A DOWNBEAT evaluation of the state of the Communion was delivered on Tuesday by the former Primate in Jerusalem & the Middle East, the Rt Revd Clive Handford. Bishop Handford chairs the Windsor Continuation Group.
The group is holding three sessions with the bishops. The first looked at the present situation. The next will look at where the bishops think the Communion should aim for. The final session, next week, will consider how to get there.
The present situation was, he said, severe and complex. It weaved in and out of many dimensions and many competing value systems. Much had been undertaken in response to the Windsor process, “but we remain at an impasse. There is inconsistency between what has been agreed and what has been done. There seems to be a gap between promise and follow-through.”
There were also real but half-spoken fears that there might be a wider agenda: that people might want to question the nature of Christ, the credal statements, possibly to introduce lay presidency. There had been a breakdown of trust, he said.
These suspicions were also engendered by the timing of the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem so close to Lambeth and “by the sadness of brothers and sisters not here”, whose absence was a symbol of the pain of the Communion. No one had a monopoly of pain. The Church in North America was in turmoil, too.
The preliminary observations in the group’s presentation (it was not, he stressed, a report) found that people’s positions and arguments were growing more extreme, and they were growing apart from each other. “Relations in the Communion continue to deteriorate.”
The Instruments of Communion were not trusted, and people felt they might not be strong enough to cope with the problem. People worried that the litigiousness and division that now beset North America could begin to be seen elsewhere.
Even ecumenical partners knew no longer whom to address their words, as the Church no longer spoke with one voice. Because of the interconnectedness of the Churches through ecumenical discussions, this was now affecting many denominations worldwide.
So why, asked Bishop Hanford, are they bothering? “Because we believe that God has called this Communion into being and has a purpose for it,” he said.
Tom Bair, husband of the Rt Revd Geralyn Wolfe, Bishop of Rhode Island, whom he married last year, addressed the press at the same meeting.
“The Anglican Church had made one of the most important differences to the world in which we live. It would be a tragedy of great proportions if the Communion came apart. We have not come apart. There’s still ways to go. I think God can intervene.” |
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