Recent Anglican Communion controversies have some surprising antecedents in the mid-nineteenth century debates triggered by the global spread of the Church of England. At that time, the term, ‘Anglican Communion’, was just beginning to gain currency. Provinces were emerging, with synodical government as well as an independent workable system of church discipline and measures for electing bishops.
Questions began to arise as to how this increasingly far-flung family would hold together with real coherence. There began to be calls for the creation of international structures and gatherings. A suggestion came from the United States for a Council of Bishops. A number of colonial bishops were pushing for a Pan-Anglican synod.Footnote 3 There was discussion about the nature of the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the newly emerging provinces. There were calls from places like Australia for a ‘tribunal of reference’.Footnote 4 As in the contemporary debate, fundamental questions were intensified by controversy. The first Bishop of Natal, John Colenso had become embroiled in a doctrinal controversy and was eventually deposed by Bishop Gray, of Capetown, for what were regarded as his unorthodox opinions as well as his tolerant views on polygamy. Eventually, the Archbishop of Canterbury called a meeting of bishops at Lambeth, for ‘united worship and common counsels’.Footnote 5 It was not a council and it was not a synod. The first Lambeth Conference, held in 1868, was a deliberative, consultative, gathering, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as chair of the conference and a first among equals. The Colenso affair was an important matter that Archbishop Longley wanted to keep away from the main agenda because he believed it was too divisive.Footnote 6
Thus worldwide Anglicanism began to take shape; it would not be an international Church but a Communion of Churches. It would not be governed by Pope or patriarch; it would be episcopally led and synodically governed. It would not have a magisterium, and to the extent that it had international instruments they would be voluntary and advisory.Footnote 7 This commitment to dispersed authority within a Communion of autonomous provinces has been reaffirmed many times within the life of the Communion since, including at the 1930 Lambeth Conference, which expressed the view that the Anglican Communion is ‘a fellowship, within the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’, of ‘particular or national Churches’ that are ‘bound together not by a central legislative and executive authority, but by mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference’ (Resolution 49).
However, intra-Anglican tensions over the last quarter of the twentieth century raised serious questions as to whether such a polity was capable of holding an increasingly diverse and conflicted worldwide Communion together. During the 1970s to early 1990s, Anglican Communion stresses focused around the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate. By the late 90s, the issue most to the fore was that of the place of gay and lesbian people within the life of the Church. Anglican coherence was looking increasingly fragile. The 1997 Virginia Report put it like this:
At the end of the decade one question for Anglicans is whether their bonds of interdependence are strong enough to hold them together embracing tension and conflict while answers are sought to seemingly intractable problems. In particular the call for more effective structures of communion at a world level will need to be faced at Lambeth 1998 for the strengthening of the Anglican Communion and its unity into the next millennium.Footnote 8
The report went on to ask whether ‘effective communion might not require instruments, at all levels, “not only for legislation, but for oversight” ’.Footnote 9 These words can be linked with the Lambeth 98 call for a study as to whether the existing structures of Anglicanism were adequate for ‘effective communion’. Debate at Lambeth 98 around issues of human sexuality was difficult and dividing. A resolution was eventually carried that encouraged a process of listening to the experiences of gay and lesbian people, but that also rejected homosexual practice as ‘incompatible with Scripture’ and that the conference was ‘unable to advise the legitimizing or blessing of same-sex unions’.Footnote 10
Anglican ‘bonds of affection’ were further strained when in June 2003 Gene Robinson, a priest who was in a committed long-term same-sex relationship, was elected bishop by the Diocese of New Hampshire in the United States.Footnote 11 The confirmation of Gene Robinson’s election by the General Convention of The Episcopal Church, along with the authorization within the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada of a public rite for the blessing of the relationship between same-sex couples threatened the Communion with major division and possible schism. While the crisis tended to focus on specific issues such as human sexuality, there is little doubt that the stresses across the Anglican world at the beginning of the twenty-first century must be understood against a broad background of global change and in particular the ‘transition in the Anglican world from colonialism to post-colonialism and from modernity to post modernity’.Footnote 12 Kwok Pui-Lan makes the point that the 1998 Lambeth Conference was marked by ‘cultural contestation’, as leaders from Africa, Asia and Latin America took the opportunity to ‘talk back’ to the West.Footnote 13
There is much in the current debates, then, that comes like an echo of those surrounding the Communion’s beginnings. An immediate crisis has combined with background global factors to raise profound questions about how a world-wide family of autonomous churches in all their diversity, differences and inevitable disagreements, can live together without strong structures of central authority. Some of the proposals to respond to the current crisis have more than a passing resemblance to ideas canvassed leading up to and through the first Lambeth conference. The Anglican Communion has been going through an intense re-visiting of some of its foundational debates.
Responding to the Crisis
These deeper questions were recognized in the Communion’s first major response to the crisis. After consulting the Primates of the Communion, in October 2003 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, appointed the ‘Lambeth Commission on Communion’. It was not mandated to settle questions of human sexuality, but to examine and report on ways to maintain ‘the highest degree of communion’ within the worldwide Anglican family.
The report of that commission was released in 2004 and it has come to be known as The Windsor Report. The early sections of the report dealt with the biblical and theological foundations for communion, touching on themes such as biblical authority and interpretation, the episcopate, discernment and reception, and diversity. This was followed by a section called ‘Our Future Life Together’, which looked at how the structures of the Communion might better deal with conflict. There was a particular focus on what have been called the Anglican Communion’s ‘Instruments of Communion’: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) and the Primates Meeting.
The final section of the report did seek to address specifics, but again focused on matters of Communion relationship without seeking to resolve the particular issue of human sexuality. It recommended that The Episcopal Church should express its regret for the pain its actions caused other members of the Communion and to effect a moratorium on the consecration of anyone living in a same-sex union.Footnote 14 It asked bishops not to authorize public rites of blessing for same-sex unions and recommended that those who had already done so express regret for breaching the Communion’s ‘bonds of affection’. It suggested that the bishops involved in the New Hampshire consecration as well as those involved in formalizing the blessing of same-sex unions should ‘withdraw themselves from representative functions in the Anglican Communion’.
Alongside these recommendations, Windsor tried to address the fact that some bishops from other parts of the world had responded to events in North America by providing episcopal ministry to conservative parishes in the USA and Canada. It recommended a moratorium on such interventions.
Many of those of more liberal conviction regarded The Windsor Report as a setback and the more conservative, particularly in Africa, saw it as inadequate. It has been theologically critiqued, and the deficiencies to be expected in a report so urgently produced have been highlighted by many. The moratoria it proposed have proven fragile and actions in some quarters have been met by accusations of betrayal from others. Yet the general thrustFootnote 15 of the report was supported by the Primates Meetings of 2005 and 2007 as well as ACC 13 in 2005 and the conversations begun in Windsor continue to be reflected in Communion dialogues.
The Anglican Emphasis on the Local: Both Dance and Paralysis
The Windsor Report itself suggested that perhaps the key conversation to be had in light of the challenges facing the Anglican Communion revolved around the word ‘authority’.Footnote 16 The report acknowledged that Anglicans use the term in two related ways. First it is used of the primary authority of Scripture, but then it is used of the structures and processes of decision-making through which the authority of Scripture is grounded in the Church’s mission.
The Anglican Communion does not have a Pope, nor any system which corresponds to the authority structure and canonical organisation of the Roman Catholic Church. The Anglican Communion has always declared that its supreme authority is scripture. Later in the report we examine what this claim might actually mean, not least the way in which living under scriptural authority is principally the grounding for the Church’s mission. In that context, scriptural authority demands, and we believe that in our Communion structures it has begun to receive, appropriately sensitive and fine-tuned systems of decision making which allow both for the full participation of all members and for an eventual way of making difficult decisions which can enhance, rather than endanger, the unity and communion of our richly diverse family.Footnote 17
The Anglican emphasis on ‘dispersed authority’ means that the local and contextual is taken seriously even as the primary authority of Scripture is received.Footnote 18 For the Reformers, this meant that the local or national Church had authority to make a determination even in controversies of faith so long as it did not act contrary to the Word of God.Footnote 19
There was a moment during the opening service at the 2008 Lambeth Conference that powerfully imaged this Anglican emphasis on the local and contextual. It was the Gospel procession. The Melanesian Church led this part of the service. There were the bamboo drums and pipes of Melanesia. The Gospellers were dressed in the traditional attire of Melanesia: grass and feather, bare-breasted women. They brought a wooden canoe forward and placed the Gospel book within it, and with vibrant dance and drum, they processed the Gospel down into the Nave of the great Canterbury Cathedral. In that moment, the distinctive dance of Melanesia was as much authentically Anglican as the ancient and high-vaulted ceiling of Canterbury under which it occurred.
This is the polity, the dance of Anglicanism. At its best it takes seriously the local, the minority, the indigenous, the different, and holds these things in Community without coercion. However, the risk of vesting so much authority in the local is that just as it can lead to dance, so it can lead to paralysis. As recent experiences have shown, it can mean that the Communion struggles when a national Church, in the exercise of its own autonomy, comes to a decision in a matter of faith that other members of the Communion are not able, or not yet able, to affirm as faithful to the Word of God.
In other churches, there can be an appeal to central authority: a pontiff, council or assembly, but in Anglicanism not only is there an emphasis on the primary authority of the Word of God being received locally and contextually, it is true that the only structures that have power to determine or compel are also local. The Communion-wide structures are structures of consultation and advice; if there is an umpire on the Anglican field of play, and if he or she has a whistle to blow, there is nothing resembling an ecclesiastical yellow or red card to wave and certainly no Communion-wide tribunal to consider charges against an offending player!
Revisiting the Old Debate: To Strengthen the Centre
One response to this Anglican dilemma has been to try to strengthen the centre, either structurally or confessionally. As we have observed, there have been various suggestions and proposals to strengthen central authority within the Anglican Communion from its earliest days. There was an element of this approach in initial proposals for an Anglican Covenant. The tone of early drafts and an attention to enforceability introduced a juridical emphasis not so evident in ecumenical covenants and agreements. Norman Doe suggested that in this area the draft covenant appended to The Windsor Report innovated by introducing an element of ‘limited jurisdiction’ by the Instruments of Communion.Footnote 20
A report developed for the Standing Committee of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia was critical of the initial draft covenant as ‘unrealistic’ and supporting a ‘centralized jurisdiction’. It named the ‘quasi-legal and centralizing tendencies in the draft covenant’ as ‘particular barriers’ and expressed the view that the Anglican Church of Australia would be unlikely to make a statement of commitment to an interdependent life of the Communion, which did not reflect a number of principles, including:
The holding together of provincial autonomy with a mutually professed provincial preparedness to self-limit and to wait upon one another;
Dispersion of authority to autonomous churches and away from central institutions; and
The conferral of advisory rather than juridical power upon the instruments of unity.Footnote 21
The Australian concerns were not isolated. They were shared by a majority of bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference. The bishops considered a third covenant draft, known as the St Andrew’s Draft, and the particular area of difficulty was in the section that dealt with dispute resolution. The St Andrew’s Draft was clear that the Instruments of Communion had no ‘legislative, executive or juridical authority in our provinces, except where provided in their own laws’ (3.2.5d). However, it also required that covenanted churches:
• Accept the legitimacy of Communion-wide evaluation, which any of the Instruments of Communion may commission (3.2.5b).
• Acknowledge that where a church chooses not to adopt the course of action recommended by the Instruments of Communion it is relinquishing the ‘force and meaning’ of its covenant relationship with other members.
Consideration of this draft at Lambeth made it clear that any covenant that had a quasi-legal and centralizing character was not likely to gain wide acceptance within the Communion. Perhaps ironically, given that it was promoted as an alternative to a whole Communion gathering at Lambeth, the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) held just before Lambeth 2008, in its own way represented a move towards stronger Communion instruments.
Attended by nearly a third of the bishops of the Communion, GAFCON’s methodology was to seek unity around a robust restatement of the central tenets of faith. There was a confessional element; it produced The Jerusalem Declaration, which included a 14-point summary of traditional Anglican belief as a touchstone of orthodoxy. It also proposed a structural element. In a section called ‘The Road Ahead’ a Primates Council is proposed, initially constituted by a self-selected six, with a mandate to ‘recognize confessing Anglican jurisdictions’ and offer ‘orthodox oversight’ across the Communion. The establishment of a primatial council with some mandate to intervene across provinces undoubtedly represents a shift in Anglican polity; in Anglicanism, even the Archbishop of Canterbury is regarded as a first among equals and has no right of jurisdiction in any province other than his own.
Historically, Anglicans have been wary of a confessional approach to Communion, and even traditional formularies like the Thirty-Nine Articles are given different status in various provinces. Responses to The Windsor Report have made it clear that provinces are unlikely to cede any of their autonomy to an intra-Communion body such as a Council of Primates, so the GAFCON proposals may best be seen as a response to particular needs, rather than as a workable way of drawing the whole Communion together. Rather than trying to strengthen the Communion through centralist or confessional means, the 2008 Lambeth Conference might be seen as an attempt to make dispersed authority work more effectively.
It was clear from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation letter that Lambeth 08 would be different from earlier Lambeth Conferences. As Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams made it clear that he wanted to pursue a more consensual way of being together, ensuring that all the voices were heard and that there was an emphasis on listening, fellowship and prayer. There were no resolutions and no adversarial debate of motions, amendments and points of order. Instead the bishops engaged in a process called ‘Indaba’. The word is a Zulu one and it describes the coming together of a community to resolve issues through consensus, waiting on each other, hearing all the voices.
Bishops spent every morning together in groups, first in Bible study, then in Indaba. Sometimes the organization of the process let it down and there were moments of frustration; there were those who felt that the processes inhibited the teaching voice of the bishops gathered. However, it was clear what the Archbishop of Canterbury was trying to achieve: a less adversarial, more community-sustaining way of dealing with conflict.
The final document, called ‘Lambeth Indaba — Capturing Conversations and Reflections from the Lambeth Conference 2008’, is more a record of dialogue rather than an official report from the conference. However, it did reflect the beginnings of consensus around some ways ahead:
• The recognition that the Lambeth 98 resolutions on human sexuality remain and have moral weight in the Communion.
• Support for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s call for a moratorium on Communion breaking actions.
• Moves to develop an Anglican Covenant, giving expression to a shared heritage and vision, as well as providing processes for dealing with developments and differences that touch the life of the whole Communion.
So the Lambeth 2008 response to Communion tensions was to develop the methodology of moral suasion, to emphasize the relational, the building of consensus over time. As bishops discussed a draft text for an Anglican Covenant, it was clear that any ceding of power to a central instrument was unlikely. There was very little support for any form of international Anglican juridical process and not a lot of patience for some of the semi-juridical language in the text considered; any covenant would need to be morally persuasive rather than coercive, advisory rather than juridical, and aspirational rather than punitive. What was recognized was a need for a clear and agreed process of conflict resolution between autonomous churches based on mutual self-limiting rather than a ceding of autonomy. This is much more clearly the character of the third (Ridley Cambridge) draft of the Covenant considered by ACC 14 in May 2009:
Recognition of, and fidelity to, the text of this Covenant, enables mutual recognition and communion. Nothing in this Covenant of itself shall be deemed to alter any provision of the Constitution and Canons of any Church of the Communion, or to limit its autonomy of governance. Under the terms of this Covenant, no one Church, nor any agency of the Communion, can exercise control or direction over the internal life of any other covenanted Church.Footnote 22
The draft does have a section dealing with ‘dispute resolution’, but it is explicit that any outcome of Communion processes, including possible suspension of a province from participating in one of the Instruments of Communion, ‘shall not have any force in the Constitutions and Canons of any covenanting Church unless or until it is received by the canonical procedures of the Church in question’.Footnote 23
With the endorsement of this draft by ACC 14, subject to some revisions of the section Four (Our Covenanted Life Together) and its referral to the provinces for consideration and adoption, the Anglican Communion has effectively reaffirmed its commitment to a voluntarist, relational way of being together, dealing with differences through mutual self-limiting rather than by central control.Footnote 24 It has chosen, at least for this time, to find ways to make the present consultative and advisory structures work more effectively rather than developing central structures with decision-making capacity and the power of sanction; that is, to continue to work within what might be termed a ‘polity of persuasion’ with autonomous member churches seeking to maintain Communion within ‘bonds of affection’ through mutual relationship, advice and counsel.
A Polity of Persuasion: Creative Conflict in Community
Conflict is part of the life of the Church, simply because the Church is not what it shall be. It is incomplete. It has a necessarily penultimate character; it lives between promise and fulfilment, between origin and eschaton. Its present reality stands in conflict with its future as well as in fulfilment of its future. While the Church is orientated towards the Kingdom of God, it is yet to receive the fullness of that Kingdom, or to use the language of Paul quoted in The Windsor Report, it is a community still waiting the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1.5-7). The perfect communion of the Holy Trinity is yet to be manifested among those disciples for whom Jesus prayed ‘that they might be one, as we are one’ (Jn 17.22).
Because the Church is still waiting for its fulfilment, its knowledge and utterances are ‘in part’ (1 Cor. 13.9). There is an element of healthy conflict in all theological discourse. A 2008 IATDC report puts it like this:
Conflict arises because of real differences about our faithfulness to our Christian vocation. Conflict always involves suffering, puzzlement and distress. When harnessed creatively, it can however be a gift from God (e.g. Philippians 3.7-11, 4.11-13; cf. Genesis 33.10; Isaiah 58.4-11). The path towards resolving such conflict will involve following in the steps of the crucified Christ and allowing the presence of the Spirit to bring the conflicted parties to a place of new life. Situations of conflict can, through the power of the Spirit, become opportunities to enhance our mutual understanding and to grow in the faith.Footnote 25
Nicholas Sagovsky makes a similar point when he says that ‘the tradition is received and dealt within real historical communities’. Wherever there is human community ‘power is deployed and conflict is either contained or it tears the community apart’.Footnote 26
Serious, impassioned conflict, where the protagonists are committed to apparently irreconcilable positions is characteristic of humans living in community. The Church is not immune from this fundamental datum of human sociality. On the contrary, where Christians have a proper depth of conviction, it is inevitable that those convictions will clash.
In recent times, much of the energy of the Anglican Communion has been focused on avoiding what The Windsor Report described as ‘the crippling prospect of repeated worldwide inter-Anglican conflict’.Footnote 27 There is no doubt that unrestrained and inappropriately expressed conflict puts koinonia at risk. However, there is also risk in the premature suppression of conflict producing an inauthentic unity, limiting the opportunities for enhanced understanding, renewal of energy and growth.Footnote 28 Paul Avis puts its well:
The deleterious effects of unrestrained conflict are obvious. It reduces collaboration between various components or sub-groups of the organisation. It leaves the defeated damaged and unfit for productive work. It wastefully diverts energy from work to warfare. It polarises conflicting groups or individuals in a way that may take years to overcome. On the other hand, conflict gives vitality to an institution. It allows internal interest groups to pursue their aims, which may be for the overall benefit of the system. It opens up the system to its environment as fresh energies are drawn in to replace those consumed in internal conflicts. It clarifies the true interests of the organisation, corrects imbalances and stimulates reform and renewal.Footnote 29
So the challenge for the Communion, as it looks to the future, is not just to find ways to limit the destructive effects of conflict, but to harness its creativity. This will require time and patience as well as a quality of engagement.
A Polity of Persuasion: A Question of Time and Patience
The proposed Anglican Covenant is one tool to help the existing structures deal with conflict more effectively. A Pastoral Council has also been proposed to provide support and advice on the invitation of a Province as it deals with particular conflict situations and the needs of minority groupings.
While there is no doubting the importance of these proposals, other initiatives may need to be considered if the coherence of the Communion is to be maintained and if its differences and diversity are to be more than a point of weakness in the demands of the twentieth century.
This point was made strongly in a response by the Province of Australia to the Covenant Design Group’s St Andrew’s Draft.Footnote 30 The Australian response argued that for initiatives like an Anglican Covenant to work, they needed to be supported by moves to develop ‘a rolling process of conversation’, with more opportunity for face-to-face meeting and relationship building across the Communion.
This requires time and continuity. Anglicanism’s gatherings of conferences, councils and synods inevitably must have some episodic character. A challenge will be to enable conversation and debate that has a more diachronic character, providing time not just ‘process space’ enabling the many voices of the people of God to be heard, but also a chronological space that offers providential opportunity.
Rowan Williams paints an evocative picture of the power of what might have at first seemed like meaningless wasting of time in a reflection on the Johannine story of the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8.1-11). When the woman is accused before Jesus, he at first makes no reply but writes with his finger on the ground:
What on earth is he doing? Commentators have had plenty of suggestions, but there is one meaning that seems obvious to me in light of what I think we learned that morning. He hesitates. He does not draw the line, fix an interpretation, tell the woman who she is and what her fate should be. He allows a moment, a longish moment, in which people are given time to see themselves differently…Footnote 31
Within a polity of persuasion process will need to provide time for direction to emerge, and not necessarily as a formal, final and binding decision. Sometimes what emerges may well be conviction and consensus, but equally it could be hesitation and caution. This taking of time together can be understood within the biblical call to ‘mutual submission’ (Eph. 5.21), going beyond a simple submission of the minority to the majority, to the development of mutual obligation in light of the common good to have a ‘perichoretic element’; a making space for the other within Communion.Footnote 32
A Polity of Persuasion: The Quality of Engagement
In all these formal Communion gatherings, the ways of being together and doing business may need review if they are to maximize the opportunities for genuine dialogue and consensus building. While Anglicanism reflects a theological lineage going back to the early Church, many of its ways of formal gathering have the DNA of Westminster. Bruce Kaye attributes this to the ‘accidental imperialisms of some temporary episodes in the Anglican historical experience’. His argument is that synods in the form found in most Anglican provinces emerged from particular nineteenth-century circumstances and reflect those circumstances as much as any underlying theological tradition. Kaye goes on to identify two problems with the parliamentary form of synodical governance. He argues that the model presumes that a synod has ‘immediate coercive powers for its laws and decisions’, whereas even in those provinces where the canons of General Synod do apply immediately within every diocese (for example, in the United States), there is still little power to coerce a voluntary church community. So the first problem Kaye identifies is a practical and functional one; synods are often unable to do what their structures and processes would suggest they are established to do.Footnote 33
The second and related problem Kaye identifies is theological: ‘whether synods should be trying to do this anyway’. Kaye questions the view of authority implicit in the parliamentary approach to synod and also makes the point that a centralist juridical structure is limited in its capacity to ‘engage significantly’ the society in which it lives. He draws on contemporary organizational theory to suggest that it is more productive to conceptualize the Church as a network, or at least a series of networks, with initiative and activity dispersed and a sense of authority as a ‘persuasive resonance’.Footnote 34
Reflecting on the English General Synod, Stephen Platten argues that the adversarial character of parliamentary process can work against the building of consensus and ‘almost certainly encourages various forms of polarization’.Footnote 35 If differences and conflict are to offer creativity and opportunity for growth, then much of the synodical process found at a diocesan and provincial level is probably mismatched to the polity of persuasion needed within a voluntarist community.
While none of the international instruments of the Anglican Communion operate strictly within a synodical model, the same principles apply. Not only does a polity of persuasion need the ongoing engagement of diachronic process, it needs process with a particular character. It will need a continuity of conversation provided in various ways, including through regional gatherings and networks operating between the larger episodic gatherings. It too will be facilitated more by a style of gathering that is consensual, persuasive and open to formal and informal networks.
Among possibilities to be considered might be a change to the frequency of the Lambeth Conference. With international travel now much more accessible, the possibility of a briefer ‘Lambeth between Lambeths’, at least for diocesan bishops, might allow important conversations to continue. A proposal from the 1998 Lambeth Conference to encourage and reinforce regional networks and relationships within the Anglican Communion would also seem worth re-visiting.Footnote 36 While various commissions and committees work continuously between the major Communion gatherings, the opportunity for representatives of the various provinces of a region to meet and discuss difficult issues would add to conciliar continuity and mean that the major gatherings would become much more part of a rolling conversation. Within countries like Australia, the structure of provincial (State) synods and councils, for instance, could be used more intentionally to ensure a continuity of conversation over difficult and conflicted matters between the triennial meetings of the national General Synod.Footnote 37 The way the Communion uses the biennial Primates Meeting might also be re-considered. Instead of asking the primates to resolve disputes they might better serve their role as chief pastors in college if they were asked to broker conversations and relationships throughout the Communion.Footnote 38
Beyond these formal developments and proposals, there is perhaps even greater richness of koininia to be developed in the informal; the companion relationships, the exchanges of clergy, the sharing of insights and prayer that go on every day in the life of the Communion. The ongoing development of these informal links is arguably just as important to the Communion’s ability to hold together as the continued evolution of its formal structures.Footnote 39
A Polity of Persuasion: Is it Just About The Church?
The Anglican Communion has spent the last decade re-visiting some the debates that accompanied its beginning. As in those early debates, controversy and division has brought calls for a strengthening at the centre. Whether through conviction or a simple recognition of reality, the Communion has shown itself in recent major gatherings unwilling to depart from a model of dispersed authority exercised within ‘bonds of affection’. Anglicanism seems committed to a polity of persuasion at least for the foreseeable future. The challenge is to make it work and the question is what is at stake if it does not. Obviously the institutional coherence of the Communion is at stake, as the foreword to The Windsor Report put it:
…if realistic and visionary ways cannot be agreed to meet the levels of disagreement at present or to reach consensus on structures for encouraging greater understanding and communion in future it is doubtful if the Anglican Communion can continue in its present form.Footnote 40
Perhaps there is even more at stake. In a world where power is wont to impose, perhaps there is something to be said for a diverse and international church community that is suspicious of power unless it is shared. In a world where nations act against each other and then talk, a Communion of churches that must talk before acting may just be good news. In a world where the globally dominant use their influence to suppress the voices of others, there is perhaps a hint of the Kingdom in a Communion that gives equal voice to all its communities across the globe. In a world torn by conflict there may be a great gift in a vision of community where autonomy is respected, the less powerful do not have a less powerful place, and in times of conflict the first resort is to listening engagement, restraint and a bending towards each other.
When Jesus addressed how power was to be used among the disciples, it was in contrast to what occurred ‘among the Gentiles’. His injunction, ‘it is not so among you’, was to show the subversive servant way of the Son of Man in a world where ‘their rulers lord it over them and their great ones are tyrants’ (Mk 10.41-45). The disciples of Jesus are to demonstrate, as Windsor put it, that new way of being human, over against corrupt and dehumanizing patterns of life, has been launched upon the world.Footnote 41
That is why the sometimes tedious debates about authority and structure in the Anglican Communion could actually matter; because they might have something to say about being human under God and living in community, about sharing power and coexisting, about living interdependently on this tiny planet. Pursued with this perspective, they might just be important conversations about the human future.
