By Adrian Worsfold
The Archbishop of Canterbury has had a plan. Seemingly with a consistent Catholic insight, he has wanted to reform and centralise the relationship of bishops and dioceses into a more organic arrangement with each other and his primacy.
He tells us this very well in a recent lecture contribution to The Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius conference entitled Rome, Constantinople and Canterbury: Mother Churches? (There is a written transcript, as well as two audio files.)
In it he criticised Roman Catholicism, as the See of Peter suffers from “juridical anomalies and bureaucratic distortion”; he speaks of an:
ecclesial unity that is ultimately somewhat secular (that is, the unified organisation controlled from one focal point).
It comes across that he is thinking of Max Weber and the bureaucratic authority that is rational and secular, and develops from traditionalism which would include sacred authority and such as the charism of bishops.
He also criticises the autocephalous arrangement of Orthodoxy, but only specifically as it is (not its philosophy of organising):
Orthodox have often frozen the concept of primacy in an antiquarian defence of the pentarchy as the structure of the Church thus allowing non-theological power struggles rooted in nationalism and ethnocentrism to flourish with damaging results.
The pentarchy is specific: must it always follow that culturally rooted Churches end up being nationalist and ethnocentric?
His argument uses the mother Church idea for primacy, but also that one bishop is no bishop, and that there is an economy of giving and receiving that brings bishops into necessary contact with each other. The mother Church idea means that local Churches cannot exist alone.
What we see here is a theology by ecclesiology of conservation and conservatism. This is a key text:
This is why it is problematic if a local Church so interprets the gift it has received that it cannot fully share it beyond its own cultural home territory – which is an issue for both left and right in our Churches, I suspect. And the primatial initiative in challenging or seeking to limit local development on these grounds becomes intelligible as part of the service of the mother Church – to those to which it is the mother.
So here we see how the theme of “Better Bishops” at the Lambeth Conference – better interactions taking full account of the mother Church – coincides with the effort to close down singular innovations within these local Churches.
The argument he presents does not hold. It does not hold on its own argument, nor does it hold any longer due to recent events.
He discusses various mother Churches, such as the “generative” Celtic Church, but in the end there is only one mother Church and that is the Jerusalem Church. In all practicality, though, the Anglican Communion and its ultimate mother Church of England is itself a local Church to the Roman Church – and, if not specifically, then to Churches “across the globe and throughout history.” How come, then, that women were ever ordained, that women could be bishops?
In other words, there has to be a theology and ecclesiology of innovation. He might say that such resides in the immediate mother Church (he doesn’t, because he doesn’t discuss it), but then this turns a Communion into a Church, and the Anglican Communion is not a Church. This is where he keeps making his mistake, why he talks about dioceses and then his primacy, and forgets that, like it or not, the local Churches organise the dioceses and have their own primacy.
His method is to bind the bishops and his office via a Covenant to strengthen the Instruments of Communion: however, again and again, actual Churches have rejected its narrow focus and more disciplinarian features.
His policy will not work also because of recent events. If the leaders of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans can be believed, Anglicanism is going to have a Primates Council that is a different seat of authority. It will decide on whether a Church or a diocese is orthodox or not. It will decide this on the basis of a plain reading of the Bible understood not to contradict itself, on affirming the Thirty-nine Articles, on the one if locally translatable Book of Common Prayer, and on the Ordinal. It is unlikely such a Council will pronounce traditionalist Anglo-Catholics unorthodox, but they are marginalised (again) by this approach.
Whether the Canterbury Communion recognises or not the new Anglican Province of North America, with its Primate Bishop Robert Duncan, or continues to recognise or not The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, authority is still going to run in two directions. Also, in England, a congregation that regards its bishop as too revisionist may find the Primates Council offering international oversight. By Church and national law (there is no doubt about it) such a congregation would have to set up independently, leaving the parish to the bishop. However, a patchwork of congregations throughout Britain leads logically to another Province with another Primate. Again, whether or not a Canterbury Communion recognises it, authority goes different ways.
In other words, the whole reform of an organic episcopal unity and a mother Church, with the binding of a Covenant, is now shattered. It is finished. There will be competing Anglican Churches with different authority centres in the same place.
From the very beginning the Archbishop’s policy has been wrong. A Communion spinning with a strong centrifugal force, ideologically dividing, cannot be forced together at the centre. It needed loosening up, to try and create space and slack in the system, to allow as much variety as possible.
The autocephalous view, of Churches deciding mutual recognition, does not prevent informal gatherings of bishops, and gift receiving and giving organic interaction. Nevertheless, variety does come over one territory, and you have to learn to live with geographical overlaps. We have arrived here anyway.
The Roman Catholic Church is just that, a Church. Eastern Orthodox Churches are that, but they organise themselves. Anglican churches are more like the Eastern Orthodox: it is at best a confederation of Churches.
Bishops and clergy and laity that form a Church are entitled to innovate, even if innovating ought to involve an argument that partly looks back. It is interpretation of the gift. In the end, Churches that will innovate can relate to one another, and recognise one another. Those that cannot innovate will recognise their own.
The Covenant is surely now finished. The Primates Council does not need one as they have their means to decide orthodoxy; and now a Covenant will have neither point nor purpose. In the resulting Balkanisation of Anglicanism, some sections may want a stronger Covenant among themselves – say the South East Asians who won’t want to come under the Primates Council.
Quite simply the attempt to centralise according to Catholic theory and process has resulted in disaster. Never able to provide a Protestant belief basis for a fellowship (despite the transitory Advent Letter of 2007, which was unsustainable), the New Puritans and their African ballast have decided to provide a Fellowship meaning a different direction of authority. The rest of the Communion will probably have to let be, and it needs to loosen up, for the sake of remaining good relationships – and the Archbishop’s policy ought to come to a swift end.
The Lambeth Conference of bishops apparently will not have any resolutions (unless there is a revolt from within) and no doubt the Covenant will press on by detached committee, but when it comes to the Churches they ought to stop it dead and organise Anglicanism according to decentralised relationships.
Adrian Worsfold (Pluralist), has a doctorate in sociology and a masters degree in contemporary theology. He lives near Hull, in northeast England and keeps the blog Pluralist Speaks.