It isn’t perfect, but the Report of Eames/Windsor/Lambeth Commission’s is surprisingly clear, especially considering it is an Anglican bit of work. And for this, it may be just what we need. It seems that the core difficulty of the current controversy has been not the fact that the issue involved is sex and sexuality, or authority and freedom, or revelation and inspiration, or faithfulness and interpretation, or justice and oppression, or any other of a nearly endless list of possibilities. Instead, I think it’s been difficult mostly because it’s been difficult for the Church to arrive at a common definition of the very issue that has defined the controversy. And this matters because if we haven’t been able even to agree upon what it is we’re arguing about, then surely we’ve done hardly better in being able to agree upon what it is that we stand for.
When Archbishop of Canterbury called this commission he told the members that they were to address what it means for Christians in the Anglican Communion to be actually in Communion with one another. In holding to this charge, the Commission’s Report now focuses all of us on this single phenomenon: Communion.
The report recalls for us the simple fact that our Communion with our fellow Anglicans, involves not just privilege, but responsibility. It recalls us to understand our mission and ourselves in terms of our membership in the Church; and to understand this community as much wider and deeper, than just the more local expression of it. It moves us, I think, to reflect upon the nature of what it means to be in Communion with one another as individuals, parishes, dioceses, and as communities of whole Churches: the Episcopal Church in Communion with the Anglican Church of Uganda, the Church of England in Communion with the Anglican Church of Singapore.
So, I think we notice here a wag of the finger aimed toward both the intransigent on the ‘Right’ and the intransigent on the ‘Left’. And for all of us, I think, the Report is a challenging, even confrontational. The Commission’s Report reminds us Anglicans of what we really already know, which is, that we cannot turn our back on one another without also turning our back on God. Whenever you or I on any level become somehow persuaded of how very superior we are in comparison to those others, whoever those others are, this Report, and the truths to which it refers, remind us that the reality and responsibility of our Communion call us to learn that this holy gift of Communion is not put here to serve us, as though we are customers or clients, but to fashion us together as members and fellow servants. This report will challenge our infatuation with ourselves, and rightly so.
For our part, the Report urges the Episcopal Church to use a framework of the Anglican triad of Scripture, Reason, and Tradition to supply to the rest of the Communion an explanation of the controversial actions taken at General Convention last year. Thus, the Report is calling on the Episcopal Church to do some important thinking and praying around articulating a much-needed theology of person hood, and an ethic and standard of relationship that can be applied equally to everyone, which the Church should have done anyway prior to acting legislatively around one person’s election as bishop. I hope the Church will graciously comply. To do so will, as the Report notes, benefit all.
Equally important, the Report also re-states the commitment shared by all the Churches of the Communion to listen to, and to care equally for, all persons, especially those who in some way experience a lack of charity and grace from this very Communion of which they are a part.
If the Report is to be the turning point that it can be, it will compel people whether they like it or not, to frame future discussion and debate in the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion around the affects of an issue upon the phenomenon of our Communion. You and I can give thanks to God for this because, in a relationship of both mutual autonomy and mutual accountability, most of us will now be able to choose to grow with one another, in the difficult, humbling, and sacrificial Anglican expression of the faith for which we stand together. The Lambeth Commission’s Report reasserts that the Anglican way forward is to hold our Communion as a central expression of the worship and ministry that Christ has given to this Church. It encourages us to demonstrate together what we stand for: a sacred bond and trust from God which fashions people of all nations into one Church, one Communion, apostolic, catholic, and holy, God’s presence, alive and well within the Communion of all God’s people.
Jim +
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