indirectly with the Commission, and they will be there simply to give their reactions, from the particular geographical location they best know, concerning where they believe things are now and are headed in the days ahead. More importantly, this will be a time for you to ask questions and probe around areas of confusion which may be festering and longing for clarity, if not healing and peace. Some other panelists are working directly with the Commission and are in contact with the Primates of the Global South, who have just met in Nairobi; or with Canterbury itself; or with likeminded efforts to provide input to the Commission taking place in England and elsewhere. ACI has completed its own submission as of last week, and we will say what we can about the contents and direction of our proposals. That discipline of the Presiding Bishop of this church; and of consenters to the consecration of Canon Robinson, or the resolutions associated with same-sex blessings, is required for the Communion to survive is our main conviction.
That we have a church crisis is but where the rubber meets the road in the most obvious and most visible sense. Behind that crisis is a crisis of theological construction, and it can be traced to our seminaries, to our adult education materials, our pulpits, our capacity, or incapacity, properly to handle the church�s scriptures as God�s very word of address and self-expression. Of course, that is a matter of our hearts being so convicted. This crisis is also tied up with cultural factors, which encourage innovation and consumer choice, thus making �new and better� the operative or default categories here and elsewhere in the developed world: whether in the realm of liturgical change for change sake; itchy ears in the realm of doctrine and basic belief; local options and human rights; a Bible which gets better and better from one testament to the next, and then finds itself being updated by the wisdom of our own day.
The Anglican Institute and SEAD have faced into this theological and cultural reality�which is conspiring to muffle the clear and saving tones of our Gospel Message�for over a decade now. Sensing the seriousness of the problem and the hopefulness of our past history as Anglicans, we have merged our endeavours. We have seen significant signs of present hope on two fronts at least: common cause with evangelical and catholic Christians outside the Anglican way, especially in this country; and an exciting generation of theological minds coming out of Great Britain and Canada and the Global South. SEAD has run a series of eight conferences in Charleston, SC which have tapped into to these twin and rich resources.
Last February Philip Turner and I sat down and tried to assemble the best names we could imagine to produce a volume to be titled: Anglicanism: History and Hope. We decided that we would hold three conferences: one in Charleston in January, one in Colorado Springs in April, and one in Oxford in September. We had in mind the replacement of a popular book on Anglicanism familiar to us as students (Sykes/Booty, Studies in Anglicanism, 1988), but which we believed lacked a certain edge and a sufficiently precise description of our Anglican legacy and our reasons for hoping about it as an expression of what God is doing in his mission in Christ across this vast globe: that is, Anglicanism as an evangelical, charismatic, catholic, thoughtfully traditional expression birthed in England and sent out in the power of the Holy Spirit to every corner of the world.
When, then, the crises of the past months hit, we decided it was our responsibility to address this as an Institute, and you at Grace Church have been supporters of our efforts to work with the Primates and with Canterbury wherever God has taken us � and we thank you and pay tribute now to you for that support.
More importantly, however, we judged our initial plan to produce History and Hope, far from sidelined, and indeed even more necessary. What good does it do to focus on the problems which we must soberly face and try to deal with, without taking a longer view as well? Without pausing to look into the beauty and mystery and hopefulness and power and theological integrity and expression�which we believe comes from Anglicanism�s abiding optimism about the Bible�s ability to speak clearly to each generation of faith? And so we are staying the course on that project, even as the seas have risen and the storm clouds gathered. Indeed, precisely because of that. This conference is then a mixture of History and Hope, and sober reflection on the reality that faces us as a Communion and an Episcopal Church.
Introduction of speakers: Edith Humphrey, Robert Prichard, Jeremy Begbie, Peter Walker, Ephraim Radner, John Karanja, Bill Atwood, David Virtue, George Sumner, Lord Carey.
