Has the Anglican Experiment Really Failed?

By Charles Raven
http://www.anglicanspread.org/
October 28, 2009

Last Sunday I was privileged to be present at the consecration of the Revd Canon Dr Festus Yeboah-Asuamah as the new bishop of Sunyani Diocese in Ghana by the Archbishop of the Church of the Province of West Africa, Dr Justice O. Akrofi. The diocese has only existed since 1997 and the diocese from which it was formed had itself only been inaugurated in 1981, yet here were hundreds of joyful worshippers gathered in a new cathedral to welcome their next bishop. For over five hours there was a glorious weaving together of liturgy and music, moving seamlessly between solemnity and spontaneity, with a clear and challenging gospel focus in the Archbishop's sermon.

Yet the day before in London, as Forward in Faith were debating Pope Benedict's extraordinary offer to Anglicans of a Personal Ordinariate, the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Revd John Broadhurst, told the conference plainly that 'the Anglican experiment is over'. Well, maybe in England it is, but clearly not in Ghana.

Of course, the Pope's initiative is a very sobering sign of Anglican failure. The Vatican has been at pains to point out that its action in offering Anglicans a continuing 'space' within the Roman Church is not an attempt to poach, but a response to persistent requests from those in distress and it seems clear from the lack of preliminary consultation with Dr Rowan Williams that confidence in his ability to lead the Anglican Communion has dwindled.

However, what my experience in Ghana illustrates is the truth which GAFCON has so powerfully articulated - that the failure of the Anglican Communion is not an intrinsic flaw in its fundamental theological vision, but a failure to be faithful to that vision. The Anglican experiment is in fact proving to be remarkably successful in many areas of the Global South, undergirded by that recovery of confidence in Evangelical Anglicanism so closely associated with John Stott and J I Packer - even if it may sometimes take liturgical forms which would not be entirely to their taste.

The Anglican Communion crisis is not about Anglicanism in itself, but a crisis about faithfulness. Failure to maintain Anglicanism's doctrinal and moral integrity precipitated GAFCON and is the root cause of the Pope's offer of the Ordinariate. As Bishop Broadhurst bluntly stated 'Anglicanism has become a joke because it has singularly failed to deal with any of its contentious issues'.

GAFCON and the Ordinariate are both, essentially, calls for a return to roots, but which roots? Back to the Reformed Catholicism articulated by the English Reformers and powerfully reaffirmed as a global vision in the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration of 2008 or back to Roman Catholicism?

The attraction of Rome is its theological coherence and the same is required for any credible and durable alternative. And herein lies the danger of the Anglican Covenant process - the Global South Primates Steering Committee's response to the Personal Ordinariate was to issue an 'exhortation' http://www.globalsouthanglican.org/index.php/comments/pastoral_exhortation/ in which they affirmed the Anglican Covenant as a 'clear and principled' alternative, but is such optimism justified? There are two as yet unresolved problems with the Covenant, even in its somewhat improved Cambridge Ridley Draft form.

The first is evident from the Primates' exhortation itself. Who exactly are they exhorting? Principally, it would seem, the Archbishop of Canterbury himself who is urged 'to work in close collegial consultation with fellow Primates in the Communion, act decisively on already agreed measures in the Primates' Meetings, and exercise effective leadership'. In other words, to start doing precisely what he has so signally failed to do so far.

It has been commented that the Archbishop is operating with 'no known ecclesiology' and seems to have adopted a self defeating institutional pragmatism. One of the 'three undeniable facts' of the 'long and agonising journey' which led to the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration was the persistent failure of the Communion Instruments to exercise discipline. Sadly, the dysfunctional pattern continues, notably at the last meeting of the Anglican Communion Council in Jamaica where the Archbishop's intervention had the effect of kicking what many considered to be the crucial Section 4 of the Ridley Cambridge Draft into the long grass, an action widely seen as a move to soothe TEC's anxieties about anything which could give the Covenant teeth.

This impression is reinforced by recent correspondence with Bishop John Howe of Central Florida, His letter of 10 September 2009 reversed the position he set out in a previous letter of 14 October 2007. The only consistent factor in these two views was that both served the interest of TEC - in 2007 Williams argued that the diocese could sign up to the covenant, which would have discouraged orthodox congregations concerned with the state of TEC from leaving, whereas in 2009, affirming the same principle would have encouraged North Carolina and other dioceses to fragment from TEC.

The second, and connected, problem with the Ridley Cambridge draft is the ambiguity of the document itself. While it is true that it has much that can be squared with the Jerusalem Declaration, the introduction which sets out the Covenant's theological basis is specifically excluded from the Covenant on the grounds that 'it may provide challenges to some'. So the Covenant lacks an agreed theological foundation without which the 'unifying task of a common discernment in communion' referred to by the Windsor report (Section 67) is in real danger of becoming a merely political exercise.

This implicit relativism of the Ridley Draft is consistent with the 'two track' Communion as envisaged by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his response to TEC's Anaheim Convention in July. It allows for two different 'styles' of Anglicanism to co-exist while excommunication is effectively ruled out as 'apocalyptic'. This calls into question 'passive discipline' strategies favoured by some orthodox supporters of the covenant process who envisage revisionist Churches effectively opting out of communion through failure to sign up to the Covenant. If there is no binding process by which recognition can actually be removed, a two track communion implies the acceptance of parallel 'truths', with one track being provisionally privileged over the other simply because of the weight of institutional opinion.

The Anglican experiment has not failed. In many parts of the Global South it has been wonderfully transformative, but there are failing Churches within the Communion of which the Church of England is one, as the Bishop of Fulham has recognised. The Global South Primates Steering Committee looks for a 'clear and principled way forward', but if the Anglican Covenant is ever to fulfil this purpose, the Communion will need the 'new wineskin' of clear and principled governance. As the Church of England unravels, it seems increasingly clear that we must look to Jerusalem - the Jerusalem Declaration - rather than Canterbury if we are truly to return to our roots as a Reformed Church of the Western Catholic tradition.


---The Rev'd Charles Raven is a priest in Bewdley, Worcestershire