Two Tiers, One Cheer – Archbishop Rowan Williams’ Reflections on the Future of the Anglican Communion in response to the decisions of the Episcopal Church at its General Convention
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009By Charles Raven
SPREAD
July 28, 2009
After having taken a rather long pause for thought, the Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday released his considered response to the decisions of the Episcopal Church at its General Convention, which rejected his personal plea for moderation and pressed ahead to officially authorise liturgies for the blessing of those in same sex unions and the ordination of those in such partnerships.
Despite a deeply unconvincing attempt by the Presiding Bishop to claim that the moratorium on such steps is actually still in place on the basis that the resolutions were descriptive rather than prescriptive (so why bother passing them?), this action was rightly seen as having destroyed any hopes of maintaining the unity of the Anglican Communion and has elicited from the Archbishop an unusually lucid damage limitation exercise, helpfully presented in twenty-six numbered paragraphs set out like theses.
At first reading, those who hold to classical Anglican teaching might be inclined to give ‘three cheers’ since the Archbishop appears to give a strong affirmation of traditional biblical teaching on sexuality and accepts that some form of institutional distance from revisionist Churches may be necessary.
Specifically, he recommends that the Anglican Communion should now accept the likelihood that it will have to operate as a two tier body, a core made up of those Churches which can coalesce around the Anglican Covenant and a less ‘intensely’ engaged cluster of Churches for whom local autonomy takes priority. On the specific presenting issue of sexuality he unambiguously aligns himself with the orthodox core and it is encouraging to find the erstwhile campaigner and theologian of the gay lesbian movement writing :
8. …a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even of the Communion as a whole. And if this is the case, a person living in such a union is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond; whatever the human respect and pastoral sensitivity such persons must be given, their chosen lifestyle is not one that the Church’s teaching sanctions, and thus it is hard to see how they can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate, requires’
and :
9. In other words, the question is not a simple one of human rights or human dignity…
In an English context, this is a remarkable statement from someone so close to the liberal establishment and may help to restrain a government in its dying days increasingly determined to promote gay rights at the expense of the rights of conscience and free speech.
So it is very much to be welcomed that Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury has now managed to so distance himself from Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Wales and advocate of ‘gay ordination’ (one cheer.), but the two tier strategy will not work because it reflects the deeper problem of the Archbishop’s flawed theology of revelation. His characteristic reticence to speak of the Bible as God’s Word reflects a persistent theological difficulty in speaking about the authority of Christian doctrine (see my article ‘Shadow Gospel’), which only the GAFCON movement has begun to seriously address at a Communion wide level.
It is in this area of authority, ultimately Scriptural authority, that the Anglican Communion struggles when confronted by the ‘new religion’ of TEC and its associates. The Anglican Church of North America’s (ACNA) Presiding Bishop Robert Duncan made it clear in his recent open letter ‘Two Cities, One Choice’ that the Communion’s difficulties arise through trying to hold together fundamentally opposed visions of Christianity. Reflecting on the ACNA launch in Bedford, Texas, and TEC’s General Convention in Anaheim , California, shortly afterwards he observed that:
‘In the last month, the contrasting behaviors and values of the religious leaders who met in these two small cities made each a symbol of Anglicanism’s inescapable choice. The two Anglican Churches in the United States represent two cities. Jerusalem and Babylon come to mind as the Scriptural cities which are enduring symbols of choices to be made by God’s people.’
In contrast, for Rowan Williams the issue is not primarily about faithfulness to apostolic truth, but the willingness to intensify relationships within the given institutional structures. So he writes:
22. … For those whose vision is not shaped by the desire to intensify relationships in this particular way [The Anglican Covenant], or whose vision of the Communion is different, there is no threat of being cast into outer darkness – existing relationships will not be destroyed that easily. But it means that there is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance: that is, a ‘covenanted’ Anglican global body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with ‘covenanted’ provinces.
The Archbishop’s new found commitment to orthodoxy in sexual matters does not therefore flow from an understanding of the difference between teachings which are intrinsically right or wrong, but is to do with his understanding of proper process:
23. This has been called a ‘two-tier’ model, or, more disparagingly, a first- and second-class structure. But perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a ‘two-track’ model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal structure. If those who elect this model do not take official roles in the ecumenical interchanges and processes in which the ‘covenanted’ body participates, this is simply because within these processes there has to be clarity about who has the authority to speak for whom.
This emphasis on process rather than substance has been a weakness of the Windsor Covenant strategy from the start. It can only deal with symptoms. It cannot deal with the underlying chronic infection of false teaching. What Presiding Bishop Bob Duncan sees as ‘Babylon’ – the realm of those who reject God’s rule – becomes in Rowan Williams’ ecclesiology simply an alternative style:
24. It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are – two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude co-operation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion. .. The 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.
At this point, I’m beginning to have doubts about the title of this piece. Should I even have given one cheer? It now becomes clear that what appeared to be surprisingly unambiguous statements by Rowan Williams on sexuality actually open up a deeper level of ambiguity. He affirms them not out of personal conviction (this would be an astonishing reversal), but because he is committed to an institutional process and adapts accordingly. If the clear teaching of Scripture can simply be reduced to a matter of style and the biblical discipline of excommunication is dubbed ‘apocalyptic’, where could the ‘intensifying’ of Anglican Covenant relationships eventually lead under Rowan Williams’ leadership?
Depressed revisionists who believe that Rowan has betrayed the cause should read Susan Russell’s perceptive comment on behalf of the pro-gay Episcopal group Integrity USA and cheer up. She takes the long view and argues ‘we recognize that those who have been waiting for the casting-out-of-TEC-into-outer-darkness are not getting what they want. And as we continue to move forward in mission and ministry with those who embrace historic Anglican comprehensiveness, we believe those “outer darkness” threats are going to ring more and more hollow until they fade away altogether.’ Some pieces on the chess board may have to go, but this will be in order all the more thoroughly to subvert the orthodox in the long run.
There is a subtle trap for the orthodox here. The Archbishop is speaking their language, but not for their reasons. If they support this proposal for a two-tier Communion they will have implicitly abandoned the claim to guard apostolic truth and will be progressively neutralised through interminable indaba. Only the GAFCON movement has the theological backbone to rescue the Communion because the Jerusalem Declaration is willing to state not only the positives, but also the necessary negatives – of the reality of false teaching and the need to reject the authority of those who deny the faith, in word or deed.
