It Takes Time
On the future shape of the Anglican Church
CLERGY PERSONS. The enthronement ceremony for the new archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, March 21, 2013.
Almost
27 years ago I attended a debate between Rowan Williams and Graham
Leonard in Christ Church College at Oxford University. The debate was on
the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood. Pope John Paul II
had ruled that the Catholic Church was not competent to change the
tradition and had forbidden any further discussion of the question, at
least in the Catholic Church. But sometimes questions cannot be settled
prematurely, even by papal or episcopal fiat. There is a sense in which
the community itself comes to a decision about “ripeness” and takes its
time to arrive at a deeper understanding and peace. This, too, can be
the work of the Holy Spirit.
As was to be expected, the debate in Christ
Church was polite. At no time did I feel there was any danger to my
blood pressure. It was a very Anglican debate. I do not recall either
side developing an irrefutable argument, but I do remember it dawning on
me, perhaps a little late, that whatever the theological issues, it was
a debate about the identity of Anglicanism itself: Was it a Reformed
church or was it a Catholic church? Could it be both?
Several years later, in 1992, an Anglican
friend and priest rang me to tell me that, at last, the synod had voted
in favor of women’s ordination. He observed that although it had been a
painful process, the decision had been arrived at in a very legitimate,
Anglican way—through the houses of bishops, clergy and laity. It had not
been unanimous, but the process of discernment had involved the whole
body of the church. I was glad that it was a decision that obviously
brought him consolation, and especially glad for his wife and my other
friends who then went on to be ordained. Although on this occasion I did
not share their theological position, I never doubted their integrity
and desire to serve the church, the sacrifices they had made and
continue to make and the power and grace of their ministry. They have
kept before me the deep and consoling challenge of the priesthood of
Christ, which ultimately must transcend gender, as it belongs to the
whole people of God. Of course, having accepted both theologically and
culturally the ordination of women to the priesthood, it would have been
incoherent not to accept that women could become bishops—which the
General Synod eventually did just last month (July 14).
I do not know if there is one theology of
priesthood in the Anglican tradition. In any dealings I have had with
Anglicans—whether “high” or “low”—I have been impressed by their
cultural and evangelical commitment, but I have been conscious of the
wide variation in their understanding of what their priesthood is and
entails. So Anglicans have a church that is in the process of redefining
itself, and part of that seems to be the search for a functional
ecclesiology of tolerance, a recognized theology of plurality within the
one body that is allowed to express itself in different forms and
disciplines. It seems to be a neat line to walk here between plurality
and what some would see as a tolerated structural schism.
I wonder if the desire to accommodate
different theologies in expressly different forms of office achieves a
real ecclesial communion, or whether it represents a strained compromise
in which people, at their best, have deep charitable dispositions
towards each other, but live with a sort of quiet desolation at a
divided body. Structural accommodations do not necessarily mean
reconciliations, as we Roman Catholics know from our own ecclesial
experience.
I also wonder what it would be like to be a
bishop in such circumstances. How does one have a real sense of being a
focus of ecclesial unity and exercise a deep pastoral solicitude for the
whole body of Christ when a significant proportion of that body rejects
one’s ministry? The metaphor most used in the post-decision
conversation is that of family—a family in which there can be
differences of commitments and lifestyles but one that still wants to
remain a family with obligations to each other. Is that metaphor now a
nostalgic memory from an earlier settlement, or is it the beginning of a
genuinely renewed ecclesiology that Anglicanism needs if it is to avoid
a series of ad hoc arrangements that ultimately entrench division
rather than resolve it?
The Church of England is undergoing a
profound transformation—culturally as well as theologically and
spiritually. Around its theological questions are also national and
cultural ones. Can it remain an established church? Does that really
serve the nation and the other Christian communities, as is often
claimed? Does it allow the church real freedom, or does it subtly force
it into accommodations with the spirit of the secular state? Whose head
is really on the coin?
There is no doubt that the failure of the
Anglican Church to agree upon women bishops last year drew considerable
pressure from the government and parliament to change. Indeed, the risk
of assimilationism can emerge from unexpected quarters: the question of
women bishops was almost overshadowed by the support expressed by Lord
Carey, former archbishop of Canterbury, for legalizing assisted dying.
It raised a deep but unaddressed question about the witness of a
“national” church. Although the question of women bishops and the
church’s defense of life can seem far apart in the public mind, they are
theologically related to the very nature of the church’s fidelity to
Christ in history: not only how it lives that fidelity but how it comes
to discern it in each age.
Of course, our own church cannot simply be a
member of the audience as the Anglican drama unfolds. The Catholic
Church has by its very nature a deep effective and affective solicitude
for the whole body of Christ. Over the years I have felt privileged to
watch the Anglican Church develop and evolve not just in response to the
pressures of demographics and cultural change but with a profound and
costly search for ways of embodying the Gospel. For all of us there is a
sense that what emerges includes both a lasting truth and the
contingency with which that truth must be given shape in history. This
can be confusing, containing both grief and hope and the struggle
between the siren voices of integrism and assimilationism, together with
the different sorts of secular politics these represent.
But I have been conscious also of Karl
Barth’s teaching on the patience of God, who not only waits for us but
accompanies us and, in every sense, makes time for us. This is far from a
political process of change; it is about how we live and give shape to
our salvation history so as to make Christ visible and available in our
age. Patience is more than pragmatism or even a virtue, it is a grace
born out of our trust in Christ’s faithfulness to us. Every Christian
community, especially our own, needs this patience as an ecclesial gift.
Since the day I listened to the debate in
Christ Church all those years ago, the words of Rowan Williams remained
with me. If I remember them correctly, he said that as a church we
needed to remove all that impedes our living and witnessing to the
Gospel of Christ. Yes! That surely is the primary task of a bishop,
whatever the gender or whatever the confession. It is the hard work of
love for the great church about which none of us can be complacent.
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