Address by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Christ Church in Philadelphia, October 22
Episcopal News Service. November 8, 1989 [89233]
Two hundred years ago this week, on October 16, 1789, a Constitution and Canons and a Book of Common Prayer were ratified "by the Bishops, the Clergy and the Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in Convention." The act of ratification took place in the Pennsylvania State House, surroundings already hallowed by the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the framing of the Federal Constitution. In the space of 16 short years, from "the shot heard round the world" to that October day in 1789, two revolutions -- the one political and the other ecclesiastical -- were brought to splendid completion....
On July 2nd this year we celebrated the 500th anniversary of the birth of another Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. He stands prominently amid a select band of Tudor writers from Tyndale to Shakespeare who made us speak as we do and who, in Cranmer's case, made us pray as we do. In his preface to the first Prayer Book of 1549, he revealed the intention and the hope which have informed the shaping of every subsequent Book of Common Prayer in every province of our Communion:
"That the people...should continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his true religion."
From Latin to the vernacular, from Tudor English to modern English, from 1549 to 1979 and beyond, the Book of Common Prayer in each generation is a vehicle of God's amazing grace, a sign of God's long continuance of nursing care and protection for his people.
As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of your first Book of Common Prayer, here as elsewhere in our worldwide Communion the Prayer Book has influenced and held together our growth in worship and doctrine. Whatever the diversities today, we must never lose our unity in the ways in which we approach God. There is a skill in crafting words which after frequent use still seem fresh. Thus we are nourished from generation to generation....
The powerful experience of family unity characterized the Lambeth Conference a year ago. It has marked the subsequent discussions throughout our Communion about women and the episcopate. And only last month it took your own House of Bishops, meeting here in Philadelphia, by surprise. To see each other's faces, in the midst of very real differences of opinion and diversity of practice, is like seeing the face of God. And it sets us all free to do the urgent work Paul spoke of (2 Timothy 4:5).
An address given by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the members, guests, and friends of the Diocesan Convention of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, October 20, 1989
Two hundred years ago, on October 16th, a constitution and canons and a Book of Common Prayer were ratified by the bishops, clergy, and laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA. This religious achievement was preceded by the founding of your nation -- the Declaration of Independence and the signing of the Constitution. Taken together these two events stand for two precious ideals in any community -- exploration and order, ideals that have shaped your origins and the character of the nation. William Penn wanted Philadelphia to be what he called a "city of holy experiment." But he named it "city of brotherly love." Together these two phrases suggest two images of the church which continue unaffected by the passing of the years and to which the Episcopal Church remains steadfast and loyal.
Church history should be described as a history of holy experiments when explorers set out to break new ground, push back frontiers, found new territory. For William Penn and for the Constitution itself, freedom of religion was just such a discovery. He wanted Philadelphia to be a place of discovery for the human spirit and a place of mutual responsibility. Experiment and fraternal love -- that would not be a bad motto for the Anglican Communion. It would capture the independence established here in 1789 which has become a feature of Anglican churches elsewhere, yet it would also recognize Anglicanism's family. It now spans the world's races, cultures, and social conditions. It has prided itself on combining the essentials of the Christian faith with wide freedom for the seeker and explorer.
Some members of the Church of England are apprehensive about innovations within the Episcopal Church. I have just come across a passage which may surprise them. It comes from John Henry Newman when he was still an Anglican. In 1839 in a magazine called the British Critic he wrote:
"Let the American Church take her place. She is freer than we are....She has but to will and she can do. Let her react upon us according to the light and power given her. Let her be, as it were, our shadow before us."
The statement of your recent House of Bishops meeting here last month admirably demonstrates what I mean. It records Christian people overcoming mistrust and finding a common will "to discern afresh the dimensions of our community of faith." It affirms the right of believers to hold different theological convictions on the ordination of women, and it pledges courtesy and respect to those who do not accept it, as well as loyalty to the unity of the diocese.
This was an important moment for the Episcopal Church. It reflected the spirit of the Lambeth Conference and gave a sign to the whole Communion that deep springs of faith, grace, and love are strong enough to set disagreement in new light and give hope of deeper unity ahead. I pay tribute to that spirit of unity and to the wise and sensitive pastoral leadership of Bishop Browning which has done so much to foster it. It needs translation into every diocese in the Communion....
Theology is not everybody's post prandial taste, but I want to say something which all may understand. It may be the time has come to concentrate less on increasing refinement and more on the preservation of varieties. The scientific tasks of systematizing, purifying, and testing for consistency remain important. But in the natural world we have learned of the importance of preserving varieties of species. I believe there is a similar need in theology. So, too, in the arts. They are essentially cumulative. A painting by Rembrandt does not invalidate a painting by Raphael, and it does not add anything to it -- but it does add greater fullness to the storehouse of treasures. The virtues of either might be neglected in one age and then rediscovered in the next. They should both be preserved. So too with theology and theologians. Truth is many-sided. Only a church which can comprehend diversity can believe in the development and unfolding of God's grace.
Yet some dogmatic theology has concentrated on the suppression of other opinions and the replacing of them by a single correct variety. Theological systems have, like capitalism and science-based technology, been immensely effective and impressive in the course of the last four centuries. But their achievements have sometimes been bought at a high cost to the human spirit.
As the Anglican Communion we need to reaffirm our tradition of unity in diversity, our commitment to comprehensiveness as a way of preserving the theological equivalents of biological species and artistic inspirations.
An idea derived from an individual's unique experience of the grace of God in Jesus Christ may not fit into any existing dogmatic scheme easily, but like the stone which the builders rejected, it may become the headstone of a new corner.
Yet if our Communion is to win people to a personal faith in Jesus Christ, then we must strengthen those things which hold ustogether -- teaching drawn always out of and tested by the Scriptures; the tradition of ordered worship which elevates and does not trivialize; the ability to share together in sacramental life which has its heart in the Eucharist. People look to us all over the world for firmness in faith, affirmation of moral standards, and support of the weak and oppressed.
When there is impairment of communion -- a rather ugly phrase but we must recognize it to be the case over the ordination of women in the Anglican Communion -- we need to strengthen all the other elements of communion and common life. Lack of solidarity, lack of generosity, indifference to one another's burdens and needs, lack of charity -- these things impair communion just as surely as lack of a commonly recognized ministry. A church that is isolated, cut off, oppressed, restricted, or remote needs its communion with the worldwide Anglican family to be expressed in visible and concrete ways, by personal visits, by exchange of ministries, by sharing of gifts, by inclusion and recognition at gatherings of the faithful. This, as well as agreement on orders, is part of what communion means. Our fellowship is impaired without it, whether in the life of a parish or in relationships between dioceses or provinces of the Communion.
Inevitably the weaker look to the stronger, the smaller look to the larger, those who are restricted look to those who are free. Yet when contact is made in these ways, it is not at all clear who is the stronger or who is the more free, for suffering can sharpen witness and deepen faith....
Again and again Desmond Tutu, who once described the Anglican Communion as very untidy but hugely lovable, has shown the defense that, if anyone touches him, they touch a whole world family of faith.
You will know that the Archbishop of Canterbury is sometimes treated as if he were the head of the Anglican Communion. The media finds it easier to concentrate on a person than a committee, especially when that person lives in a sophisticated modern capital with a diplomatic network and efficient communication. But I do not rule. I serve the Communion by gathering it, and sometimes speaking for it. I am only a senior bishop with a diocese like other bishops. Yet I have the enormous privilege of knowing how much this partnership in our sort of world can mean....
I should make some reference to my recent visit to the Pope in Rome. It was a return visit for his presence in Canterbury Cathedral in 1982. Then we remembered Augustine of Canterbury and his mission to the English, begun in Rome in 597. That was the start of a movement of the spirit to which all English-speaking Christians owe their origin and their debt. On this occasion in Rome we remembered [Pope] Gregory and prayed in the place from which he sent out Augustine on his mission.
After four days of prayer and conversation together, the Pope bade me farewell with these words: "Our affective collegiality will lead us to effective collegiality." There could hardly be a better way of summarizing what I have been trying to say. Without fraternal love there will be no holy experiment. I went to Rome in my capacity as a senior bishop in the Anglican Communion. Our international character was symbolized by the presence of the Archbishop of Nigeria in my party, as well as others, including an American, Sam Van Culin. We went to affirm the unity we enjoy in order that we might move through these times when the cause of fuller unity seems rather distant.
The reasons for present difficulties are well-known but not one-sided. In the last one hundred years, Anglicans have questioned some of the more recent dogmatic statements of the Roman Catholic Church about particular rules of personal morality, as well as definitions of new dogmas. Rome, for its part, questions the independent decision of a few Anglican provinces to ordain women to the priesthood. Is there no way, they ask, in which the Anglican Communion as a whole can decide matters touching the very heart of the faith and discipline of the church? In our Common Declaration we both located these differences in a different understanding of the exercise of authority. To clarify the question is to learn the better to live with it and hopefully one day to answer it.
We were certainly not engaged in negotiation. My visit is part of a long process of reconciliation which goes on at all levels of the church. Our meeting gave visibility to the gradual healing of memories. I hope that the pictures we sent out were those of Christians who have more things which unite us than divide us. What we can do together now, even around the table of the Lord, would have been inconceivable at the beginning of my ministry.
We talked about the efforts which Christians should make together in the closing years of this century to proclaim the Gospel in the largely secularized societies of the West. We talked of common action in the growing ecological crisis and the succor of the poor and oppressed. There can be dialogue between us. There can be common action for the well-being of our world. Above all, there are bonds of affection.