Reflection on the Canterbury Meetings

Over the past two weeks several of you have asked me about the recent meeting of Anglican leaders in Canterbury. I’ll confess a general ambivalence about spending time discussing the Anglican Communion conflict, as it has a tendency to distract us from our mission of evangelism and discipleship, and will likely be off-putting to spiritual seekers, or to “de-churched” folks coming from a bad experience with a church. However, the conflict it is a part of our history as a congregation, and, to the extent that the conflict continues, it is part of our present day reality as well.

So, the Anglican Communion is a group of 38 church bodies, called Provinces, from around the world with roots in the Church of England. Historically, as the British Empire contracted, Church of England missions were left in the now-former colonies. Authority in the mission churches was slowly handed over to indigenous leaders, and, over time, the Anglican churches in given countries or regions united into relatively autonomous Provinces, although each Province retained deep relational connections to the Church of England, and a common theological and liturgical heritage.

Each Anglican Province is led by an archbishop, who is known as the “Primate” (the source of a lot of jokes, but from the Latin primus, meeting “first”) of that Anglican Province. From time to time, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, although he has no technical authority outside of England, is considered “first among equals” (primus inter pares), and calls meetings of Anglican leaders, whether all the bishops or just the Primates, from around the world.

Since 2003, the Archbishop of Canterbury has called together the Primates several times in response to the decision of The Episcopal Church (or TEC, which, from the time of the American Revolution, has been the American branch of the Anglican Communion) to consecrate a partnered gay man as Bishop of New Hampshire against the pleading of global Anglicans (not to mention the vast majority of Christians around the world). At a meeting in 2005, the Primates recognized that The Episcopal Church had broken “the bonds of affection” that held the Anglican Communion together. Again, the Anglican Communion has no papal-style curia, so it is only common roots and goodwill that, historically, had held the 38 autonomous churches together.

Since then, a number of meetings have taken place, which have largely continued to articulate that the Communion is broken, but, generally, without an agreed-upon vision for moving forward. Different proposals regarding accountability were floated, but, again, nothing was done.

All the while, many Provinces around the Communion announced that they were in impaired, or even broken, communion with TEC, and several bishops, mostly from Africa, took the extraordinary step of offering oversight to any American (or Canadian, because, by this time, at least one diocese in Canada had authorized liturgical rites for the blessing of same-sex couples) congregation who wished to leave TEC. Scores of congregations, and even a few dioceses, formally left TEC, and, in a very irregular way, became a part of another Province. Our congregation started in 2007 as a part of the Anglican Church of Uganda.

In 2008, global Anglican leaders met in Jerusalem at the first Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), at which the call was given for the creation of a new Anglican Province in North America. Responding to this call, in 2009, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) was born when the congregations and dioceses that had sought refuge in other Anglican Provinces came together, now in a peer relationship with other Anglican Provinces around the world.

Since 2009, the ACNA, while fully engaged in life and ministry with many Provinces around the world, has not been fully recognized as part of the Anglican Communion by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion Office. So, it was extraordinary when our archbishop was invited to attend the recent Primates’ meeting. The other extraordinary result of the recent meeting was the requirement that TEC withdraw from participation in the global Anglican Communion for three years as a result of their decision over the summer to authorize marriage rites for same-sex couples.

What does this mean for us? Honestly, at a local level, it means very little. Since our birth in 2007, we’ve developed close relationships with Anglicans around the world, and those relationships will continue unimpeded. The same is true on a diocesan level. On the Provincial level, however, this could be a first step toward creating a mechanism for discipline within the Anglican Communion that has not, to this point, existed. A communion committed to common ministry and common discipline, rooted in the richness of historic Anglicanism, could be a gift, both to the global church, and the world.

You can read the official statement of the Primates here. Our archbishop, Foley Beach, posted his reflections here. Anglican TV did a helpful interview with Archbishop Foley that is available here. Finally, here is a reflection from our bishop.

Again, the decades-long conflict within the Anglican Communion is part of our story, so engagement is important. In my mind, the best way to engage is to continue to pray for our archbishop and other global Anglican leaders. Pray that they might have wisdom on how to lead well in this uniquely challenging season, that our Communion might be empowered to bear witness to the gospel in these complicated times. In the end, I’m mindful of St. Paul’s words to the Philippians, “this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14). We can rejoice that, as we press on, we’re not alone, and we can pray that, as we press on, we’d see many to our left and to our right. The heavenly call awaits.

Peace,

Chris