The 2011 meeting of the Anglican Primates in Dublin has come under considerable criticism in the last week, both for the number of absentees who were present at the meeting and for the publication of a document entitled “Towards an Understanding of the Purpose and Scope of the Primates’ Meeting.” For example, in an article entitled "Dublin Post-Mortem," the Anglican Communion Institute has written that

the Dublin meeting represented only a small fraction of the Communion’s active members. Thus, from the very outset it lacked one of the defining criteria of a Communion Instrument, the ability to function as a body that “interprets and articulates the common faith of the Church’s members (consensus fidelium).” (Covenant 3.1.4.) Last week, the consensus fidelium was to be found elsewhere with those who did not attend.

I propose that this is wrong, and for two reasons. On the one hand, it assumes that the Primates’ Meeting is a representative body. On the other hand, and more problematically, it assumes that the consensus fidelium is defined by space rather than by time. Combine these together and we have the view that a small number of Provinces with a large number of members are more important than a large number of Provinces with a smaller (but by no means insignificant) number of members. An accurate understanding of the Primates’ Meeting is important if we are to consider the ways that the Anglican Communion as a whole is to resolve its current crisis.

Did the Dublin meeting represent “only a small fraction of the Communion’s active members”? The truth is, we have no hard numbers on active Anglican membership to answer the question because the Anglican Communion has not adopted an official form of keeping tally on this sort of thing. However, a few numbers are given in various places. So, before we assume that the vast majority of the world’s Anglicans were not “represented” at this meeting, let’s put the numbers on the table. The Church of Nigeria’s website gives the number of Nigerian Anglicans as being 18 million. The Church of Uganda’s website states that one-third of Ugandans are part of its church (thus totaling about 11 million). This gives us a total of roughly 29 million members in these three Anglican provinces — a total number of members that is more than one-third of the Anglican Communion’s total membership. Statistically speaking, the provinces of Nigeria and Uganda are outliers; if we allow them to shape our understanding of the general trend of membership across, e.g., the “Global South,” then these two provinces will terribly skew our understanding. Most Global South provinces are nowhere so large — indeed, they are quite small.

Turning then to the other five provinces that boycotted the meeting, the Anglican Communion website reports that there are 120,000 Anglicans in the Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean; Wikipedia reports that there are 35,000 baptized members in the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East; Wikipedia further indicates that there are 98,000 members in the Church of the Province of South East Asia, 22,000 members in the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, and one million members in the Church of the Province of West Africa. Assuming that all of these numbers are correct, we are looking at a total of about 30.5 million members, active or not, in the seven provinces that boycotted the Primates’ Meeting. The Anglican Communion claims to have around 80 million members, meaning that roughly 50 million members were “represented” at the Primates’ Meeting. However, as it is well known that many of these members are not active in the Western churches, we cannot take this number at face value. So, let’s say that in terms of active members, 25 million Anglicans were “represented” at the Primates’ Meeting. Regardless of whether the seven boycotting provinces actually have 30.5 million active members, the truth of the matter is that we simply cannot accept the claim that “the Dublin meeting represented only a small fraction of the Communion’s active members.” Rather, about half (and perhaps slightly more) of the Anglican Communion was “represented” at the Dublin Primates’ Meeting.

There is a further, more important question to be asked: does the Primate of a given Anglican Province have a representative role? The term “representative” should be glossed, for it assumes a direct correlation between numerical size and influence. For example, in the United States of America, the House of Representatives is a representative body because each states is allowed to elect representatives, based upon its population size, to the House. However, each state is entitled to one representative, regardless of population, and the number of total representatives is not variable, but has since 1929 been limited to a total of 435. The House of Representatives is thus very different than the Senate, which is comprised of two Senators from each state, regardless of population size. Within the American system, therefore, the state of California has 53 Representatives but only two Senators. The reason for this is not due to any desire of the Senate to quash the ability of Californians to be represented; nor is the reason for this due to any sinister desire of stuffy white males to ignore hippies. Rather, the difference is due to the fact that the House of Representatives has one end and the Senate has another. The Senate has the ability to ratify treaties and deals with various appointments to top government posts. The House, on the other hand, has its own unique powers, including the ability to elect the President should the American Electoral College grind into deadlock. Most importantly for our present purposes is the simple fact that the House and the Senate each has its own appointed roles and ends.

It is tempting to draw lines of comparison between this system and the Anglican Communion, but we should wholly avoid doing so, not least for the simple reason that the Anglican Communion, unlike the United States government, has nowhere specified in canon law or in constitution what the relationship is between the four Instruments of Unity (the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Anglican Consultative Council). The American Congress (which comprises the House and the Senate) is understood in vertical terms; things begin in the House, move on “up” to the Senate, work their way to the President, sometimes go back and forth, etc. (It is a secularization of the British system of the 18th century; the President is the King, the Senate is the Lords, the House is the Commons.) Things do not work — and have never worked — this way in the Anglican Communion. The Primates have never ratified or vetoed anything done by any Anglican commission, any Lambeth Conference, any Archbishop of Canterbury, or any individual Anglican province or collection thereof. The reason is simple: the Primates’ Meeting was never set up to do so and no one has ever sought to have it do so. We might therefore conclude by saying that although a Primate represents his or her own Province to other Primates at the Primates’ Meeting, the Primates’ Meeting itself is not a representative assembly. This distinction is important. To be upset that the Primates’ Meeting is not representative is like being upset that the American Senate is not representative. To offer such a critique is to misunderstand the system (whether Anglican or American) — and to risk further perpetuating misunderstanding.

Where then is consensus to be found? We are told that at the Primates’ Meeting in Dublin last week, “the consensus fidelium was to be found elsewhere with those who did not attend.” We have already shown that in terms of mere numbers, this is not the case. Insofar as we are looking at a specifically Anglican consensus fidelium, the Primates’ Meeting is not the theater (to borrow a term from military history) where these sorts of things are fought out — and it never has been. One might counter that the Primates’ Meeting in Dublin ought to have referenced previous meetings, given that the last several meetings have done so. One might also argue that given various resolutions made at the Lambeth Conferences, that the Primates have a level of authority that they ought to have exercised. Both of these points have much to commend them and I do not wish to argue against them. I simply wish to propose that the Primates’ Meeting has not ever, so far as I know, exercised anything like jurisprudence. It is worth noting that the Anglican Communion website offers no archive of sources concerning the Primates’ Meeting — a point that contrasts very sharply with the vast body of material which the Anglican Communion website offers for both the Anglican Consultative Council and the Lambeth Conference. Although the Primates’ Meeting has grown in importance since crisis broke upon the Anglican Communion in 2003, it is unclear to me that we should read statements about Primatial authority and leadership which were made in the 1970s and 1980s as if these had been offered with an eye to the sort of leadership needed at present (not to mention the administrative machinery needed to make such leadership effective — or, at the very least, less ineffective).

If the consensus fidelium is to be found anywhere, it is to be found in the history of the Church — or, to borrow a phrase from G. K. Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy, “the democracy of the dead.” The recent Primates’ Meeting can and ought to be critiqued on this basis. It can also be critiqued on the basis of Anglican history (preferably its broad arc, rather than its more recent and bumpy years). Three avenues of critical inquiry and discussion come to mind. First, the Primates' considerable silence on the current state of the Anglican Communion is more than a little strange — although this is not to say that we ought to leap into conspiracy theories about either the immediate end of the Anglican Communion, or dishonesty on part of the majority of Primates who met together in Dublin, or that the Covenant process has been derailed. Conspiracy theories are almost invariably the products of an undisciplined mind. Second, we might ask how the paper entitled “Towards an Understanding of the Purpose and Scope of the Primates’ Meeting” is in continuity with previous statements about Primatial authority — recognizing, of course, that this very same document is also subtitled “A Working Paper.” Some have voiced concerns that the historic role of the Anglican Primates has now been undercut, and this is worth looking into. But it should be kept in mind that such historical inquiry, if it is pursued, must be allowed to take time. The last decade excepted, it may very well be that the history of the Primates' Meeting is really not terribly interesting and that it has not been terribly central to Anglican history. This is not to say that the Primates' Meeting is or ought to be unimportant now; contexts change, although as any historian will tell you, when contexts change is rarely clear, to historians no less than those who experience history as "current events."

Third, and perhaps most importantly, we ought to query why the Presiding Bishop of the American Episcopal Church was invited to participate as a full member, despite that fact that in June, 2010, the Archbishop of Canterbury removed all American Episcopalians both from all Anglican ecumenical consultations and from the Inter Anglican Standing Committee on Unity, Faith, and Order. This seems, to the present Anglican, a mixed message. It also came at a very high cost — not only the boycott of seven Primates, but also the frustration and resentment that the recent Primates’ Meeting has generated (and which it has also been used to justify) across the Communion. Some of this — perhaps much of this — is unfair. But it is nonetheless real, and is already being used to further disturb the unremittingly turbulent ecclesial terrain of North American Anglicanism. Non-participation is a failure of the consensus fidelium, no less than the giving of offense. The Nicene Creed was not vindicated by Athanasius alone, and it was not the work of one council but two. Orthodoxy is a long haul no less than a consistently faithful one. It must also be pastorally responsive — and a clarification of the matter of American attendance would do much good, particularly for those of us in the United States.

If we are going to enter into these kinds of necessary critiques, then we ought to do so while recognizing the institutional ends and the limits of the Primates’ Meeting. Otherwise our critiques will be rooted in expectations and assumptions that are either unfair or, what is worse, false. As I touched upon in my discussion of American government above, the Anglican Communion has, for some decades, refused to order its structures in a clear fashion. We have four Instruments of Unity, but no set, definite relationship between them. If one has wood, nails, concrete and water, but no clue as to how to plan and make a house, then the structure that results will not likely last long. When it comes to human institutions, it is a question of authority — a question of who has what rights and what responsibilities. Ironically, and perhaps bitterly, the most recent Primates’ Meeting was called in order to try and sort some of these things out. That it did so with the absence of fifteen Primates, seven of whom were boycotting the presence of the American Primate, indicates that resolution concerning the Primatial office has not in fact been reached, even if some things have now been put on the table. If Dublin, 2011, did not set us back, it has certainly made it more difficult for us to move forward. For this, we no doubt have many Primates to blame. And for this we ought humbly pray, devoutly kneeling. But blame is not enough: what is needed is faithfulness.

Addendum

It occurs to me that the concern for representation is an acutely American one, culled from a belief that the “body politic” is artificial rather than organic, and that there is therefore not a singular American identity so much as there is a singular American space. Perhaps we have the same expectation of the Anglican Communion — an expectation that those in the early Church did not have, and because of this the early Christians were not concerned about bishops being representative. If the faith is one, then representation takes on a very different meaning; the bishops represents his diocese not in terms of the faith of the diocese but, instead, as one who simply brings forth local issues within an otherwise shared religious framework. Without an organic ecclesiastical body (that is, one rooted in a recognizably shared past), and without a sense that the faith professed by one Province is the same as that professed by another, representation must take on a fundamentally diplomatic understanding. In other words, without a shared and unifying narrative, representation is predicated upon difference — and perhaps incompatible difference — rather than one Lord, one faith, one baptism. If this is the case, and I suspect it is part of the problem, then part of the answer to our ecclesial difficulties can be found only in the realm of catechesis. In this sense, the consensus fidelium, the democracy of the dead, takes on a considerable urgency which cannot be reduced to a small number of mostly small provinces in the Global South.