Communion is 'gift of God,' Canterbury tells Primates in Advent Letter
Episcopal News Service. December 14, 2007 [121407-03]
Matthew Davies
Calling the Anglican Communion "a gift of God" and describing it as "a voluntary association of provinces and dioceses," Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has written to the Primates and Moderators reflecting on their responses to the Joint Standing Committee's analysis of the New Orleans statement from the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops.
In his much-anticipated Advent Letter, released December 14, Williams addresses concerns about the escalation of interventions from Anglican leaders into the affairs and common life of other provinces and offers proposals for the next steps in the lead up to the 2008 Lambeth Conference.
Williams vowed to pursue "professionally facilitated conversations between the leadership of The Episcopal Church and those with whom they are most in dispute, internally and externally, to see if we can generate any better level of mutual understanding."
He also intends to convene a small group of Primates and others "to work on the unanswered questions arising from the inconclusive evaluation of the Primates to New Orleans and to take certain issues forward to Lambeth."
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori welcomed Williams' Advent Letter. "In this season, as we focus on hope and preparation, I am glad to hear of the Archbishop's interest in facilitating further conversations," she said. "While I have repeatedly offered to engage in dialogue with those who are most unhappy, the offer has not yet been seriously engaged. Perhaps a personal call from the Archbishop will bring to the table those who have thus far been unwilling to talk. Advent is both a time to ready our eyes to see God in unlikely guises, and to put our hope in God's ultimate graciousness."
Williams and members of the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates of the Anglican Communion attended part of the September 19-25 House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans. The Committee found that the Episcopal Church had "clarified all outstanding questions" relating to its response to the requests of the Windsor Report, and questions on which the Primates sought clarifications by September 30, 2007.
The Primates, in a February 19 communiqué issued in Dar es Salaam, requested that the House of Bishops make "an unequivocal common covenant that the bishops will not authorize any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses" and "confirm that the passing of Resolution B033 of the 75th General Convention means that a candidate for episcopal orders living in a same-sex union shall not receive the necessary consent unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion."
The Archbishop of Canterbury sent the Joint Standing Committee's 19-page report to all the Anglican Communion's Primates and members of the Anglican Consultative Council, asking them to consult in their provinces and respond to him by the end of October 2007.
Williams released a summary of those responses November 23 acknowledging that they differed in their assessment of the situation and promising to reflect further in his Advent Letter.
More than half of the replies, Williams said December 14, "signaled a willingness to accept the Joint Standing Committee's analysis of the New Orleans statement, but the rest regarded both the statement and the Standing Committee's comments as an inadequate response to what had been requested by the primates in Dar es Salaam."
"So we have no consensus about the New Orleans statement," he added, noting that some of the more negative assessments from primates "were clearly influenced by the reported remarks of individual bishops in The Episcopal Church who either declared their unwillingness to abide by the terms of the statement or argued that it did not imply any change in current policies."
Some of the positive responses, Williams said, "reflected a deep desire to put the question decisively behind us as a Communion; some of these also expressed dissatisfaction with our present channels of discussion and communication."
Williams acknowledged that because the Anglican Communion has "no single central executive authority," there is no clear indication of how to proceed. "However, it is important to try and state what common ground there is before we attempt to move forward," he said. "[T]he existence of our Communion is truly a gift of God to the wholeness of Christ's Church and...all of us will be seriously wounded and diminished if our Communion fractures any further."
Describing the Communion as "a voluntary association of provinces and dioceses," Williams said its unity "depends not on a canon law that can be enforced but on the ability of each part of the family to recognize that other local churches have received the same faith from the apostles and are faithfully holding to it…This means in turn that each local church receives from others and recognizes in others the same good news and the same structure of ministry, and seeks to engage in mutual service for the sake of our common mission."
Williams described a full relationship of communion as meaning a common acknowledgment of: the authority of Scripture as 'the rule and ultimate standard of faith', an authentic ministry of Word and Sacrament; and "that the first and great priority of each local Christian community is to communicate the Good News."
He called the debates on human sexuality issues "significant" but warned of "symptoms of our confusion about these basic principles of recognition. It is too easy to make the debate a standoff between those who are 'for' and those who are 'against' the welcoming of homosexual people in the Church."
The Instruments of Communion, Williams said, "have consistently and very strongly repeated that it is part of our Christian and Anglican discipleship to condemn homophobic prejudice and violence, to defend the human rights and civil liberties of homosexual people and to offer them the same pastoral care and loving service that we owe to all in Christ's name.
"But the deeper question is about what we believe we are free to do, if we seek to be recognizably faithful to Scripture and the moral tradition of the wider Church, with respect to blessing and sanctioning in the name of the Church certain personal decisions about what constitutes an acceptable Christian lifestyle."
Meanwhile, the steering committee of the Chicago Consultation, an international Anglican group that supports the full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in the Anglican Communion, issued a statement December 14 criticizing Williams' Advent Letter for containing "not a word of comfort to gay and lesbian Christians."
The Consultation includes more than 50 members, including two Anglican Primates, 10 diocesan bishops in the Episcopal Church, and representatives from Brazil, Canada, England, Ghana and New Zealand.
"In asserting the Communion's opposition to homophobia, [Williams] gives political cover to [Nigeria] Archbishop Peter Akinola and other Primates whose anti-gay activities are a matter of public record," the statement said. "We are especially troubled by the absence of openly gay members on the bodies that may ultimately resolve the issues at hand. The archbishop's unwillingness to include gay and lesbian Christians in this process perpetuates the bigotry he purports to deplore."
Williams identified the interpretation of Scripture as the underlying issue in the current tensions regarding human sexuality. "Where one part of the family makes a decisive move that plainly implies a new understanding of Scripture that has not been received and agreed by the wider Church, it is not surprising that others find a problem in knowing how far they are still speaking the same language," he said, referring to the Episcopal Church's decision to elect and consecrate an openly gay bishop living in a committed relationship and some Anglican dioceses' provisions to bless same-gender relationships.
"And because what one local church says is naturally taken as representative of what others might say, we have the painful situation of some communities being associated with views and actions which they deplore or which they simply have not considered," he added.
Raising concerns about incursions of Anglican leaders into other provinces, Williams emphasized that successive Lambeth Conferences and Primates' Meetings have "cautioned very strongly" against such provisions of "supplementary ministerial care through the adoption of parishes in distant provinces or the ordination of ministers for distant provinces."
"It creates a seriously anomalous position," he said. "On the ground, it creates rivalry and confusion. It opens the door to complex and unedifying legal wrangles in civil courts. It creates a situation in which pastoral care and oversight have to be exercised at a great distance. The view that has been expressed by all the Instruments of Communion in recent years is that interventions are not to be sanctioned."
Williams, who spent three days with the House of Bishops in September, emphasized that "most if not all of the bishops present in New Orleans were seeking in all honesty to find a way of meeting the requests of the Primates and to express a sense of responsibility towards the Communion and their concern for and loyalty to it."
He called the exact interpretation of the New Orleans statements as "disputable," given the diversity of responses from around the Communion. "I do not see how the commitment not to confirm any election to the episcopate of a partnered gay or lesbian person can mean anything other than what it says," he said, referring to the House of Bishops clarification on that question posed to them by the Primates in their Dar es Salaam Communiqué. Williams also noted that the House of Bishops' declaration on same-gender blessings "is in effect a reiteration of the position taken in previous statements from TEC, and has clearly not satisfied many in the Communion any more than these earlier statements."
Williams indicated that some of the responses expressed "puzzlement" as to why the House of Bishops should bind itself to future direction from the General Convention, the bicameral chief legislative body of the Episcopal Church that includes clergy and laity as well as bishops. "[T]here seems to be a gap between what some in The Episcopal Church understand about the ministry of bishops and what is held elsewhere in the Communion, and this needs to be addressed," Williams said.
Commending the bishops for their hard work, Williams urged the Primates to honor their intentions, recognizing that it has been a very costly and demanding experience, "testing both heart and conscience."
Despite his decision to withhold invitations to the 2008 Lambeth Conference to a small number of bishops "whose episcopal ordination was carried through against the counsel of the Instruments of Communion," Williams said the Conference needs "to be a place where diversity of opinion can be expressed."
The Lambeth Conference should not be viewed as a canonical tribunal or a general consultation, Williams said. "It is a meeting of the chief pastors and teachers of the Communion, seeking an authoritative common voice. It is also a meeting designed to strengthen and deepen the sense of what the episcopal vocation is."
"[A]n invitation to Lambeth does not constitute a certificate of orthodoxy but simply a challenge to pray seriously together and to seek a resolution that will be as widely owned as may be," he added. "And this is also why I have said that the refusal to meet can be a refusal of the cross - and so of the resurrection. We are being asked to see our handling of conflict and potential division as part of our maturing both as pastors and as disciples. I do not think this is either an incidental matter or an evasion of more basic questions."
Williams acknowledged the time and effort that has gone into the responses already produced by the Episcopal Church and said that further meetings are unlikely to produce "any more substantial consensus than that which is now before us."
"It is of enormous importance that the Communion overall does not forget its responsibility to and for that large body of prayerful opinion in The Episcopal Church which sincerely desires to work in full harmony with others, particularly those bishops who have clearly expressed their desire to work within the framework both of the Windsor Report and the Lambeth Resolutions," he said.
The full text of Williams' Advent Letter is available here.