Technicalities and Assumptions

At a recent deanery meeting in my diocese, an effective local leader asked why Episcopal laity, in particular, should be concerned about the future relational dynamics in the proposed text. ‘Isn't this text,’ he asked, ‘primarily addressing technicalities about bishops and primates?’ He had read the text carefully and had found only a few direct references to laity. Most of the language does refer to ‘bishops in conference’, ‘episcopal collegiality’ and ‘Houses of Bishops’ located within their own ‘synodical structures’. Yet this lay leader's question reminds me that this proposed covenant includes unnamed assumptions and phrasing that is not always clear. It also presents controversial conclusions as though they were rooted in some long-standing consensus. In the political language of our day, we would say that in some instances the proposed covenant lacks transparency.

I experienced many of these same dynamics in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I served on the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (IATDC). The documentary product of this Commission was the Virginia Report. I have written elsewhere about the ups and downs of this experience and my disappointment with the final Report.Footnote 2 Here I wish to emphasize the importance of understanding the language and assumptions at work in inter-Anglican documents.

Let's consider the word ‘collegial’, for example. In IATDC's deliberations the phrase ‘personal, collegial, and communal’ was used to describe the ways in which Anglican bishops exercise authority. At the start of our conversations I assumed that ‘collegial’ – as noted in Merriam-Webster's first and long-standing definition of this term – meant ‘power or authority vested equally in each of a number of colleagues’. Instead I was directed to an 1887 usage, which the same dictionary describes as ‘equal sharing of authority, especially by Roman Catholic bishops’. I was literally, and rather crisply, informed that our Anglican bishops functioned ‘collegially’ with authority parallel to the Roman Catholic ‘College of Cardinals’. Could this be true? This understanding of episcopal collegiality, the Virginia Report also insists, is a central reality in ‘Anglican experience at the diocesan, Provincial and Communion-wide levels’.Footnote 3 This assertion did not then and still does not accord with many, if not most, of my encounters with bishops’ leadership in the Episcopal Church. In our Diocesan and General Conventions, I have not observed TEC being led primarily by ‘bishops in synod’.

Nor do these assumptions about the exercise of ‘episcopal collegiality’ ring true to me as a historian of both the Reformation in England and of the American church. Queen Elizabeth I – the real Tudor ‘founder’ of the sixteenth-century Church of England – intentionally grounded her ‘Settlement’ of Church governance in parliamentary actions with laity involved. She clearly had no fondness for Roman Catholic polity, let alone meetings of English Bishops. Nor did Queen Elizabeth take it upon herself to speak for other countries. ‘Flexibility’, a Tudor historian has recently written, ‘was a key to survival’.Footnote 4 The Reformation in England took hold gradually in communities of common prayer where all members, not just a few leaders, endeavored to live out their faith despite considerable diversity and uncertainties. Similarly, early American Episcopal history indicates that church leaders were at best apprehensive about episcopal authority. As early as 1784, an informal Convention declared ‘that to make canons there be no other authority than a representative body of the clergy and laity conjointly [meeting]’.Footnote 5 In considering the proposed covenant, it is important not only to question and clarify the way language is used, but also to discover where and how a phrase or assertion has been previously employed.

The proposed covenant, as TEC's Executive Council 2010 Study Guide helpfully notes, is built upon a number of earlier international Anglican documents.Footnote 6 These recent texts say they were each occasioned by matters of ‘urgency’ or ‘crisis’. When IATDC was convened in the 1990s the ‘matter of urgency’ challenging the ‘unity and order of the Church’ was specifically named as the ordination of women to the priesthood and the consecration of women bishops.Footnote 7 Language used in the proposed covenant is much broader. It points to ‘any action which may provoke controversy, which by its intensity, substance or extent could threaten the unity of the Communion’ (3.2.5). Granted, those drafting the proposed covenant may well have painted with a broad brush to provide both for current and future challenges that could threaten the Communion. Yet, since the central presenting cause of controversy is not directly named in this proposed covenant, the text lacks transparency about the ‘action’ it seeks to remedy. I wonder: if the proposed covenant were discovered centuries from now without accompanying contextual information, would it leave future readers guessing at the nature of the intense threat? World hunger perhaps? The HIV/AIDS pandemic, or global ecological collapse? I return to my mother's theatrical query: what is this drama really about?

Asserting Power, Surrendering Authority

Ecclesiology, the theology of the nature of the church, is principally about the organization of power. This includes humanity's response to divine power as well as the employment of personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural power. Exercising authority within the institutional church has often been a concern for Anglicans, as church history makes clear. For example, what authority or authoritative body decides how ministry is ordered, who names and addresses crises, what programs and initiatives are approved, how mission is understood and shaped? Two matters in particular interest me as a lay leader.

I am first concerned about the steady movement toward centralizing authority vested in channels dominated by Primates and other bishops. Citing the ‘crisis’ occasioned by the ordination of women, the Lambeth Conference of 1988 called for ‘enhanced responsibility for the Primates’ Meetings’.Footnote 8 IATDC, the Commission on which I served, responded by briefly discussing and asking questions about four ‘world-wide’ structural components: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), and the Primates’ Meeting. These four vehicles for international communication were eventually identified in the Virginia Report as ‘instruments of unity’. It is important to note that two of these instruments – the Primates’ Meeting and the ACC – were instituted fairly recently. They first appeared in the 1970s, largely in response to the ‘urgent’ matter of women's ordination. It is also true that the Virginia Report was not adopted by TEC, the ACC or the Lambeth Conference of 1998, although the 1998 Conference did ask, somewhat rhetorically, if ‘effective communion’ did not require ‘appropriate instruments …?’Footnote 9 I have detailed this progression to illustrate the persistent evolution of the four instruments now presented to us with disciplinary teeth in the proposed covenant. Here they are renamed as ‘Instruments of Communion’, or simply as the ‘Instruments’. In these texts and in other inter-Anglican conversations, the notion that the Instruments should exist and should have power has been largely assumed, never actually agreed upon. Yet the drive toward centralizing authority in bodies beyond the influence of the average layperson continues to gather momentum. One of the more recent structural adjustments in the life of the Communion is that the ‘Joint Standing Committee of the Primates’ Meeting and the ACC’ has evolved into a smaller ‘Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion’, and is now simply called the ‘Standing Committee’. TEC members, by the way, should not think that this Standing Committee is similar in structure, composition or authority to diocesan Standing Committees in our Province.

The bureaucratic dynamic at work is not difficult to discern. Unlegislated edicts issued by unrepresentative bodies pave the way for a concentration of power at the highest levels of the Anglican Communion. The end result may be useful for those who sign on to this document. It might also have advantages for international ecumenical conversations with other highly centralized faiths.Footnote 10 Yet whether this reflects traditional Anglican ecclesiology is another matter, one that I will address after I raise my second concern as a layperson.

What does the centralization of ecclesial power called for in the proposed covenant portend for a church whose ecclesiology is grounded in the authority of the baptized? The centrality of baptism is a gift from our earliest Christian ancestors that is now restored in TEC's 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Baptism shapes our primary and continuing identity as Christians in worship and in daily living. My mentor Verna Dozier, one of the wisest teachers of Scripture I have been blessed to know, warned laity about giving up our authority: ‘religious authority comes with baptism. … [it] is of God. Human beings do not give it. Human beings cannot take it away. Sinful human beings, however, can surrender it’Footnote 11 (emphasis added).

I raise this concern as even my most charitable reading of the proposed covenant does not give the impression that it is grounded in a theology that honors the baptism of lay people as fully as it honors the ordination of clerics. It is to be expected that the proposed covenant does cite ‘Baptism’ as an inheritance ‘each church affirms’ (1.1 and 1.1.5). Yet I remain concerned that the authority of the baptized is at best misunderstood, if not ignored, in the proposed covenant. The proposed covenant does clearly prefer an ecclesiology shaped from the bureaucratic top down rather than outward from baptismally grounded communities of faith.

Traditional Polity: An Endangered Species?

Some backers of the proposed covenant are trying to portray increased centralization as a necessary development of Anglican tradition. Yet this is not accurate. Traditional understandings of authority in the Anglican Communion have called for authority to be ‘dispersed’ throughout the Communion.Footnote 12 Similarly, resolutions of Lambeth Conferences have historically been explained as advisory rather than binding. Also, until recently, most descriptions of authority have referred to and deferred to the authority of ‘autonomous’ Provinces. The proposed covenant attempts to honor this legacy of Provincial autonomy in this muddled and contradictory assertion that each Church will commit itself:

The language in the text above invoking ‘mutual responsibility and interdependence’ (MRI for short) has been affirmed by Anglicans since the Toronto Anglican Conference of 1963. The desire expressed at that gathering to focus on the ‘Church's mission in response to the living God’Footnote 13 gave rise to the ‘Five Marks of Mission’, which are included in the proposed covenant in Section 2.2.2, and which were approved by TEC's 76th General Convention. TEC has already approved an inter-Anglican ‘Covenant for a Communion in Mission’ which does require active supportive relationships.Footnote 14 My question is whether it is appropriate to co-opt language about mission and human need as grounds for approving the communion-wide judicial system presented in the proposed covenant. To do so might suggest that the drafters of the covenant now believe the primary mission of top leaders in the Anglican Communion is exercising judicial control. I, for one, hope this is not the case.

Language about ‘moral reasoning and discipline’ (1.2.2) suggests to me yet another departure from long-standing Anglican tradition. Members of the Communion are not familiar with emphasizing discipline, restraint, or taking ‘authority over’ autonomous Provinces. Signers would commit themselves ‘to teach and act in continuity and consonance with Scripture and the catholic and apostolic faith, order and tradition’ (1.2.1). Language of the proposed covenant suggests a developing Anglican magisterium, a centralized teaching authority.

You might expect me, as a historian, to be a huge fan of tradition. Indeed this is true. It is also true that we use the word ‘tradition’ in different ways. I, and many other Anglican scholars, turn to the work of Richard Hooker, the formative theologian of the English Reformation. Tradition, for Richard Hooker, was not abstract. Nor was it, as I believe English historian Henry R. McAdoo once commented, ‘an ever-increasing accumulation of irreversibles’. Tradition was shaped by ongoing communal reflection in a particular locale. Hooker named it as the ‘voice of the English Church’. Tradition arose out of common experience in a particular context, similar to the flexible and ongoing development of English ‘common law’. Such law was not transferable to other peoples and nations. It was a valued and transformative process with the essential qualities of moving faithfully and growing with the times. Simply put, tradition has traditionally embraced both continuity and change. Hooker, much like Thomas Cranmer in his Preface to the early English Books of Common Prayer, acknowledged that most elements of church life change because they are no longer convenient or useful. In adopting the Anglican Covenant are we stating that traditional Anglican polity is no longer convenient or useful for the Episcopal Church?

Relational Consequences and Future Intentions

If we in the Episcopal Church agree to the proposed Anglican Covenant, what kind of foundation are we building for our future life together?

The Introduction to the Covenant signals the need for ‘discipline as a witness to God's promise’ in an unstable and fragmented world (Introduction, 4). Merriam-Webster's first definition of ‘discipline’ is ‘punishment’. This dictionary also cites ‘control gained by enforcing obedience or order’. In the language of the proposed covenant, punishing or reprimanding actions are presented as ‘relational consequences’ (see 4.2.4, 4.2.5, 4.2.7). For Provinces that are described as autonomous to put themselves willingly under a higher ecclesiastical authority seems at best a contradiction in terms. For the Churches of the Anglican Communion to engage God's mission at the highest level by imposing ‘relational consequences’ seems inconsistent for a structure that is called a ‘Communion’.

I also keep wondering if lasting ecclesiastical relationships can be shaped on paper. I believe they grow out of the primacy of God's mission and of communities enacting this imperative through relationships expressed in specific active ways, locally, nationally and globally. A former student once observed that she learned best by ‘doing’ and not simply ‘talking’. I regularly encounter expansive visions of the church's future that are being shaped in the continuing vitality and power of local congregations and communities. Shouldn't we keep on seeking a larger-minded foundation for life together in the Communion, one based on growth in mutual understanding rather than on punishment? I recall the prophetic sermon preached by the (now retired) suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts, Barbara C. Harris. If I remember correctly, she urged us with persistent humility to pursue ‘the hard work of practicing relational openness of theological exchange in the face of mounting calls for new orthodoxy’.

I may be a pragmatic pessimist. To put it bluntly, I do not see imposing discipline as a solution to disagreements about women's ordination and homosexuality. Do you? On the other hand, I may well be an optimist. If so, the perspective of a student and scholar of Anglican history and theology has led me to believe that the Anglican Communion may still be faithfully strengthened without stifling diversity, avoiding future controversy, and further enabling structures at the highest levels to determine what are matters of common good.

Is the proposed Anglican Covenant the best way to seek deeper communion for the long and short term? I look forward to joining with other clergy and laity as we explore these and other questions for reflection.