Channel: America
Author: Austen Ivereigh

... The point is, “schism” is not the right word for what is happening. A schism refers to a part of the Christian body separating from another. But the TEC is insufficiently united in itself to break away from the wider Anglican Church; and the Anglican Communion is insufficiently united to constitute something that can be broken away from.

It’s much more complex, and messy, than schism. It’s full-on balkanisation.

But out of chaos, order is emerging. Anglicans are splitting into two camps: a core of Anglicans—those committed to the Covenant process—are coming closer together, under Dr Williams’s leadership, while the rest are spinning away from Canterbury and from each other.

The real split is not over homosexuality but between “Catholics” and “Protestants,” the key historic tension within Anglicanism. The fissures do not run cleanly between provinces and churches, as the Anaheim rebels show. But this crisis is forcing people to choose. This is the real division: between those who believe in a Catholic ecclesiology and those who do not.

The “Protestants”—divided between liberals and conservative evangelicals, in radical disagreement over homosexuality, as over much else —cannot, by definition, come together, and will continue to fragment, leaving the “Covenant” Anglicans to come together around a firmer, more Catholic ecclesiology. Within the “Catholic” camp there will remain strong disagreements over homosexuality, but those are less important than the shared conception of Church.
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That view is astounding.  Not that it’s unimportant, but it seems to me that the clergy cares much more about ecclesiology that the laity.  Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but the fact is that “this” is about the basic doctrines of the Creeds, and not about ecclesiology at all.  Also, the context in which discussion of ecclesiology takes place always seems to ignore the fact that we’re in the 21st century.

Good find, Doug.  Well done!  Thanks for posting this.  I think the author is quite perceptive.

Hudson, isn’t “one holy, catholic and apostolic church” a creedal matter?  Furthermore what’s a creed without ecclesiology, without a visible Church that prays it?  The creeds didn’t drop down out of heaven; they came from the Holy Spirit working in the Church.

Surely you don’t mean to suggest that you would hold the entire creed hostage to ecclesiology which is just one of dozens of doctrines that can be found there.  It’s just not a priority except to some clergy for whom the structures are, shall we say, personally relevant.  I’m in an ACNA parish and our structures are completely confused.  Nobody in the pews really cares.  We are Anglicans in the wilderness, and praise God we are finally free, but it’s like camping.  We need to be content with irregular structures.

I think he overstates the “Protestant” and “Catholic” categories.  There are still conservative evangelicals choosing to stay in TEC.  There are still high-ecclesiology Anglo Catholics separating from TEC.  Like any divorce, old tensions contribute to the fracture, but they may not be the primary or precipitating factors driving the decision to split.  They do, however, influence some of the outcome as we, quite humanly, regress in times of crisis.  So it isn’t surprising to see older patterns of relating emerging and bearing out, in general terms, how some of the split is shaping up.

Hudson,
I think your analogy bears the seeds of its own fallacy.  Most people go camping as a vacation, not as a way of life.  Eventually, ACNA will want to settle down and establish a “home.”  People need and crave order.  If it were just about theology, there would have never been the initial attempt of an “inside strategy;” people would have simply bolted and added to the Anglican alphabet soup.

It is interesting to wonder whether or not the author of this article actually sees the reality of the Anglican Communion more clearly than many of us do.  His statement that “...280 developing-world bishops (about a third of the total), who boycotted the Lambeth Conference…set up their own parallel Communion, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA), which does not recognise the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury” is especially interesting, as it points to a very real tendency - even if undeclared - in the FCA movement.  Perhaps someone will someday say of the Anglican Communion what is now said about the East and the West: there was no definite moment of schism, just a growing alienation and diversion of paths…

Hudson, I think you’re falling into the fallacy of “everyone I know thinks this, so everyone must think the same way.” I’m in a parish with a CP rector under a CP bishop, and I guarantee you that most of the people in our pews are attuned to the ecclesiology of the situation and have chosen. We had a chance to jump ship to AMiA in 2004 and deliberately remained in TEC due to our understanding of church.

I think the author’s point is salient, especially in the kind of historical and organizational context Ephraim Radner cites in his recent article
(http://covenant-communion.net/index.php/site/articles/it_seems_good_to_us_and_the_holy_spirit_the_us_of_general_convention/permalink=)

The tendency to split does seem to accelerate more rapidly on the reformed side of the ledger, and I well recall specific instances of the dynamic Radner describes in the 1970s using the descriptive identifiers “charisnmatic” and “fundamentalist”.

Hudson,
I welcome your comment and don’t want you to feel like you have been assaulted by a bunch of theologians (and if you feel that way, I apologize on behalf of all of us). I think you articulate well a truth when you say “it seems to me that the clergy cares much more about ecclesiology that the laity.  Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but the fact is that “this” is about the basic doctrines of the Creeds, and not about ecclesiology at all.”  I think many laity feel exactly as you suggest.  But that suggests to me a problem in our catechesis, for it is clear that we are not teaching people to make the essential connection between ecclesiology, unity, and faithfulness.  We need to do a much better job at articulating this for the average person in the pews so that they can own it.

I tried to give an account of this in my “Tract 1, Part 4: The Cruciform Shape of Unity and Justice.”  I had in mind as one of my goals making explicit the reasons ecclesiology (church order) and soteriology (salvation) are inextricable from each other. I quote from the beginning of that below:

On the seventh Sunday in Easter, the lectionary draws our attention to that extraordinary prayer that Jesus prayed on Maundy Thursday just before departing for Gethsemane (John 17:1-26). The prayer is extraordinary partly because, in spite of knowing what lay ahead in the coming hours, he did not pray for himself.  He did not pray for the world. He prayed for us.  And from Jesus’ prayer for his disciples, we derive some of our most important understandings of what it means to be the Church.  He said, “Holy Father, protect them in your name .... so that they may be one, as we are one.  Theologians have long focused on that phrase, “as we are one,”  for it is clear that it is Jesus’ will that the Church be one in the way the Father and Son are one.1 Later, Jesus explains this a bit.  He prays, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (v21).  In Jesus’ prayer we discern two teachings that are so basic to Christianity that they resonate in our creeds.2 First, our faithfulness to Jesus consists of our embodying the unity for which he prayed. Second, this unity we are to embody consists of our being in the Father and the Son.  On Trinity Sunday, the lectionary features John 3:1-17 and Romans 8:12-17, bringing into focus the role of the Spirit in creating and sustaining the Church that Christ commissioned.  Given the revelation of the Spirit, we say more completely that we are to be one, as Father, Son, and Spirit are one.  Thus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we embody our unity by abiding in the Father and the Son.

I hope this article is helpful to you in seeing why clergy emphasize this so much.  Our faithfulness to Jesus consists of our embodying the unity for which he prayed.

I don’t feel assaulted at all, but neither am I persuaded.  We’ve reached a fork in the road.  I just think that Jesus would say there is a time for ecclesiology and then there is a time for ceasing from it.

No Hudson.  Your response shows that you are not using the word in quite the same way we are using it.  Ecclesiology is not about how to organize ourselves as an institutional church and we are speaking about loyalty to an institution really, which seems to capture something of how you are using it.Ecclesiology is about how we order our lives so that we embody Christ, which includes how we discern together the truth we must speak so that our speech communicates the truth that is Christ.  So ecclesiology is integral to salvation.  Jesus certainly would never tell us to cease from our struggle to embody Christ, right?

I believe what you really mean is that eventually you must accept the “no” of the brother who sins against you who refuses to repent and allow him in freedom to walk apart from the community of which he has been a part, trusting in Christ’s promise that what we do will be bound in heaven (Matt 18:15-18). 

But of course the ways we go about that kind of discernment, repentence, and reconciliation are part and parcel of what we mean by ecclesiology.  And, if I have accurately sketched something of what you are getting at, then I imagine many of us here would agree with you.

On the passage in question, I would only remark that America is, after all, written by people whose ecclesiology could be only slightly caricatured as “We have Abraham as our fath—er, Benedict as our pope.”

Hudson,

I agree with you wholeheartedly.  The originating news post spends the first half of the article speaking within the context of same sex blessings and the division that was caused as a result of that.  The excerpt above draws from the last portion of the article.  It is clear this is within the context of the division caused by same-sex blessings, ending the moratorium and Rowan Williams’ attempt to impose his will (a mirror of Catholic ecclesiology/“centraling agenda”) against the backdrop of Protestant self-government.

A portion not in the excerpt above is, “Quite what was actually decided in the Los Angeles suburb is a matter of dispute —especially among those who were there. But it’s clear that TEC’s commitment to maintaining the moratoriums is over. Writing recently in the Guardian, Jim Naughton, canon for communications at the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, saw last week’s vote as a chance finally to “push back” what he calls Dr Williams’s “centralising agenda” and his attempt to impose “a single-issue magisterium on the issue of homosexuality”. This piece at Episcopal Cafe offers a fascinating example of just how strong in parts of the TEC is its anti-Catholic prejudice: Dr Williams’s efforts are seen as “Romanesque” and examples of “Catholic authoritarianism”.

This later develops into the excerpt above, only a portion of the article that develops the concept that seems to me be the bridge in the misrepresentation Hudson is trying to call out; what he finds astounding.  The article is written within the context of same-sex blessings.  The analogy to the strife in ecclesiology is within the context of Rowan Williams’ plea and hope and efforts and the democratic style of protestant governing of churches.  The article transitions as follows:

“The real split is not over homosexuality but between “Catholics” and “Protestants”, the key historic tension within Anglicanism. The fissures do not run cleanly between provinces and churches, as the Anaheim rebels show. But this crisis is forcing people to choose. This is the real division: between those who believe in a Catholic ecclesiology and those who do not.

The “Protestants”—divided between liberals and conservative evangelicals, in radical disagreement over homosexuality, as over much else —cannot, by definition, come together, and will continue to fragment, leaving the “Covenant” Anglicans to come together around a firmer, more Catholic ecclesiology. Within the “Catholic” camp there will remain strong disagreements over homosexuality, but those are less important than the shared conception of Church. 

Rome, of course, is firmly behind Dr Williams and the Covenant process: they know that at the end of it there is the prospect of an Anglican Church they can seek unity with. It’ll be a lot smaller, necessarily, than the current Anglican Communion. But the prospects of unity will at last be real. It’ll take years; maybe none of us will see it in our lifetimes. But my bet is that the before the end of Dr Williams’ term the foundations for Catholic-Anglican unity will have been laid —even as he is depicted as having helplessly overseen the disintegration of the Anglican Communion.”

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Mr. Uffman’s writing on the The Cruciform Shape of Unity and Justice.  It is long and in different tracts and parts, but well worth the read Hudson.  I see a vision there, a part for ACNA to play in their calling to partake in this cruciform shape of unity and justice. 

I believe that at the center of this, of course, is the tension within the body of Christ and the institutions that embody our physical realities; gathering, ministering, cultural forces and political and personal agendas.  These, perhaps, were not all foreign to Christ’s ministry here on earth as he carried our sin and presented us with a doubled edged sword to make our way through the culture of the day and equip us for what St. Paul adjures us to do - not to be conformed to the culture of the day but to have our minds renewed in Christ.  There is a time to walk apart.

My only question here is where is room for Jesus’ words when he asks us to pluck out our eye if it makes us sin?  Would not ACNA’s leaving not be so much about denying ecclesiology, but doing just what you are proposing Mr. Uffman to Mr. Hudson - “Ecclesiology is about how we order our lives so that we embody Christ, which includes how we discern together the truth we must speak so that our speech communicates the truth that is Christ.  So ecclesiology is integral to salvation.  Jesus certainly would never tell us to cease from our struggle to embody Christ, right?”

Which leads me to the next question - how much liberty and freedom of speech were the preachers/priests/pastors/shepherds in the TEC permitted to speak their truth without being fired, demoted or not hired at all if they said sodomy was unclean?

I will post later the link to a priest who had served for ten years in the Episcopal Church who said he had seen people who did not agree with sodomy being within God’s plan for blessing as marriages being demoted, not hired at all and discriminated against. 

Is not obedience the highest form of ecclesiology?

Hi, Craig. You wrote: “Ecclesiology is not about how to organize ourselves as an institutional church and we are speaking about loyalty to an institution really, which seems to capture something of how you are using it. Ecclesiology is about how we order our lives so that we embody Christ, which includes how we discern together the truth we must speak so that our speech communicates the truth that is Christ.  So ecclesiology is integral to salvation.”

The problem is that in church history and the current situation in TEC a chasm develops between faith and church order. Loyalty to Jesus Christ must come first, then only secondarily loyalty to an institutional church, contingent on whether that institution is loyal to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in Holy Scripture and proclaimed by believers during the last two millennia.

For many orthodox Episcopalians/Anglicans this concern is reflected in the last part of this passage: “You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money…, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them!” [2 Tim. 3:1-2a, 4b-5]

So I think there is a danger of falling into thinking that “it’s all about ecclesiology.” We should not use “ecclesiology” as a defense of a particular institutional church/denomination, especially when a chasm develops between the “outward form” of that institution and the “power” of the Gospel of Christ. Orthodox believers need to discern at what stage in a prolonged controversy they should cease unproductive dialogue, “avoid them,” and depart for an institutional embodiment of the Gospel of Christ that upholds both faith and order.

Dick