Albany Via Media

Communion, Covenant and Conversation:
Being Episcopal and Anglican

Remarks by the Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade
Albany Via Media, Albany, New York
April 10, 2010

I bring you greetings from the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and from the many throughout the church who support you in your witness and ministry. I am grateful for this opportunity to think with you about the proposed Anglican Covenant that is to be considered at your diocesan convention. I commend to you the DVD presentation by your Canon Theologian, Dr. Brown. His remarks are both thorough and fair. My purpose is to expand and hopefully deepen the conversation about the covenant.

Christianity is a community faith. Jesus' prayer that we all be one has been answered in the affirmative. We are connected, we are one. Paul's image of the Body of Christ is not something hoped for but a description of reality. It is like the bumper said about gravity, “It's not just a good idea, it's the Law!” The question is not establishing unity but rather living in the unity already established. These bonds are essential to our faith. RH Tawney wrote in the early days of the last century that “Those who seek God in the absence of their fellows find not God but Satan, whose countenance bears a striking resemblance to their own.” In other words, by ourselves we begin to worship ourselves. Without the benefits of a wider community God becomes our creation rather than the other way around. The people we need the most are those who differ from us. It is wisely said that if two people agree on everything, one of them is not necessary. Our differences are among the greatest gifts we can give one another.

Community happens in a variety of ways with various degrees of connectivity. Congregations, prayer groups, service organizations, your diocese, ecumenical gatherings and groups like this one are all aspects of Christian Community but quite different in the connection they provide. The Anglican Communion is one of many forms of community in the Body of Christ. The question we are struggling with today is in what ways and to what degree are its members to be connected?

As we begin considering that question I want to give you a wonderful ‘snob word’ to take home as your reward for having come out on a nice Spring Saturday. The word is amphictyony. It refers to a loose form of political organization focused on a religious center. The early Greek city states were amphictyonys as were the twelve tribes of Israel after entering the Promised Land. The Anglican Communion has historically had a common history (the British Empire), a common focal point (Canterbury) and selective common mission (dioceses and Provinces work together without central coordination). This is essentially the pattern of an amphictyony. We have, however, moved beyond that loose structure and worked as a confederacy, an organization with an emphasis on the autonomy of each member. The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral found on pages 876–878 of the Prayer Book is a statement of confederacy formulated in the 1880's as we began ecumenical conversations. The proposed covenant is a further step toward strengthening the Anglican center, a move toward a federation where autonomy is reduced and central authority is increased.

Family Systems Theory has much to say about how people make and sustain community. It tells us that anxiety in a system produces reactive tendencies including a desire to reduce autonomy and strengthen the central authority. One obvious place we see this is during a time of crises when we grant to the president what are called the ‘war time powers’. In the anxiety of war, we sacrifice some democratic prerogatives in the interest of swift and decisive action. When the People of Israel felt the pressure of the hostile tribes of Canaan they turned from their amphictyony and asked for a stronger central authority. “We are determined to have a king over us so that we also may be like other nations…that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles” (I Samuel 8:19). The Anglican Communion is experiencing anxiety right now and is reacting by seeking to clarify and strengthen its center, moving away from amphictyony and in the direction of federation.

As James Russell Lowell wrote, “New occasions teach new duties.” What new occasions are pressing us to new duties, what has changed in the Anglican Communion? I would suggest that there are three main factors: the rise of indigenous leadership, improved communication and revisionist movements. In the old days Anglican bishops had all attended Oxford or they thought they had. The leadership had much in common. Now African and Asian Provinces are being run by Africans and Asians who do not think like Americans and Canadians. We have always been different but instant global communication keeps confronting us with those differences. If the Archbishop of Uganda has a thought before breakfast the People of Albany know it before lunch. And there are revisionist ideas, people suggesting that we can think in new ways about basic, important and traditional concepts. Revisionists play an important role in the life of faith. Amos, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, Augustine of Hippo, Benedict of Nursia, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Martin Luther, John Wesley, William Wilberforce, Absalom Jones, and Li Tim Oi were all revisionists. But so were all of the heretics, cult figures and fools of history. These three forces make the almost perfect storm in which we find ourselves. Revisionists are often right and, just as often, wrong. It takes a long time to figure out which.

The most troubling revisionist thought today is that God may be calling us to a new understanding of human sexuality. The Episcopal Church began studying human sexuality at the General Convention level in 1964. The Lambeth Conference of 1978 called for a study of human sexuality as did the conference of 1988. For the most part those Communion wide studies did not happen, but Lambeth 1998 affirmed the traditional expressions of human sexuality. The Episcopal Church continued its work through 2003 when it consented to the episcopacy of Gene Robinson. This decision contributed to the anxiety in the system and heightened the desire to define itself as a community. That is the reason for the Covenant.

This specific draft of the Covenant says:

1. Community is basic to our faith.

2. We have a history as an Anglican community.

3. We have a mission as an Anglican community.

4. We have responsibility to one another as an Anglican community.

5. We need a system for reconciliation of significant differences among us.

Hardly anyone would have a problem with 1 – 4. They are basically descriptive of what we have always thought ourselves to be. Number 5 raises a question. It is prescriptive, creating something we have not had before. Do we need a system for reconciliation? Our covenants with Lutherans, Methodists and others do not have such a system and the Anglican Communion has never had one before. History shows us that it takes a long time for theological views to take shape or to reshape. We have made terrible mistakes when we have sought premature conformity on theological issues. The Inquisition, religious wars, the Pope and the Patriarch excommunicating one another, persecutions, crusades, pogroms, holocausts and hatred are all fruits of that impulse.

The proposed system of reconciliation is full of difficulty. Lawyers tell us that contracts need to be specific because they only have value if they can function when people cannot agree. The covenant is vague in its principles. It describes process rather than results. It tells how we treat scripture and one another. It does not tell us what our faith conclusions should be. That is the role of a Confession such as many protestant churches have, not a covenant. It has been said that when the Church of England makes a statement it is usually so broad that neither the pope nor the Premier of China can say for certain they are not Anglicans. Our covenant is like that. In our current controversies I am a revisionist. I am convinced that I have honored the covenant in coming to my revisionist view. There is no way to prove that I have not.

The covenant empowers the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion to be chief arbiter of disputes. In your diocesan DVD neither Dr. Brown nor Bishop Love were clear on who the members might be. That is understandable since the group does not actually exist. The Anglican Communion does not have a Standing Committee the same way the Diocese of Albany does, with responsibilities and powers defined by canon law. The Anglican Consultative Council has a 14 member Standing Committee and the Primates have a Standing Committee. They sometimes met jointly with the Archbishop of Canterbury but have been accountable to their separate bodies, not the Communion as a whole. They come closest to being a Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, but no one has made them so — unless the covenant does.

In the 1990's a document called The Virginia Report said that the Anglican Communion has four Instruments of Unity. This was later changed to Instruments of Communion. They are the Archbishop of Canterbury, The Lambeth Conference, the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council. The covenant, as proposed, would introduce a fifth in the form of a Standing Committee. The people who serve on the two standing committees that are proposed to be melded into one are good people, but the entity they would become lacks the stature and maturity to play the role they are being assigned, especially when the covenant they are to enforce is so vague. I understand why the current tensions lead people to want to reduce anxiety by resolving disputes. My personal view, however, is that the covenant would be better off without that provision.

In lieu of it I would suggest we rely on the revelation in the Road to Emmaus story in the Gospel of Luke. In that account two people were walking from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus on Easter day. They were fully aware of the crucifixion and had heard rumors of the resurrection. They were doing their best to figure it all out. During their conversation Jesus, unrecognized, joined them and guided their discussion to a deeper understanding. At the conclusion of their journey they had a meal and it is said that they recognized the Lord in that great Eucharistic phrase “the breaking of the bread.” I would suggest that our church is still on the Emmaus Road and can be confident that when we are in conversation our Lord joins us and deepens our understanding. I would also suggest that in the original story if Jesus had simply shown up and broken a piece of bread without the preceding conversation, no one would have recognized him at all. Conversation is the key. Maintaining the conversation is a vital and difficult ministry in the Anglican Communion today. I commend you for your efforts to keep the conversation alive and Christ expectant.

Thank you for the gift of your time and the privilege of your attention. May God bless you.