If there is a future for ECUSA and the Anglican Communion, then what?
Ephraim Radner
What if the Episcopal church actually “turned back” from its decisions of GC 2003 and their presuppositions – that is, what if she “repented” on the matter of gay blessings and consents and ordinations and consecrations? How would we start talking to each other again, how engage the deep (some would say irreconcilable) differences among us? I ask the question not because I assume such a turning back is about to happen. Hardly. But it may happen, in God’s grace and for the sake of something greater than we can perhaps see today. And, imagining such an event helps us also to see what a directive like the Windsor Report implies for the future of our church, should it be embraced. It is a future that, it seems, many do not wish to see – at least, given the bitterness and consternation abounding in the face of even the practical possibility that the Report’s recommendations might be positively taken up by our House of Bishops. So, in the midst of our decision-making leading towards General Convention, why not ask, “how are we going to have to deal with one another if in fact we choose to follow Windsor?”. Indeed, we may not want to wade into the Report’s wake. But we should at least know what we are avoiding.
Let me address this through the single question, “how will we talk to each other?”. There are many strategic and polity-related questions that have exercised the minds of concerned Episcopalians and Anglicans (and, it seems, many who are no longer members of our church!) over the past three years, on blogs, in back-rooms, at far-flung conferences. These are essential matters to clarify, to be sure. But Windsor has made discussion and “dialogue” and “listening” an important vocation for the communion, precisely in light of our failures on these fronts up until now. Obviously, many people groan inwardly and outwardly at the prospect that more discussion will be the fruit of ECUSA’s “repentance”; and well they might – it is a penance perhaps too hard to bear. But this reaction is largely, I believe, because our discussions in the past have been increasingly perverted and off-the-mark. Windsor’s directing outline has implications for what a true discussion might be, and they point towards something different than past attempts and claims and theological engagement. It is to these implications that I want to turn. I will break this down into two categories: first, what ought to be the context of our speech, and second, what will be the topics we need to address.
I. The context of our future discussions
a. The Presumption for Tradition
The Windsor Report, if embraced, points to a radical reordering of the playing field for the conversations of the Episcopal Church, at least in comparison with the past. For the entire thrust of the arguments for and from “communion” posit what I would call the “presumption for tradition” in our speech. Because communion assumes and demands the reality of a network of “bonds” among members of the Church, it is this bonding that will inform the parameters of our speech. And the logic of such bonding comprehends networks of connection that stretch far and wide, temporally and geographically, indicating the living relationships of bequest, thankfulness, responsibility, and subjection that, taken as a whole, represent “tradition” in a broad way. Now traditions can be and often are questioned and challenged; that is a part of the very “network” that maintains the bonds of the communion. But the questions and challenges, for all that, take place within and not outside this larger network, which is presumed because it is in fact real and living and defines communion as something more than a concept.
The presumption for tradition means that any future discussion of the presenting issue of, in this case, sexuality, can only take place within a commitment to this larger network of bonded bequests, especially in terms of teaching, discipline, and witness. One of the great failures of past discussions of sexuality, in ECUSA at any rate, has been an insistence that the topic bear no relationship with the full range of Christian commitments given us in our tradition: the authority of Scripture, catholic witness, the character of common life and the Eucharist, conciliar polity, the doctrine and reality of the Holy Spirit and the nature of revelation, and so on. It is not as if people have not realized that all these things are implicated; but ECUSA has moved forward with its innovations on the matters of sexuality in deliberate disjunction from any understanding of how these other matters relate and are affected by changes in sexual discipline. The result, in part, has been a kind of crack-up of the fabric of ECUSA’s teaching altogether, as bits and pieces of Christian belief and commitment are disengaged from each other, consciously and unconsciously, and individuals and groups go off in all kinds of directions, liturgically, theologically, and exegetically. The failure to impose or even consider “discipline” in matters of liturgical non-conformance and teaching – “open communion”, experimental Eucharistic language and rites, relativization of the Scripture even in formal church settings and so on – is not simply due to a failure of will, but to a now embedded sense that Christian practice is made up of a conglomeration of unrelated elements that can be juggled about at will, without compromise to the Gospel and the Church life together. It may by that the crack-up is something with which people are happy. But we at least now have to acknowledge that it is an actual dynamic that has been at play in our increasingly disjointed and dismantled life.
Any future discussions in our church, and the context in which we “talk to each other”, must therefore presume the traditions we were given and that we vowed to uphold and that bind us to the larger Communion. If there are challenges to these traditions, they must be made humbly and patiently, and convincingly to the whole Church. If this does not happen, we shall simply repeat the fragmenting and finally hostile confrontations of the past. Ultimately, this new playing field will be founded upon the theological virtues that in fact nourish and are nourished by the presumption for tradition: faith (in the goodness and giftedness of the communion of saints), hope (in God’s leading through the gifts God has already in fact given) and charity (that we can be open to receiving and being led in the context in which we have been placed, and thus can do this gently and joyously).
b. The representation of tradition
One important practical outcome to this presumption for tradition is that more formal discussions must be organized so as to represent the tradition of the Church in a formative fashion. By and large, over the past several decades, the committees, commissions, and councils of the national church and of many dioceses have had at best token representation of tradition- and communion-oriented witnesses. This tendency has come to a head in the recent theological delegation to the ACC and the special Commission on Anglican Communion Relations that will report on Windsor to General Convention, each of which has radically embodied a rejection of the Church’s tradition altogether. Seminaries and commissions on ministry and the so on will be challenged by an embrace of Windsor not only to become more “diverse” (something they rarely are, to an abusive fault), but actually to aim at a tradition-oriented center. This would prove a radical challenge to current institutional and intellectual orderings, one that, frankly, it is hard to see the insecure, who so populate most human institutions, being able to tolerate in this church in particular. The Episcopal Church, and indeed, Anglicanism as a whole in North America of all persuasions, has been afflicted for decades by such a severe theological inferiority complex (perhaps rightly assessed and founded) as to have slid into some of the grossest forms of anti-intellectualism possible in an otherwise highly educated church that is filled with some quite brilliant minds and expansive hearts. Still, there simply is no way that the playing field will make any difference unless the teams that are put forward are committed (because desirous) to abiding by the rules of the game, however discomfiting these will prove.
II. Topics we will need to address
Now let me note, in the most sketchy and incomplete way, some of the topics that will need to be discussed anew, with the seriousness of an engaged and fearless mind and heart, if a re-commitment to our Communion bonds is to be real and fruitful. These will need to be discussed within the context of the “presumption for tradition”; but they will need to be discussed nonetheless, openly and responsibly. The Lambeth Conference, Primates, ACC, and Windsor itself have made this clear in general. And unless there is a willingness to engage such questions, the “bonds” we claim are our lifeline as a Church-in-Communion will be window dressing at best, lies at worst.
1. Scripture and its meaning and authority. We all know this topic is critical. But here we need to begin with the acknowledgement (or at least entertain its critical weight) that we have failed in engaging this topic according to the tradition’s presumption that the whole Scripture is to be the “ultimate rule” of our reflections and discipline. Protestant sensibilities and habits have tended to the definition of specific doctrinal principles within Scripture, which has resulted (over the past few centuries) precisely in the more revisionist limitations of Scripture’s breadth according to narrow or abstracted ideals. Legitimate worries over mutually antagonistic proof-texting derive from the fact that few of us read the whole Scripture with anything like an expectant sense of its comprehensive ordering of the world’s reality – we have lost the ability to get beyond our local commitments within the Scripture itself. It is not as if these matters have not been addressed in the past – questions regarding the Law and the Gospel, Canon, figuration and history, and so on. But we seem to have reached a nadir, within our church among almost all parties, with respect to the patient engagement of these matters both foundationally and in terms of practical argument. The fact that we are still hurling texts about shellfish and Acts 15 at each other indicates that we have not even begun this reflection adequately on a fundamental level within the church. As Windsor has pointed out, this only makes ECUSA’s forging ahead with its disciplinary innovations all the more rash and destructive.
2. Within the context of a re-engagement with Scripture’s reality and breadth, we need to reflect upon theChurch’s theology of creation: what does it mean to have a divinely “created purpose”? what is a human being in terms of such purpose? Current technological challenges in the realms of genetics and genetic engineering (as this pertains also to fertilization methods) have pressed these questions more quickly than we have been able or willing to engage and resolve them. The presumption of tradition demands some clear parameters of discussion here, and of decision-making, but does anyone know what these parameters are in these cases? And how do the vast inequalities of technical resources within the world and our churches around the world inform our assumptions about and approaches to any of this?
Obviously, in speaking of the “theology of creation” within the context of Scriptural authority at this time, we must be particularly concerned with matters of sexuality and marriage. While there is much scientific and pseudo-scientific material being cast about, almost randomly and quite thinly, within our churches, there has been no real effort at attempting some kind of coherent integration of either this material itself or of an informing Scriptural vision, let alone of the two together, in a way that allows Scripture to illuminate in a primary fashion. So, while we are not likely to reorder the lines of division over women’s ordination within the Communion, it is time to revisit the discussion, given the connections some have seen between the current conflicts over homosexuality and the “tradition” regarding the role of women in the Church. This too must be talked about. We are still infants in all of this, including most of our leaders and theologians. The presumption of tradition on this score ought at the very least to humble us into a basic tentativeness before “new” information, as well as press us into a deliberate, careful, and restrained study.
3. The following topics, individually and as related to each other, will need intense and prolonged scrutiny and reflection:
a. Procreation and Child-rearing: while this topic has had a traditional focal location in theological anthropology, it has only had a passing interest (usually of a purely political point-scoring kind on various sides) in the current debates in the Communion. Given its central and even primordial place in Christian theology of the human person, this must come to the fore. Rowan Williams has written provocatively about this, as have writers like John Saward, and others from non-Western traditions. Is one of our primary purposes as human creatures in fact to procreate and to raise children? If so, why and how?
b. Family: Obviously, the question of the Christian family is related to the above. Among the issues here that we have failed to think about adequately are the elements necessary to fulfill the divine vocation to “form” children, and/or spouses in their mutual relationship. Formation is a cultural question in a general sense, and will force us to examine the lines of influence between non-Christian and Christian “culture”, both locally and intimately, as well as more broadly and globally. We have barely scratched the surface of learning from one another in the larger Communion about these matters, and American insouciance to considered and integrated practice represents, just in this area, one of the most glaring aspects of our cultural arrogance and folly.
c. Divorce and remarriage: one thing that has emerged in the present conflicts in ECUSA and the Communion is that there is some kind of organic link – though not clearly understood – between the changes in our marriage discipline with regard to divorce, and changes in other areas of sexual theology and discipline. Given that these changes with regard to divorce and remarriage are relatively recent, yet long-standing enough as to provide data and evidence to be studied, it appears that a serious reconsideration of the meaning, effects, usefulness and faithfulness of our marriage canons needs to be pursued, again on a much broader Communion and Scriptural basis.
d. Friendship: an aspect of the debate over homosexual partnerships that has generally been ignored is the character of friendship that the Christian Gospel both encourages and shapes – friendship, that is, that is non-sexual in its orientation and that engages persons of the same or different sex. In the context of the current struggle in Britain over the Civil Partnership Act, some theologians (like Andrew Goddard) have pressed for just such an exploration of friendship in a newly focused way. There are, of course, vast resources within the Christian tradition to aid in such exploration, much of which has been forgotten in the contemporary era. But the question has been rightly asked as to whether modern sexual confusions (and no one can deny that such confusion is rampant) are informed by a lack of Christian direction and encouragement with respect to friendship itself.
e. Human passions and their meaning, control , and direction: much imprecise and mutually contradictory statements have been made in the current conflict concerning the nature of human impulses, emotions, and appetites, especially as they relate to the vocation of Christian holiness. This is not only about sex and sexuality, but also about other aspects of the human character and personality. The fact that so much anger and bitterness (not to mention self-justification for the same) colors our current conflict on all sides indicates that we are fairly un-self-aware about the shape of the “redeemed” human person granted us in Christ through the Holy Spirit. The sometimes hysterical reaction to “change” in sexual “identity” – both among proponents for such change and also among its skeptics and opponents – indicates deep misunderstandings and certainly disagreements about the nature of Christian “ascetics” and its relationship (see above) to Christian and non-Christian culture. The focus of so much discussion regarding Christian identity upon the Prayer Book’s “Baptismal Covenant”, limiting because of its generalities, has acted to derail reflection on traditional elements of the Christian person in this regard.
f. The exercise of ecclesial discipline: Laissez-faire and random reactionism has characterized the last few years in ECUSA and the Communion itself, with little control (and self-control) being exercised in the face of unfulfilled promises, behavioral scandal, contradicted teaching, liturgical subversion, episcopal encroachments, refusal to talk openly and prayerfully, and so on. A part of this dispiriting mess can be blamed on a widespread misunderstanding (and sometimes willful rejection) of the reality and character of Christian and eccleseial discipline. This topic has obviously come up in a concrete way with respect to ECUSA’s place in the Communion. But just here there is evident a deep confusion over the Scriptural and traditional motives, meanings, and purposes of discipline.
f. Pastoral realities of human compassion and protection: One of the greatest casualties in the current conflict of our Communion has been the fundamental Christian call to compassionate response to and protection of the vulnerable. This has been evidenced by expressed hatred, in various contexts, towards homosexuals, conservatives, Africans, political liberals, bishops, women, and on and on. The presumption for tradition that Windsor implies must be the new playing field is not about a victory of one “party” in the church over another, as if there are scores to be settled and people to be picked off. It is, as I said, about faith, hope, and charity lived out in the Church within the vast world of God’s creation. This is not a word we are hearing, nor is it one we are seeing. Repentance will involve a turn towards this most basically, but only if it can be identified clearly and understood compellingly.
There are, no doubt, many other topics that we will need to discuss and “listen” to one another about. If they seem, at a certain point, to take in the whole scope of the Christian faith, that is perhaps only because we have wandered so far from one another – parallel to the fragmentation of the larger Church Universal – that the claim of “one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, within the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3-6) has become either a vague metaphor or an eschatological hope to which we are not responsible for the time being. But this is also a travesty of the Christian Gospel. The Windsor Report would have us change the playing field so that our goals might no longer be aimed at such vanity, but at the substance itself of our common trust in Christ. And this is far more than a game; it is “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” given to the “mature-minded” (Phil. 3:14f.). Are we ready for such a well-aimed maturity?
