The Anglican Communion as intentionally interdependent

Is the Anglican Communion broken?

Some ruminations on the supposed break up of the Anglican Communion and the matter of the Communion as intentionally interdependent. 

Over on REAL ANGLICANS the point is made that the Global South's PR machine is moving into high gear. Fred writes, 

"I am now watching as the next step in the Global south public relations program kicks into high gear.  Way back when, specifically the Jerusalem Declaration, in a little preface work, the Conelonialists said that the Archbishop of Canterbury was NOT NECESSARY for an Anglican Communion.  That discussion lay dormant for many months and then a few months ago the rhetoric kicked in.  With the advent of the Primate's meeting in Dublin the PR moved into high gear.  Look at ACI, ACNA, or even the Soundings Board over at the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin and you will see that there is a call for the Archbishop of Canterbury to step aside/down/get the hell out of the way."

The ABC was soundly ridiculed for the Primates' Meeting for  not looking more, well, primatial. There was the matter of the presence of only 2/3rds of the Primates, sometimes stated as Primates representing only 1/3 the world's Anglicans. Then there was the lack of notable statements from the Primates - no communique, no rousing call that certain Provinces conform to Lambeth I:10 or Windsor. And there was the criticism that the Primates spent their time thinking about what constitutes the work, authority and place of Primates in the various churches, a subject that seemed to some to be a far cry from expectations.

ACAWKI: Anglican Communion as we know it.

The realignment crowd is stepping back from any need for a Communion that has as its focus of unity the Archbishop of Canterbury. So they are pleased to say that it is the end of the Anglican Communion as we know it, and flap their wings in distress, pumping their followers up for the big revelation of the new improved Anglican Communion whose primary Primates are those from the Global South / Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. 

Over at Anglicans Down Under Peter Carroll is alternately despondent concerning the future of the Anglican Communion and about the business of giving the existing post-Primatial meeting Anglican "thingy" a clever new name, the Global Forum of Independent Anglican Churches, a name so ugly that even its proponents (if there are any) would cringe. 

Peter is however way to cleaver to be simply about promoting the notion that the Archbishop of Canterbury should step down. Rather, he suggests that the Communion, 'as we knew it' is dead and its successors are two sorts of entities: (i) a progressive "forum" whose agenda is no longer liberal in old Anglican terms but radically independent, and (ii) a coalescence of various groups that have split off from the now discredited progressive crowd and are moved to form around the Jerusalem Declaration and a less Euro-centered way of identifying their unity.

Anglicans Down Under paints a pessimistic picture:  

"In terms of the aspirations of this blog - looking for signs of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church among Christians identifying themselves as Anglican - things will be forlorn. We are not one (either institutionally or organically), if we are 'holy' then a whole lot of other Christians are marching to a different understanding of holiness, 'catholic' is questionable as a descriptor of any Anglican entity claiming global connectedness between Anglican Christians, and as for 'apostolic', well, we argue furiously with each other about the content of apostolic teaching relevant for today as foundation and definition of whatever passes for shared theology among Anglicans, and we have varied approaches to understanding the ways in which we are (or are not) in continuity with the ancient apostolic church."

A new argument seems to be making up about the supposed progressive distaste for the limitations of imposed Communion wide restrictions on the work of individual churches within the communion. The argument goes something like this: 

Anglicans are called to be a communion - that is a community of churches that is by intention one, holy, catholic and apostolic.  While we know full well that such an intention is not met in fact - witness the divisions among the churches not only in our communion but in the whole of the Christian world - we none the less intend the sort of interdependence that would hold us together.  

The argument is then that the existing "instruments of communion" - the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates Meetings have failed to serve this end because we have not held one another accountable on the matter of intentionality.

In this argument, what is wrong with the progressive churches is that they have failed the test of intention, and having done so they are no longer a communion of churches, but a federation of like minded churches, the dreaded Global Forum of Independent Anglican Churches.(GFIAC)

My sense, however, is that progressive churches (The Episcopal Church, for example) have not given up on the intention of interdependence at all. What they have done is to make matters of justice central rather than adjunct to the life of the church. 

The experience of interdependence has been integrated with the need for justice in many instances. For example, the base community forms of bible study (the so called African model) have been used extensively in the US, but in the context of this culture and its lenses. As in other cultures and contexts this way of doing immediate study of the biblical material has opened readers to the discussion of moral and ethical problems and justice concerns. 

Another example: our Hymnal has incorporated music from different churches in the Communion, and from some not part of the Communion, and many of us are aware of our interdependence as we are informed by those hymns and our spirits lifted. When we chose the hymns we include and we see them through our own eyes as well as receive them, that is we receive them interdependently. 

But perhaps the best example of interdependence has been the way in which TEC was drawn into the conversation about strategies for ending apartheid in South Africa and found there encouragement for our own struggles. We were challenged to see the interdependence between our struggles in the US for racial equality and the need to support the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. More, we were challenged as church to move our church held investments from South African businesses. But most of all we became increasingly moved by the leadership of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his companions and predecessors. On some important level our interdependence became all the greater as he became a light to us as well as to the people of South Africa. 

Our interdependence as a church on other churches in the Anglican Communion is real. It does not limit our independence, rather it often challenges our worship, believing, thinking and action. And we can assume that our own challenges are felt elsewhere.

Some of the realignment church groups (AMiA, ACNA, etc) have made a point of being clear about their intentions for interdependence.  For a while the Anglican Covenant was a touchstone, but as it has been seen by these same churches to have been watered down and reflective of the power structures already in place in the Anglican Communion, the Covenant is no longer a primary statement of intention.

The Jerusalem Declaration has become that statement of intention. And yet the JD falls short in intention in that it no longer intends what the Anglican Communion has said it intends. The Lambeth Quadrilateral, often seen as the document of our intentions related to interdependence in church union, is not enough. The Anglican Consultative Council is not enough. The Anglican Covenant is not enough. And why?  Because none of these are confessional in character. All of them place confession (witness) in the Scriptures, the Sacraments, the Creeds and communities of bishops. So it is not clear to me that the realignment community of churches is by intention interdependent in any complete way either.

I do believe that if the Anglican Communion is to survive it will be because we find new ways to express our interdependence. Many of those will not be so new. They will be old ways recalled and brushed off and made new again. Things like mutual respect, concern for witness in context, support of those who witness in hard places, willingness to give for the spread of the communities of faith, aid in distress... they are all there already. We just have to use them. But we will find new ways: learning justice ministry from one another, seeing our history through new eyes, finding common cause in the suffering of the world. 

Meanwhile, Peter once again has raised what he believes is the progressive problem,that it will not flourish, and suggests the same is in store for the Anglican Communion.

"What I do know is that there is no Christian body dominated by liberal or progressive theology which has flourished. .... If (as I suspect) the recent Primates' Meeting represents a decisive step in which the entity known as the Anglican Communion has yielded itself to domination by liberal or progressive theology (i.e. rather than ensuring a balanced theology in lively tension between liberalism and conservatism), then there is no reason to think that anything other than decline awaits that entity - measured both by decreasing numbers being represented by those who meet in the name of the Communion, and by further fragmentation of the common life of those who continue to meet."

"Domination by liberal or progressive theology" spells trouble for Peter. He would rather there be a "lively tension between liberalism and conservatism." Well, part of the tension is that at any given time period one or the other is in the ascendancy - now liberalism then conservatism. Part of the lively tension is living with the fact that sometimes one's own party or group is not in the ascendancy. Intentional interdependence in this situation is learning to live with being a minority opinion at this time or that.

Progressives have no illusions that they are in the ascendancy in the Anglican Communion at the moment, in terms of numbers or representatives. They still have considerable influence for all sorts of reasons, some good some not so good. But intentional interdependency assumes that we keep being in tension one with another through our struggles. It does not mean giving up our progressive agenda, but our willingness to bear the burden of such witness.

Peter believes that the Communion has "yielded to domination" by progressives. Either I misunderstand what he is saying or he is wrong.  Some in the Communion have yielded, others have embraced, others strongly object. But some, notably those who by intention will not attend meetings with the Presiding Bishop, have intentionally scorned the most simple of interdependent activities - sitting in the same room together. If anything the Communion has retained its call for interdependence and simply notes with sadness those who intentionally cannot suffer the tension and presence of those they believe heretical or morally wrong.

If the Anglican Communion is intentionally interdependent then who has given up on that intention? We may note that the so called progressive churches have stuck it out even when their members are removed from certain committees or their representatives to the ACC have been dis-invited to participate. They have intentionally been interdependent, even if that means meeting with people who do not share their sense of justice or their moral concerns.

Peter says, "there is no Christian body dominated by liberal or progressive theology which has flourished."  I wonder if that is true. 

If numbers is the game, then flourish is a matter of growth.  We might suppose that the notion that God's promise of a Messiah was a promise for the whole world, not just for the Jews, and was a progressive one.  We might think that inclusion of all persons in the promised reign of God was progressive. If so then the initial Gospel was propelled forward into a world ready to receive it as at lest a liberalizing of the promise as understood by most Jews, and a progressive reshaping of the vision of the prophets. In that light, perhaps the whole of the expansion of the Christian faith has been a product of liberal and progressive theology.  

But no, the realignment PR machinery is still crunching the words and I am afraid that Peter's assessment can be viewed as part of that. 

Those who believe The Episcopal Church to be profoundly wrongheaded and hardhearted first talked about how TEC had "walked away" from the Communion. Then they proposed that unless TEC repented they could not walk together with us. Now they suggest that we are independentistas unwilling or unable to play with others. Each is in its own way the accusation that we have reneged on being interdependent because to independent minded. This is, I believe, a confusion - understanding interdependence to be static rather than dynamic. 

Interdependence is not about agreements reached on matters of common life, but rather about staying in relation even when tensions are high and others are in the ascent.


Progressives, in their better moments, are always interdependent, believing that the people, living out their understandings of the Gospel and its justice demands, can in an interdependent way achieve what could not be achieved by this or that independent church or jurisdictional body. That interdependence also is to be found in inter-church and inter-national bodies. 

I would trust that should the Anglican Consultative Council be guided by a majority that was unsympathetic to TEC's direction, progressives in TEC would not bolt but stay, taking whatever blows are dealt, and without filching from actions it believes are just and Gospel driven. And, if the will and means were there to have us removed from the ACC, we, as progressives, would hopefully see that as a matter of the moment, continuing to be by intention interdependent, even if our partners were rejecting us.


But my sense is that TEC, even if progressive in its theology, is not about to abandon the intention of relationship with all the member churches of the Communion, that is, those churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, no matter what. Nor is TEC about to step back from actions it believes are Gospel driven.