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Unopened Gift, The

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Steenson, Jeffrey

Recent decisions of its American and Canadian provinces on homosexuality have provoked a tumultuous crisis within the Anglican Communion but also a remarkable opportunity. The proponents hope that significant doctrinal developments are well underway in the area of moral theology, but it is a new Anglican Communion ecclesiology that may be the enduring legacy of these times. The Windsor Report raises important questions about the limits of provincial autonomy and the primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in these discussions the defects in the ecclesiological self-understanding of the Episcopal Church have become apparent. For some time now various inter-Anglican bodies have called for an enhanced role for the Archbishop of Canterbury within the Communion, and the Windsor Report moves this forward. There are striking parallels to the statements on authority by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission worthy of further reflection.

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If General Convention 2006 were to apologize to the rest of the Anglican Communion for its unilateral actions, as called for in the Windsor Report and the 2005 Primates' Communiqué-admittedly an unlikely possibility-it could justifiably argue that its culpa was felix. The complex social and moral questions surrounding human sexuality in our culture would still remain unresolved in our churches. Properly so, we should say, lest the pastoral character of Anglican church life be irretrievably lost, since at every level people will otherwise be forced to choose and divide. The felix in the considerable disruptions occurring after General Convention 2003 is that Anglican ecclesiology will have entered a truly fruitful period of development. This is the debate we should engage, for it has implications that go well beyond the internal dynamics of Anglicanism.

Within the Episcopal Church there is much catching up to be done. Our constitutional structure retains an unmistakably secular shape, influenced as it was by the philosophical outlook of the later eighteenth century, and is proving to be a serious impediment to Christian unity. It worked well enough so long as nothing of real significance happened in matters regarding faith and order. But the accelerating pace of social change has overwhelmed it and effectively made it the servant of the culture. It has become provincial in the pejorative sense. The General Convention, for all practical purposes, has declared that its autonomy is its first principle. This is an intolerable situation for those who would seek to live under the great canon of catholic authenticity, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus.

There appears to be an expectation that General Convention 2006 will assert that its actions are a legitimate expression of provincial autonomy and that the Anglican Communion's instrumentalities have no right to interfere in its internal affairs. But it is by no means clear that the Episcopal Church should draw such a conclusion based on its own title deeds. According to the preamble to its constitution, the Episcopal Church acknowledges that it subsists within the Anglican Communion and in communion with the see of Canterbury. One might reasonably infer that should the Episcopal Church ever find itself out of communion with the see of Canterbury, its own constitutional foundation could be in jeopardy. Arguments have been offered informally that this would not be so, since the preamble was an afterthought added by General Convention in 1967 that functions as a "mission statement" about intentions rather than binding commitments. But the enabling resolution from 1967 declared that the preamble was to be "an integral part of the Constitution."1 The definition it adopted about the Anglican identity of the Episcopal Church appears to have been drawn directly from Resolution 49 of the Lambeth Conference of 1930. This Lambeth resolution held that to be Anglican it is necessary to be "in communion with the see of Canterbury."2 The preamble thus indicates a renewed consciousness within the Episcopal Church about the fundamental importance of its place within the wider Christian family.3

The role of the Archbishop of Canterbury within this communion of churches has been in an embryonic state, but a consensus seems to be emerging that the archbishop must be more than merely a figurehead. The 1997 Virginia Report (from the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, a creation of the Lambeth Conference of 1988) recognized the need for the Archbishop of Canterbury s primatial ministry to the Communion to be more clearly defined (6.1). "Today Anglican identity and authenticity of belonging is generally determined by the outward and visible test of communion with the see of Canterbury" (3.32). The Lambeth Conference of 1988 had asked whether the Archbishop of Canterbury and the primates should not "exercise an enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters."4 The Virginia Report responded affirmatively when it concluded that, for the sake of holding the Anglican Communion together, effective instruments of oversight might be needed. "Is not universal authority a necessary corollary of universal communion?" (5.20). This led to the call from the Lambeth Conference of 1998 for the primates to initiate and monitor a decade of study in each province on the Virginia Report and in particular on the question of oversight.5 The Windsor Report sees the desirability of the Archbishop of Canterbury's being able to speak directly to any provincial situation when the unity and mission of the wider Communion is imperiled: "such action should not be viewed as outside interference in the exercise of autonomy by any province" (para. 109). The continued participation of particular provinces in the life of the Communion, especially at Lambeth Conferences, is held to be at the discretion of the Archbishop of Canterbury (para. 110).

Unopened Gift, The

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Steenson, Jeffrey

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