As he heads home, the Archbishop of Canterbury, first among equals of the Archbishops of the Anglican Communion, could feel he’s done a good job touring Australia. But in England, a couple of significant pieces of church news broke, which meant it might have been good to be out of the reach of the press pack (more on them later).
But in Australia, there was good news. He was here celebrating the 175th birthdays of Melbourne and Adelaide dioceses (regions)
North Queensland where Welby ordained three First Nations women might be the highlight.
Petronella Connelly ordained as a priest told the ABC “There’s been Bible studies, teaching, hospital visits, working with the community, so having the archbishop here is the icing on the cake.” Valmai Connolly was also ordained as a priest, and Ainsley Dangar a deacon in the Aboriginal church at Yarrabah.
In Sydney, where no public meeting was held in the conservative diocese, he visited Scarred Tree Indigenous Ministries, presenting Uncle Rev Minniecon with the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation for “costly work with Australia’s Stolen Generation and with the Anglican Church”.
The lack of a public meeting in Sydney was criticised on the left – but a photo of Welby with Archbishop Kaniska Raffel of Sydney was criticised from the right, becoming a minor internet meme – an example of how the visit celebrated unity for some, and pointed out differences to others.
Was it irony, coincidence or in repentance that the Scared Tree visit in Sydney was to St Johns Church in Glebe, the suburb named for a large parcel of land taken from the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and granted to the Church of England?
The lack of a public meeting in Sydney was criticised on the left – but a photo of Welby with Archbishop Kaniska Raffel of Sydney was criticised from the right, becoming a minor internet meme – an example of how the visit celebrated unity for some and pointed up differences to others. The influential Pastors Heart vodcast featured GAFCON-aligned leaders calling Welby to repent of “not enforcing discipline in the Anglican Communuon on those leaders who have “Departed from the authentic exercise of his office by normalising and praising those who have departed from biblical teaching and practice.” While a report in Eternity took an entirely positive view of the visit reporting “Archbishop Welby’s warmth touches thousands.”
Travelling North from Yarrabah Welby visited Torres Strait Islanders, where, as in flooded Lismore, he engaged with people on the urgency of action on Climate Change.
“Excuse me,” asks a curious customer in a Lismore shop where The Guardian was present, “have I seen you on television?”
“I’m just a middle-aged English clergyman,” Justin Welby replies. “You might be talking about a little service I did.”
He meant the Queen’s Funeral.
The same deft self-deprecation was on display in Adelaide, where being interviewed by former Premier and now priest Lynn Arnold mused aloud, prophetically perhaps “And I think speaking without judgmentalism about where there has to be change. One of the things when I do speak, I do speak on politics, A, I never use names because I don’t attack individuals but ideas or policies, I’m very certain of that. And secondly, I’m making it clear that being in government as a politician is one of the hardest things in the world. I think it’s one of the most difficult things you can ever do. And so, that one of the things I always say is, “Pray for governments,” as I pray for Liz Truss, for Boris Johnson, but we’re getting quite astray and we’ll have to change our prime ministers, but… Did I say that aloud?”
(The Other Cheek carried the full interview)
A visit like Welby’s is a good opportunity to recognise people who have been too often excluded, with the Australian scene mirroring the Church of England itself becoming more inclusive of ethnicities. Giving recognition to the Indigenous churches, celebrating their inclusion by the North Queensland ordinations and hearing of their struggles is strategic for a visitor like the ABC to do.
The topic of inclusion was raised by the Archbishop in his Australian tour, on other occasions. Muriel Porter in the Church times reported he was “saddened and disappointed” by the refusal of Australia’s largest, Diocese, Sydney not to recognise Archbishop of Perth Kay Goldsworthy as an Archbishop – although Sydney was at the bishops with Goldsworthy conference that Welby attended in Melbourne.
In a key passage in his speech marking the 175th anniversary of the Adelaide diocese, Welby gave an account of why Christians should strive for inclusion as a general principle.
“Over the last 40 years, all the great faiths of the world, including Christianity, have seen a sharp rise in fundamentalist extremism. Fundamentalism usually leads to a slightly sectarian approach which says, ‘Only we have the truth.”’ The next stage is where people say, ‘Only we have the truth, and God has made it our job to do his work of making sure everyone knows and believes and has the truth that we have imposed on them.’
“The church has done that over the centuries millions of times, and invariably, with disastrous effects. Jesus did the opposite, when he was alive he was funny, most of the parables have a joke in them, we’re so [inaudible 00:12:33] and serious when we read them. Think of the parable of the good shepherd who goes to find the sheep, shepherds were notoriously scummy people, in your language, mob. They’d sit around. They carried knives, because it was a dangerous job and they weren’t afraid to use them. People told shepherd jokes in those days, like they used to tell, I don’t know whatever you told in Australia. But in England we used to tell Irish jokes, in France they told Belgian jokes, and in Switzerland, they told French jokes.
(Someone interjects “New Zealand,” The Other Cheek suspects it was Geoffrey Smith the archbishop of Adelaide)
“So, when Jesus says there was this [shepherd], everyone thought this is going to be a good one.]. There was this shepherd and he had 100 sheep, and he lost one, typical shepherd. So, he left the 99 alone in the wilderness and went to find the one, stupid man, typical shepherd, leave 99 sheep. Then Jesus says, “God’s like that, God’s like that,”
But while the Archbishop was down under, two controversial events in the Church of England, and a couple outside of it, became public. Each explains the difficulty of keeping all the sheep in one fold. Actually, do you need two, or is it one-and-a-half sheepfolds?
While he was away, two key appointments marked tensions over inclusion in the Church of England
A new Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, the Very Revd David Montieth, was announced. He is a gay man in a civil partnership. This upset conservatives, but subsequently a CofE spokesperson explained since Civil partnerships were introduced “Some gay and lesbian English clergy have entered civil partnerships from near the beginning in 2005. They are still bound by the rule that sexual relationships must only be within marriage as recognised by the Church, and are not allowed by being in a civil partnership. Abstention from sexual relationships (celibacy) is required of all unmarried clergy, whatever their sexuality.”
A new bishop of Beverley has been appointed to look after some Anglo-Catholic parishes, which do not accept women priests. A new bishop for the conservative evangelicals will follow. These appointments, which support opponents of woman ministers frustrate some of those who celebrate their ministry.
And three new bishops have been appointed by the breakaway GAFCON-aligned Anglican Mission in Europe, Tim Davies, Ian Ferguson and Lee McMunn were consecrated on Friday 21st October at a service in Hull by Archbishop Foley Beach (Primate of the Anglican Church in North America and Chair of Gafcon), Archbishop Laurent Mbanda (Primate of the Anglican Church of Rwanda & Vice-chair of Gafcon) and Archbishop Henry Ndukuba (Primate of the Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion). The British equivalent of our diocese of the Southern Cross is recruiting for church planting in Britain in particular.
These ordinations followed a summit of GAFCON Primates (leaders of national churches) that made the call for Welby to repent of his refusal to criticise or discipline the national churches that support same-sex marriage.
In another talk, his sermon in Adelaide, the Archbishop of Canterbury references his evangelical church-planting roots. He’s coy in this quote, he’s talking about Holy Trinity Brompton, home of the Alpha Course
“There is a big church in London which I know quite well. I won’t go into the details. And its minister came to see me nine years ago and said, ‘What can we do to help?’ And I said, ‘Plant a church that will be generous and bless the place where it is in every diocese.’ And they’ve more or less done it over the subsequent nine years. They send a group of people who sell their houses, move their children’s school, exactly like Short, go to a place they do not know, find new jobs, and find new ways of living. They send them with a couple of clergy, some money, and an administrator, and they start a church. There’s very little difference to what Augustus Short [Adelaide’s first Bishop] did, except it’s easy to get back and the journey is not three months. But to move your whole household and your job, that is commitment. That is discipleship.”
In Adelaide, there is an Anglican Church with a spectacular record of church planting, similar to Holy Trinity Brompton’s in that church growth ministry. Trinity Church Adelaide has got very good at sending out teams to plant churches, with 13 daughter or granddaughter churches.
But the recent Synod (Church Parliament) election results in Adelaide which saw a progressive near clean sweep of elected positions will widen the gap between Trinity and the rest of the Adelaide church.
Conservative forces are battling it out in both the Church of England and the Anglican Church of Australia. In both General Synods (church parliaments) latest elections the conservatives did well. But progressives have scored some victories too, as evidenced by the dean of Canterbury and recent rulings by the Australians Appellate Tribunal (the church’s supreme court) which removed restrictions to blessing civil same-sex marriages.
Next year the topic of Inclusion comes to a head in the Church of England as a multi-year process known as “Living in Love and Faith” on the future of LGBTQIA people in the church comes a time of ‘discernment” at a General Synod meeting in February 2023.
Just like the Church of England which Justin Welby flies back to, Australia’s Anglicans are working out how (and if) they can live together.
Unifying?
Unifying? that’s how the progressives saw the visit. I think the evangelicals played it down, rather than make a big deal of their disagreement. But the First nations visits were a bit of a unifying thread, with Scarred Tree and the Yarrabah ordinations welcome acknowledgement of First Nations, something the Anglicans, most I think would agree is something Australian Anglicans have not been spectacular at, with lots of false starts.
John, I’m surprised that you accept the self-description of party in the church who call themselves progressives. If you use the word, at least it should be in inverted commas. To describe someone as progressive assumes that the direction in which he or she is going actually represents progress, but I don’t believe you would accept that, so don’t accept the word. Their position is in fact regressive, but you could politely call it theologically liberal, or perhaps theologically fast-and-loose!
It is hard to find terms that nobody will complain about. “Progressive” and “conservative” are the best I can come up with. It is not uncommon for people who are on one side of the aisle to complain – as you do – that the word used for the other side is too nice. Theologically “Liberal” usually implies people who don’t believe in the Virgin Birth or the miracle accounts. Such people still exist, but by the term “progressive” I mean the people who favour same-sex marriage and similar issues such as LGBTQIA clergy and many of these maintain a belief in things like virgin birth. Today’s “progressives” are not the same as 1970 “liberals”. Whereas “conservatives as the name implies have stayed largely the same in terms of theology.