By George Clifford
The Anglican Consultative Council has adjourned its 14th plenary. The Episcopal Café’s Lead and other reportorial sources have amply documented the results of that meeting. Even after the Council’s adjournment, debate continues (flaming in some quarters, flickering in others) about the proposed Anglican Covenant. The Archbishop of Canterbury urges Anglicans to engage in that conversation. Although acknowledging the Communion may adopt some form of federalism, he hopes that the process will instead move the Communion toward closer unity.
Why, exactly, should we in the Episcopal Church care about an Anglican Covenant and the Anglican Communion?
Christian unity is a prominent New Testament theme. Emphasizing unity and participating in the larger Church helps to define our Anglican Christian identity, highlights the Church’s global reach, and enriches us individually and collectively. We Episcopalians trace our ecclesial roots through the Scottish Episcopal Church to the Church of England, from which the American Revolution separated us. Apostolic succession provides a tangible link across the centuries to Jesus.
These linkages have been more than intellectual concepts for my journey. I was privileged to spend two years of my ministry on exchange from the U.S. Navy with the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy, serving as a Church of England priest and chaplain. Our Episcopal membership in the Anglican Communion made that experience possible.
The twentieth century World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order movement flopped. Faith and Order sought to promote Christian unity by articulating doctrinal formulations of the Christian faith with which various Churches could agree and by identifying ecclesial structures for achieving visible, structural unity. Those worthy goals proved impossibly elusive.
Different Churches live with very different worldviews. Culture, ecclesial history, language, and many other factors all help to shape a Church’s worldview. I value collegial ministry. In the Navy, I treasured opportunities to conduct joint Lutheran (ELCA) – Episcopal worship services. With approximately twenty-five Episcopal Navy chaplains, we were rarely co-located. Next best was working with an ELCA chaplain. Each time, I learned much about a very different tradition with which I generally shared liturgical practices but a tradition that had a different set of theological emphases, different polity, different ethos, etc.
During my time with the Royal Navy, my Church of England colleagues included priests from Canterbury, York, Wales, Scotland, Australia, and South Africa. In other words, we came from seven Anglican Communion provinces. All of these nations had close ties with Great Britain. Yet as I listened carefully, I heard about seven sets of traditions, theological emphases, and ethos. Since then, through conversations, travel, and reading I have developed an even greater appreciation for the breadth of diversity represented in the Anglican Communion.
Anglican polities that at first glance may appear similar in fact incarnate highly valued differences. Some provinces are their nation’s established church (or part of it), whose major policies, leaders, and worship require government approval. Other provinces function as ecclesial fiefdoms, largely controlled by the provincial Archbishop. Other provinces operate as representative democracies, integrating bishops, clergy, and laity into a system of checks and balances. Still other forms of Anglican polity exist in the various provinces.
In sum, perhaps the Anglican Communion has embarked on an enterprise similar to the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order movement, an enterprise likely to prove an equally frustrating and elusive search for greater organic unity.
What if the Anglican Communion laid its efforts to draft an Anglican Covenant to rest and instead promoted the unity of cooperative mission?
Cooperative mission is not mission tourism. Cooperative mission is feeding the hungry – spiritually and physically – together. Seminarians spending one year studying in the seminary of another province might become the norm, not the exception. Clergy might routinely serve several years in another province. Mission teams from all provinces might beneficially serve in all other provinces. Companion diocesan relationships might continue to proliferate and strengthen.
On a larger scale, the Anglican Communion could beneficially create a massive global mission initiative to engage thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Anglicans, in cooperative mission. For example, the Anglican Communion might establish an Anglican mission to feed, house, and otherwise care for many of the world’s millions of displaced persons. The Communion could organize this with initial funding from monies now spent on consultative meetings. Every province could link the mission to its biblical and theological teaching, recruit volunteers, raise funds, etc.
Cooperative mission of this type helpfully bypasses theological and structural differences, focusing on incarnating Jesus’ love. The latter half of the twentieth century offers numerous examples of Churches cooperating in mission in spite of important doctrinal and structural differences. Surely, many of the people who participated in such a mission would return home with a genuine appreciation of other Anglicans and a radically deeper commitment to the Communion.
No amount of dialogue seems likely to resolve the substantive theological and structural issues that divide the Anglican Communion. Unity is too valuable to lose because of that impasse. Jesus left us no doctrinal statement, no plan of organization. He simply loved people and encouraged others to do follow his example. Perhaps now is the time for we Anglicans to go and do likewise.
The Rev. Dr. George Clifford, Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years He taught philosophy at the U. S. Naval Academy and ethics at the Postgraduate School. He blogs at Ethical Musings.