Communion And Hierarchy

Mark Harris, member of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church (TEC) and writer of the blog PRELUDIUM is a perceptive and thoughtful commentator on the current scene within both TEC and the Anglican Communion.  In two pieces, "The days ahead in the land of the dissatisfied: South Carolina, Albany, and points west" and "The Archbishop blows his ecclesial horn: the last trumpet has sounded," he comments on the just published statement of the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning the recent actions of General Convention.  He makes a number of observations and comments, some more accurate and apposite than others.  However, one observation/comment in particular stands out and deserves thoughtful consideration, namely his claim that the position about the nature and structure of the Anglican Communion articulated by the Archbishop of Canterbury implies a form of global governance and hierarchy that runs all the way down.  Fr. Harris' claim deserves careful consideration because it has become already the default position of progressive defenders of TEC's recent actions, and will without doubt stand near the center of TEC's defense of the actions of its General Convention. At the conclusion of "The days ahead"¦" Fr. Harris says that if, in the covenant process, allowance is made for buy in by individual dioceses, the result will (1) be "subversion of General Convention by dioceses voting in isolation of any provincial structure and (2) a direct hierarchical setup with allegiance all the way up the line."  In "Archbishop blows his ecclesial horn"¦" he speaks (negatively) of "the move for global governance in the Anglican Communion..." Fr. Harris has rightly perceived that the Archbishop in his recent communication has opened the possibility of dioceses and other churches ratifying the proposed covenant ("with the explicit provision that the Covenant does not purport to alter the constitution or internal polity of any province").  Prescinding from the question of the right of a diocese to remove itself from TEC, let it be noted that there is within TEC's constitution no let or hindrance that prevents ratification of the covenant on the part of dioceses.   In the case of TEC, ratification of the covenant by diocese "in isolation from an Provincial structure" in no way subverts General Convention.  Again, TEC's constitution places no let or hindrance in the way of such an action.  The real question is whether such a provision on the part of the Communion would portend, imply, or directly establish a hierarchical form of governance with authority over the various provinces and diocese that comprise its membership. The answer to this question is quite simply NO.  The Archbishop's letter makes clear that the covenant cannot "purport to alter the constitution or internal polity of any province."  Further, from the Virginia and Windsor Reports through the various drafts of the covenant it has been stated again and again that Anglican polity does not and cannot involve an international form of jurisdiction.  Enormous care has been taken to affirm the autonomy of the various churches of the communion, though this autonomy is limited by membership in a larger communion. In the Archbishop's communication to the communion he has remained faithful to this line of thought. He has made clear that the Anglican Communion subsists in mutual recognizability rather than in an overarching jurisdictional structure.  The issue before the communion is, therefore, ways and means of determining recognizability rather than ways and means of erecting a central jurisdiction. Nowhere in the reports made or the covenant proposals considered has there been a proposal for a form of global hierarchy with jurisdictional authority.  It is difficult to see where Fr. Harris' worries about "a direct hierarchical set up with allegiance all the way up the line" come from unless they do no more than express his belief that Anglicans ought not to place the limit of recognizability on the autonomous actions of the various provinces and dioceses of their communion. That being said, Fr. Harris' worries about global hierarchy do arise out of an intense and widespread discussion of the sort of hierarchy that defines or ought to define Anglican forms of governance.  Let it be noted that the question before TEC and the communion is not hierarchy or no hierarchy.  The question is the type and extent of the hierarchy that defines Anglican polity.  To this question there are a number of possible answers.  The one that Archbishop Rowan, in keeping with the Virginia and Windsor Reports and the various covenant proposals explicitly rules out is a centralized international jurisdiction resembling that of the Roman Catholic Communion.  If, somehow, either the Archbishop, the covenant proposal or the various reports open the way for such an eventuality, then it should be shown how this is so.  Neither the expression of vague worries nor spurious statements of fact serve a constructive purpose in the present, or for that matter any other, atmosphere. Fr. Harris with the rest of the communion opposes an international hierarchy with jurisdiction in the various local churches that make up the communion.  He does, however, favor another form of hierarchy"”one that finds no place in TEC's constitution but nonetheless is now being argued in the courts of California, Pennsylvania, and Texas.  For lack of a better term, I will call this the view of ecclesial hierarchy to be established in secular courts.  The Office of the Presiding Bishop in the cases of the Dioceses of San Joaquin, Pittsburgh, and Forth Worth is arguing before a secular court that TEC is a hierarchical church with supreme authority located in the General Convention, the Executive Council, and the Office of the Presiding Bishop.  In this scheme, the various dioceses are sub-units in a subordinate relation to these governing entities. The courts may be receptive to this argument because the law tends to operate with a very simple distinction between hierarchical and non-hierarchical churches.  In this typology, TEC will appear at first glance as hierarchical in a way that say Pentecostal Churches do not. It is a matter of general agreement that this position is being argued in order to prevent the three dioceses mentioned above, upon their departure from TEC, from taking the property of the diocese with them.  To Fr. Harris' credit, he has another, and to my mind nobler, reason for defending this position.  He does not want the dioceses of TEC to be able to act independently of the General Convention, the Executive Council, and the Office of the Presiding Bishop.  Thus, Fr Harris has a position that is, as it were, a knife that cuts in two directions.  Internationally, he seeks to establish the unfettered autonomy of the several provinces of the communion and so preclude any form of "global governance," and domestically he wishes to establish a form of hierarchy, like that of the Methodists and Presbyterians, that locates final authority in a national form of governance that has supreme authority over its constituent units. Fr. Harris' position, like that of the Presiding Bishop and the majority of TEC's present leadership, when all is said and done, serves to identify TEC as a denomination within the spectrum of American Protestant denominations.  That is, Fr Harris wants TEC first of all to understand itself as an expression of Christianity defined by the borders of a nation state rather than as an expression of Catholic Christianity that happens to be located within the boundaries of a nation state. The conversion of TEC, with little catholic remainder, into yet another American denomination is reason enough to be concerned about Fr. Harris' views.  That these views are apparently shared by a preponderance of TEC's leadership is reason to be doubly concerned.  However, there are other considerations that ought not to be lost sight of.  The first is constitutional. Not all hierarchical churches are hierarchical in the same way.  This is a fact that secular courts have yet to reckon with.  Thus, for example, the constitutions of the Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church employ the well-recognized legal language of hierarchy to describe the relation between the national church and its constituent units.  If one looks at these constitutions one finds the operative legal terms indicating supremacy, subordination, preemption and finality.  One does not find these terms in TEC's constitution. The point is fundamental.  As our colleague Mark McCall has pointed out it is inconceivable that the men who drafted TEC's constitution and at the same time "were developing the hierarchical structure of the United States government"¦would have would have intended a centralized church hierarchy to be inferred from silence.  They knew full well from their own experience that silence meant an absence of hierarchy." (http://aci.local/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/is_the_episcopal_church_hierdoc.pdf) By its constitution, The Episcopal Church is indeed hierarchical but in a way the Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist churches are not.  Its hierarchy is constitutionally located at the level of the diocese rather than national church.  Neither its Presiding Bishop nor its Executive Council nor its General Convention have supreme governing authority at the level of the diocese. This constitutional arrangement coheres with the Archbishop of Canterbury's view, expressed in a letter to the Bishop of Central Florida, of the centrality of Bishop and Diocese in catholic ecclesiology.  It also accords with the view of the early church that accorded the Bishop in his diocese priority over larger administrative structures.  There are good theological reasons for this ordering that we have stated elsewhere. (http://aci.local/2009/07/the_organizational-basis-of-the-anglican-communion-a-theological-consideration/ Turner:http://anglicancommunioninstitute.com/2009/07/communion-and-episcoapal-authority/). The point is that there are strong constitutional and theological reasons for rejecting the views of both Fr. Harris and the Office of the Presiding Bishop.  But where do these considerations leave the question of hierarchy within the Anglican Communion? We have before us (1) the denominational model of hierarchy exemplified by America's "mainline" Protestant Churches, Fr. Harris and the Office of the Presiding Bishop; (2) the rough and ready distinction between hierarchical and non-hierarchical present in the secular courts; (3) the internationally centralized jurisdictional system of Rome: and (4) a system of self-governing provinces and dioceses in which there are various forms of local hierarchy. As proposed by Archbishop Rowan, these churches are bound one to another not by a central governing body but by instruments of communion and covenant obligations designed to insure mutual recognizability by intensification of present relationships. It is the fourth option in respect to hierarchy that the Anglican Communion has pursued with ever increasing vigor at least since 1867.  The challenge before the communion is not, as suggested by Fr. Harris, a Vatican-like hierarchy.  It is finding adequate mechanisms for intensifying present relations between local forms of hierarchy in ways that further mutual recognition on the one hand, and on the other addressing in a Christian manner those provinces and dioceses whose actions place such recognition in jeopardy or doubt. It is because of the urgency of this issue and the importance of its being stated correctly that we have decided to respond to the two pieces that have appeared on the blog PRELUDIUM.  In the ecclesial debates of the present age it is difficult if not impossible to find a body of published literature in which a coherent stream of argumentation can be found.  Opinion increasingly floats in an electronic atmosphere that bypasses the printed word with the speed of light and itself is extinguished more quickly than the dawn.  Despite its fragility, one cannot ignore the electronic word.  For this reason we have responded to Fr Harris who speaks on his blog for many.  He has raised the central issue of hierarchy our communion faces even though in doing so he has misidentified the actual challenge that lies before us.