The ACNA Constitution: In Line with the Covenant?
By Ephraim Radner | January 5, 2009
Anglican Communion Institute
Work in formulating and adopting an Anglican Covenant is proceeding, and with renewed focus. I judge this to be the case despite some vocal claims that the project is both pointless and perverse. Most of these limited and negative claims have come from Western Anglicans intent on maintaining their local autonomy in terms of non-accountability to other Anglican churches and the Communion at large; and among these voices, not surprisingly, is a preponderance of Americans. But there have also been conservative voices, associated with the primarily non-Western group known as GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference), that have labeled the Covenant process as “futile” and “irrelevant” because of its purported lack of theological and disciplinary substance.
I was deeply disappointed that almost 200 Anglican bishops associated with GAFCON did not come to the 2008 Lambeth Conference, and so failed to engage a discussion on the Covenant with their colleagues. One might be left with the impression, in fact, that they share the negative views of both liberals and GAFCON spokespeople, something that, although not fatal to the Covenant itself, at least presents major challenges. However, the recent publication of the provisional Constitution for the proposed province of the Anglican Church of North America, warmly supported by and supporting GAFCON, seems to provide a very different perspective. For this Constitution in fact embodies many of the very things the current Covenant draft articulates, and in some measures provides even more latitude to members. Whether consciously or not, the Constitution reflects important aspects, in its own proposed intra-provincial relations, that we have long argued are necessary, possible, and realistic elements of communion-oriented commitments. To this degree, the Constitution demonstrates, perhaps despite itself, a convergence of vision with the current Covenant direction.Very briefly, I would note this convergence on the fronts of doctrine and discipline.
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Patient Endurance: On Living Faithfully in a Time of Troubles
By Philip Turner | January 2, 2009
Originally published by the Anglican Communion Institute
I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance (Rev. 2:2a)
When referring to the response given to the tumult within The Episcopal Church (TEC) by those with more traditional theological and moral commitments, it is at present a matter of common parlance to speak of an “inside” and an “outside” strategy. At first glance, reference to an “inside strategy” and an “outside strategy” suggests two groups that have similar goals but employ different tactics to reach those goals. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that this way of describing the two groups serves to distort rather than clarify the differences between them. It is of signal importance that these differences be clarified and openly debated. They in fact reveal fault lines in understanding the nature of the Christian witness itself that threaten to divide the entire Anglican Communion.
In a recent address, Bishop Duncan said of the proposed new province, “We need a unified body both to heal the divisions among ourselves and to give the broader Anglican Communion a unified and coherent partner with which to be in relationship.” When taken in conjunction with other remarks he has made, it is clear that the goal of the “outside strategy” with which Bishop Duncan is associated is in fact not a new province but a replacement province–one that will take TEC’s place within the Anglican Communion. Given the nature of this goal it seems initially plausible to seek a province that lies “outside” TEC’s jurisdiction.
Several things are said about the goal of those who hold to what is called by contrast the “inside strategy.” One is that their goal is the “reform” of TEC from within. Reform obviously requires an “inside strategy.” In response to assertions by those who supposedly hold to an “inside strategy” that their goal is not “reform” it is then said that these insiders “lack the will to resist” and that their “plan seems to be to ‘die in place’.” In short the “inside strategy” is no strategy at all according to its “outside” critics. Upon examination it appears to them as merely a passive stance in the face of an inevitable collapse within TEC of effective resistance to the revisionist goals of the progressive forces that for years have held the levers of power.
As we have viewed this discussion over time, it has become increasingly clear that the distinction between inside and outside strategies is unhelpful. It in fact has become both incoherent and obfuscating. To be sure, those who favor what we will from now on call a “replacement province” have strategic goals and tactical plans. It does not seem to us, however, that “strategy” and “tactics” best illumine what those whose resistance remains within TEC are about.
At one time this way of speaking was indeed quite accurate. There were strategies and tactics designed to use meetings of the House of Bishops and the General Convention to stop TEC’s progressive march toward liturgical and even doctrinal Unitarianism. It is now the case that the people we know do not see any near possibility of reform and they no longer pursue such purposes. They have recognized the futility for near term of politically realistic change. However, they do hold certain convictions, and they do have certain commitments that give shape to their present actions—actions that hardly qualify as passive. These convictions and commitments are reflected in patient and enduring witness rather than in strategies and tactics designed to bring about desired future states. They grow from trust that God will use faithful witness in his own time and in his own way to bring about his purposes—purposes that do not stem from our imaginings or our desires but from God’s justice and God’s mercy.
Just what are these convictions and commitments? Here we must summarize a host of conversations to which we have been party over the past several years. The convictions revealed are these.
1. The weakness and disarray of TEC (and indeed of the churches of the West) are best understood as the result of divine displeasure at pervasive misconstruals of Christian belief and practice coupled with a common life that blows neither “hot nor cold.”
2. It is a form of delusion and disobedience to place oneself and ones friends outside the judgment God intends for the health of his church. Rather, fidelity calls for acceptance of the judgment as both just and merciful. It calls also for faithful Christians to live through that judgment to the end. This way is none other than the way Christ himself walked, believing not in a future state of his devising and constructing but in God’s power, through his death, to give life to the dry bones of his people.
3. The pattern of Christ’s life suggests the necessity of a clear differentiation between a way faithful to his life and teaching and one that has simply assumed the form of the culture with which the leadership of TEC has identified.
These convictions and commitments are a form of specifically Christian witness rather than a strategy designed to bring about a desired future state. The future state of TEC and the Anglican Communion rests in God’s hands. Our work is not to take this kingdom by force of design and tactic, but to make a faithful witness, practice faithful endurance, and wait upon the Lord to see what he will make of what we do and say.
The present conflict within TEC has brought these convictions and commitments into the full light of day and set them off from the strategies and tactics of separation. It is in no way helpful to cover over the differences, but it is also very unhelpful to misrepresent or misunderstand them. These differences are real and they stem from very different understandings of the nature and calling of the church and of the present circumstances of its life. These are differences that call for careful thought and thorough debate rather than ill will and precipitous action.
It seems that those who have formed the Anglican Church in North America have decisively entered the path toward a replacement province. The time for debate about this choice has now past. Time and time alone will tell what future lies in store for this venture. We shall not attempt to predict an outcome. If our theology is right, such an attempt would be at a minimum presumptuous. What we can do, however, is point out the ways in which the notion of an inside and outside strategy distorts the nature of a serious difference in the understanding of our Christian vocation that demands careful discernment. We can also do what we can to present the nature of this difference to the Communion with a prayer that these two ways can be assessed in a manner that leads to the peace of the church.
Philip Turner
Christopher Seitz
Ephraim Radner
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Whither the Church?
By Fr. Tony Clavier | December 30, 2008
The Anglican Communion staggers on into the New Year, battered and in imperfect communion. This past year has been tough for those who believe in “Communion” aka Church. Of course in a divided Christendom every use of the word “Church” with either a capital or small “c” falls short of its precise definition or the hope of its calling. If the two words are not precise synonyms, one can’t have one without the other. Rather like love and marriage, sacramental communion is at the heart of what we mean by Church and church.
Mere Anglicans are offered two remedies for our systemic malady. Our GAFCON co-religionists through their proposed rival American Province offer what appears to me to be a romantic and anachronistic vision, summoned from a day when “Anglicanism” was young and tied unevenly to the Continental Reformation. Whether the charred shades of the Edwardian bishops or even the views of their more radical sectarian successors would adapt easily to the modern separatist scene is quite another matter. Certainly the ideal of a confessional form of Anglicanism tight on doctrinal interpretation and easy on ecclesiology, now relegated to adiaphora is quite another matter.
Oddly their mirror image seems similarly romantic and confessional. Despite often sneering rejoinders to separatists, those who largely govern TEC propose an appealing version of a 60s vision of peace and light, perhaps in blissful dysnjunction with the reality of the society in which conservatives and liberals have conspired to seduce us all with what has turned out to be greed, and a “me” centered lifestyle. Our present economic collapse is the proof of that pudding. The TEC Establishment would love to enshrine their new morality in Canon and regulation, probably enacted next year at General Convention, forming a corpus of “doctrine” as formidable as those which emerged from Jersusalem in 2008. If the Communion refuses to accept these new principles many are just as willing to secede from the Communion as are many in Gafcon. A North American independent Church looks good to them.
Those who propose a Covenant as a remedy to these dis-eases, may seem equally willing to embrace a “doctrinal” solution. I tend to see the drafts of a Covenant so far presented less in terms of a doctrinal proposal as a presentation of a portrait or a family history. The Draft Covenant reminds us who we are and whom we serve. It speaks to an authentically Anglican voice or perhaps harmony of voices, the sum total of that which has and continues to describe the Anglican choir and its repetoire. Like any other adjectival construct, the Covenant so far has attempted to “describe and limit” a noun. The noun is the word Anglican.
The framers of the final draft of a Covenant must seek to say who we are without being too restrictive and what we believe without being wildly broad. If we lose our liberality and civility, our legitimate breadth in an attempt to rein in our radicals on both sides we will blur our portrait. If we give too greater latitude to “novelty” we will suggest a much too radical role for a Communion for which inclusion and tolerance denies the role of wild speculation and internal conflict, for living into inclusion involves a moderation not necessary in groups in which the majority rules. Perhaps the Covenant should finally frame our unwritten Constitutional principle as Anglicans that no section or group however temporarily ascendent should enact rules which violate the principles of any other significant constituent “party” within the Anglican comprehension.
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Bishop James Stanton: Koinonia and the Covenant Process
By Bishop James Stanton | December 27, 2008
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of messages from the Covenant authors’ retreat and our public conference, held on December 4-6 in Dallas. For information on sponsoring a Covenant conference in your diocese, email Craig Uffman at assi…@stanneswarsaw.org or leave a comment on this post.
Listen to the audio of Bishop James Stanton of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas as he offers the morning keynote address at the inaugural Covenant Conference in Dallas, TX on December 6, 2008. The Conference was presented by the scholars of the Covenant community (http://covenant-communion.com).
Duration: 51 minutes, 4 seconds
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A Conversation Worth Viewing
By Dan Martins | December 26, 2008
Covenant’s own Dr Christopher Wells recently engaged the Rev. Dr. William Franklin of the Anglican Centre in Rome in a dialogue-tilting-toward-debate over some of the underlying sources of our current Anglican angst. You can view a "trailer" here, but I strongly advise taking the time watch the whole thing.
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Three Admonitions, Three Promises
By Nathan Humphrey | December 22, 2008
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of messages from the Covenant authors’ retreat and our public conference, held on December 4-6 in Dallas. For information on sponsoring a Covenant conference in your diocese, email Craig Uffman at assi…@stanneswarsaw.org or leave a comment on this post. The following homily was offered by The Rev’d N.J.A. Humphrey as part of Morning Prayer that began the Covenant Conference on Saturday, December 6, 2009 (I Advent (Year One)) at the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, TX. Fr. Nathan’s text was Luke 21:5-19.
In our gospel reading from Luke this morning, we encounter an apocalyptic discourse foretelling the destruction of the institutional center of Judaism: the Temple. I don’t think we can possibly comprehend the disciples’ sheer horror at hearing Jesus proclaim, “the days will come when there shall not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” I come from the Diocese of Washington, where we have a rather nice cathedral, which I would hardly want to see destroyed, but even that would not compare with what Jesus describes.
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Jordan Hylden: Christmastide
By Jordan Hylden | December 22, 2008
Editor’s Note: We are pleased to offer this Christmastide reflection as our way of introducing and welcoming Jordan Hylden, our newest Covenant Featured Author.
It might happen to you, if it happens at all, at Christmas. Going home for Christmas is very often a strange affair, since the season tends to mix together all the Christmases that came before it in a timeless blend, so that when you listen to Grandpa reading the old familiar Christmas story, or when in church you sing the sweet carols by dim candlelight, you are somehow not quite twenty years old, and not quite fifteen or ten or five years old either, but really you are all of them at the same time.
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Book Review: “Called Out of Darkness” by Anne Rice
By Greg Jones | December 22, 2008
Originally published in the (Raleigh) News and Observer (12/21/08):
Anne Rice has built a bestselling career through dark tales about vampires. Recently, her writing has moved toward a new light thanks to her reconnection with faith.
Her latest book, "Called Out of Darkness," provides an autobiographical account of her spiritual struggles. Rice is reticent — she provides only limited access to her inner self, refraining from giving readers "too much information" in this, her "spiritual confession." Nevertheless, her clear, engaging prose offers a thoughtful account of someone’s who has been renewed in her mind and faith and found a new calling as an explicitly Christian writer.
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Art: Tender Attention
By Graham Kings | December 21, 2008
Originally published at Fulcrum. Republished with permission from the author.
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Rowan Williams on Barth’s Christmas Message heard today
By Nicholas Knisely | December 21, 2008
An extraordinary meditation on Christmas by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Telegraph today.
Some pieces of the longer essay are motivated by looking for lessons for our day in Barth’s 1931 Christmas Sermon:
"What Barth saw beginning to take its grip on Germany in 1931 was a system of ‘principle’ that worked quite consistently once you accepted that quite a lot of people that you might have thought mattered as human beings actually didn’t. As the nightmare decade unfolded, the implications of this became clearer and clearer. And what he was warning against was the temptation of unconditional loyalty to a system, a programme, a ’cause’ which was essentially about ‘me and people like me’. It’s about the danger of my agenda, our needs, the programme of this particular group, its safety and prosperity.
And Christmas is supremely the story of a God who is not interested in telling us about principles. First comes the action – God beginning to live a human life. Then comes the appeal: do you love and trust what you see in this human life, the life of Jesus? Then the implication: everyone is capable of saying yes to this appeal, so no one is dispensable. You don’t and can’t know where the boundary will lie between people who belong and people who don’t belong.
[...]The God of the Christmas story (and the rest of the Gospels) doesn’t relate to us on the basis of any theory. but on the basis of unconditional love and welcome. That act of free love towards the entire human race changed things – even for those who didn’t and don’t share all the beliefs and doctrines of Christianity. And for those who do share those convictions, loving God and one another is a defiance of all programmes and principles designed to preserve only the wellbeing of people like us.
All of us, Christians most definitely included, have problems living up to this. But that’s one reason why we tell this story repeatedly, the story of the ‘unprincipled’ God who values what others don’t notice, who relates to people we’d all rather forget, whose appeal is to everyone because he has made everyone capable of loving response."
Read the full article here.
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Book Review - “Rowan’s Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop” by Rupert Shortt
By RichardKew | December 21, 2008
Rowan’s Rule is a fascinating book, not only tracing the life and ministry of the present incumbent of Augustine’s Chair, but also seeking to introduce us afresh to one of the most complex individuals. The book confirms what I have been saying about Williams for a number of years: that he cannot be pigeon-holed by simplistic labels and shallow formulas, especially those that might be polarized and polarizing.
Rupert Shortt reckons that Williams is probably the most brilliant Archbishop of Canterbury since Anselm, while at the same time being one who wears his intellectual capacity humbly. This is a huge claim to make when there have been incumbents such as Michael Ramsey of recent memory, and Thomas Cranmer of the Reformation years. The reader will have to judge whether Shortt has succeeded in backing up his assertion, but he certainly makes a strong case.
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On the Death of Cardinal Avery Dulles
By Neil Dhingra | December 19, 2008
I think that most of you have already heard that the Jesuit theologian Cardinal Avery Dulles passed away last Friday. I’m sure that, in the coming weeks and months, we will read sustained and learned overviews of Avery Dulles’ writings and legacy. Here, in addition to asking you to pray in gratitude for his life, and, if possible, for him, I want to point out one rather obvious thing about Cardinal Dulles. Even a relatively careless reader will note a theme appearing in the obituaries: Dulles’ work was characterized by a “considerable generosity to opposing views” (John Allen, National Catholic Reporter), resulting in a “sane balance in his thought, wholly within the tradition but willing to examine new ideas and to show how they could fit within the full history of Christian theology” (Joseph Bottum, Times). Even those who question the late Cardinal’s actual balancing of, say, the local and the universal church, would surely admire the careful search for a “sane balance” itself (see Christopher Ruddy’s review of Dulles’ collected McGinley Lectures). And even those who might question his emphasis on continuity – John Allen reports that Dulles worried that John Paul II and Benedict XVI were “not traditional enough” on the death penalty and just war theory – have to admire his deep respect for the “full history of Christian theology.”
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(CEN) Vatican signals there will be no enclave for former Anglican clergy in Rome
By Craig Uffman | December 19, 2008
Church of England Newspaper December 19, 2009
THE VATICAN will not create an enclave within the Roman Catholic Church for Anglicans opposed to women clergy and the ‘gay agenda’, Rome’s La Civiltà Cattolica predicts.
In an October article entitled Catholic Anglican Relations after the Lambeth Conference (La Relazione tra Cattolici e Anglicani dopo la Conferenza di Lambeth) the semi-official Jesuit bi-weekly stated the "corporate unity" under discussion between the Vatican and traditionalist Anglicans "will not be a form of uniatism as this is unsuitable for uniting two realities which are too similar from a cultural point of view as indeed are Roman Catholics and Anglo- Catholics."
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Homily for December 5, 2008 – Clement of Alexandria
By Ephraim Radner | December 17, 2008
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of messages from the Covenant authors’ retreat and our public conference, held on December 4-6 in Dallas. For information on sponsoring a Covenant conference in your diocese, email Craig Uffman at assi…@stanneswarsaw.org or leave a comment on this post.
“Does this offend you?… the words I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (Jn. 6:61,63).
We remember today Clement of Alexandria – a Christian who himself, I suppose, gave some offense, but also provided us with a measure of spirit and of life as well. Although he was memorialized, if I recall this rightly, as saint by the Roman Catholic Church, he was later dropped from the Roman Martyrology in early modern times because of concerns regarding some of his theological opinions. I’m not sure what these offending opinions were. But there has always been some reticence about Clement in the West. He was too positive about marriage, as opposed to celibacy, for one thing. And his sense of human sin as a fundamental kind of ignorance and therefore of salvation as a fundamental form of knowledge — he called the Christian a true “gnostic” – was always somewhat unsettling in the context of strong Augustinian attitudes. The Word of God, as we know from the title of one Clement’s most famous works, is depicted as the “Teacher” or “Pedagogue”, and Clement in this treatise is careful to explain how Christ instructs us through both “exhortation” and “precept”, bringing to lost humanity “cure” and “commandment” both, for our illumination and transformation. Commentators on Clement and his vision have therefore spoken of his theology as expressive of a Christian version of that broader antique vision of philosophy that scholars like Hadot have dubbed “psychogogy”, training the soul in virtue. This might indeed challenge the sensibilities of a Western Church always on the look-out for Pelagian hints and feints.
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Homily at Covenant Retreat: Evening Prayer, Friday in the First Week of Advent (12/5/08)
By Dan Martins | December 16, 2008
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of messages from the Covenant authors’ retreat and our public conference, held on December 4-6 in Dallas. For information on sponsoring a Covenant conference in your diocese, email Craig Uffman at assi…@stanneswarsaw.org or leave a comment on this post.
“Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had."
We are all here because, in various ways, each of us believes ourselves called to give something—something to our Lord by way of faithfulness and obedience, something to His church in general by way of gospel witness, something to the Episcopal Church in particular, perhaps, by way of leadership or prophetic vision, and something to one another, by way of mutual encouragement in the midst of all the other sorts of giving.
Perhaps some of us are tempted to think that this very retreat, and the conference that follows, are signs of our collective giving. After all, the k