Anglicanism: The Dream that Died

by Demophilus

As a confirmed Anglican I try to keep up on the maneuvering that goes on in my fold. Mostly I find it distracting, even painful. Whether or not I (or my parish) am in the right theologically, it is a grievous thing to see disputes between ostensible brothers and sisters in Christ played out in the media, in the courts, and elsewhere. My suspicion is that it reminds those with no faith at all why they don't bother to wander into a church on Sunday mornings. So it was with some interest that I read this essay by Travis Kavulla on NRO the other day.

This isn't the place to rehearse the history of grievances that has brought Anglicanism to this moment, but as I write there's a meeting of conservative Anglicans, led primarily by the African churches, meeting in Jerusalem. It is something of a demonstration against the every-10-year Lambeth Conference convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, in the minds of conservatives, has not dealt with Gene Robinson -- the gay bishop of New Hampshire -- in a sufficiently swift and stern manner.

The tragedy of all this, or at least one dimension of it, is that the great experiment that is Anglicanism seems to be faltering, perhaps drawing to a close. There always has been something noble about Anglicanism, a genuine via media between the ever more fracturing Protestant sects and the false universalism and authoritarianism of Rome. At its most grandiose, it was even a potential third great form of Christianity, a Christianity for the English-speaking world that stood alongside its Latin and Eastern iterations. Its theological basis always was uncertain and found its fullest expression in a prayer book, the great and glorious Book of Common Prayer. If religion, as Oakeshott thought, was the marriage of the practical and poetic modes of experience, then uttering the venerable words of the BCP exemplified this definition.

Of course, this synthesis, or compromise, or unstable dream -- however one wants to define it -- always has risked incoherence. I've always been struck by the prescience of Reinhold Niebuhr's remark in The Nature and Destiny of Man that, "At its worst Anglican thought is compound of liberalistic moralism and traditional piety. At its best it manages to combine all facets of the Christian doctrine of grace more truly than other churches."

Well, if there is one thing we moderns do not excel at it is holding the middle ground and withstanding the tensions of life; amid the fragmention of modernity we long for false absolutes, forgetting that the infinite is involved with, but not contained within, history. And so its no surprise that Anglicanism, already, perhaps, particularly unstable, is being reduced to a contest between liberals and fundamentalists. Archbishop Orambi from Uganda is cited in Mr. Kavulla's essay as saying, "This Bible is black and white. It is not a historical document." Well, no and no. This really is crude theology, a vivid example of the fundamentalist's tendency to double down against doubt and complexity. And yet the Anglican Left, those who emphasize the "new things" the Spirit seems to be working are no better. Too often their thinking is lacking in rigor and their schemes of interpretation -- of both Scripture and tradition -- are as hucksterish as the fundamentalists, if possessing a different valence.

In the end, the fate of Anglicanism is a nearly perfect commentary on modernity, where both sides of a struggle refuse to realize they are, in fact, mirror images of one another. Fundamentalism is just as modern as a thorough going, optimistic progressivism. Those concerned about theology, politics, and modernity would do well to pay attention to my much beloved Communion. In it can be found the promise and perils that await us all.

Comments

[Lauren]

Check out this amazing web ad for Sarah Palin. Who is this woman? McCain better pick her for VP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXfiOSCfY44

[William Burns]

Of course, it's all quite a bit more complicated than Kavulla lays it out. The African bishops he refers to have been considerably more tolerant of polygamy than homosexuality, using arguments that sound remarkably like those of American theological liberals. And possibly the most eminent theological liberal in the entire Communion is Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

[Demophilus]

William -- you certainly are right; it is more complicated than Kavulla admits. I should have noted somewhere that I linked to the essay mainly to get the conversation started. I think my post shows I'm not entirely satisfied with the "conservatives" in the Communion.

[hb]

I'm not sure the idea's dying, but maybe that's just because I happen to be at a parish here in DC that has thus far refused to let the nonsensical political dichotomy affect its public discussions about the wider church's troubles. We're a parish that's called itself Anglo-Catholic for decades, and is remarkably old fashioned, let's say, in certain respects, but also has a very high proportion of openly gay men in attendance. So, the idea is still around, in pockets, that the West should submit to fellowship with the rest of the communion, and the South should realize that Jesus would definitely be hanging out with gay men and lesbians.

Just as the African bishops aren't really so concerned about theology (as William points out, they're flexible on other points), many Western liberals are likewise concerned mostly with power relationships--using the Church's politics to make up for widespread oppression of gays. Both sides are half-right and half-wrong: it seems unlikely that Jesus would support excluding gays or acting with the shocking arrogance that the Episcopal Church, of which I am a resolute member, has displayed. The problem, as one of the priests at my parish has put it, is that so few partisans realize that they're disagreeing about the nature of Jesus and Christianity, not sexuality, and thus very little work gets done, in what few conversations there are, towards resolving the real root of the "break."

Tutu's a helpful example, of course, because he can speak about both sides of this real dialectic at once. He's a man whose life and actions have brought the suffering of the Global South to the attention of the rest of the world, but he sees the error in the too-bold assertion of power that's a natural response to the 500+ years of violence colonized countries have suffered. It's a tempting response, he understands, but not a Christ-like one. Tutu remembers and proclaims, in a feat that's difficult for any human being, that Christ calls humans to submit to one another, to love each other first above all things. So he can say it's foolish to exclude gays, (especially if one thinks homosexuality is a sin), and (I think he's said this) foolish to continue to act like colonial authorities towards the Episcopal Church's brothers and sisters in the South.

But the power struggle will continue, so long as people decide to fight political phantoms by means of the Church. I think that's not so much a modern problem as a Christian one.