Many Anglicans could be forgiven for the almost audible inward groan that emanates at the mere mention of homosexuality and Anglicanism in the same sentence. Surely Anglicans have had quite enough of the issue? Worn out by the divisive debates and debacles, is it not time for the Anglican Communion to move on, and perhaps tackle something a little less contentious — such as mission and ministry, or justice and peace?
The answer to these questions is, of course, ‘yes’. But that should take nothing away from Bill Sach’s remarkable, indeed peerless book, that surveys the terrain of one of the knottier problems to have arisen in Anglican polity for many a year. This work will repay careful reading, and is well worth the time one might invest to ponder how a crisis such as this assumed the proportions it did, and where any hope for the future of the church might lie.
There cannot be many Anglicans who don’t hold an opinion on the subject in question. But as Sachs points out eloquently, Anglicans across the globe, whether liberal or conservative, traditional or progressive, are often caught between their biblical, doctrinal, ecclesial and legalistic frameworks, on the one hand, and their experiential, contextual and pastoral concerns, on the other. Indeed, one of the great strengths of this book is the lucid articulation of emerging contextual theologies and the ways in which they compete with hitherto unarticulated but assumed notions of catholicity, homogeneity and more complex forms of global belonging. The local, indeed, is both a strength of Anglican identity; but also a potential source of weakness when attempting to speak and act on a global scale. Sachs articulates this potentially problematic dynamic beautifully and clearly, and without recourse to party-based sniping. There is no siding with liberal or conservative slants. Sachs knows too well that the Anglican Communion with its somewhat patchwork polity is far more complex than it seems. Anglicans all agree on what the Bible says; we are just spending quite a bit of time — and acrimoniously, on occasions — figuring out what it means, and where, why and when to apply texts in the twenty-first century.
The first chapter sets the scene — the defining moments of the debates, as it were — which brought an issue that was bubbling below the skin of Anglican polity and identity boiling right to the surface. As Sachs suggests, even with regard to the elevation of Gene Robinson, and the proposed elevation of Jeffrey John to the episcopate, the ensuing divisions in the church were in fact already emerging. Tensions on sexuality existed long before 2003, and caused significant difficulties at the Lambeth Conference of 1998, and had already coloured and clouded the arch-episcopate of George Carey.
Sachs, as a contextual theologian, then locates these difficulties and disagreements in the wider milieu of ecclesial polity. Tensions, for example, have always existed in the contention for the shaping of early Christian unity (chapter 2). Ideals and realities can also be conflictual, as are the concentrations of power (in the centre or on the periphery, and between local and catholic) in the formation of a global polity (chapters 3, 4 and 5). Sachs contends that the key to understanding the debate is the realization that indigenous Anglicanism is both the foundation of its global polity, as well as its nemesis. Drawing on writers such as Michael Sandel and John Tomasi towards the end of his book, Sachs shows that the kind of activism which promotes rights — vindication through political processes — rather than seeking tangible social and communal harmony as a whole, and for the greater good of all, is bound to be deficient for a church, where there are higher goals to reach for.
Sachs is in no doubt that there are difficult days ahead for the Anglican Communion. One way of resolving its future would be to plot a more assertive course; to chart a pathway, in effect, that was directive and hierarchical. This would have its champions, to be sure. Another way forward is to capitulate to despair, or simply to ‘walk apart’ — in effect, to cave in to endemic consumerist individualism. But there is another way, and Sachs carefully expounds this in his conclusion.
Taking respectful issue with Philip Turner’s and Ephraim Radner’s recent The Fate of the Communion (Eerdmans, 2006), Sachs suggests that unity will need to continue to be progressed through careful listening and speaking, and recognition of the blend between interdependence, intra-dependence, independence and dependence. All Anglicans dwell within this framework, and have to work through the consequences of practising ‘contextual reliance on the authority of Spirit without the balance of a wider collegiality’ (p. 247). This is an issue for Sydney as much as it is for New Hampshire.
Sachs believes that the future of the Communion lies in recognition of multiple contexts that partially form ecclesial polity, even though these same realities may need challenging and addressing from time to time. Many Americans, for example, operate quite happily and unconsciously within a ‘spiritual marketplace’, leading to an individualist and consumerist mindset that picks a tradition or combination of traditions that suits lives at particular points in time. The result is that the local congregation tends to express and interpret the wider tradition for individuals, but at the expense of the broader and deeper adherence to a given denomination. Local congregational life, therefore, and for the purposes of constructing meaning, value and concepts of wider belonging and catholicity, is now far more dominant than it used to be.
That said, the ‘Communion’ of the future must entail a readiness to be in fellowship with one another, but without this necessarily meaning ‘agreement’ on all things, or ceding authority to one another. As Sachs points out, ‘no position on homosexuality could embody the whole of (the) Anglican tradition’ (p. 249). I am sure that this is right. However, the argument for the future of Anglican polity does not necessarily hinge on dissenting from this kind of view. It might rest, ironically, on accepting that some positions — among traditionalists, progressives, conservatives and liberals — while being faithful expressions of a localized contextual theology, are nonetheless not easily able to fully commune within a body that is seeking to rediscover its catholicity.
