Geoffrey Kirk of Forward in Faith of UK on Primates Meeting

For New Directions London

‘For nearly two centuries’, a wit once remarked, ‘Westminster politicians have been talking about a solution to the Irish problem. What none of them would ever admit was the nature of the problem. The problem is that there is no solution.’

Much the same is true about the Anglican Communion. No one, it seems, has the courage to admit what must be obvious to all: that the problem with world-wide Anglicanism is not merely with the conduct of individual provinces but with the polity of the whole. Like the Home Office in the parlance of Dr John Reid, it is ‘not fit for purpose’.

Not only does the doctrine of Provincial Autonomy make divergence in ethos and doctrine virtually inevitable, but the resulting weakness of common structures (the so-called ‘Instruments of Unity’) makes disciplining errant provinces severely difficult. And when the erring province is TEC, the predominant source of funding for the Communion’s central secretariat, it is impossible.

Whether or not the Director General saw the irony of ending the recent meeting of Primates in Frank Weston’s Cathedral in Zanzibar, readers of New Directions will probably take the point: the doctrinal disintegration of Anglicanism is no adventitious phenomenon. It has been unfolding for the best part of a century. The Communiqué of the meeting in Dar es Salaam, for all its vaunted ‘unanimity’ (‘that’, said Clifford Longley on another such occasion, ‘is a very Anglican use of the word unanimous’), cannot hope to turn the tide of history.

What the Communiqué has done, couched as it is in the language of the revisionists themselves, is merely to draw another line in the sand.

The Primates have requested, through the presiding bishop, that the House of Bishops of TEC make an unequivocal common covenant that they will not authorise any rite of blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses or through General Convention (see Windsor 143, 144) and confirm that the passing of resolution B033 of the seventy-fifth general convention means that a candidate for Episcopal orders living in a same-sex union shall not receive the necessary consent (see Windsor 134) unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the communion (see Windsor para 134).

The Deadline for the answer is September 30th 2007.

“If the reassurances requested of the House of Bishops cannot in good conscience be given, the relationship between The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as a whole remains damaged at best, and this has consequences for the full participation of the Church in the life of the Communion.”

No one, of course, could reasonably suppose that such undertakings will be given, or that the failure to give them will result in any specific action by any of the ‘Instruments of Unity’. But that is hardly the point. The heart of the statement is not in the requests it makes but in the terms in which they are made: ‘unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the communion’. With that proviso the game is up for the traditionalists.

For the grounds upon which traditionalists oppose gay bishops and same sex unions is not that they go against previous Anglican practice (which might be changed by mutual agreement among the parties concerned), but that they contravene the plain teaching of scripture, which applies in all times and cultures and which neither individual provinces nor the Communion as a whole is competent to change. The issue, for them, is not one of Church traditions but of divine Law.

By signing the Communiqué traditionalist bishops have conceded the very point they were striving to uphold. Having initially refused to sit at the same table as Katherine Schori, and shunned her at the Lord’s Table, they have signed a document which endorses her position and effectively outlaws their own - and elected her to their Standing Committee! To this observer it looks uncommonly like suicide.

But lest you think this judgement harsh, consider the implications of the Communiqué for the future of Anglican moral theology.

Until now it has been assumed that penitence involves not only contrition but amendment of life. When I have sinned I need not only to be heartily sorry for what I have done and firmly to intend not to do it again; I must also seek, so far as possible, to undo what has been done amiss. If I have stolen what is not mine I must return it; if I have entered into a sinful or illicit relationship I must end it.

Not so with The Episcopal Church and the Zanzibar Communiqué. There a half-hearted expression of blanket regret (how many times has your confessor told you to be explicit?) and a future possible undertaking not to do the same again (why the reluctance to renounce wrong-doing in the first place?) is taken as enough. No mention, you will notice, of Gene Robinson.

The removal of Robinson from the Diocese of New Hampshire would, you will say, be too contentious a process and too high a price to ask of The Episcopal Church. But why? No other action, surely, could more powerfully signal sincere repentance. Either Robinson’s public conduct in a same sex relationship is ‘conduct unbecoming’ and contrary to Divine Law, or it is not. And if it is not, what possible grounds (apart from blind prejudice) can there be for barring other such candidates from episcopal office?

We must sadly conclude that in Zanzibar the traditionalist primates were skilfully out-manoeuvred. They conceded the very principles for which they stand; and did so in exchange for assurances which they will probably not get, and which, should they be forthcoming, will be half-hearted and of little effect. All this came about not because those primates are weak or foolish, but because the Communion itself, of which they are an intrinsic part, is structured on principles of democracy and mutual accountability. Pursued to their limits these principles leave no place for radical obedience to the word of God, which must necessarily be the strong suit of those who oppose same sex partnerships and gay bishops.

It was clear from its ringing endorsement of the politicking which resulted in the ordination of women in some provinces, that the ‘Windsor process’ cannot, by its very nature, comprehend an appeal to the unchanging word of God as witnessed by catholic tradition. The words of Pope John Paul II: ‘declaramus Ecclesiam facultatem nullatenus habere ordinationem sacerdotalem mulieribus conferendi’ [we declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women] have no resonance whatever in the official structures of the Anglican Communion, which can only proceed by accommodation and consensus. And Katherine Jefferts Schori, now a member of the Primates’ Standing Committee, is the very incarnation of those procedures.