The Future of the Anglican Communion
Christopher Seitz
Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20040201224146/http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.org:80/foa-seitz.htm
A talk given at the Anglican Communion Institute Conference in Charleston, SC, 8-10 January, 2004
As President of The Anglican Communion Institute it falls to me to introduce our keynote speaker. But this has not been a typical year so there can be no and typical introduction to Archbishop Gomez or this conference on the future of Anglicanism. At virtually every level of our life, we have been affected by the events of the past six months. The stress and strain has left no one—lay person, clergy, theologian—untouched. So it is necessary to do more than introduce a speaker. It is critical that we take stock of where we are and why this conference, which has now been changed several times to adjust to our present reality, has the form that it does. From “Anglicanism: History and Hope,” to “Anglicanism: Communion or Federation?”, to “The Future of our Anglican Communion.”
So let me begin with a short narrative about what we had planned to do and what has happened with those plans in the light of Oxford, Truro, St Andrews, Minneapolis, Plano, Nairobi, Lambeth, Orlando, and now, Charleston – to name but a selection of where the turmoil of our Communion has taken us since last Spring. And indeed with roots back in 1999 and the Nassau Statement, which became To Mend the Net.
What did we plan to do?
In March of last year Philip Turner and I sat down to plan an ambitious schedule for SEAD in 2004. We had just completed a successful conference on the Ten Commandments, in Dallas, and we looked forward to a third and final event in June with our ecumenical partners at the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.
Our long-term intention had been—and remains—to publish three volumes: on the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer: the three central pillars of our Christian confession and the bonds of sacred trust linking us to our ecumenical friends. Volume is out, with Brazos Press; volume 2, on the Ten Commandments, will appear this year, with Eerdmans Publishers; and volume three would come out following a conference on the Lord’s Prayer in 2005.
This schedule only committed us to odd-numbered years, and in 2004—this year—we had hoped to turn our attention to “Anglicanism: History and Hope.” We had an ambitious project in view. We wanted to assemble the best of a new breed of Anglican thinkers, drawing upon the many speakers who had been active at previous SEAD events, as well as others. John Webster, Joan O’Donovan, Gerald Bray, Jeremy Begbie, Alister McGrath, Marcus Bockmuehl, Michael Banner, Tom Smail, Edith Humphrey, George Sumner, Ashley Null, John Chew, Kathryn Greene-McCreight, Oliver O’Donovan, John Karanja, Tom Wright and others – these were the contributors we had in mind, and not of few of them, with a lot of hard work, were signed on. The idea—borne of strong coffee and a desire of many years—was to produce a careful evangelical-catholic alternative to the popular Study of Anglicanism of a previous generation, edited by Sykes and Booty: a kind of Lux Verbi, to set the theological agenda in the way thatLux Mundi had for a previous century. That is, less irenic, more evaluative, more evangelical, more trenchant in analysis, more international.
We planned to have three conferences where papers for such a volume would be presented, in trial or finished form. One would be in Charleston, as usual, in January; one would be run in conjunction with the Anglican Institute, in Colorado Springs, in the spring. This would further our intention to bring the work of the Institute and SEAD into greater coordination. A final conference would be held at Wycliffe-Hall Oxford in the summer of 2004, thus bringing another long-standing intention into concrete fulfillment, that is, the establishment of a firm transatlantic link, between US and British Anglicans. Peter Walker had for several years wanted to see if SEAD and the AI or both could run a conference in the Wycliffe context during the summer season. Alongside our ecumenical concern has been, for the past six years, the bringing before the American public the work of new and exciting evangelical scholarship from the UK. So this seemed a prefect opportunity as a third setting for our volume’s papers.
What a world we have been in since that planning session in March last year!
I have tried to find a proper metaphor to capture the time in which we are now living and in which we find ourselves presently as Anglicans. I sometimes draw on days in New England on a sailboat. We are heeled way over, shipping water, the seas are rough, we are working hard on deck, there is much activity, much worry, much concern, some people have been washed off deck, some have jumped into lifeboats, the boat is stretched to the limit, the stays are noisy from the tension, and we are indeed making our way, and the boat speed is a testimony to that, alongside the more worrying signs: gunwales under water, soaked clothing, eyes weary from watching, tired hands and hearts and minds. Concern about sustainability: of the boat and of ourselves.
We at SEAD, and now at ACI, have not been caught off guard by the storm. We have seen it coming for some time. The need for mechanisms of order and discipline in our Communion, if it is to survive tough storms, is and remains acute.
We were not sure when the storm would hit. But somewhere between that planning session in Texas last spring, and this moment, we have watched as gale after gale after hurricane after tropical depression after gale has hit and hit and hit again and kept the seas rough and the wind relentless and the work non-stop. One can actually hear the timbers of our Communion boat creak, and there seems to be little sign that the winds are calming.
In short, the Communion has been hit by a tsunami, and we are salvaging what we can and hoping things have not gone beyond the possibility of repair.
In times like these, adjustments must be made. And so this year’s Charleston event does not look like what we planned last spring. Speakers have been shifted to other events. Some will be writers for a volume and not speakers at conferences at all. We felt it imperative to adjust our course and our deck-work to be sure that events we have been hard at work on over the past six months could be made the subject of our common knowledge, our public discussion, scrutiny and interaction. The main change has been the construction of an international panel, with time and space for questions and answers. Anxiety is created on deck when hard work going on behind the scenes never comes, or only slowly comes, into the public space. And much hard work there has been. It would take a conference unto itself just to describe the line that goes from To Mend the Net, to Primates Meeting, to True Union in the Body, to Claiming Our Anglican Identity to Steps of Discipline to the Theological Charter of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes. But let this much be said, as we look into this work and bring it before you. Our first formal ACI event reflects our final and abiding concern: to see to it that the scriptures’ imprint and the apostolic faith as once delivered to this part of Christ’s Body is sustained within our Communion.
We had changed the conference title in the early summer to respond to a specific challenge before us, with language that has had its own kind of impact through the deliberations we have been following closely over the past months. That title was “Anglican Christianity: Communion or Federation?” Our firm response to answer to that question was and is: Communion and not federation. Unlike the Lutheran World Federation, which consists of independent national churches, Anglicanism has found its life and mission in a genuine Communion of accountability and interdependence. Within the US, we have tried to emphasis this with the language for a network now forming: Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes. If some leaders in ECUSA wish to be a local American denomination, one among many others claiming new truth in a New World setting, we at ACI have maintained a different vision: an Anglican Church true to its Communion past and present as the Body of Christ, and not an assemblage of body parts with different goals and different Masters.
Because we want American Anglicanism not to succumb to this age’s or this region’s strongly held views on how the teaching we have received and been taught is wrong, or in need of modern dismissal, we have found hope in the Communion at large. A Communion which is not seeking to forfeit but to treasure what has been received and taught from the church’s beginning, handed down by the clear witness of prophets and apostles. We are puzzled, though perhaps not surprised, at the failure of the “post New Hampshire episcopalianism” to declare itself no longer bound by the promises and responsibilities of Communion life. With all the talk of fresh insight and conviction and new Holy Spirit teaching, why does this talk not find its logical end-point: a kind of “declaration of independence” from Communion promises and common life? Since its actions indicate a wish to be independent, logic would demand that talk of a genuine Communion—a single body in Christ as He is our single and only Lord—cease. And indeed, after New Hampshire, it is hard to imagine that next year’s Primates Meeting, or the Lambeth Conference in five years, will look as they once did, ever again.
We are indeed in rough seas, and the turbulence is the consequence of seeking to adjust divine laws of nature and revelation, and to seek new compass points other than those given by God.
But the rough seas tell only part of the story. Our local part. There is also tide and current in the sea, and these have their own invariable force. Our life in this sea takes us into the life of others in the Communion, beyond our own local hard-going. Our prayer is that the Holy Spirit’s powerful current and tide, as witnessed to in the vast reaches of our Anglican sea, will assist us now in our hard going. We are all of us bound together in this sailing, for which Christ is the true captain and destination. Our prayer is to be able to look to the shore of His time and His destination, with His eyes see that we are being borne along by a tide and a current of His making and His help. Sustained by brothers and sisters of Christian courage and resolve in other parts of our Communion, and those who have already reached the other shore, in ages before our own: saints and martyrs who sought to treasure and not to squander the teaching and witness of prophets and apostles, a teaching and a witness which have focused our Christian life and kept our eyes firmly on Jesus Christ, in this, our Anglican Communion Life and Mission.
The Conference Before Us
We are facing an unprecedented moment in the life of the Anglican Communion. At no point in its long history can a direct analogy be found which would help us determine what kind of response is required. Even the establishment of Anglican Christianity in America, during a time of civil strife and confusion, cannot provide a direct or helpful analogy.
In some ways it is a testimony to Anglicanism’s unique character that the advance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ has always preceded formal polity decisions and structures. Yet we are at a moment of reckoning with fateful consequences for the identity of Anglicanism as an international Communion of Churches. The unilateral actions of one Province in particular (ECUSA) has called us to consider whether the Communion can be sustained as a genuinely interdependent reality, or whether it will devolve into a federation of independent national bodies, themselves internally divided and denominated according to individual preferences and wishes.
At least six facts must be considered as we face the crisis provoked by the actions of ECUSA and seek to find a way forward. I am sure that we will have ample time to visit these in the course of this Conference. I suspect that Archbishop Drexel will have his own lost and that many of the items I here mention will arise in his own talk. They are others will be discussed in detail from the panel, with your questions and concerns in the foreground:
1. We know that members of the Communion—the Provinces—are “self-governing.” At what point does this consist of a claim to something more: a “declaration of independence” from the claims of Communion life and a walking out of the Communion?
2. If a Province walks away from the witness of the prophets and apostles (scripture’s plain sense according to the rule of faith; and the continuous teaching of the church on sexual practice), and the larger Communion has upheld this witness and called for forbearance, has the Province ceased being “self-governing” and instead become eccentric: insisting on a degree of theological autonomy which opposes the social claims of Communion, the plain sense of scripture, and the historic faith of the church?
3. Who adjudicates when the move from “self-governing” to “eccentric” or “independent” has taken place, especially when the Province in question fails to declare that by its actions, in disregard of Canterbury and the Primates, it has knowingly and deliberately walked away from the life of the Communion? (a) Canterbury? Does Canterbury have this authority? (b) The Primates? Individually, yes, and so 16 or more have declared themselves unsure of where 815-ECUSA has gone. But collectively, as a Primates Meeting functioning as an Instrument of Unity? They have been given “enhanced responsibility,” but how, collectively, is this responsibility to be discharged? (c) Or perhaps the US courts will be brought in to decide? Can a hierarchical church find its claim to hierarchy at odds with a larger, Communion hierarchy, which would limit its independence and autonomy, or more minimally, would cause US Courts to exercise restraint?
4. What kind of sanction should be exercised against a Province acting unilaterally? Is “suspension” biblically appropriate? Does it avoid the hard task of discipline, through simple exclusion and good-riddance? Splintering and saying good-bye has a long history in Christianity and especially in our consumeristic West. Is more needed than that? What kind of a sanction has the possibility of disciplining and changing wrongful autonomous attitudes and action? The New Testament is full of concern with disciplining, as we have spent three days discussing and reflecting on at the House of Studies. Without the larger communion, however, we have a case of the majority of the ECUSA seeming to have a power over the minority, which is itself representative of the teaching of 80% of the Communion.
5. Canterbury has the authority “to gather” and “to invite”: for all Communion affairs of common life (Lambeth Conference; Primates Meeting). Should it not exercise this authority in respect of ECUSA and its PB, and extend an invitation only as a disciplined family member? If it fails to exercise this authority, will the Communion unravel and become a loose federation of independent national denominations? Is forbearance morally neutral, or is it a deliberate act with inevitable, if unwanted, consequences?
6. Individual Provinces have described themselves as members of a Communion and in communion with the See of Canterbury, with varying degrees of accountability, and this is so even if such decisions and such polity were unsought by Canterbury itself. The Preamble of our Constitution and Canons describe us as a constituent member of a Communion, in Communion with the ABC. Has Canterbury’s failure to rescind from such claims on its role, over the centuries of our common life, a tacit acceptance of Canterbury’s special role in the life of the Communion, however we now understand it to be exercised? Does Canterbury have a role which belongs to the life of the Communion, even where it has not explicitly sought this?
Back in 1999, after a heartening Lambeth Conference, where at last the majority presence of the Communion had a majority role, several of us were invited to Nassau to work on a document which would be called, “To Mend the Net.” At issue was, effectively, just about every issue on my list. Our host was the Archbishop of the West Indies, The Most Revd Drexel Wellington Gomez. And what company since then have we kept: from Truro to Oxford Nairobi to London to Nassau, with non-stop cyber chatter and planning in between.
Archbishop Drexel has been a hero for many of us. Unwilling to weary. Attentive to detail. Fair and patient. Theologically astute. Courageous and kind. Willing to do the kind of hard work that these times exact from us. Unwilling to cut corners or to bluster, always mindful of the charity that Christ demands of us, but also alert to the schemes and wiles which sap energy and send us down blind alleys. Organizer and Contributor to “To Mend the Net,” “True Union in the Body,” “Claiming Our Anglican Identity,” “Steps of Discipline.” Always prepared to deal with the nitty-gritty, while keeping his eye of the larger prize: Jesus Christ and His Church. I can hardly sing a line of “The Church’s One Foundation” anymore without thinking of Archbishop Drexel and his courageous work.
I know I speak for every one of us at ACI when I say how indebted we are to you, Drexel. Without your leadership and your steadfastness in the struggle, we might have lost the Communion long ago. We know that Jesus Christ is your hero, and in His name we give thanks that you have been strong and dedicated in this struggle for our Communion.
We thank you for your dogged work in the past. We look forward to your word to us here today. And we pray for further strength, hope against hope, as you labour in the cause of the Christ for the mission of the Anglican Communion.
