Melancholia

I am better disposed to ++Rowan’s closing speech at ACC 14 than are some.  I think the opening reflects a man seeking a little desperately for something good to say about a shipwreck.  The meeting didn’t go well, he knows it didn’t go well, he’s not too sure why it didn’t go well, but he’s not going to go out on a sour note, by gum.  Also, ++Rowan has an rhetorical tick of sometimes assuming the persona of one or more sides in the Great Anglican Family Feud, not always being clear that he is speaking to typify a side of the debate rather than in his own voice.  Thus the passage

Now, who are the people who bear the deepest costs in our conflicts in the Anglican Communion? . . . There are some who bear the cost in this way: they will say that Christian credibility is shattered by the sense of rejection and scapegoating which they experience, and that includes a great many of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ. The cost they feel is often they cannot commend the Christianity that they long to believe in because they feel that they are bound up in a system and a community where scapegoating and rejection are very deeply engrained.

is intended to summarize the stated feelings of one side of the discussion, not to validate or authorize their position: it is parallel to the immediately following passage

And then there are those for whom the credibility of Christianity is at stake in another way, those for whom the cost is felt like this: that the decisions that others have made in other parts of the world have put them in a position where they cannot commend the Christianity they long to share with their neighbours with any ease or confidence because they feel that fellow Christians have somehow undermined their witness.

I don’t think that either summary is especially concise or accurate, but let’s assume he’s painting broad strokes here rather than taking sides.

He goes on to forecast a more federal, less consistent Anglicanism, “an agglomeration of more strongly bonded and less strongly bonded Provinces or constituent parts.”  If the Anglican future is more chaotic rather than less, he wonders, how will the various Provinces continue to do things that they do agree on?  Lets say, education, or relief work, or the like.  He pleads for civility: “because we are nine times out of ten a great deal more polite about other Christians than we are about each other in the Communion these days!”

I think we find here is ++Rowan’s description of the stresses within the Anglican Communion.  Whether his description is accurate can and should be debated.  He seems resigned to a future of a different shape and color, a different polity, and is asking how a more fragmented Communion might work.  At a meeting of the ACC, it’s not out of line to wonder what the future holds for the various Instruments of Unity and in what way they might serve a more fragmented Communion.

It’s really a pretty sad, slightly grieving speech, I think.

Addendum:  I wonder if this speech doesn't give us a clue to ++Rowan's elusive approach to these disagreements.  It seems that we might infer from this speech, from his actions, and from other speeches and writings, that for ++Rowan the locus of the Church is not in ideology or theology, but in worship ("praying together") and acting together.  This might be considered very Anglican.  Differences of opinion are glazed over with common worship and common action.  Differences of opinion are intractable, but common ground can be found in worship and in action.  The unanswered question is whether this difference of opinion has reached the point of being inevitably divisive.

Comments

[Sibyl]

"Differences of opinion are glazed over with common worship and common action." Very astute observation, Captain.

If Anglican unity has only been a surface 'glaze' of unity, an apt parallel might be the ceremonies, parades and public appearances of British royalty that are merely historical reenactments and reminders of past power and glory of the British crown and colonial empire and the various charities the royals sponsor and support while retaining their own comforts, (supposedly) superior places and identities.

Yet...Christ, the Gospels, Epistles, all of Scripture call us to be one, of one mind, one faith, one hope, one baptism, one Lord and Savior, one who is Truth, Love and Life. We lose ourselves and our identities to find them again reordered and transformed in Him.

As I recently came into the liturgical church, Episcopal, now Anglican, and have begun to read the ancient fathers, and saints, the Popes, I have found the same kinship and unity with them as I have with living brothers and sisters in Christ who are teaching and preaching and loving Christ Crucified and Risen, who are continuing in penitence and abiding, who are seeking and being filled by Him. Jesus makes us one.

We cannot be one with those who are continually distorting, re-ordering, suppressing, denying the faith and the word of God and reality to suit themselves. 'My will be done' pnly creates chaos and futility in the end.

[Ann McCarthy]

Amen, Sybil!
And, as usual, spot on, Capt. Yips.

[UndergroundPewster]

Common worship and common action are used as a smokescreen behind which the unorthodox agenda continues to advance.

Keep on blowing away the smoke Capt.