Cross-posted at Communion in Conflict

The devil is in the details, as the saying goes. And in the Archbishop’s admirable Pentecost letter, it’s the little words that are tripping me up the most. 

As legend has it, when Philip of Macedon contemplated invading the Greek city-state of Sparta in Laconia, he sent the Spartans a message, saying, “You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land and prevail, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city to the ground.” To which the Spartans sent the one-word reply, “If.” This is perhaps the most famous illustration of what came to be known as “laconic” speech — short, blunt, brief, to the point, and maybe even a tad bit intimidating.

I was reminded of this anecdote when I read the following sentence from “The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pentecost letter to the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion”:

If the truth of Christ is indeed ultimately one as we all believe, there should be a path of mutual respect and thankfulness that will hold us in union and help us grow in that truth.

If.

My first response was to ask myself, “Do we all believe that the truth of Christ is indeed ultimately one?”

This question in turn reminded me of the classic (and therefore not politically correct) joke involving the two main characters from the old 1950s TV show, The Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger and Tonto are out riding one day when they are attacked by Indians. Cornered and running out of ammunition, the Lone Ranger turns to Tonto and says, “It looks like we’re going to be killed by the Indians.” Tonto looks at the Lone Ranger and replies, “What you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

We.

Who does Rowan Williams think is included in that simple two-letter word, “we”?

Then there’s that peculiar three-letter word, “one.” What, exactly, does that mean?

Finally, there’s a fourth word in that sentence that further caught me up short; admittedly it is a big word by comparison to “if” and “we” and “one,” but it’s also a deceptively simple word: “should.”

According to the omniscient internet, the psychologist Albert Ellis, founder of rational-emotive therapy (RET) in 1955, coined the now-popular, evocatively scatological phrase, “Don’t ‘should’ on yourself.” (I don’t know if anyone ever pointed out to him that his aphorism could just as easily be paraphrased as, “You shouldn’t should on yourself.”) In one online obituary of Ellis, it stated that Ellis observed that while human beings have the capacity to be loving, in communion (!) with others, and to grow, we also are just as capable of being self-destructive, blaming of ourselves and others, and to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

So while I do believe that the truth of Christ is ultimately “one” and want to believe that “we all believe” this to be true, and while I agree that there “should” be a “path of mutual respect and thankfulness that will hold us in union and help us grow in that truth,” I wonder: How, aside from a miraculous infusion of grace, is this church to find and stay on that path?

I won’t even get into the meaning of the little words, “all,” “truth,” “path,” “union,” “grow,” and “help.” I’m having a hard enough time with “if,” “we,” “one,” and “should.”

None of this is to detract from the fact that this letter is a profoundly solid piece of Christian teaching, which I hope to appreciate more fully in further reflections. No doubt, those on both the right and the left will not be happy with it for all the usual reasons. But there is much wisdom in it, if we can only find that path of which the archbishop writes.

If.
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