As a new Archbishop of Canterbury is announced, Lance Lawton asks if the job of leading the world’s Anglicans impossible.
The Anglican Communion has had its internal challenges over a long time. But it’s enjoyed a particularly rocky journey (or is that a choppy See?) through the current century. Whilst Primates of the Communion and others are wrestling with redefining (or is that ‘reinventing’?) the global body, in this writer’s view it’s well past time to consider the more nuclear option. Is it time to disinvent it? Has it had its day? I’d suggest it has. Is it fit for purpose in the 21st century? On balance, I want to suggest not.
Justin Welby, Lambeth and human sexuality
The Communion is led by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Whoever takes up that role, accepts the task of holding together in some form of unity a large monolith with increasingly divergent views among its member provinces and their bishops. Justin Welby held that office for about a decade, retiring slightly prematurely almost a year ago, admitting grave failures in his management of sex abuse cases on his watch. (That in itself is a weighty subject, occasioning grief and demanding repentance; but even so, not the subject for addressing here). In that time the See proved especially choppy for him. Now with the announcement of Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally as his successor, it’s hard to imagine any smoother sailing for her.
We might call Welby’s time in office the Welby decade. Not in any sense that his stewardship was or remains of greater significance than those of any of his predecessors, nor more definitive of the future. Rather simply that it was a particularly fraught, in some senses defining, and certainly unprecedented period in the life of the Communion, much bigger than Canterbury.
My own view, which I’ve expressed many times, is that Welby’s greatest “sin” was simply being the mug in Augustine’s chair at a time of largely unavoidable and protracted intra-Communion conflict. I have some views on how well he managed what lay before him, but that also lies outside the present purpose.
My interest in the Welby decade is in the way it has brought to a head a range of defining challenges which have afflicted the Communion for decades, without ever previously being seriously addressed, at least to this writer’s awareness. Another frog, another saucepan?
This is to more than imply that sexuality is not the fundamental issue. More on that later. But it has been the sorest point of the Welby decade, through which it has graphically exposed and deepened fissures in the Communion. Fairly or not, it has defined ++Justin’s stewardship of his office, for which he had and has an abundance of critics. Acknowledging the many flaws of binary labelling, the familiar “conservative” and “progressive” might suffice for now.
For conservatives:
++Justin had caved in to a revisionist moral agenda, leading the Communion into heterodoxy & heteropraxis. He had crossed at least two doctrinal or moral Rubicons.
The first was announcing to the Lambeth Conference of bishops in 2022 that the Communion now recognises two deeply held convictions on marriage – one being the position spelled out plainly by the Lambeth Conference of 1998 that same-sex marriage and “homosexual practice” are incompatible with Scripture, the other being that of welcoming same sex marriage “after careful theological reflection”.
The second crossing was in his affirmation, as Primate of the Church of England, that the CofE should provide for the blessing of same sex relationships, though not the solemnising of same-sex marriages. To many that demarked definitively his renunciation of the authority of Scripture.
For progressives:
++Justin’s failure was no less deeply moral. To them he had overseen an abusive and homophobic system, highlighted for instance by the snubbing of same-sex spouses at the Lambeth conference.
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If there exists a way to reconcile the two camps in a full mutually satisfying communion, I’ve plainly missed it. Or to put it more plainly, in the view of this writer such a hope is a fool’s errand. These are not reconcilable positions. Indeed in some senses, each is the other’s antithesis.
All of that is why now is a good time to ask difficult questions about co-existence in a global Anglican Communion. Parts II and III will consider a little pertinent history of the Communion (if in layman’s terms), reflect on what really divides the global fellowship now, and propose how other branches of Christ’s church might hint at a future for ours.
First published at fullofgraceandtruth.net
Image Credit: Pixabay Amended to add the name of the new archbishop, Sarah Mullally.
“Anglican”? “Anglican Communion”? Words better left with Alice and the queen of hearts.
Once there was long-standing clear agreement (or else). So the words of King Charles 1 in his introduction of the Articles of Religion. This is available on the (UK) Church of England website.
I once had great admiration for the Book of Common Prayer. The shine dimmed when I learned its role in the “Great Ejection” of 1662. I think the consequences of that have long continued.
So, yes, Mr Lawton, the illusion has dimmed and the women and men now forming the “powers that be” of “Anglicanism” will continue their paths of disintegration. I hope none of God’s people are cast down by what we have seen and will see.