What is the future of the Anglican Church?
Aug 13, 2008
THE The rift within the Anglican communion over the issue of homosexuality may not kill the church. However, the acrimonious debate by its leaders over the last few weeks has unfortunately exposed an unsavoury side of the church in which intolerance of opposing ideas and unbridled self-righteousness
By Peter Mulira
THE The rift within the Anglican communion over the issue of homosexuality may not kill the church. However, the acrimonious debate by its leaders over the last few weeks has unfortunately exposed an unsavoury side of the church in which intolerance of opposing ideas and unbridled self-righteousness threaten to strike at the very foundation of Anglicanism as we know it.
The Anglican church has always been prone to controversies but has always survived them leading one poet T. S. Eliott to write: “the Anglican church washes its linen in public but unlike other institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, the linen does get washed.â€
These controversies normally find their final expression in the Lambeth conference which brings together every 10 years all the primates from around the world in an assembly in London as guests of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the successor to St Augustine of Canterbury.
The issue of homosexuality which has now split the church down the middle first came up at the Lambeth conference of 1978 and reappeared in 1988 but it is the resolution which was passed at the 1998 conference pronouncing “homosexual practice to be incompatible with scripture†that has brought matters to a head.
When in 2003 the church in America consecrated as bishop a man who was living in a homosexual relationship, all hell broke loose and some bishops felt so betrayed that they demanded that the Archbishop of Canterbury should convene an emergency meeting of the Lambeth conference over the issue which he refused to do perhaps on the twin grounds that each province is independent in its affairs and that the conference was not an executive body capable of passing judgment on others. This led to the boycott of this year’s Lambeth conference by some 230 bishops who organised their own rival conference in Jerusalem at the beginning of July.
This may be all too confusing to the ordinary faithful who may not understand the intricacies of the debate. To make sense of what is going on, it helps to consider the controversy from five standpoints namely the meaning of the Anglican communion, the Lambeth conference, the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the influence of the American church and an epilogue. Up to the 1800s, it used to be said in days gone by that the Anglican church is the nation of England at prayer.
Indeed Anglicanism originated from England after one of its kings broke away from the catholic church over an amorous affair some 450 years ago. It later spread all over the British empire through the work of missionaries building up a communion of believers.
At the 1930 Lambeth conference, this communion was defined as a fellowship of Anglican dioceses and provinces in communion with the see of Canterbury which in effect makes the Archbishop of Canterbury first among equals.
The communion has three characteristics, namely:
(a) member churches uphold the faith and order set forth in the book of common prayer as authorised by their several churches,
(b) members are national churches and as such promote within each of their territories a national expression of Christian faith and
(c) members are bound together not by a central legislative and executive authority but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference.
What this means is that the national churches through the common counsel of the bishops in conference have the final say on all church matters including issues like what homosexuals can or cannot do in church.
In light of (b) and (c) above, it is difficult to understand how the Archbishop of Canterbury could be expected to convene a meeting for the purpose of disciplining the American church without breaching the communion tenets for interpreting the scriptures according to its wisdom without himself breaching the tenets of the communion. The Americans interpreted the bible according to their cultural environment. A leading theologian has written that “the idea that one can separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel undiluted by any cultural accretions is an illusion.â€
The American secular culture allows the individual to do what he likes and regards matters of social limits and faith as belonging to the province of being matters of the heart.
Unfortunately, this issue has subjected the Archbishop of Canterbury to accusations of being a colonial relic in relation to the communion. This accusation overlooks the fact that it was not the Archbishop who gave himself his premier position in the communion.
Rather it it was Bishop Lewis of colonial Canada who wrote to the Archbishop in 1666 suggesting that there should be a meeting of the Bishops of the Anglican church “attended by one of their presbyters learned in ecclesiastical law as their advisers in ecclesiastical matters and under the guidance of the Holy Ghost to take counsel and adopt such measures as may be fitted presided over by your Grace.â€
In accepting the suggestion, Archbishop Longley made it clear that “such a meeting would not be competent to make declarations, or lay down definitions on points of doctrineâ€.
Longley’s successor went even further when he convened the second meeting stating, “There is no intention whatever on the part of anybody to gather together the Bishops of the Anglican church for the sake of defining doctrineâ€. With this background of strict adherence to the independence of the provinces the Lambeth conference of 1968 passed a resolution requesting that “the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the advice of the Anglican Consultative Council, should call future conferences setting their time, place and agenda.â€
This history disposes of accusations of a colonial mentality overspill on the part of the Archbishop of Canterbury but the choice of time for launching the attack on the prelate and why the debate on homosexuality has generated such hostility puzzles the mind. hostility?
The Lambeth conference has considered sensitive issues before involving the interpretation of the scriptures in regard to such things as birth control, racism and the ordination of women but these have never affected the collegiality of the communion.
It would seem that today the division of the American church between the fundamentalist and liberal churches is playing itself out in full force over the Anglican communion at large. The fundamentalists believe in the literal interpretation of the bible while the liberals accept a cultural contextualisation of the scriptures.
In this maze the problem which faces the believer in the ‘third world’ is that when he chooses the fundamentalist approach, he will be seen as imposing an intolerant Christian world view on others based on his personal understanding of the scriptures while if he adopts the liberal approach he will be regarded by some as a condoner of sinful behaviour. The future of Anglicanism lies in a resolution of this chasm which its leaders have created for their followers.
Lastly, we should remember that the Anglican communion is not the same thing as the Anglican church. The communion is a mere fellowship of the leaders of the Anglican provinces and dioceses. If the communion were to have a centralised authority with an elected leader like the papacy, then the rationale behind the break-up of the Anglicans from the church in Rome will disappear.
This means that there is a third direction in this controversy open to believers apart from Jerusalem and Canterbury—the direction leading to Rome.
The writer is a lawyer
THE The rift within the Anglican communion over the issue of homosexuality may not kill the church. However, the acrimonious debate by its leaders over the last few weeks has unfortunately exposed an unsavoury side of the church in which intolerance of opposing ideas and unbridled self-righteousness threaten to strike at the very foundation of Anglicanism as we know it.
The Anglican church has always been prone to controversies but has always survived them leading one poet T. S. Eliott to write: “the Anglican church washes its linen in public but unlike other institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, the linen does get washed.â€
These controversies normally find their final expression in the Lambeth conference which brings together every 10 years all the primates from around the world in an assembly in London as guests of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the successor to St Augustine of Canterbury.
The issue of homosexuality which has now split the church down the middle first came up at the Lambeth conference of 1978 and reappeared in 1988 but it is the resolution which was passed at the 1998 conference pronouncing “homosexual practice to be incompatible with scripture†that has brought matters to a head.
When in 2003 the church in America consecrated as bishop a man who was living in a homosexual relationship, all hell broke loose and some bishops felt so betrayed that they demanded that the Archbishop of Canterbury should convene an emergency meeting of the Lambeth conference over the issue which he refused to do perhaps on the twin grounds that each province is independent in its affairs and that the conference was not an executive body capable of passing judgment on others. This led to the boycott of this year’s Lambeth conference by some 230 bishops who organised their own rival conference in Jerusalem at the beginning of July.
This may be all too confusing to the ordinary faithful who may not understand the intricacies of the debate. To make sense of what is going on, it helps to consider the controversy from five standpoints namely the meaning of the Anglican communion, the Lambeth conference, the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the influence of the American church and an epilogue. Up to the 1800s, it used to be said in days gone by that the Anglican church is the nation of England at prayer.
Indeed Anglicanism originated from England after one of its kings broke away from the catholic church over an amorous affair some 450 years ago. It later spread all over the British empire through the work of missionaries building up a communion of believers.
At the 1930 Lambeth conference, this communion was defined as a fellowship of Anglican dioceses and provinces in communion with the see of Canterbury which in effect makes the Archbishop of Canterbury first among equals.
The communion has three characteristics, namely:
(a) member churches uphold the faith and order set forth in the book of common prayer as authorised by their several churches,
(b) members are national churches and as such promote within each of their territories a national expression of Christian faith and
(c) members are bound together not by a central legislative and executive authority but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference.
What this means is that the national churches through the common counsel of the bishops in conference have the final say on all church matters including issues like what homosexuals can or cannot do in church.
In light of (b) and (c) above, it is difficult to understand how the Archbishop of Canterbury could be expected to convene a meeting for the purpose of disciplining the American church without breaching the communion tenets for interpreting the scriptures according to its wisdom without himself breaching the tenets of the communion. The Americans interpreted the bible according to their cultural environment. A leading theologian has written that “the idea that one can separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel undiluted by any cultural accretions is an illusion.â€
The American secular culture allows the individual to do what he likes and regards matters of social limits and faith as belonging to the province of being matters of the heart.
Unfortunately, this issue has subjected the Archbishop of Canterbury to accusations of being a colonial relic in relation to the communion. This accusation overlooks the fact that it was not the Archbishop who gave himself his premier position in the communion.
Rather it it was Bishop Lewis of colonial Canada who wrote to the Archbishop in 1666 suggesting that there should be a meeting of the Bishops of the Anglican church “attended by one of their presbyters learned in ecclesiastical law as their advisers in ecclesiastical matters and under the guidance of the Holy Ghost to take counsel and adopt such measures as may be fitted presided over by your Grace.â€
In accepting the suggestion, Archbishop Longley made it clear that “such a meeting would not be competent to make declarations, or lay down definitions on points of doctrineâ€.
Longley’s successor went even further when he convened the second meeting stating, “There is no intention whatever on the part of anybody to gather together the Bishops of the Anglican church for the sake of defining doctrineâ€. With this background of strict adherence to the independence of the provinces the Lambeth conference of 1968 passed a resolution requesting that “the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the advice of the Anglican Consultative Council, should call future conferences setting their time, place and agenda.â€
This history disposes of accusations of a colonial mentality overspill on the part of the Archbishop of Canterbury but the choice of time for launching the attack on the prelate and why the debate on homosexuality has generated such hostility puzzles the mind. hostility?
The Lambeth conference has considered sensitive issues before involving the interpretation of the scriptures in regard to such things as birth control, racism and the ordination of women but these have never affected the collegiality of the communion.
It would seem that today the division of the American church between the fundamentalist and liberal churches is playing itself out in full force over the Anglican communion at large. The fundamentalists believe in the literal interpretation of the bible while the liberals accept a cultural contextualisation of the scriptures.
In this maze the problem which faces the believer in the ‘third world’ is that when he chooses the fundamentalist approach, he will be seen as imposing an intolerant Christian world view on others based on his personal understanding of the scriptures while if he adopts the liberal approach he will be regarded by some as a condoner of sinful behaviour. The future of Anglicanism lies in a resolution of this chasm which its leaders have created for their followers.
Lastly, we should remember that the Anglican communion is not the same thing as the Anglican church. The communion is a mere fellowship of the leaders of the Anglican provinces and dioceses. If the communion were to have a centralised authority with an elected leader like the papacy, then the rationale behind the break-up of the Anglicans from the church in Rome will disappear.
This means that there is a third direction in this controversy open to believers apart from Jerusalem and Canterbury—the direction leading to Rome.
The writer is a lawyer