Shrill cries for centralization

There are increasingly shrill cries for a centralized authority over the Churches of the Anglican Communion.  Some are now claiming that there is such crisis in the Communion that the only possible resolution is in granting the Lambeth Conference and the Primates’ Meeting a ‘Conciliar authority,’ although no one can say who it is that would or could, under Anglican polity, grant such authority.  These arguments are claimed to be rooted in the principle of ‘What affects all, should be decided by all.’  These arguments are based on two premises, one of which is false and one of which is faulty. 

The assumption that the Anglican Communion is in crisis is false.  Only those who have a craven lust for power view the state of affairs in the Communion as dangerously critical.  In reality, there is no crisis.  On the other hand, views such as these do indeed threaten to create one.  If people begin to accept the premise that the Anglican Communion (read: 'the Anglican Church') is in crisis, then people may in fact choose to accede the authority that God has entrusted to them as faithful protestants.  In that case, the Communion would indeed enter a crisis, a critical destruction of the virtues of autonomy and autocephaly that the Communion has represented since its emergence in the late 1800's. 

In terms of Christian history, the Communion is still young, hence fragile.  It is vulnerable to the plays for power that some are executing now.  The rest of us bear the responsibility of doing all we can to preserve the distinctive blessings and the distinctive burdens of what it is to be the Anglican Communion. 

Further, and more obviously, the presumption that the principle of: ‘What affects all, should be decided by all’ is valid in the Anglican context is demonstrably faulty.  One is immediately struck with the irony of this doctrine being touted by persons of the Anglican tradition: the Church of England having clearly denied this very principle in order to claim its right to exist. 

Certainly what the Church in England did under Archbishop Cranmer and King Henry VIII had dire implications for 'all' the Church!  Would those calling for centralization now suggest that England was wrong to have enacted its reformation?  Or is one correct in inferring that these folks define 'all' not as 'all Christians' but only as 'all Anglicans'?  If so, then one realizes that their limitations on 'all' are as sectarian as any other inaccurate use of the term.  It then becomes these people’s burden to explain why this peculiar use of the principle is restricted in such a way that it serves what appear to be their predisposition and affection for autocratic power. 

The respective polities of the Churches of the Anglican Communion define 'all' as those who are members of each Church, respectively.  When it comes to governance, each Church has its own membership, therefore its own 'all.'  These polities result directly from England's rejection of Rome's claim to define 'all' for all Christians. 

There is no crisis, there is only claim to same.  There is no 'Anglican Church,' there is only an effort to claim same.  If the political powers of the Anglican Communion push an attempt to centralize more power to themselves, they will find a great many members of the organic Church, the 'all' of the Churches of the Communion, leaving their Churches; leaving the emerging autocracy and oligarchy; and reiterating what England told Rome, what America told England, 'NO!  We value our independence as much as our interdependence.  You will not take away one in the name of the other.'  These folks will leave to strengthen expressions of faith in community that are more democratic and organic, as perhaps once was the Church of England and certainly as is, yet, the Episcopal Church.  And the discarded remains of the Communion will find itself quickly and increasingly irrelevant to anything having to do with Christian witness to the wider world. 

Jim +