The crises in the Anglican Communion in recent years have revealed two distinct problems confronting the Communion, one theological and one structural. The two halves of faith and order. The theological problem is whether the Communion has theological coherence on major questions of faith and practice. Slowly over the last decade and a half an affirmative answer to this question has been evolving. In particular, on the presenting crisis of human sexuality the Communion does have a common mind that has been expressed repeatedly by all four Instruments. The extent to which this has happened is reflected in the report of the Joint Standing Committee in late 2007 after the meeting of TEC’s House of Bishops in New Orleans:

The Communion seems to be converging around a position which says that while it is inappropriate to proceed to public Rites of Blessing of same-sex unions and to the consecration of bishops who are living in sexual relationships outside of Christian marriage, we need to take seriously our ministry to gay and lesbian people inside the Church and the ending of discrimination, persecution and violence against them. Here, The Episcopal Church and the Instruments of Communion speak with one voice.

TEC’s Presiding Bishop concurred in that report, but she has since served as the chief consecrator of Mary Glasspool and TEC’s General Convention has authorized the development of liturgies for public rites of blessing.

The extent to which the theological question has been answered is also reflected in the steps already taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury to begin removing TEC representatives from Communion bodies responsible for faith and order and the acknowledgment by the Secretary General that TEC does not “share the faith and order of the vast majority of the Anglican Communion.”

Also evolving, albeit more slowly and less certainly, are solutions to the structural problem: whether the Communion has the structural coherence to deal with these kinds of crises. A number of well known studies have addressed this issue, including the Virginia Report, the Windsor Report and the Report of the Windsor Continuation Group. But the Communion response has not been limited to the publication of reports. There have been two concrete responses to the structural problem and the recommendations in the various studies, and both have come to fruition in the past year. One is the Anglican Communion Covenant, now under consideration by the member churches. The Covenant was under development for several years in a largely transparent process. Three drafts were published and open to public debate and comment. Regardless of one’s position on the Covenant, there can be no question that its contents are known and have been scrutinized by all interested parties.

The second response to the structural problem is the constitutional reform of the Anglican Consultative Council. This response has also been under development for several years and is motivated both by purely legal issues and by the recognition of needed institutional reform, but unlike the Covenant the constitutional reform of the ACC has largely proceeded outside of public view. This feature has been compounded by the fact that many of the issues involve technical legal matters that have implications that are not readily apparent and, in some cases, were not even applicable until late in the process. This has made informed consideration by the member churches and Instruments difficult, if not impossible.

This process is now nearing completion. On July 12, 2010, a certificate of incorporation was issued for a new UK company, the Anglican Consultative Council. Accompanying the certificate were the Memorandum and Articles of Association of this new company. These documents were made public by the Registrar of Companies for England and Wales although they were not disclosed publicly by the Anglican Communion Office until July 24. With the registration of this new company with the UK Charity Commission, the transformation of the ACC is now complete. The ACC is now a company regulated under both UK Companies and Charities laws.

We will examine below the provisions of the ACC’s new constitution, its Articles of Association, and the implications these Articles have for the structural problems of the Communion. We will also consider the extent to which the new ACC constitution presents a future for the Communion compatible with that of the Covenant. In summary, our conclusions are as follows:

• By making the ACC an English company, the new constitution subjects the ACC, one of the Communion’s Instruments, fully to UK and applicable EU law, including equalities legislation that the Church of England itself has resisted.

• The new constitution reverses the historic relationship between the ACC and its Standing Committee, making the Standing Committee the primary legal entity and giving it greater authority than the Council as a whole.

• The new constitution infringes on the traditional authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates’ Meeting, which are separate and independent Instruments of the Communion that do not derive their authority from the ACC constitution.

• The new constitution reduces the role of the member churches in the governance of the ACC.

• In these ways, the new constitution is inconsistent, both in vision and in detail, with the Covenant.

Because this document has been held outside of public view until very recently, we write without the benefit of comment from English lawyers. If correction on that account is in order, we expect it will be voiced. Many things, however, seem straightforward enough and it is important that the nature and extent of the changes brought about begin to be appreciated.

1. The ACC Is a Corporation Governed by UK and EU Law

The starting point in a review of the new constitution is to note that the ACC is now an English company, subject to UK and EU law like all other English companies. A certificate of incorporation has been issued in the name of “The Anglican Consultative Council” and the new Articles make clear that this new company is now governed by the Companies Act 2006. We will consider below to what extent the new legal entity is the same body as that traditionally understood as the ACC. For the present, however, it is important to recognize the significance of the fact that the ACC is now a corporation governed by UK and EU law.

The initial Lambeth Conference resolution calling for the establishment of the ACC and proposing its initial constitution (1968 Res. 69) did not specify any legal structure or entity for the ACC. It was just a body to be defined by its constitution. As such, the ACC was what is generally regarded as a voluntary association. Traditionally, such associations were not recognized by the law as legal entities distinct from their members. The essence of a corporation, on the other hand, is that it has a legal personality distinct from its members or shareholders and its legal rights and duties are determined not solely by agreement of its members but by the governing law.

At its second meeting in 1973, the ACC approved the establishment of a limited legal structure (a trust) under UK law, but its specific purpose was to hold property located in the UK and the resolution indicated clearly that the ACC itself and this trust were not identical, but distinct entities — the trust holds property “on behalf of” the Council. Resolution 2:33 (1973):

Legal Status

1. The Council approves that a Trust be set up in the United Kingdom the object of which shall be to advance the Christian religion in accordance with the terms of the Constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council which may hold on behalf of the Council all property and funds situated in the United Kingdom.

2. The Council delegates full responsibility to the Standing Committee to approve on its behalf the final form of the said Trust and to appoint the necessary Trustees.

In 1999, the ACC began the process of changing this status. Resolution 11:6 provided in part:

That the Standing Committee consider, and if it thinks fit, adopt an appropriate legal structure for the ongoing work of the council within the framework of a limited company in accordance with legal advice and any directions of the charity commissioners for England and Wales, but so far as possible in all other respects in accordance with the existing constitutional arrangements.

Although this resolution only called for “an appropriate legal structure” “within the framework of a limited company” and did not specify that the ACC itself would be incorporated, it was clear by ACC-13 in 2005 that the intent was for the ACC itself to become a charitable company governed by UK law. We are now at the endpoint of this process, and the Articles of Association forming that company are the new constitution of the ACC.

We do not question the underlying legal advice that the appropriate legal structure for the entity responsible for managing the Communion’s UK assets is a company limited by guarantee. We are not at all persuaded, however, that this legal entity should be one of the Communion Instruments itself and that the fiduciaries charged with overseeing these charitable activities should be the same as those comprising one of the bodies responsible for faith and order in the Communion. Whatever the complex legal issues may have been, the practical result for the Communion of this legal transformation of the ACC will be to return and consolidate legal and ecclesiastical power in London and to insure that no important decision can be made without consulting UK lawyers and complying with UK law.

The potential for resultant legal problems is obvious. Some charities affiliated with other churches, both in the UK and elsewhere, are either ceasing operations or converting to secular control — hardly an option for the ACC — to avoid regulations restrictive of religious freedom. And one can readily contemplate future mandates on UK companies designed to enforce UK policy objectives in other countries, including gay rights, e.g., embargoes on transactions with countries (most of the Communion) not complying with European equality regulations. It is incongruous that in the last year the bishops of the Church of England were voting in the House of Lords against proposed equalities legislation because it would restrict religious liberty even as steps were being taken to incorporate the ACC under UK law and possibly subject one of the Communion’s Instruments to that same legislation. Significantly, the new Articles contain no “ethos statement” or statement of required standards of conduct or faith for ACC officials, and Article 6.5.2 already refers to the possibility that Standing Committee members might have civil partners.

2. The ACC Is Now Defined Legally by Reference to the Standing Committee with the Full Council Playing a Secondary Role

Under the old ACC constitution, the powers of the Standing Committee were derivative of those of the Council itself. The Council consisted of its members, who were appointed directly by the member churches. The Standing Committee had the power to act for the Council between meetings of the full Council and to execute matters referred to it by the Council. The nature of the Standing Committee’s legal role as derivative of (and lesser than) the full council is shown by Article 8 of the former constitution:

The Standing Committee may exercise all powers of the Council as are not by this Constitution required to be done specifically by the Council, and in particular may borrow money and mortgage or charge the Council assets.

Under the former constitution, the members of the Standing Committee also served as trustees of the Council for charity law purposes.

The ACC’s new Articles of Association essentially reverse this relationship. It is the Standing Committee that has primary management authority and it is the full Council that has a lesser and secondary role.

By adopting the corporate form, the ACC has fundamentally altered the foundation of its governance. The principles of governance of an unincorporated association are those chosen by the members themselves. Indeed, as already noted, traditionally the law has not recognized such an association as having a legal personality apart from its members. Corporations, on the other hand, are created by the law and their governance is prescribed in the first instance by the corporate law. The ACC company was formed and got its legal personality only when a Certificate of Incorporation for company number 07311767 was issued by the Registrar of Companies for England and Wales.

Corporations are juridical persons, entities created by the law. As such, the corporate law defines in detail the fundamental governance of the corporate entity, including who the members are, how votes are to be taken, how meetings are called and who is responsible for the management of the company. Choices as to these matters are permitted, but are subject to the parameters established by company law. For English companies, the most recent corporate law is found in the Companies Act 2006, a 700 page statute that specifies the basic rules of company life. In general, English company law specifies that

• non-written resolutions can only be passed in “general meetings” of the members, including the familiar “annual general meetings” required of public companies and often held by private companies;

• who must be given notice of such meetings and how notice is to be given;

• what kind of majorities are required to pass “ordinary resolutions” and “special resolutions” and what constitutes each; and

• how members can designate others, “proxies,” to vote on their behalf.

These concepts are well known to corporate lawyers, but may be less familiar to ordinary Anglicans around the Communion. The ACC’s new Articles explicitly adopt the meanings of terms defined in the Companies Act 2006.

Applying these concepts to the ACC’s Articles, we see that the most important provision for understanding the ACC’s new structure is Article 7.5:

The Trustee-Members shall constitute the membership body of the Council for the purposes of the Companies Acts and as Charity trustees they shall have responsibility for management of the Council’s property and funds.

Thus, the legal membership of the company consists of the Trustee-Members. And they are defined in the definitions of Article 1 as follows:

Trustee-Members means the individual members for the time being of the Standing Committee of the Council (and “Trustee-Member” or “Trustee-Members” has a corresponding meaning), the Trustee-Members being also the members of the company for the purposes of the Companies Acts….

Put simply, the membership body for legal purposes is the Standing Committee, not the full Council. This is reflected throughout the new articles in other more technical provisions. For example, Articles 12, 13 and 16 make clear that it is the meeting of the Standing Committee that constitutes the “general meeting” and “annual general meeting” of all members specified in the Companies Acts as the meetings at which the company can pass resolutions. And Article 3.1 specifies that it is the Standing Committee members whose personal liability is limited. If the company had other members, their liability would be unlimited since they are not included in the limitation in this article.

This constitutes a significant change in structure from that of the former constitution. Under the old constitution, the members of the ACC were the persons directly elected by the member churches. And the former constitution provided for “meetings of the Council” at intervals of every two or three years, and “meetings of the Council” meant meetings of the members elected by the member churches. What is the role of these “members” under the new corporate structure?

In the new Articles, the persons elected by the member churches are still identified as “Members” but this is largely definitional and of limited effect since the Articles also specify that for legal purposes–that is, for purposes of the Companies Act under which the Council is now organized–the members of the Council are now the members of the Standing Committee. And the meetings of the full Council are designated under the new Articles as “Plenary Sessions of the Council” and are said to be “in addition to” the general meetings and annual general meetings of the Standing Committee, the latter being the meetings of members recognized under the new Companies Act structure. The Plenary Session is in fact an extra-corporate body whose primary legal role is the exercise of a right, provided for in the Articles but not mandated by company law, to elect the members and trustees of the company — the Standing Committee — and to advise the company on certain, but not all, matters that the Standing Committee has the legal authority to do.

Does any of this matter in practice or is it mere legal formality? In fact, it has real practical consequences. One important feature is the relative scope of the authority of the Standing Committee and Plenary Session. As already noted, in the past the authority of the Standing Committee was derivative of, but less than, that of the full Council. The Standing Committee could do much of what the full Council could do, but nothing more, except to the extent they were acting solely in their capacities as trustees of a charity. But under the new Articles, the Plenary Sessions have a separate limit on their authority that is not applicable to the Standing Committee. The “Objects” or purposes of the ACC have been revised in the new Articles to include three objects: to advance the Christian religion; to promote the unity of the Anglican Communion; and to promote the purposes of the Anglican Communion. The Standing Committee, as the legal company, is authorized by law to pursue all of these objects. But the authority of the Plenary Sessions is limited to the contractual rights granted to them in the Articles. And under Article 16.1 they can only meet “to promote the unity of the Anglican Communion” and can only consider other matters “in that context.” The Standing Committee has no such restriction on its authority, i.e., it need not consider matters only in the “context” of unity.

Given the controversies in the Communion and the provisions of Section 4 of the Covenant this becomes a real, not a theoretical, issue. Can the recognition of “relational consequences” that diminishes the role of a member church in some way be considered by the Plenary Session as a matter promoting the unity of the Communion? Or is this something that can only be done by the Standing Committee?

Another important issue that has been the subject of recent controversy is the manner in which amendment of the ACC’s constitution is accomplished, and in particular amendment of the constitutional schedule specifying its membership. The Articles treat amendments to the main body differently from amendments to the membership schedule, but each case requires action by a body other than the Standing Committee. In the case of amendments other than to the membership schedule, Article 27.3 provides for a vote of two-thirds of the plenary members. In the case of the membership schedule, amendment is by the Standing Committee with the consent of two-thirds of the Primates. But the Companies Act mandates that amendment of the articles must be accomplished by a vote of 75% of the full membership of the company, i.e., the Standing Committee. As we understand it, the Companies Act thus imposes an additional requirement to amend the Articles that in effect gives any four members of the Standing Committee a veto over the proposed amendment. In other words, the full Council could vote overwhelmingly to amend the Articles, but the decision could be blocked by a minority faction on the Standing Committee. And this possibility is not merely hypothetical. We know there have been allied blocks on the Standing Committee, we have seen them in action in Jamaica, and ACC officials have publicly bemoaned recent Standing Committee meetings to the point of resignation and extreme frustration (the “worst meeting of my life”).

As noted above, the Plenary Session is not part of the legal membership of the ACC. The plenary members therefore possess no statutory rights as members of the incorporated body, but only those rights granted in the Articles. These rights are contractual in nature; unlike the Standing Committee, the plenary members have no inherent legal authority to manage the ACC. It is important therefore to recognize the extent to which the new Articles restrict the authority of the plenary members even over the Plenary Sessions themselves and transfer significant control over these Plenary Sessions to the Standing Committee. New Article 16.5 now gives the Standing Committee the power to adopt rules governing the conduct of business at the Plenary Sessions. And it is not even clear whether the Plenary Session itself could change such rules even with an overwhelming majority vote and the consent of the ACC President, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The wording of Article 27.2 suggests not. Under the old rules, the Standing Committee had no such role in adopting procedures for meetings other than its own. (Old bylaws 1(c) and 2(b).)

Similarly, Article 8.2.3 now gives the Standing Committee the ability to give directions for the conduct of elections for Standing Committee membership, as well as elections for Chairperson and Vice-chairperson, and Article 27 gives it general authority to adopt rules and guidelines broader than its previous authority, which was limited to the Standing Committee’s own proceedings. (Compare Article 27.1 with old bylaw 2(b).)

Not only are the Plenary Sessions downgraded in importance relative to the old structure and subject to significant control by the Standing Committee, the Standing Committee is given additional ability to influence the proceedings through exercise of the right to appoint up to six members in addition to those elected by the member churches. Under the old constitution, authority to appoint these additional members (previously called co-opted members) was given to the Council itself.

And in addition to exercising all the membership rights, the Standing Committee members, as “Trustees,” also exercise the rights of directors of the company under the Companies Act. As a matter of law, directors have the primary management responsibility for the company.

In short, the reversal in the legal structure making the Standing Committee primary and the full Council secondary is also reflected in specific rules that give the Standing Committee significant control over the Plenary Session — what was formerly thought of as the ACC.

3. The New Articles Infringe on the Prerogatives and Traditional Authority of Other Instruments.

To this point we have looked at the ACC’s new constitutional structure only from the perspective of the ACC itself. The changes in the nature and governance of the ACC are significant and obvious. But the new Articles also take the first steps toward asserting legal control over the other Instruments thereby radically changing the traditional understanding of those Instruments as independent bodies or offices.

The starting point is the definitions section in Article 2, which appears to be an attempt to define and thereby control the membership of the Primates’ Meeting by reference to the ACC’s membership schedule rather than the Primates’ Meeting’s own self-definition:

“Primates” means the principal Archbishop, Bishop, Moderator or Primate of each of the bodies listed under paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of the Schedule appended to these Articles.

“Primates’ Meeting” means the gathering of the Primates convened time to time by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This is an important, if technical, point. The former ACC constitution contained a definition of “Primates” identical in substance to this definition but with a qualification that the definition was “for the purposes of this Article,” which was the article on determining ACC membership. But this definition now applies not just when changing the ACC’s own membership but to “these Articles,” and as we will see next, the new Articles purport to regulate, at least in part, some decisions of the Primates’ Meeting.

This attempt to define the Primates is now broadened because the new Articles also purport to define the Primates’ Meeting itself. This definition partly mirrors that used in the Covenant, reflecting the traditional understanding (that the Primates’ Meeting is “convened by” the Archbishop of Canterbury), but there is an important difference. Under the new Articles, the Primates’ Meeting is the “gathering of the Primates” and “Primates” as we have just seen is a defined term that is defined by reference not to the Primates themselves or the Archbishop of Canterbury, but to the ACC membership schedule, which is controlled by the Standing Committee.

Following the traditional practice, the Covenant specifies that it is the Archbishop who “gathers” the “Primates’ Meeting” and there is no qualification on his discretion as to which Primates to gather — no reference to the ACC membership or any other list. Indeed, in the past the Archbishop has not in fact used the ACC list as the basis for gathering the Primates. For example, he has invited the Archbishop of York notwithstanding the fact that he would not be included among those defined by the ACC list. In addition, the Archbishop has not invited the senior bishop from Ceylon despite the fact that the extra-provincial Church of Ceylon was listed on the ACC schedule. And in 2007, the Archbishop made clear that invitations were within his discretion when he announced that “I have decided not to withhold an invitation to Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as the elected Primate of the Episcopal Church to attend the forthcoming meeting. I believe it is important that she be given a chance both to hear and to speak and to discuss face to face the problems we are confronting together.”

By attempting to define the Primates’ Meeting as those on the ACC schedule as opposed to those whom the Archbishop of Canterbury chooses to gather, the ACC is encroaching on matters within the domain of two other Instruments.

But the ACC Articles go further. They purport to regulate and control decisions the Primates make about their own leadership. Article 8.2.1 provides:

In electing the Chairman, Vice Chairman and other Trustee-Members [Standing Committee members] the Members and the Primates (as the case may be) shall have regard (particularly in the process of nomination) to the desirability of achieving (so far as practicable) appropriate regional diversity and a balance of representation between clergy and laity and between the genders. (Emphasis added.)

What this article purports to do is impose diversity criteria on the Primates’ election of members to their own standing committee since those members become “Trustee-Members.” Whether these criteria are laudatory is not the issue. It is for the Primates to decide on the qualifications they will consider in electing their standing committee. For example, although they have not yet chosen to do so the Primates might wish to adopt selection criteria that focus on proportional representation or theological coherence with the Communion’s faith and order rather than regional or gender diversity. We hope the Primates will robustly resist these initial efforts to control their decision making.

The new articles further encroach on the historical prerogative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to appoint members of the Communion’s commissions and similar bodies. New Article 5.5 gives the ACC (the Standing Committee) the authority to establish Communion commissions. We have already seen this developing in recent years without any legal authority, but this now formalizes that practice. Will the Standing Committee next claim that the Archbishop cannot appoint such commissions without its consent? It does not bode well that the Standing Committee recently interrogated the Archbishop on decisions taken concerning some of these commissions and the explanation given was that he had conferred with the Secretary General, who possesses no authority in these matters.

As a final example of the ACC’s encroachment on other Instruments under these Articles, we note that the procedures for determining the membership of the Inter-Anglican Finance Committee have been changed to place sole appointing authority in the Standing Committee. Former bylaw 4 provided that the committee would consist of at least five members, of which at least two would be appointed by the Primates’ Meeting and at least three would be appointed by the Council. Now the Standing Committee, not the full Council, is the appointing body for all members, with both the Primatial and non-Primatial members of the finance committee appointed separately from among the members of the Standing Committee. (Articles 14.1 -14.2.) The “at least” language on the number of members is dropped, fixing the size of the committee and ensuring that there will be a majority of non-Primatial members.

In each instance just described, the changes made were small and in some cases technical. But they reflect an assumption that the other Instruments can be governed in some way by the ACC’s Articles and may be claimed as a precedent for that in the future. Given the Standing Committee’s control over these Articles, this is a dangerous precedent for the Communion and its Instruments as traditionally understood.

4. The New Articles Reduce the Influence of the Member Churches on the ACC.

In many ways the reduced influence of the member churches follows from the facts we have already noted. The members elected by the member churches are no longer the legally recognized members of the ACC. But there is one other way in which the influence of the member churches has been reduced. The former requirement that amendments to the constitution be ratified by two-thirds of the member churches has been removed. Amendments now require only a two-thirds vote of one Plenary Session and, under the Companies Act, a 75% vote of the Standing Committee.

It is ironic that one of the legal arguments TEC has made in litigation it instituted against its former dioceses is that its General Convention possesses legal supremacy because it can amend TEC’s constitution. But TEC’s constitution requires that amendments be approved at two successive meetings of the General Convention and that formal notice of the proposed amendment be transmitted to the diocesan conventions between the two votes. And when the vote is taken at the General Convention, it is cast in the House of Deputies by dioceses that have equal representation and vote as a unit in both the clergy and lay orders with each diocese having one vote in each order. This is considered a vote by dioceses by TEC’s own constitutional commentary.

Under the new ACC Articles, however, amendments do not require two readings, are not sent formally to the provincial synods and are not voted on at the Plenary Sessions by member churches as a unit with each church having one vote. They are voted on in one session by the individual members, including the members appointed by the Standing Committee, which gives disproportionate representation to the western churches. This reduces further the input of the member churches in the functioning of the ACC.

5. The Structure of the Communion Reflected in the New ACC Articles Is Not What Was Contemplated In the Covenant.

We have identified above the distinctive features of the transformed ACC. We now must ask to what extent this ACC response to the Communion’s structural problems is compatible with that found in the Covenant finalized only seven months ago?

To start it is helpful to revisit the fundamental principles of our Anglican identity as expressed in Section 3 of the Covenant:

First:

Churches of the Anglican Communion are bound together “not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference” and of the other instruments of Communion. (3.1.2.)

Second:

[Each Church affirms] the central role of bishops as guardians and teachers of faith, as leaders in mission, and as a visible sign of unity, representing the universal Church to the local, and the local Church to the universal and the local Churches to one another. This ministry is exercised personally, collegially and within and for the eucharistic community. (3.1.3.)

Third:

In addition to the many and varied links which sustain our life together, we acknowledge four particular Instruments at the level of the Anglican Communion which express this co-operative service in the life of communion….It is the responsibility of each Instrument to consult with, respond to, and support each other Instrument and the Churches of the Communion. Each Instrument may initiate and commend a process of discernment and a direction for the Communion and its Churches. (3.1.4.)

These principles can be summarized as recognizing that the Anglican Communion (1) is not tied to a single “central authority”; (2) is one in which its bishops play “the central role” in essential areas of leadership; and (3) is led by four distinct Instruments of Communion, each of which “may initiate and commend a process of discernment and a direction for the Communion and its Churches.”

None of this is novel. As the Covenant itself notes in the Introduction:

To covenant together is not intended to change the character of this Anglican expression of Christian faith. Rather, we recognise the importance of renewing in a solemn way our commitment to one another, and to the common understanding of faith and order we have received, so that the bonds of affection which hold us together may be re-affirmed and intensified.

It must be emphasized that the “we” of the Covenant are the member churches of the Anglican Communion that sign the Covenant together with the other churches who may join them in that agreement. The Covenant is their commitment to each other and the historic Instruments of Communion they recognize in their re-affirmation of their common faith and order. The Instruments derive their authority in the Communion not from their own internal legal processes, but from the recognition they receive from the Communion’s churches.

The Covenant thus becomes the foundational document for the Communion. It does not derive its authority from any of the Instruments. Rather the reverse.

One can see at a glance that the new ACC Articles present quite a different vision at key points. They unquestionably establish a “central executive authority.” Indeed, in its recently posted Q&A this is explicit:

The Standing Committee is the executive arm of the Anglican Consultative Council, charged with advancing its work between its three-yearly plenary meetings. It also incorporates the Standing Committee of the Primates’ Meeting, and has responsibility to oversee the implementation of requests from the Lambeth Conference. So, for example, it takes responsibility for organising meetings of the Instruments, and co-ordinates the work of the various Networks and Commissions which serve the Communion in a wide variety of ways. The work on Theological Education came from an initiative of the Primates’ Meeting; the Relief and Development Alliance was a proposal from the Lambeth Conference of 2008.

The ACC Articles, moreover, do not sufficiently acknowledge the central role of bishops and the bishops in conference. The Lambeth Conference of bishops appoints none of the members of the Standing Committee, and it is the ACC that elects the majority of the Committee members. Although the ACC can and does elect bishops from among its members and bishops will always comprise a large part of the Standing Committee, there is no formal recognition of a “central role” for bishops and the stated criteria for appointing Committee members include “a balance of representation between clergy and laity.” In the larger, if now less important, Plenary Session, there is no vote by orders, which would guarantee a special role for bishops, and the membership criteria encourage lay, not episcopal participation.

And as noted, the ACC Articles assert the legal authority to define and regulate in some respects the other Instruments of Communion. The Covenant’s oft-expressed vision is of a Communion in which each Instrument is distinct, co-equal and responsible for its own membership decisions. A possible trajectory of the new ACC Articles, if now only in its earliest stages, is that of a Communion in which all the Instruments are governed by a single legal constitution subject to UK law.

Indeed, a threshold question is whether the new ACC Articles and the Anglican Covenant are even talking about the same Instruments. The Covenant defines the ACC with reference to its former constitution and specifically refers to the membership schedule, indicating it considered the Council to be the body comprised of the members elected by the member churches, not the smaller body comprising the Standing Committee. This accords with the original Lambeth Conference resolution that specified the first constitution of the ACC. It also defined the Council by reference to the members elected by the member churches and said of the Standing Committee only that:

The Council shall appoint a Standing Committee of nine members, which shall include the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Council. The Secretary General shall be its Secretary. The Standing Committee shall meet annually. It shall have the right to call advisers.

Is this even the same body as the new English company whose members and directors consist of the Standing Committee only and not those elected directly by the member churches?

Similar questions arise with respect to the committee defined in Section 4 “to monitor the functioning of the Covenant…on behalf of the Instruments.” Among other duties, this committee must be “responsible to the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting” and “make recommendations as to relational consequences” to “the Instruments of Communion.” The Covenant identified that committee as the “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion.” In its public materials, the ACC Standing Committee identifies itself correctly as “The Anglican Consultative Council-Standing Committee.” This accords with its legal definition. By its own account, last December it “adopted” the title used in the Covenant of “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion” but has since thought better of that idea and decided to stick with “‘the Standing Committee,’ as per the new ACC Articles of Association.”

Whatever else can be said of this confusion, one thing is clear: when the Covenant defined a committee to monitor “on behalf of the Instruments,” to “be responsible to” the ACC and the Primates’ Meeting, and to “make recommendations” to the Instruments, it did not contemplate that this role would be filled by a group that constitutes the entire membership and governing body for legal purposes of one of those same Instruments.

6. Conclusion

In light of these developments, we draw the following conclusions:

• It is not appropriate for one of the Communion’s four Instruments to be an English company regulated by UK and EU law like any other UK company. To repeat what we said above, we do not question the need for the proper and efficient management of the Communion’s charitable assets by fiduciaries complying with all relevant laws. We are not convinced, however, that this role should be confused with the historic role of the Instruments of Communion in “the discernment, articulation and exercise of our shared faith and common life and mission” and in particular with the role of the Communion’s Primatial leadership, which bears special responsibility for “doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters that have Communion-wide implications.” (Covenant 3.1.4.)

• We urge the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates not to cede their independent authority to the corporate charter of the ACC, but to insist that their authority cannot be infringed by the ACC.

• It is now beyond doubt that the newly transformed and empowered ACC Standing Committee cannot function as the committee required by Section 4 of the Covenant.

• The Covenant remains the only hope for preserving the traditional faith and order of the Anglican Communion. We call upon member churches of the Anglican Communion to adopt the Covenant with all deliberate speed and, having done so, to make proper arrangements for the responsibilities assigned to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion in Section 4 to be undertaken by a body that has both the competence and ability to assess threats to the Communion and recommend appropriate action.

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A. The scope of the Indaba project

The Continuing Indaba Project, as its organizers have described it, is geared toward “decision making by consensus,” in a way adaptable to the Anglican Communion. (The word “indaba” is of Bantu [African] origin, and connotes a meeting or council to discuss a serious matter.) In particular, it is about seeking a “common mind” in the face of “hard questions” that “threaten to divide us.” What are these conflicted questions? Sexuality is one, along with other matters, like “the authority of Scripture, faithfulness to tradition and the respect for the dignity of all.”

The project’s organizers recognize, however, that its outcome may not be actual “agreement” over these questions. Still, at least some agreement is hoped for; and where not agreement, then some “clarification of disagreement” such as to create more “positive missional relationships.” So, Indaba will seek consensus around conflicted questions that either leads to actual agreement on the matter at issue, or at least to a better understanding of the disagreement in a way that promotes closer cooperation in mission.

In what follows, I wish to reflect on how this approach might in fact play itself out on the first hard question mentioned, that of sexuality. (It is, after all, one upon whose difficulty subsequent discussions seem to founder.) What conflicts are resolvable in this way? And is sexuality one of them? And if so how, and if not, then what? Although I want to turn to scriptural examples, I also want to begin by laying out a way in which to locate the dynamics of consensus decision-making in general, as it might take place within organizations. And, of course, Anglican churches and the Anglican Communion as a group of churches are organizations, if of a particular kind. Thereby the scriptural examples can have some systematic purchase on our practical understanding for the Church. Thus, although this is not primarily a theological reflection, it provides material for that part of the theological task which is the proper articulation of God’s encounter with human practical behavior.

B. Hirschman’s Model

So let me outline what I consider to be a persuasive account of how disagreement presents and resolves itself variously within organizations in general. To do so, I will make use of a secular description, that given in Albert Hirschman’s influential 1970 volume Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970). Hirschman’s book is initially about business firms, but he applies his model — and others have also done so — to a range of membership organizations: political parties, nations even; and, of course, churches. His basic idea, deceptively simple, is this:

Organizations deal with challenges and dissension through a proper (and it varies by situation) balance between the loyalty of customers/workers/members and the exit of the dissatisfied. The place of “voice” in this balance is important, but again, varied: voice (the ability to question, inform, deliberate, engage in and influence decision-making) is necessary for internal critique and reform; too much voice, however, can be disruptive. “Exit” is encouraged through the provision of many choices, under circumstances where voice is constrained; it is discouraged by either loyalty, lack of choice (say, for instance, extremes in a political party, with no other parties as real choices), or coercion.

Finally, there are the situations where dissension and the exercise of dissenting voice is bound to the satisfaction of the struggle itself — “movement politics” is about this, for instance, and choice is not at issue, but rather the struggle itself is what gives energy, and the struggle itself, then, becomes an ethical act on its own. Even in religion, this is a factor for some. So, in a much less sweeping way, there are those in churches for whom dissent and conflict within an organization is itself a part of engaging the fulfillment of membership.

In the best situations, in any case, exit is a “safety valve” for “too much voice” or too great a level of internal dissatisfaction; it releases from the organization’s system tensions and conflicts that, if left in place, would destroy the whole and ruin individual integrity. So governments themselves are sometimes willing to let go of the dissatisfied, e.g., 17th-century Puritan emigration from Britain, Soviet Jewish emigration in the 1970s, Cuban emigration, and so on. There is, to be sure, a kind of emotional “exit” as well, when — for lack of choice — members simply drop out of engagement, through a form of acquiesced marginalization.

One key point in all of this is that the greater provision of choice makes exit more and more likely, and at a certain point, organizations start losing what would otherwise be perhaps constructive dissent, as well as the gifts of those who embody it. The departure from France of Protestants after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the late 17th century is an example of this, and it crippled French culture into the future in many key ways. (To be sure, in this last case, it was not so much “choice” that was at issue, but a deeply misguided expulsion.) Indeed, too much choice undercuts both loyalty and voice, except in special situations.

We might note as well situations in which voice has been constrained but exit is not possible in a sustained way — whole peoples (e.g., large minorities or even disenfranchised majorities [one can think of the Balkans or certain nations in Africa]), who either cannot leave a country, or whose refugee status elsewhere is unmanageable. Loyalty is less an issue here than are the perceived or real needs for survival. Civil war is usually the outcome to such convergences of restrictions on both voice and exit. Sometimes — often only after the exhaustion of civil war — negotiated settlements can be reached, motivated by the need to avoid further bloodshed (see, for instance, the work by Donald Rothschild and Philip G. Roeder). These represent interesting cases of “consensual” decision-making (e.g., South Africa) among previously “irreconcilable” parties. But they are rarely useful models for church disagreements, apart from state intervention, because their single purpose initially is to avoid murder rather than agree upon religious commitments, let alone worship together. (I bring this up because there have been attempts to create parallels between such negotiated political agreements between hostile parties within a single nation, on the one hand, and internal church discussions on the other. These attempts strike me as, on the whole, category mistakes.)

One of the things that Hirschman’s model explains — something most people know intuitively in any case — is that in most organizations what we know as “consent” by members is often only very “thin”: either consent represents the lack of choice in the face of constrained voice (it is a suffered consent) or it represents the outcome to an appeasing policy, constantly shifting, in the face of too ready access to exit in response to easily available alternative choices. To this extent, “procedural justice,” in the sense of a robust framework of regulated debate, deliberation, and decision, with the regular possibility of subsequent revisitation of a controverted matter — a liberal political notion—may be an ideal that has little value in a culture of easy choice. For persevering in the engagement of “procedures” demands loyalty and committed voice both, and both of these are diluted by too much choice. On the other hand, it is precisely when procedures are no longer trusted, or when their engagement does not in fact give constructive scope to voice, that they are abandoned, whether physically or emotionally. (The real analogies with the Anglican Communion are here obvious.) Finally, Hirschman’s model locates what one might call the option of “conscientious disobedience” (discussed below) as either a form of engaged marginalization or as a form of participation that is fed by conflict, but that nonetheless does not abandon loyalty for exit.

One can readily see parallels here with dynamics that are being played out in Anglican churches and in the Communion. My purpose, however, is not to dwell on these details, but to move on to the more general issues of churches and the debate over sexuality.

C. The Church: new thresholds of participation

Taking up some of the key aspects of Hirschman’s model, we can return to the case of the Church or of churches. In general, it seems clear that membership in a church is sustained by loyalty (leaving aside the divine motives for such loyalty). And that the balance between loyalty and voice may vary, depending on the perceived needs of members.

But even in churches, loyalty can be subverted when voice is reduced, especially in times where the church faces challenges. Sixteenth-century Europe offers a good example. One of the most significant transitions in the early modern period of the Western Church, one that now defines religious affiliation in general, is the explosion of alternative ecclesial choices. (We should note that, for Anglicans in particular, this factor has grown in significance recently, with the emergence of alternative Anglican ecclesial bodies standing alongside existing ones. This factor — earlier “continuing churches,” the AMiA, ACNA, GAFCON, TEC’s own putative “international communion,” etc. — should not be underestimated as a process-changing element.) This, understandably, has lowered the sustenance threshold of loyalty to a given church: exit becomes easier, and more readily taken advantage of, in a religiously plural and tolerant society. The amount and kind of voice sought after by Christians in their church also changes in the expanding market of ecclesial options: often, members of churches want more voice, and it takes little resistance to such desires to elicit an exit. Recent studies, e.g., by the Pew Foundation, have shown that this pattern has become more prominent within the ranks of all American Christian denominations and traditions over the past few years, including the more “catholic” traditions.

D. The “Hard Question” of Sexuality among Anglican Churches: what are the options?

Now, moving to the particular situation of the debate over sexual behavior within Anglican churches: how does this hard question sit within the shifting balances of loyalty and voice within our churches? Consensus would come into play when dissenting voices to this or that state of affairs or church policies (including teaching) resolved themselves into a renewed commitment of loyalty to the church. So, with respect to this particular question, we might ask: about what is there debate, and about what might consensus be achieved? The proper place of expressed same-sexuality in the church? Partnered bishops for a given diocese? How much voice needs to be granted around all this to preserve loyalty and prevent exit? Is it possible that in fact a procedural consensus can be pursued and achieved that would maintain the balance?

I have argued before that consensus around the “proper place” of, e.g., same-sex unions cannot be had in the church of the West today, and as a result the resolution of dissenting voice in Western churches is unlikely in any first-order fashion. And we can see, following Hirschman’s model, why this must be the case: because of the intervention of the secular state on the matter of same-sexuality in many Western nations, voice and dissension have in fact been practically ruled out as having constructive capacity. This intervention has rendered impossible a balanced ecclesial debate and possible consensus, in the sense of minds coming together (and therefore changing). Because of enacted civil legislation permitting and protecting these same-sex relationships, gay unions/marriages and families (via surrogate conception and gestation or adoption) are now legitimized and upheld by the state, rooted in social ties, and therefore ensconced within the membership of many church bodies.

What then is left to be discussed and consensually decided in this situation? Is it the question of whether membership of civilly married gay couples is to be permitted in the church? But if this were an actual discussion, with broad scope for voice, and thereby developed decision-making, this would mean that it is at least possible that those churches where such persons (i.e., same-sex couples) are now members could in fact decide to throw them out (or at least impose membership limitations), or conversely that those who disagree could come to change their mind and agree to their continued unlimited membership.

Such “change of mind” on the part of either group is theoretically possible, but pragmatically unrealistic. For given the practical realities of a socially and legally upheld same-sex relationship, only one group can be allowed to change their mind, and thus only one outcome is actually possible within most Western societies as a consensually achieved result: viz., that those who disagree with continued full membership would change their minds. And is such an outcome in fact one that reflects an open-ended consensual process?

Let us return to Hirschman’s model. At this point, because of the intervention of the state in legitimizing actual same-sex families, complete with children and their assumed obligations, voice (in the sense of decision-making power) has effectively been constrained: families will not, because they cannot in this society, be broken up. Furthermore, churches are now subject to civil litigation, with at least a prima facie plausibility of losing, if they choose to discriminate against the full membership privileges of same-sex couples.

There are therefore three real options for the Western church around this hard question: loyalty trumps disagreement (i.e., those who oppose the membership of partnered gays subordinate their disagreement to their church loyalty, and somehow tolerate the alternative); dissent is coercively marginalized, or eliminated through various means (e.g., those who oppose the full church membership of partnered gays are refused voice or positions of leadership or decision-making, or resources, in a way analogous to their desired membership limitations on same-sex couples): or exit (i.e., those who oppose the full membership of partnered gays leave the church altogether, either for some other church or for none).

If these are the real options in this situation in Western Anglican churches, the consensus-seeking discussion around sexuality in the Church cannot be about the proper place of same-sexuality within the Christian Church (a first-order question), but will instead be about what to do with an asymmetrically entrenched set of commitments (i.e., a disagreement that takes place within a disequilibrium of power) within the Church itself. In this case, I therefore suggest, Indaba can at best “clarify disagreement” — not only that it exists and of what kind, but what to do with it (that is, where it leads). It remains, furthermore, a real question as to whether this kind of disagreement can be clarified in a way that strengthens missional relationship, largely because the “exit” strategies pursued by some are likely to disrupt rather than strengthen such relationships.

Finally, we should be aware that the dynamics within the world Communion, among various Anglican churches, is related to the above, although the weight of relationships, and the constraints on voice and exit are very different. By and large, Western churches are in the minority view on the matter of sexuality, but also have demonstrated the capacity, for various reasons, to control voice. Exit has been the choice of some conservative Anglican churches; while, as the dynamics of control over voice begin to shift against them, Western churches, like TEC, begin to consider exit on their own terms. The Communion, however, has been built primarily on loyalty, and here the rise of putative alternative communions begins to prove unsettling. The balance of exit, voice, and loyalty is, as in most cases and especially here, very complex and unpredictable, affected by changing attitudes, new projection of various kinds of leadership, changing economic and legal contexts, and malleable self-understandings among participants. Still, the general dynamics currently at work are fairly straightforward.

E. Scriptural examples of decision-making

At this point, let us turn to scriptural example. By looking at how “disagreements” are engaged in Scripture, we can perhaps help answer this last question. I will provide some simple, if broadly sketched, exemplars.

1. consensus decision-making around open-ended disagreement: Probably the most attractive kind of scriptural example will be one that demonstrates the people of God dealing with a difficult matter, around which there is disagreement, and then coming to a common mind and, from this, a commonly upheld decision. There is a sense in which this is what, in the first instance, Christians are after (cf. Jesus’ prayer in John 17). And probably the most prominent exemplar of such consensus decision-making is the gathering in Jerusalem, described in Acts 15, which sought agreement and made a decision regarding some of the demands placed upon Gentile believers.

We know that the disagreement was deep and heated. And the format of the gathering has been well-studied and broken down: there is a gathering of the “apostles and elders,” who hear the testimony and views of those in debate; there is consideration, and the search for coherence whose foundation lies in the Scriptures; there is finally a common acceptance of the leader’s (James’s) discerned decision that is attributed to the Holy Spirit’s work as being one and same with the Spirit’s scriptural witness. Much of the actual human process is evidently unreported in the account. Still, it is a winning picture of open-ended discussion, leading to consensus, through the “facilitation” of a leader and a faith in God’s more primary direction.

But the example here is important to understand in its context, for it would be wrong to assume that this way of proceeding is indeed possible or at least accessible to any church at any given time. For the context of the Jerusalem gathering — both rhetorically, and we may assume historically — lies in the thick description of the apostolic community and its growing church already given in the previous chapters of Acts. Indeed, this is what, to an extent, fills in the blanks of the “procedure.” And in particular, I would single out — as has the Church’s tradition — the description of this apostolic community in Acts 2 and 4:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:42–47).

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need (Acts 4:32–34).

These texts, with their use of vocabulary and imagery that overlaps with Acts 15, is clearly meant to describe the practical character of that church that actually makes a difficult and significant decision. And “practical” is indeed the issue here, in the sense of outlining the “procedures” of common life in which decisions are made. Hardly understood by the Church as a past “ideal” (contra some modern critics), Acts 2 and 4 became the touchstone for a range of renewal movements in the Church over the centuries. These movements include Augustine’s own community life, built into his Rule that is then disseminated in the West; the pursuit of the vita apostolica in the 11th to 13th centuries (including Franciscanism); the deeply influential retrieval of “primitive” holiness among Anglicans in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, including the model of the religious societies that so transformed Anglican mission; finally they reach into the charismatic renewal and the “new monasticisms” of the present (cf., the Fraternités de Jérusalem).

In all this is embodied the shape of the church within which consensus is achieved. And this shape is built around regular gathering, devotion and submission to an apostolic center of teaching, the sharing of the Eucharist, persistent prayer together, and the sharing of property. Out of this comes “one mind and one heart.” And it is important to understand, then, that Acts 15 is possible because of such a shaped church of regular practice, and that consensus emerges from within it. The shape of the church is not the result of consensus, but rather the opposite genetic relation pertains.

Hence, consensus of the kind envisioned in Acts 15 presupposes something already existent. Without it, the bare procedural elements of counsel just as easily become the tool of deception and judgment, as in 1 Kings 22, when God actually makes use of a “lying spirit” to mislead those who search for God’s will with a seeming genuineness.

And it is just this shape to the church described in Acts 2 and 4 that has now seemingly slipped through the fingers of the Anglican Communion. I need not go through the elements enumerated above as applied to our “common” life; suffice it to say that on the most tangible of levels — the sharing of the Eucharist and the holding of shared property — it is obvious that Anglicanism is no longer either “a” church or a set of churches capable of reaching a consensus in the Spirit. While it may be possible to see such a church one day restored, such restoration is not so much a question of discernment as it is dependent upon the power of God apart from human discernment.

So, if this example no longer fits our situation, what other scriptural examples may?

2. entrenched disagreement: This is disagreement within the people of God that admits of no free movement toward consensus. And this, presumably, is the kind of disagreement that an Indaba process might seek to clarify, without however resolving. Within Scripture, there are various ways that entrenched disagreement has been dealt with:

a. coercive marginalization, in the sense of restricting the voice of one party to the disagreement.

i. Numbers 12: Miriam and Aaron are at odds with Moses over his leadership. Having voiced this disagreement and opposition, Miriam is punished by God with leprosy, which is designed to constrain future dissension, as indeed it does.

ii. Prophetic marginalization (cf. Amos and Jeremiah), whereby those who voice disagreement — with the king, with the religious establishment and so on — are threatened, demeaned, imprisoned, and in some cases (cf. Matthew 3:34ff’s list) killed. The deliberate acceptance by dissidents of the coercive elements here can represent what today we would call “conscientious objection.” One might wish to place this as a separate response (see below), although it must be said that it is rare that such objections do not end in the actual disappearance of the objectors altogether (although, as in some of great modern movements of popular rights, in India, South Africa, and the United States, that is not always the case — something worth bearing in mind).

iii. The early apostles themselves, in their denunciation of the authorities’ treatment of Jesus, are similarly constrained, imprisoned, and in some cases killed.

It should be stressed that, in the context of these examples, what is at issue are situations where discussion, by definition, will not and even (from the perspective of divine truth and vocation) should not be open-ended: only one party is in the right, and the other must either repent, as it were, or be silenced, although in all these situations, it is the divine voice that is coerced into a hoped-for reticence, even as its utterance is an entrenched and immovable demand.

But such coercive response to entrenched disagreement is not the only one demonstrated within the Scriptures

b. exit: just as Hirschman suggested, exit is also a response to constrained voice within the Scriptures.

i. Gamaliel’s advice in Acts 5:33ff. is a form of suggested exit that is in fact followed up on: “keep away from these men,” he advises, and “they took his advice.” This kind of separation, in this case an enforced separation, is repeated several times in the book of Acts, e.g., when Paul walks away from the Jews finally in 18:6: “your blood be upon your heads! … From now on I will go to the Gentiles!” In these cases, there is no “room” for an adjustment of commitment in either party, but there is room to leave (unlike the cases above in a.); there are, in other words, choices available, even perhaps invented ones as in the case of Gamaliel.

ii. Paul and Barnabas choose exit to deal with their “contention” in Acts 15:36ff, and go their separate ways. (It appears that at least the subject of this contention was later resolved — cf. Col. 10 — although there is no evidence that Paul and Barnabas themselves ever reconciled). In this case, Barnabas is presumably too tied to his kinsman Mark to give in to Paul, and exit is possible simply because there is a great world wide open for various missionary endeavors that do not require ongoing cooperation.

iii. The Letters of John contain various references to exit within the church: 1 John 2:19; 1 John 10; 3 John 10. That the early Christian church was already a place of fissure and, to that degree, choices — ones permitted or ignored by at least the civil authorities — makes the situation here closer to our own in many ways.

c. active disobedience: disobedience may be an alternative to marginalization on the one hand and exit on the other. The dissident party simply does not comply but it does so out of a certain kind of loyalty to the body to which it is disobedient. Thus, the dissent and disobedient party also insists upon paying the penalty and it does so to make clear that its disagreement is not a rejection of a more fundamental loyalty.

i. many of the prophets followed this path, e.g., Elijah in his relationship with Ahab. By and large, however, Elijah’s disobedience included flight and hiding more than the acceptance of the penalty, so the example is not perfect. Jeremiah represents a more obvious form of disobedience with accepted consequences, although in his case these consequences probably ended in his own demise, and therefore represent a final “marginalization.”

ii. Jesus is clearly an exemplar of this attitude. Like Jeremiah, the accepted penalty is death. More obviously than Jeremiah, however, the final outcome is not only death, but new life, if in a way that is strategically (because metaphysically) decoupled from the disobedience itself: resurrection is not a logical outcome to conscientious objection! In any case, Jesus’ exemplar points to (F.c) below, and stands as a decision internal to his own vocation, quite apart from common discernment. He does not need to consult, either with his friends let alone with his opponents. That might not be the case, however, for his followers.

iii. The Apostles, in Acts 5:27–32, provide a more classic example of disobedience and accepted penalty, “obeying God and not human authority.” The outcome to this disobedience, however, is not consistent, and (as noted above) in one instance gives rise to a form of “exit.”

F. The Anglican churches’ scriptural paths

If we accept that Anglicans are in a situation of entrenched disagreement over the hard question of sexuality — and I have argued that we are — then the examples above can show us what are the matters that Indaba, as it were, might helpfully address. As I see it, they are the following:

a. what are the dynamics at work in our disagreement? Since I am only proposing a personal judgment about what they are, I assume there are views other than mine out there(!), and these need to be discussed so as to “clarify” the disagreement. Having done this, however, and assuming we all acknowledge the nature of the entrenched disagreement we are in, then we have yet to reach some consensus on a response. Since I imagine most Christians today agree that coercive marginalization of dissenting voices is not a desirable response, we would need to come to agreement on:

b. terms of exit. This would be a useful consensus to achieve in many current situations in North America especially. Attempts have been made by the larger Communion (and generally in a rather timid way) to at least facilitate such discussion, but these have failed — largely, perhaps, because a mediation model was used by those who had not really accepted its premises from the start. In any case, it is also possible that Indaba about terms of exit would be helpful within the Communion at large. Although this was certainly not my original vision for the Covenant, perhaps one thing that the Covenant “process” is in fact doing, despite itself, is embodying just such a discussion about the “terms of exit” from the Communion. I imagine, however, that more forthright ways could and should be found.

Finally, one might consider Indaba within entrenched disagreement as engaging a:

c. discussion of the terms of “loyalty.” This is the only really theological point within this argument. In Christian terms, such a discussion has to do with whether those marginalized will see a greater value to maintaining membership than in holding on to their convictions in an exclusively focused fashion. Adapting one’s convictions toward an underlying loyalty to the common church can be achieved according to varying models: all the way from, on national analogies, negotiating regions of autonomy within a larger entity (this is the model, e.g., of “flying bishops” and, to an extent, Communion Partner Dioceses, etc.); to persistent and well-publicized agitation (one would probably need to fall into that group that finds meaning in struggle in order for this to work); to agreeing to suffer the demise of the material structures upheld by one’s conscience — a form of martyrdom, to be sure, where one “counts everything as loss for the sake of …,” in this case, for the sake of a notion of loyalty to the church, in entrenched disagreement, that somehow embodies the reality of Christ.

One way of describing this last option would be to say that one group — in this case, whichever group feels driven to consider strategies of exit — determines to continue to be a living example of (1.) above (Acts 2 and 4), as if God would empower its form — gathering, devoting, apostolic centering upon, breaking bread, praying, giving away — even when there is no reciprocal character at work within the whole church; even when, that is, there is no integral church that could ever sustain actual consensus. To repeat, this is a kind of ecclesial martyrdom. It may well include a form of disobedience via a vis the authorities in control, as well as including an accepted penalty, giving oneself up to God’s initiating judgment, after the example of Jesus (cf. 1 Peter 2:21–23). In a sense, we are talking about a kind of voluntary and active embrace of coerced marginalization, such that the coercive reality is itself unhinged and disarmed. This is, paradoxically, still an ”exit,” because it is a choice made without reference to the will of the other party; indeed, it is made explicitly contrary to the will of the other party, as if living in another world (“my Kingdom is not of this world; if it were of this world my servants would fight” [John 18:36]). The onlookers seek from him a desperate demonstration of his failure, crying out, “he saved others, let him save himself!” (cf. Matt. 27:42); Pilate asks that he plead for mercy (“do you not know that I have power to release you and power to crucify you?” [John 19:10); one thief challenges him, “save yourself, and us!” (Luke 23:39). Jesus’ choice, in this one case, is made apart from all other human choices.

A major question here is who should be in discussion about something like (c.)? Is this an Indaba for both parties to an entrenched disagreement, or only for the one who might decide to be martyred for their loyalty? I tend to think that, while the decision for such a path is for only one party to make, nonetheless it would be at least interesting to share in a discussion about it with those who have, as it were, remained in the “kingdom of this world” vis a vis the other party. It would further, in any case, the notion of testimony that the embrace of this option assumes. From the Indaba perspective, it is probably not necessary.

And finally we should recognize that we will need to deal with another kind of asymmetry here: discussions within a given local church (e.g., TEC or Canada) represent one kind of asymmetry; but discussions within the network of churches of the Anglican Communion may well engage an opposite dynamic, for here, arguably, the character of membership, voice, etc. is very different (as mentioned above in D.), and therefore the roles assumed by the disagreeing parties — at least as linked to positions on sexuality — may well be reversed in certain respects.

In sum, the conditions for a consensus-building Indaba are probably not present within Anglicanism on the hard question of sexuality. For various reasons, disagreement is entrenched, and the constraints on voice are asymmetrical in their force. Instead, what Indaba may prove useful for is building a consensus around terms of exit or around the character of loyalty that might rightly trump the need for exit. This last, however, can only base itself on the difficult decision made by the party who is considering such exit, independent of the views and motives of the other. Personally, it is to this last choice that I would turn my own spiritual and theological attention.
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As a result, there is a spirit of gloom and doom over the city of Kampala and the people of Uganda. Many people are bereaved; parents and children have been separated; brothers and sisters, lovers and friends are all feeling a great sense of loss and there is great pain.

This act of malice and hatred towards mankind is completely ungodly, especially towards innocent and unsuspecting persons. I condemn this act in the strongest terms possible and hope to see the perpetrators of this hideous crime brought to justice.

In the meantime, I call upon each one of us to desist from anger and revenge; this will only perpetuate the pain we already feel. Revenge is not a solution and neither is a sectarian approach to this problem helpful.

Let us instead now focus our energies on being a part of the fight against terrorism in our country. Each one of you can use your eyes as a great weapon to fight this evil. Even as we do so, let us not breed unnecessary suspicion against one another but instead seek for the common goal of a peaceful and just society. Remember a peaceful society is the right of every one regardless of their age, race, gender or religious inclination.

It may cost this nation a lot to try and be a good neighbor to the Somalis who are struggling to have a governable nation.

To the bereaved, I extend my sincere condolences. We share in your pain and wish you God’s comfort during this difficult time.

And to the entire nation, I ask you to fix your eyes on the cross of Jesus. The cross is a reminder of human cruelty to an innocent person; the agony of pain He went through enables Him to share in our pain as well. He had to pay a price for us to receive our freedom. The blood of the Ugandans spilled on Sunday will bring to Ugandans peace.

Perpetrators may not know what they are doing but Jesus prayed a powerful prayer, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” Yet with this blood on their hands, the Righteous God will be the one to avenge our cause while human justice will also take its course.

For indeed our help comes from the Lord as Psalm 46:1 says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.”

I pray for the President, his Cabinet, the Members of Parliament, the Police and all Security Agencies as they address this challenge. May God’s wisdom direct you and give you victory over the enemies of our people. And may Ugandans remain united during such a trying time.

The Peace of God be over this nation now and forever.
For God and my country!

The Most Rev. Henry Luke Orombi
Archbishop of the Church of Uganda and Bishop of Kampala Diocese
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Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori’s response has criticized Archbishop Williams’ decision on several grounds. Here, let me address just three of her objections: first, that the Archbishop’s actions represent a move towards “centralization” within the Communion, viewed especially in terms of the application of “sanctions” against member churches; second, that in removing TEC members from the Communion commissions in question, the Archbishop has somehow acted as if the proposed Anglican Covenant now before the Communion’s churches were already in effect when it is not; third, that a proper understanding of the Communion’s life would entail the maintenance of diversity among Anglican churches, rather than the (punitive) pursuit of “uniformity.”

A common framework for ecclesial relationship?

These are all substantive issues, which I shall address one by one in a moment. But to do so requires some larger common framework by which to understand the kinds of terms in use. In this case, let me suggest a category for ecclesial relationships that is now known as the “Lund Principle,” named after the 1952 Third Conference of Faith and Order held in Lund (Sweden) where the “principle” was first enunciated. The principle is this: Christian churches should do together all things that can be done together, and do separately only that which must be done separately. This appeal was made, in the Lund Report, not as a normative rule, but as a descriptive one that must be understood in terms of the greater Christian vocation to unity in all things, and “separation” in as little as possible. Indeed, Lund was challenging the churches to a concrete unitive life, not the acceptance of the status quo of division: “a faith in the one church of Christ that is not implemented by acts of obedience is dead,” the Conference wrote.

So, for Lund, the issues here had to do with the fullness of Christian life, not just compartments of it; and thus, “acting together” was a matter of faith and order — ministerial order and discipline — and vice versa. Furthermore, “acting separately” was viewed as something that, for whatever granted convictions, stood as a barrier to unity. (The division within the early ecumenical movement between “Life and Work” and “Faith and Order” is, in this light, deemed obviously artificial and ultimately misleading.) Indeed, Lund over and over challenged the churches to self-criticism over these matters: the “compulsion” to “act separately” was often one that grew out of sin, rather than a pure conscience. So the Lund Principle is as much (or, even more) a negative judgment on the churches as it is a permissive direction.

I bring up the Lund Principle for a simple reason: TEC formally accepted it (as did the Lambeth Conference), and agreed to its application to all facets of its life. Hence, its terms and meanings, at least in theory, represent a shared framework for assessing ecclesial relationships. At the General Convention of 1976 (A034), TEC resolved the following:

And in the spirit of the “Lund Principle” approved by our church’s delegates and others attending the World Conference on Faith and Order in 1952 and affirmed by the 1968 Lambeth Conference, that the Episcopal Church at every level of its life be urged to act together and in concert with other churches of Jesus Christ in all matters except those in which deep differences of conviction or church order compel us to act separately; and be it further

Resolved, That in all future presentations of budget and program to this General Convention, consideration be given to what efforts have been expended to secure data ecumenically and to plan ecumenically; and be it further

Resolved, That the dioceses be urged to establish a similar policy of ecumenical review and planning.

(I note that the final two “resolves” direct both the national office and diocesan churches to frame their lives — “budget and program” — in terms of ecumenical consultation and planning, precisely a matter at issue in the last 10 years of TEC’s life.)

In her June 2 Pastoral Letter to TEC, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori noted the following:

The Episcopal Church recognizes that [its] decisions [regarding Glasspool’s consecration] are problematic to a number of other Anglicans. We have not made these decisions lightly. We recognize that the Spirit has not been widely heard in the same way in other parts of the Communion. In all humility, we recognize that we may be wrong, yet we have proceeded in the belief that the Spirit permeates our decisions.

Using the Lund Principle framework, we can see that TEC’s Presiding Bishop has now made it clear that TEC feels “compelled to act separately.” The significance of this declaration cannot be overstated.

In itself, this declaration need not involve a “value judgment,” for it is but a description of a church’s actions vis a vis other churches. More than that, however, such a description entails the ordering of an altered relationship with these other churches. Recognizing this helps us see that Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori does not seem to grasp that such separate actions may not be coherent with continued unity in its fullness, but that, for whatever justified local “compulsions,” they must affect the kind of unity that will be enjoyed with others. Add to this, however, that Communion leaders have in fact judged TEC’s actions to be unacceptable Scripturally and doctrinally, and TEC’s desire to “go ahead” anyway makes the “separateness” of their decisions unavoidably compromising of unity, whatever TEC’s own judgments of the matter may be.

This is not a matter of evaluating in advance what is “essential” and what is “non-essential” to ecclesial unity — that, after all, is a matter that only the whole church can decide. It is rather a matter of stating the obvious: insisted separateness must imply embodied separateness of a kind, and such separateness is not the same as unity. That is the Lund Principle at work! One might even go further, as Archbishop Williams wrote in his Pentecost Letter: “To maintain outward unity at a formal level while we are convinced that the divisions are not only deep but damaging to our local mission is not a good thing.”

Ecumenical discussions, of course, presuppose that such separations exist — if they did not, there would be no discussions in the first place. But as Lund itself stressed, no church can escape responsibility for such separations, however conscientiously pursued or maintained. Ecumenical engagement demands such sobering honesty, as well as every effort to resolve the challenges posed by those actions about which honesty is required.

But it is also clear that the parallel between ecumenical relations and relations within the Anglican Communion can be misleading: the Communion’s churches, so the very notion of “communion” entails, exist in a real “oneness” in an ecclesial sense; while ecumenical relations derive from an acknowledged imperfection within and obstacle to such oneness. Still, the line of difference between the two is historically ever shifting, as we see today. And in both cases — within ecumenical relationships and within Anglicanism as a “Communion” — the ecclesiological standards of communion are understood as being the same. If they were not, the difference between a communion on the one hand, and an ecumenical relationship that is challenged to go further, on the other, could never be made.

Thus, one confusion in the current debate within Anglicanism is that the Communion is often treated (as by the Presiding Bishop) as an ecumenical partnership; another, is that the principles that govern “communion” and “ecumenical partnership” are not properly identified. This has led, on the part of Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori for instance, to a fundamental misunderstanding, it seems to me, of the ecclesiological reality of communion: contra Jefferts Schori, in a “communion it is not up to one member to declare that their actions are without meaning to another or to the majority or to the whole. Such a member can only say that it “must do” what it does, and thereby accept the fact that it has acted separately, with all the consequences of such separation. Within the civil sphere, this is called “civil disobedience”: citizens who share a commonwealth, yet disagree in conscience with some fact of its ordering, “disobey” an aspect of that ordering; at the same time, they accept the responses of the state made to their disobedience, precisely because they acknowledge and submit to the civil society’s common embrace of their lives. In the Church, such conscientious separation entails the acceptance of developing degrees of disunity as embodied in one’s own relationships with others.

Yet the Presiding Bishop’s letter, and subsequent statements, seems to ignore these ecclesiological meanings, in favor of another theology of the church, which one might call a theology of “pneumatic diversity” that has little bearing on questions and realities of unity. This may indeed be a theology that has coherence in the long run — although I do not see how it can, on both Scriptural and historical grounds –but it certainly is not a theology that undergirds the ecumenical understandings of communion that TEC has, in the past, upheld and undertaken to uphold within the Anglican Communion.

And it is important to grasp this novel notion the Presiding Bishop has put forward, of diversity as unity, rather than “separated action as disunity,” because its novelty explains the otherwise incoherent arguments Jefferts Schori makes regarding TEC’s drift away from representative standing within the Communion.

In this light, let us look at Jefferts Schori’s objections to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s decisions regarding the removal of TEC members from ecumenical and faith and order commissions.

Centralization and sanctions

The Presiding Bishops accuses Williams of seeking some kind of “centralized” authority, and exercising it in an “unanglican” manner. This objection ignores a host of historical and ecclesial realities. Most importantly, the particular issues dealt with have to do with TEC’s representative character within the Communion; but Jefferts Schori has herself admitted that there is nothing representative about TEC’s views on these matters at hand: TEC has chosen to act “separately,” which is by definition to act “on its own.”

That the Communion has always understood its character as a gathered body to be one based on some kind of fundamental common face to the world is historically uncontroversial. It finds its expressed origin in the beginnings of TEC itself, as it sought to order its life, newly independent of the Church of England. The need for recognition of shared doctrinal and moral standards, without “stumbling blocks,” goes back to the 1786 letter from Canterbury and the English bishops to the new Episcopal Church, a letter that affirmed such shared standards as necessary for e.g. providing ministerial testimonials, and thus for the sake of continued “communion” (“spiritual” in this case). The American Prayer Book’s Preface reiterated this general understanding of related identity (using the term “discipline” in the way that “order” is used today), and the church passed, in 1786, an “Act of General Convention” “declaring [TEC’s] steadfast resolution to maintain the same essential Articles of Faith and discipline with the Church of England.” Soon after, these kinds of matters were ensconced canonically, in something like the 1789 canon (IX) on the matters of recognition of orders and of episcopal “authority” of a [foreign] bishop, upon whose “testimonial” to the mutually understood doctrinal integrity and “moral” character of clergy depended “communion” with TEC. Successive Lambeth Conferences (beginning with Lambeth 1867, Resolution 8 ) reiterated in different ways the fact that to be a member of the “Anglican Communion” embodied shared doctrinal and practical commitments, bound genetically to the Church of England’s original bequest. And just on this basis, TEC itself affirmed, at its General Convention in 1868, the first Lambeth Conference’s Encyclical regarding that common bequest. It defined the bequest in terms of an “acknowledgment” of “one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, […] connected by common Formularies,” and expressed in the Scriptures, Creeds, commitments of the “primitive church” and agreements of the first four General Councils. (These elements have informed the some of the Covenant’s substance.)

Indeed, TEC at the time joined in the kind of “sanctions” Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori now decries as “unanglican,” by “reminding” observers of its common repudiation of the South African bishop, John William Colenso’s, erroneous views regarding Scripture: “this Church accepts the full spiritual validity of the deposition and excommunication of Dr. Colenso, pronounced by the Metropolitan and Bishops of the South African Church ; and we will regard him as deposed and excommunicate accordingly, until he shall so turn from his errors, and be restored to full communion by the Church of South Africa, which God of His infinite mercy grant” (1868, 20th day). In doing this, TEC’s House of Bishops was announcing what they had already effectively done as a gathered body of “communion” bishops at the Lambeth Conference of the preceding year: upholding the actions of the Canterbury Convocation with respect to South Africa on a world-wide Anglican basis of shared episcopal discernment and decision. The interplay of unity, recognizability and separateness is here clearly at work.

By 1868, then, the Rev. William Lamson, who headed the new American Episcopal congregation in Paris, could report to the General Convention on the gathering of American and English bishops and priests at his church the previous year: this was a symbol, he announced, “of the essential oneness and complete intercommunion of these two branches of the Church. By an alteration of services in both uses, and by the conjoint ministrations of the Bishops and Clergy of both Churches, this unity was completely declared.” That Lamson was describing this “Church” in terms of the Communion itself is likely. But in any case, it was recognized and interchangeable ministries that marked this “essential” oneness, a oneness that expressed itself in the earlier Lambeth Conference’s gathered life in action.

TEC’s own understanding of her identity in this regard has been consistent with this, until very recently, as the 1967 Preamble to the Constitution (drawn from the language of the 1930 Lambeth Conference) makes clear: the Preamble defines TEC primarily, not as an American denomination at all, but in terms of her membership in the Communion, and in relation to an “historical faith and order” that it shares with other members of this “fellowship,” bound to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

And so, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has, after more than 7 years of consultation with various groups and commissions and “instruments of unity” within the Communion, merely stated a consistent judgment regarding TEC’s actions: they are actions that, in contrast to a given identity from the past, have now been taken “separately” from the Communion’s common self-presentations. In removing TEC representatives from ecumenical and faith-and-order groups within the Communion, he has hardly pressed towards a “centralization” of control over the Communion. Rather, he has thus articulated a fact that is well known and admitted by Jefferts Schori herself: TEC has acted, in conscience, separately from others. And in doing this, the “unity” of the Communion’s life has been altered at least in this regard. It makes perfectly good sense for TEC to engage in any discussions it may desire with other Christians, as they in turn are willing to engage; but it no longer makes any logical sense for TEC to speak out of the unity of the Communion’s views, such as they are. Canon Kearon’s own remarks regarding such discussions in light of TEC’s actions — that “they are at the point of collapse” — indicate that the larger Communion’s ecumenical partners understood this the same way.

Is the Archbishop preempting the Covenant’s adoption?

It should be clear that the Covenant, in this regard, does not represent the invention of a new set of dynamics. Rather, as has been the claim from the beginning of the Covenant’s formulation, it seeks to express the character of the Communion already in place, if not always defined explicitly. To describe the actions Archbishop Williams’ decisions, let alone of the Covenant’s proposed common accountability, as based on a “punitive” model of the Church seems, again, historically in error, as noted above: the “bonds” of “communion” among what became the Anglican churches, were those of “acting in unity”; their solidity has been measured inversely to concrete actions made in “separation.” And such “separation,” when it is accomplished through deliberate action, is a term of description, not of punishment.

Do the churches of the Anglican Communion need to wait for a Covenant to know this? Hardly. For how could we thereby make sense of e.g. TEC’s 19th-century affirmation of the Church of England’s and South Africa’s excommunication of Bp. Colenso, and its engagement at the Lambeth Conference in these matters? Indeed, it is important to realize that the Anglican Communion’s emergence as an entity — referred to for the first time, it seems (and by Americans first of all?) only in the 1850s — gathers decisional substance only bit by bit, with discussion but without rancor or dispute, because the character of unity in doctrine and discipline was a presupposition, rather than an invention, to the members of the growing Communion. And, as a presupposition, the conditions of its meaning demanded ongoing fashioning of methods for its formal sustenance and definition, i.e. “standards” and structures.

But the standards and structures were expressive of, not creative of, a prior ordering of life. There were no constitutionally organized Communion legislatures that set up the Lambeth Conferences, or the ACC or the Primates’ Meeting, let alone consistent means by which Anglican representatives were chosen to head the Faith and Order movement (as Anglicans like Charles Henry Brent and William Temple did) and other bodies in an astonishing succession of world ecumenical leadership. Invitations were offered; ad hoc suggestions were made and channels of decision-making proposed and followed. No one questioned these gatherings, emerging structures, and representative choices as being without legislative foundation, largely because their articulation came out of an already acknowledged “unity.” It was only as decisions in separation were made by Communion churches (and here we do need to note that other churches besides TEC are representing the Lund Principle at work1), not once but in consistent repetition, that the question of “legitimation” was self-consciously posed, posed mostly, however, by those like TEC whose actions no longer engaged the coherent self-identity of other Anglican churches. But, as with Colenso’s appeal to the civil powers of England proved, such questions are raised in demonstration of the distance apart that churches had already moved, one from another.

It is not the case, therefore, that the proposed Covenant has somehow been prematurely implemented “against TEC”; the dynamics of unity and separation have been well-known within the Communion for some time. Rather, the ongoing character of Communion decision-making continues, without yet the regularized features a Covenant may provide. But when these features are provided, they will organize something already given.

The character of communion and diversity

Is all “diversity” of viewpoint the same thing as “separation”? The Presiding Bishop is right to bring up the question of appropriate “diversity” within the Communion. But it is also a question that Archbishop Williams has long grappled with as well. Only recently, he spoke in Durham (January 2009) on the ways that Anglicans have, from the early 16th-century, always sought ways of discovering and employing a shared language of consensus, that could properly place diverse particulars of religious commitment in a more universally recognizable framework. This has been an Anglican commitment and tradition, so that “while no external authority can be invoked to coerce the local church in the realm of England, this does not imply that that church’s doctrine and discipline are no-one’s business but its own.” In his November 2009 Willebrands Lecture at the Gregorian University in Rome, he challenged Roman Catholics to take more seriously such shared consensus about central ecclesial claims, not allowing a “diversity” in understandings of ordained leadership to undermine the deeper agreements Anglicans and Catholics have reached regarding the character of communion as a common means of “filial holiness” in Christ and with one another. This argument demonstrates a far subtler approach to the question than Jefferts Schori acknowledges, for it realizes that there are diversities that do not undercut certain recognizable agreed-upon commonalities; by the same token, however, such distorting diversities do exist. The point is to take the trouble together to make these distinctions, which cannot be assumed and require the work of consultation. And thus, in the recent Pentecost letter to which Jefferts Schori objects, Archbishop Williams sought to emphasize how diversity and “recognizability” within the Communion are not always, as now, mutually supportive characteristics, and that such consensually “acceptable” recognizability of shared faith and order must inform the Communion’s representatives as they seek common understandings with other Christians.

But the whole question of diversity and communion more broadly has been a consistent Anglican concern, at least since the late 18th-century English bishops required of the nascent Episcopal Church that she reorder her Prayer Book (e.g. replacing those parts stricken from the Americans’ proposed version of the Apostles’ Creed), if she wished to have her ministers and bishops “recognized” through a process of continuous succession with the English Church. It was still a question when the first Lambeth Conference met and resolved that “it is necessary that [newer Anglican churches] receive and maintain without alteration the standards of faith and doctrine as now in use in [the Church of England],” echoing in this instance TEC’s initial commitments from 1786. The bishops then explained that, nevertheless, “each province should have the right to make such adaptations and additions to the services of the Church as its peculiar circumstances may require.” Immediately, however, the bishops noted a proviso, “that no change or addition be made inconsistent with the spirit and principles of the Book of Common Prayer,” a standard that, if rather loose, at least pointed to a text. Further, the bishops insisted more concretely, “that all such changes be liable to revision by any synod of the Anglican Communion in which the said province shall be represented.” And here, obviously, “representation” is not viewed as a veto power for one’s own interests, but rather as a participatory role bounded by unitive action.

One can argue whether this Lambeth resolution was consistently followed through in a strict sense. And so, with respect to the broader diversity-unity question, the Communion has tended to address difficult issues on this score as they have arisen, rather than through a strict censorial mechanism, whether constitutional or confessional. But does this lack of a defined template that can measure when diversity becomes “too much,” or when the “recognizable becomes unrecognizable” indicate that in fact there is no means of discernment at all? Certainly not, since the dynamic of recognition — unity and separation — has performed this task quite adequately: when one church is no longer recognized as representing other Anglicans before the world, diversity has exceeded the measure of unity.

And, indeed, if the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, based on whatever means by which he has made this determination (in this case, years of consultation) no longer recognizes TEC as representative of the Communion that — for TEC and many other Anglican churches — is substantively defined by their bonds with him, then it is a simple descriptive fact that TEC’s particular convictions have undercut common Communion commitments. There is not some other mechanism that awaits application to reveal this fact. Indeed, the claim made by the Presiding Bishop that a Covenant is needed first before this can be done, — and therefore it cannot be done now — only underscores TEC’s choice to move to the side of previously acknowledged means of discernment regarding appropriate Christian diversity with the Communion, and to claim a kind of Communion chaos on this matter that even more desperately seeks some kind of covenantal resolution.

Finally, what are we to make of the fact that the Presiding Bishop and other leaders of TEC have long sought to undercut the strength of local diversity within the American Church — there are vast swaths of no-go zones in TEC for traditional and conservative Episcopal clergy and scholars, imposed quite consciously by bishops and the committees they lead? Or that they have now put in place disciplinary canons (the revised Title IV rules) that would give the Presiding Bishop the arguably unconstitutional power to inhibit fellow bishops without prior consultative permission? None of this suggests a stable understanding of the relationship between diversity and Christian unity, despite claims to the contrary in her Pastoral Letter. While the diversity-unity question deserves (and has received) significant Scriptural and theological scrutiny, its practical import is nonetheless contained within these kinds of “actions,” as Lund put it: one judges the character of a tree of unity by its fruit, if always somewhat retrospectively.

Owning one’s own actions with grace

In a real sense, both Archbishop Williams and Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori agree on how TEC’s actions relate to the Communion’s common life: they are actions taken separately from that life. What they disagree on is whether these actions thereby alter the degree of unity TEC now inhabits in relation to the Communion. Yet, as I have tried to illustrate, that alteration is an inevitable ecclesiological consequence that is bound up with acting separately, at least as such action is understood within the framework of ecclesial relationship that most churches have long accepted. That consequence is not one of punishment or juridical coercion. It is simply an essential aspect to separated actions. Nor are such actions as such “wrong,” although in this case the stated consensus of the Communion is that they are Scripturally illegitimate, which makes their insisted performance something that deliberately challenges the oneness of Anglican witness. Thus, considered by all sides, even by TEC, they are a mark of disunity. It is that mark, and that mark alone, that is being acknowledged now by the Archbishop. It would be another mark, the mark of graciousness, if the Presiding Bishop could, in this instance at least, agree with him on this point and accept the meaning of this reality.
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There was much talk about how these scattered churches might be able to purchase buildings and pay priests. The Diocese of Mid-America is a poor relation of the Diocese of the East, where in most cases buildings have been erected and clergy are full time.

While these people plan for a future which includes buildings, we in the Episcopal Church, rather like the USA, are faced with an aging infrastructure and little money to maintain our buildings, let alone diocesan and national church institutions and seminaries. We are stuck in the past. We just cannot envision Anglicanism without its trappings and so our time and money are spent on propping them up. Often our Victorian piles are no longer on sites best suited to evangelize the community. The secularized community outside our buildings has no more insight into what we do on Sundays than they do of what goes on in a Masonic lodge. They have little or no biblical knowledge and what they know about the church is largely based on the scandals they see revealed on CNN.

So we plan for mutual ministries, or team ministries, simply because we are too conservative and old-fashioned, too entrenched in what the Church has been for hundreds of years, to adapt to a new reality. The pattern we adhere to is that which emerged as America grew. It could be described as the “shopping mall” pattern. Our different denominations have offered their products to people who are shopping for something new, while attracting regular customers attached to our brand names. There has been for hundreds of years a sort of ecclesiastical game of musical chairs, in which the Episcopal Church has thrived by attracting upwardly mobile Christians uncomfortable in their less tasteful denominations. Our liturgy, musical tradition, ceremonial and culture have been the “store-window” attractions by which TEC grew and thrived.

The problem with this method, however we adapt to find cheaper ways to staff our “stores” or train our leaders, is that fewer and fewer people are visiting the mall. They are buying online. They are not attracted to our stores and see no connection between that which we show and sell with the lives they lead. Brought up to believe that something is only worthy if it serves “me” and only true if “I” believe it, the connection between organized Anglicanism and what for them is reality seems slim. This is not to suggest that this form of utilitarianism eschews mystery, or what might be termed “spirituality.” But such attractions are more a blend of sci-fi plots and new age programs. In some ways they resemble the sort of superstition the first Apostles encountered when they decided to evangelize the gentiles.

While history is said not to repeat itself, the church now is placed in a situation not unlike the one experienced in the first century. The impulse is to stay in the synagogue where familiarity breeds security. (Those who have left TEC like the APA or ACNA are busy trying to construct something which feels familiar.) The challenge of the decision of the Council of Jerusalem for the church is not that it is a paradigm for admitting same-sex couples, but that it presents a challenge to obey Jesus and actually “go into all the world” beginning in Jerusalem but soon going further.

That “further” is for most of us just round the corner. St. Paul looked for the academics in Athens or the pagan country folk in Lystra. In another place he hired a lecture hall because going to lectures was a popular thing to do. Our pressing task is to dare to evaluate our real estate for its utility as launching grounds for an “invasion” of secular life and culture. Our obsession with what we do “in church” and the safety and security of our “tradition” ironically obscures the mission of the church.

For many years we have been taught that evangelism is naughty, that sharing our faith and above all sharing Christ to others is an invasion of their “space.” We have not been so coy about invading their space with our social and political ideas! However, the task of the church is not to proselytize, a word misused, for the world we seek to speak to is no longer a world of “other faiths and religions” for a large part, and more and more a world of people with atomized vision and odd superstitions.

So far our impulse has been to conform to this secular culture hoping that a version of Christianity spiced up with the moral expectations and “spiritualistic” hobbies of the secular world will prove attractive. This approach is failing and failing dramatically. Conversion, however defined, requires a radical reordering of life and thought, not an easy accommodation to usual lifestyles. Christianity rings true, works, if you like, when it transforms.

The Great Commission, for centuries described as “Come join us, help us pay the parson and the bills,” must now be taken at its original face value. Leaving the security of what we have to encounter and challenge the world outside is a difficult sell to Episcopalians, who, whether traditional or progressive, are thoroughly conservative about structure and mission. Perhaps we may be driven to face this reality as our numbers dwindle and our finances dry up?
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[June 28, 2010] The Episcopal Church Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) is addressing its duties to collect and develop theological and liturgical resources for same-sex blessings, as charged in General Convention Resolution C056, through three main task forces and by establishing communication tools to solicit responses from the wider Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Ruth Meyers, Ph.D., SCLM Chair, pointed out, “We are following the direction outlined in C056: To share some of the ideas being considered as task groups develop theological and liturgical resources. To encourage a conversation about the theological, liturgical, and pastoral principles for blessing same-sex relationships. To offer and invite theological reflection about this work.”

To accomplish these tasks, SCLM has established three task groups to focus on particular areas: a liturgical resources group; a pastoral/teaching resources group; and a theological resources group.

[A list of resources and names of subcommittee chairs follows]

Read the entire news release here.

If a visiting clergy does not preside at the Eucharist, but only assists, or preaches, then the position of the Legal Office of the Province of Canterbury has been that no license is required by the statute, and the Archbishop of Canterbury does not have to concern himself with the details of the ceremony, or with who wears what. But a license to officiate under the Archbishop of Canterbury is a license to perform an ecclesiastical function at a service within the Church of England, and neither the Archbishop nor the Queen of England herself has any legal power to license a woman to preside as bishop over a Eucharist within the Church of England.

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Beside worship, prayer and meals, the “main activity” for this conference is hour-long classes or discussions scattered three or four throughout the day. I hope to write more about our courses to encourage discussion on your part as well as to sift through my own thoughts. There is a chosen topic for our talks for this two week that certainly took me aback. The topic is care of creation.

Father Ed introduced the topic with the five marks of mission for the Anglican Communion:

1. To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom.
2. To teach, baptize and nurture new believers.
3. To respond to human need by loving service.
4. To seek to transform unjust structures of society.
5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

The first question asked about the marks of mission list was: Is there priority of one of these marks over the other? Father Ed smiled and responded that such a question was part of the controversy and discussion over the marks. In my mind, there certainly was some sort of primacy. It seemed like the first mark necessitated the rest of them, most likely in the order of appearance. The latter four seem like corollaries of the first, albeit absolutely necessary corollaries. Let me share some of my own background regarding this topic.

I spent a summer in college working with migrant farmworkers in North Carolina. The experience began to open my eyes that caring for people was very much a relational issue as well as a societal issue. Many of the reasons for the current situation of the men I encountered had to do with the way others transformed the land they came from as well as the way an expectation of abundant, underpriced food transformed the land and work in the United States. In other words, I learned that the state of the earth has everything to do with “loving one’s neighbor,” the mandate given to us as Christians. However, I also left the experience with a bittersweet taste in my mouth, questioning the tactics and lengths that some of the people I encountered went to prove one “side” right or wrong. Somewhere along the way, the ministry portion was lost.

I spent my first semester in divinity school doing work for a young law professor on why some Christians had strong hesitations concerning the environmental movement (cf. the religious Acton Institute). I found reasons based on strong theology as well as weak theology: concerns about the place of people in creation care and about the idolization of creation reigned. What struck me the most was how much of the environmental literature reflected the language of mission and hope of salvation found in the Church. Both experiences led me to consider that proper creation care must also have everything to do with “loving God.” What this looks like and how far it goes are the questions we are discussing this week.

The problem with creation care is that issues such as these have been transformed into political polemics. This was the hesitation with the list from most involved. Certainly, you could take away all four marks and the first would stand alone. However, I was completely hesitant to say that the last four could stand alone. The question that we are being pressed on, though, is: Can the Good News of Jesus be proclaimed without responsible care for the earth? Or does recent emphasis on creation care distract from proclaiming the Gospel?

Those who spoke up were from around the world. A couple of priests from African nations spoke up with the same concerns those of us from Australia and the United States had: far too often we have seen issues of creation care, or justice, separated from the worship of God and used as political tools. Moreover, two asked, is environmental concern not just a “Western” concern? People in many places are desperate for jobs, food and water, not for concern about an inanimate mountain or an animal species. A profound skepticism was first introduced into the room, myself among the skeptics. The Episcopal Church itself, of course, is no stranger to the problem of a “justice gospel” or “environmental gospel” in which the language of Eden, sin, apocalypse and salvation rest in human hands rather than in the story of God.

I will fill you in on later talks we have had, but will first offer a few observations on the topic and its relevance and appropriateness to a conference such as this. Though I was concerned at first about the topic choice, I have to come to appreciate it. First, exploring creation theology addresses many of the rifts that the Communion experiences, including sexual ethics. (Also, see my interview with David Taylor about art and creation.)

Moreover, Christians simply cannot understand Jesus, our salvation or God’s work in the world without going deep into creation theology. Again, a temptation is to understand the gospel as otherworldly, but our God is about as materialistic as it gets: he himself became incarnate and creature not to save us from materiality but to redeem it. Watered down versions of gnosticism still run strong in the Church. A proper understanding of humanity, Jesus and God’s chosen gift of creation is absolutely fundamental to Christianity. Finally, creation theology, because of its polemics, is often avoided in study of Gospel and theology. To use it as an entryway into the good news is refreshing and allows me to explore the gospel from a perspective I have yet to explore. I am quite excited to share more with you about where our discussions have gone.
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Jefferts Schori’s rehashing of Anglican history may seem innocuous to outside observers, said church historian Diana Butler Bass, but her strong defense of democratic Anglicanism is a “call to arms.”

“Those are fighting words,” Butler Bass said. “She’s saying, `this is our tradition and you’re violating it.’ She is accusing Williams of being an imperialist.”

In essence, Williams and Jefferts Schori are having a very old argument over local autonomy and central authority, Butler Bass said—two extreme and perhaps irreconcilable interpretations of Anglicanism.

“He’s trying to find coherent Anglican identity and enforce it in a top-down way, and she’s saying we’ve always been democratic, local, grassroots.”

I find the use of the word “local” here to be quite peculiar. Classically, in an episcopal hierarchy, is not the bishop (and his diocese) the “local” church? Doesn’t her argument imply that the dissident dioceses are entirely within their rights to secede from the imperium of the American national church?

By Ralph Webb, in Linthicum

The Episcopal Church’s Executive Council began its spring meeting on June 16 by focusing on the church as a missionary society fostering both national and international partnerships, even amid inter-Anglican tensions.

“We don’t have [missionary societies]; we are one,” Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said in her opening address, echoing comments she made to the United Society of the Propagation of the Gospel in Swanwick, England, on June 9. She stressed the importance of the church’s work with Native Americans in the Navajoland Area Mission, with the “Haitian diaspora” of the Diocese of Haiti, and with Latinos.

Linda Watt, chief operating officer of the Episcopal Church, described a forthcoming church communications strategy designed to help identify what draws people — particularly mothers with young children, Latinos, and young adults — to the Episcopal Church. Ministry to Asian Americans, a November 2010 New Dawn conference designed to help Latinos “feel part of the mainstream of the Episcopal Church,” and a December 2010 leadership initiative for Sudanese members of the church are also crucial endeavors, she said.

House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson welcomed the Rev. Michael Pollesel, archdeacon in the Diocese of Ontario and General Secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, to the council. Bishop Jefferts Schori delivered a plenary address to General Synod on June 8, asking that the two North American provinces deepen their partnership.

Council members’ connections with the emerging church movement were also in evidence. Sarah Dylan Breuer of Massachusetts reported to the world mission committee about attending the Amahoro Africa emerging church conference in Mombasa, Kenya, in May.

“We need Africans’ spiritual gifts to be the whole people of God and know the whole gospel,” she told The Living Church. “God is bringing the world to wholeness. God is calling the world to repentance. God is calling us to community.”

Executive Council is holding its three-day meeting at the Maritime Institute in Linthicum Heights, Md., at a time of tension for the Episcopal Church in relation to its larger place within the Anglican Communion. The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, is scheduled to engage in a question-and-answer session with the council on June 18.

Bishop Jefferts Schori said in her opening remarks that her June 13 homily at Southwark Cathedral in London, England, had been controversial. Later, in closed session, she revealed that Lambeth Palace had ordered her not to wear her mitre (because the Church of England is still debating the consecration of women bishops) and had required her to provide evidence of her ordination as deacon, priest, and bishop. Providing this evidence is a standard requirement for overseas clergy who apply to officiate in the United Kingdom.

Recent tensions have affected the way that the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations plans to address ecumenical relationships. At an afternoon meeting of the world mission committee, Breuer reported that the commission wants to maintain ecumenical conversations with other church bodies, “even if the Anglican Communion Office does not.”

The standing commission has proposed that approximately $15,000 should be taken from the Episcopal Church’s Anglican Communion Office funding to strengthen the Episcopal Church’s ecumenical relationships. Breuer said the intention would still be to work through the Anglican Communion Office “insofar as possible,” but that “We will not say [in our ecumenical conversations], ‘We have no need of you’ because the Anglican Communion Office says to us ‘We have no need of you.’”

The proposal to redirect funds met with some skepticism. “I think we’ll produce massive confusion if we say, ‘If we can’t do our international conversations one way, we’ll take the money from the Anglican Communion Office and do them another way,’” said the Rev. Canon Mark Harris of Delaware.

The committee did not take immediate action on the proposal.

Breuer also reported that the standing commission wants to begin dialogue with the United Church of Christ and that relationships with Reformed churches should be approached “in multilateral ways rather than bilateral ones.” She encouraged the world mission committee to use the Chicago–Lambeth Quadrilateral as a basis for fostering relationships with other Anglican groups “as much as possible” and to ask Executive Council for funding to that end.

Scott Evenbeck of Indiana told The Living Church that the council’s first day involved “people trying to deal with tough issues in a really careful way.”

Canon Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine of the Virgin Islands, chair of the world mission committee, said the most important point of the day for her was discovering how “we’re continuing to do mission in spite of everything.”
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