In his now famous interview with Simon Mayo, ++Rowan Williams tells us that the date of Christmas, Magi, oxen, asses, snow and star, are unlikely at best. Stars, the Archbishop thinks, "don't behave that way." Well, so much for miracles, and the prelate of Global Anglicanism goes on to say that belief in the Virgin birth isn't a necessary "hurdle" for new Christians to "leap over" before they get "signed up." Signed up when? At Baptism? Whatever happened to the Creed? Perhaps the difficult bits of that have been relegated to the stuff of legend, along with Caspar, Melchior and Balthassar?

At the very least the Archbishop displays an unfortunate sense of timing; it's not very helpful to sideline the doctrine of the Virgin birth to pious opinion just as we're getting ready to celebrate the Incarnation. Still, maybe the timing's not quite so off after all, what with the current level of myth and legend that seems so pervasive in our part of the Church.

Urban Myth

In the first place, our status as a Communion has become a legend, if by legend we mean a fantastic tale with scant regard to reality. You can imagine the scene. There's Simon Mayo looking wistfully at a Manger tableau all the while holding up a festive "Anglican Communion Holiday Card," complete with smiling clergypersons of different hues, holding hands across continents as they cheerfully "make Eucharist." The question runs, "How much of this, Archbishop, do you think is actually true?" To which the interviewee might reply in the words of his Advent Letter:

"A great deal of the language that is around in the Communion at present seems to presuppose that any change from our current deadlock is impossible, that division is unavoidable and that any such division represents so radical a difference in fundamental faith that no recognition and future co-operation can be imagined."

Leaving aside the likelihood of Mr. Mayo's eyes glazing over with incomprehension, it must be said that the Archbishop doesn't feel that we've reached this divisive place yet and he, for one, "cannot accept these assumptions." On the contrary, he believes in the Anglican Communion legend, as well he might, being its chief. But the thing's a myth, it isn't true anymore. Ecclesial Communion entails a commonality of faith, Sacraments and pastoral governance which we no longer possess as Anglicans. We lack full recognition of Holy Orders and Sacraments, both within and between our various provinces and dioceses, we have no consensus as to the correct interpretation of the Faith, and pastoral governance is fast breaking down, at least in North America. With all of this, how can we claim to be a Communion at all? Only by seeing it as some kind of legend, a miraculous, symbolic tale, told for our edification, with little more than a sideways glance at objective reality.

Fairy Story

Still, myth or not, the Anglican legend's still around and its leader wants to save it. He proposes a rescue operation, which like the present state of the Communion has a certain unlikely quality. In order to solve our rather considerable differences we are to talk about them, again, at Lambeth 2008. To assist the process, Cantaur will encourage "professionally facilitated conversations" with TEC leadership and their opposition. O happy day for whatever lucky firm of mediation consultants is chosen for the task. Hand in hand with this aggressive Communion building strategy, Rowan will form a small advisory body of "primates and others" who will "take certain issues to Lambeth." This little group packs a bit of a sting:

"...it will also have to consider whether in the present circumstances it is possible for provinces or individual bishops at odds with the expressed mind of the Communion to participate fully in representative Communion agencies, including ecumenical bodies."

There you have it, a mythical fix to a broken legend. Not to labour the point, but warring groups of Anglicans have been talking for a very long time and the net result is our present division. It seems hard to imagine that yet more dialogue will, as it were, "mend the net." Likewise the fearsome threat of exclusion from Communion agencies; that was tried before with the gay focused Canadian Church, and had the interesting effect of altering the status quo not at all. Maybe this, in the end, is the Archbishop's intention, to keep the Anglican myth industry rolling with as little disruption as possible.

Brothers Grimm

If so, the whole business is an exercise in wishful thinking. How can our Communion be saved when it's no longer a Communion but a mythical fellowship? How can dialogue between estranged partners have any meaning when their worldviews are fundamentally opposed? For this, despite the Archbishop's denial, is precisely the issue at hand. On the one side we have those whose belief is consonant with the Faith delivered to us by Christ, who believe in its reality. As Archbishop Venables states, "Christianity is specific, definable and unchanging. We are not at liberty to deconstruct or rewrite it. If Jesus was the Son of God yesterday then so He is today and will be forever." Then there are those who view our religion as a matter of symbol and feeling, bolstered by fantastic stories of great spiritual potency, but still stories all the same. Or, to put it simply, the battle is on between those who believe and those who don't.

Judging by the Archbishop's comments on the Virgin Birth, one suspects that his sympathies lie with the latter. That such faithlessness has any future currency is demonstrably not the case, as the rapid decline of liberalized, mainline denominations, shows all too clearly. We may hope that Rowan will apply his vigorous realism to the dilemma before others bust the myth wide open before him. Whatever the case, a clash is inevitable and we may be sure that the truth will out, whether at Lambeth, 2008, or wherever else Christians have remained true to the Faith given us by God Himself.

---Fr. Michael Heidt is Parish Priest at St. John the Evangelist, Calgary, and a contributor to New Directions, the U.K's Forward in Faith magazine. St. John's is an Anglican Network/Forward in Faith parish in the Anglican Church of Canada.