From The American Heritage College Dictionary, 4th ed. 2002.:
communion n. 1. The act or an instance of sharing, as of thoughts. 2. Religious or spiritual fellowship. 3. A body of Christians with a common religious faith who practice the same rites; a denomination. 4. Communion a. The sacrament of the Eucharist received by a congregation., b. The consecrated elements of the Eucharist. c. The part of the Mass or a liturgy in which the Eucharist is received.Definitions 1, 2, and 3 can all be applied to the Anglican Communion. Lately, however, the fellowship has broken down, although the sharing of thoughts continues--more often than not as a war of words (yes, I know, military imagery). And as far as the conservatives/orthodox/reappraisers are concerned, certain parts of the Communion, especially the Episcopal Church, no longer share a common religious faith. One of the things that really bothers me about the ongoing squabbles is how the Eucharist has become a weapon for punishment or defining who is in and who is out.
The conservatives (I will use this term for the time being, as I have larger concerns with the other two terms) continue to protest that dioceses have turned to the civil legal system to reclaim churches/property that congregations deciding to leave the Episcopal Church are attempting to take with them. They feel that a pastoral rather than a legalistic approach should be taken. Yet many of these same people and groups support the drafting and implementation of an Anglican Covenant. Ultimately, a covenant is a contract or compact, a legal document. They decry the legalistic response to their trying to take property that does not belong to them, yet they want to institute a legalistic method of determining who is and who is not an Anglican.
The more I read on conservative blogs and web sites, the more the people who run those sites and blogs--along with the majority of the commentors on the blogs--appear to me to be the contemporary version of the Puritans of Tudor and Stuart England. The Puritans were not happy with the Elizabethan settlement or the church that resulted. Their zeal to reform the church and the world was one of the major factors leading to the English Civil War and the Protectorate. The Puritans were not satisfied unless everyone conformed--at least outwardly--with their beliefs. Neither, it appears, will the conservatives of today.
In my opinion, any covenant adopted by the Anglican Communion would a bad idea. To develop a rigid formula for who is and who is not an Anglican sets a bad precedent. Those who do the casting out today may be those cast out tomorrow. If the Anglican Communion is going to come apart, let it do so now instead of implementing a system that brings about dissolution through a series of bitterly fought tit-for-tat excommunications.
The more extreme conservatives in--and formerly part of--the Episcopal Church continue to work with conservative bishops in other provinces to set up their shadow church. If they cannot conform the Episcopal Church to their way of thinking, then they dream of replacing it in the Anglican Communion with the shadow church. Of course, some of the more extreme liberals wish the conservatives would just leave and go to the shadow church and leave the Episcopal Church alone. I do not think either of those scenarios is workable or preferable.
Many conservatives, especially those building the shadow church, seem to believe that, if the Episcopal Church is disciplined by--or cast out of--the Anglican Communion, most of the "vast middle" will flock to the conservative institution they are building. Quite frankly, for the majority of Episcopalians, the Anglican Communion was barely a blip on their radar screens 20 years ago. If it had not been for the handful of conservatives who went to foreign bishops and "stirred the pot," so to speak, most Episcopalians probably would not be aware of their membership in the Anglican Communion, nor even care. For the average member in the pew, a change in the Episcopal Church's status in the Anglican Communion is probably not going to cause them to leave their current parish. It might push a few here and there to move to the shadow church, but not in much greater numbers than have left over the last 20 years.
The only scenario I can see that might drive the "vast middle" out of the Episcopal Church is if the conservatives succeeded in replacing it in the Anglican Communion with the shadow church. The inevitable legal battles over church property and the resulting rancorous debate would drain parish, diocesan and denominational resources and try the patience of "the vast middle" to the point of enough! Then we would see the "vast middle" flocking not from the Episcopal Church to the shadow church, but to other denominations entirely.
The Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) seems to be the current centerpiece of the shadow church (which at this stage is not yet a single, united entity). According to their own web site CANA is "a duly constituted convocation of the Church of Nigeria." If the conservatives are successful in making the shadow church the Anglican Communion member from the United States, will the Archbishop of Nigeria then be the Primate of Nigeria and the United States?
If the Episcopal Church pauses, as many have suggested, will it pause as a whole, or will the cost of waiting be borne only by its lgbt members?
Just some thoughts on a hot and humid summer evening.
Peace,
Jeffri
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