It strikes me as more than a little hasty, if not ingenuous, to say on the basis of the resolution on homosexuality, that Lambeth has emerged as the authoritative body in the Anglican Communion. Perhaps it will someday -- but then again perhaps it wont. It takes more than one sunny day to make a summer.
Authority has to be given, it cannot be siezed, in the Anglican Communion. The cynic might say that traditionally in Anglicanism authority is given to the person or body who at the time approximates most closely to one's own opinion. A more benign analysis might say that authority is diffuse and dispersed. And the test of time is an important factor. (Compare the 1888 resolution on divorce with the present situation as a case in point.) There is no reason whatever to believe any of that has changed just because of one resolution, no matter what one may think of it in itself.
The ABC himself seems to have acknowledged as much when he noted that the resolution only indicated where the bishops stood at that time. Notice, he neither claimed authority for Lambeth, not did he project the decision into the future. It was one of his more realistic statements.
Historically, there has been an ongoing struggle to define authority within the Anglican Church. A Roman Catholic once debated the issue with John Newman (before he swam the Tiber), and said, "But you have no Pope." Newman replied by saying, "Ah, but we do -- every one of our bishops is a pope." I don't see any reason to believe that things are very different today.
The cynic in me suggests that *politics* is *the authority* in the Anglican Communion, like it or not. Lambeth is one, but only one, of the venues where the political mediation goes on. The Primates' Meeting this September (1999), GC 2000, and the 2001 synod of the Diocese of New Westminster (Vancouver) will be among others important for all of us. No doubt the chancery of the Diocese of Singapore will remain another for the foreseeable future.
One might note, as well, that around the time of Lambeth the perennial suggestion arose yet again that the ABC ought to be given more power to speak on behalf of the church in an authoritatitve capacity. He himself rejected the notion, and the idea has returned to obscurity. The reason is obvious -- the political infrastructure (including Lambeth) has never been granted authoritative status and thus there is none of the back up needed for authoritative statements by a particular person or body.
This point was also touched upon by the Roman Catholic who spoke on the subject at Lambeth, suggesting that the Communion needed a more centralized authority structure. He was received respectfully but his recommendation was politely ignored. Quite simply, it is ultimately in no one's interest.
One doesn't even have to look at the other 1998 resolutions to see the point at work. Reception of the sexuality resolution itself has been only partial and selective at best, even amongst the conservatives. How many bishops, provinces, dioceses, parishes or persons (liberal or conservative, it makes no difference) have entered into the listening process included in that resolution? I daresay many have been too busily engaged in politicing, or playing pope, to get around to it.
Simply because a large number of Anglicans at any given time say they agree with one part of a resolution, does not indicate that they have given authoritative status to the body which passed that resolution. On the contrary, they are acting in typical Anglican fashion -- playing politics. In truth, they demonstrate this by the fact that they happily ignore another part of the same resolution, and dispute other resolutions passed by even larger majorities by the same session of the same conference.
I suspect that part of the problem in understanding arises from cultural factors. The governance of the Anglican Communion, not surprisingly, mirrors the British parliamentary system and the Commonwealth as they have both evolved since the American Revolution. It is neither monarchical (like Rome) nor congressional (like ECUSA), and it is not formal and unitary but informal, fraternal and federal, like the Commonwealth. (Remember, neither a Frenchman nor an American can make head or tail of the Commonwealth, let alone the Canadian monarchy. <g>)
Here too is one of the aspects of Anglican "tradition". Ironically, I strongly suspect if you were to make Lambeth into an authoritative body the Communion would fairly quickly break up -- just as the British empire did, and for essentially similar reasons.
That, I suspect, is well understood by the PB, and accounts for his call for a moratorium on the votes on sexuality -- subtle and pragmatic strategist that he is, he neither wants to challenge the conservative forces revealed at Lambeth nor to halt the evolution.
Like it or not, we are doomed to be more like the Commonwealth than the United States of America, more likely to be fluid and evolutionary than constitutional, more likely to have authority widely dispersed than centralized, more likely to be politically rather untidy rather than neat and authoritarian. Did I say "doomed"? In fact, is that not exactly as we all want it to be? Let us only hope we are spared from being as comical about it as the Orthodox (only a few years ago the Patriarch of Moscow anathemetized the Patriarch of Constantinople during a minor dispute over ethnic jurisdiction in the Baltic states).
Pax,
Garry Lovatt
Toronto
mailto:willie@interlog.com
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