Fulcrum Blog
Bishop of Ebbsfleet blogs from Lambeth 2008

Monday morning  (the Feast of the Cure d'Ars, Patron of the Parochial Clergy)

As promised, I post this last 'guest blog' from home.  I left Canterbury after yesterday's final plenary session in the Big Top, which, in many ways, was a cross between morning worship in a certain kind of evangelical church and a school speech day.  (I make the comparisons kindly and not in a spirit of criticism).  There were the little songs, linking together announcements and nuggets of Christian goodness: this was the church bit - church as entertainment, fellowship and simple melodiousness.  It was clearly all leading up to the big sermon at the end and the mini-sermons as we went along built up the impetus and prepared us.  The school speech day bit was the applause for each and everyone - design group, stewards, bible study leaders, listeners and so on.  We didn't quite get as far as the coach drivers and the dinner ladies but at one stage it seemed inevitable that we should.  And why not?  The coaches ran well and ther mashed potato never ran out.  (I enjoyed asking the breakfast team 'Now what have you got for us today?' because, each and every day, it was the same.... )

I was immensely impressed by the ecumenical comments from Kallistos Ware - Greek Orthodox - and Iain Torrance - Scottish Presbyterian.  Neither was a stranger to Anglicanism or, for that matter, Englishness.  The one implicitly criticised our preoccupation with the North American gay rights agenda - which is being exported as swiftly and surely as Starbucks - the other endorsed the notion and mechanism of Covenant.  Kallistos' gentle criticisms focused specifically on our failure to focus on marriage, stable family life, and the importance of fathering: it is the collapse in these three related areas which is causing enormous damage to the fabric of society and these are the areas which traditional Christian Faith has most to say about and most to offer on.   As for the Covenant notion, it is gracious gift, given and received, and not contract, thrashed out line by line.  I am sure the Archbishop of Canterbury was grateful for support from both reflections.

Eventually, the songs sung and the plaudits applauded, we got to the third presidential address.  It was a magisterial defence of catholicity and of the urgency of discovering what I myself have called a liberal magisterium, a hermeneutical consensus for the sake of the whole.  It will involve moratoria, fora, the strengthening of the instruments of unity and a patient redefinition of canons, dioceses, provinces and communion - so that these features of shared life have agreed meanings and interchangeabilities.  Whether this will be possible will depend on patience and restraint in the liberal West and the conservative South - and there are lots of adverse signs and fragmentation is a force which is hard to contain.  I wish the Communion well but cannot help but thinking that the arguments we have heard about restraint on issues of human sexuality, mutatis mutandis, apply also to Faith and Order questions.  The presence of women bishops at Lambeth - and it was a great privilege to meet and get to know two or three of them - should remind us all that North American 'prophetic action' on women's ministry was what precipitated the gradual removal of the gender bar in ministry (which we are having to catch up with fully still in England) and it is exactly that 'prophetic action' - which has enthralled, obsessed, and overshadowed Lambeth 2008 - which will probably lead to same sex marriage becoming acceptable, eventually, throughout the Anglican Communion, as it has in secular Western society. 

That leads me to my concluding reflection.  I am immensely grateful for the invitation from Fulcrum to join them as a guest blogger.  I have given it my best shot - I am not a saint, a sage or a scholar - and have been dismayed only when I seem to have caused offence.  I have never before been attacked for being in any sense 'anti-gay', and that has been a bit of a shock.  I stand by the Catholic Faith, revealed in Scripture and Creed, held by and interpreted by Tradition, and, sad to say as I sat amidst the throng of a vibrant, reformed but clearly Protestant Communion, authority can now be found, in my view, only in the Roman magisterium, magnificently expounded and exemplified by Benedict XVI, or in the buried treasure of Orthodoxy, where all is intact because nothing perceptibly changes.

if that makes me a conservative, then I am proud to be one but always, I hope, motivated by and sustained by a care and concern for God's people.  I fall flat on my face over and over again but God in his mercy raises me up. 

May the Lord bless you and keep you, whoever you are, and bring you into the full light of his saving Presence.

+ Andrew

Saturday night and Sunday morning...

Two figures have loomed large in this Conference. For some, one or other is an archangel, the other a demon. For most, they have been signs of the tragic polarity that the Anglican Communion has experienced and is experiencing. One is the representative of LGCM, the other of GAFCON. The LGCM - and I apologise if I have got the organisation wrong - have strategically placed bins of newsletters, Lambeth Witness. Many - at least initially - will have regarded these as official conference handouts and it has been a mistake of the conference organisers unwittingly to collude with this impression. Other, more essential and official information, has been available in paper form much more discreetly, so discreetly that we haven't always found it. GAFCON, meanwhile, has been very discreetly lobbying - I myself wasn't lobbied at all - and several bodies - Bishops from South Asia, and CAPA, for example - have produced statements in support of Lambeth 1.10 and moratoria. The final hearing having taken place, Sunday has a bible study, an Indaba, a plenary and a closing Eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral. Will the moratoria proposed by the Windsor Report hold? Will a Pastoral Forum, as proposed by the Windsor Continuation Group, be established? What other bright ideas will emerge in the closing stages? There has been much warmth, many deep and generous relationships established and a huge volume of affection and personal support for the Archbishop of Canterbury. But what will be the outcome?

Some things we know already. One is that any moratoria that can be agreed could be guaranteed only until the next meeting of the General Convention of TEC. Another is that the Indaba method has been a great success for consultation and stakeholding and, even if it doesn't yield (or maybe hasn't yielded) concrete decisions, it could be evolved to the point where it did, and is a major candidate to replace the disgraced seventies synodality that the Church of England, for example, has landed itself with. A third is that Bishop Christopher Hill's response to Cardinal Kasper, admitting that English structures are tied up with the emergent (Protestant) nation state, has opened up a whole area of thinking for those who would have preferred - would still like to cling to - an idea of Ecclesia Anglicana as a branch of the Church Catholic maintaining historic faith and order.

In my view, the Communion - with which I myself am in impaired relationship because of the faith and order questions - needs to grapple with the relationship between diocese, province and international gathering of provinces - and that needs major work on each of these items and something much more like a consensus on what they all mean. As I have said before, bloggingly, this might be half a century's work and will almost certainly take a very long time. But it is achievable. And, I think, worth achieving.

But what about GAFCON? Who knows? Here is a cliff hanger. My prediction is that those of us who are Catholics as regards faith and order need urgently to seek unity with the ancient churches. The Copts and the Orthodox may well be the place to seek that unity in some parts of the Anglican world. The British and the Americans need urgently to look to Rome and take up Cardinal Kasper's hint, perhaps, about the 'pastoral provision' as a vehicle - a hint dropped in his lecture, or was it in the question time that followed it? (I haven't yet had chance to read the text of the lecture, though I was there.) Meanwhile, those who accept fewer councils and are more enthusiastic about the BCP Communion Order, the 39 Articles and the reformed Ordinals of the sixteenth and seventeenth century will be better off within the Lambeth Communion, but relying on the immensely impressive Global South leadership that did come to Lambeth and is committed to being and representing mainstream Anglicanism, a reformed, biblical and evangelical faith. (Mind you, Fulcrum, it will probably have some hard questions to ask of you).

My view has always been that GAFCON should have been a meeting in the wake of Lambeth, to assess where we had got to. It could have been in England - saving a few plane fares - and those who stayed away from Lambeth should have been here. Tragically many stayed away: we missed them and there could have been ways of being here without being here, if you see what I mean. I myself was pleased that this was 'the Lambeth Conference' and not 'the Lambeth Communion', and that one could attend daily mass off campus rather than subject each day's tent liturgy to a doctrinal test. But most of all I was pleased that I have been able to talk to women bishops, to Americans who support gay marriage and to many others. A daily bible study with a Seventh Day Adventist as the ecumenical member of the group has been a tremendous blessing as have been our bible study leader, Indaba leader, Indaba rapporteur, and Indaba listener.

Last word for this posting must go to the Stewards, young people from throughout the world. They have been brilliant models of openness, patience and holiness. One or two trickled in and out of the traditionalist mass - a young, fiercely intelligent English woman in her early twenties (we Anglo-Catholics have quite a number of those), a Canadian student, a visitor from the Far East and, as you might expect, a young Texan. But all of them on duty at their station were impressive: I especially enjoyed the conversation with the young biologist whom I think I persuaded that Jesus, humanly speaking, derived a significant part of his genetic material, not to mention his nurture and formation, from the Mother of God (not someone mentioned terribly often on the Fulcrum website, I dare say). If I didn't persuade her, I think I set new thought patterns going. Better than Jove descending from Olympus and having his evil way: a version of the Virgin Birth which I sometimes think is lurking around when there is no adequate Mariology. (We're nearly in extra time, Graham, so there's no point in handing out the red card.....) My last posting, I think, will be from the comfort of my office back home. Meanwhile, thank you for your company, your patience and your long suffering godliness. It's all that that we need in the Church, not the slings and arrows of internet polemic.

+Andrew

Much, much too late - 'Sailing by' has already sailed by - for a proper post and some distractions early in the morning will prevent a good session then.  I managed one and a half Indabas today: a little 'horizontal theology', as my brother of Richborough calls it, meant that I managed only the second half of the second Indaba.  What was moving this morning was that we managed to go off piste and devote three quarters an hour in our group to the question of supporting the persecuted Church in Zimbabwe.  (The excellent Bishop of Harare is in our midst and we want to say to the world at large that anyone who harms him or wishes him ill harms us and wishes us ill).   We grappled with Covenant ideas and this is still a cliff hanger...  Who knows what might happen tomorrow?  My guess is that we shall end up with a result that is not newsworthy. 

I have benefited from reading Bishop Nick's blog, posted a little earlier, and agree with him thoroughly about Bishop John Chew.  Not sure about Chris Sugden: he doesn't seem to know what I look like and, from his reaction, am not sure if he knows that it is me nodding politely in his direction.  Certainly I have not been asked to go along to any GAFCON-esque meetings - if there have been such.  And I too wonder whether pink-hatted Anglo-Catholics (a little pink skull cap is so much easier and more minimalist than the purple pink shirts and purple pink cassocks so many liberal bishops regard as de rigeur) can sign up to a limited diet of councils, a particular and rather eccentric eucharistic liturgy, and the 39 Articles.   

For me the fascinating questions of the day are ecclesiological: not how to stave off disaster for the Anglican Communion, but how the Indaba method (however unlike it is in pace, shape and direction to a genuine African Indaba) could be a genuinely new way of synodality.  There is a possibility of participation and stake-holding - not to mention godly consensus - not available in our normal decision-making procedures.  Perhaps this is because, as Christopher Hill responded to Cardinal Kasper, a reformed Church has taken on and become ensnared by the politics of the nation state - whether English monarchism or American republicanism.  We need a new way of synodality - not least to replace the discredited synod systems of the seventies.

The overwhelming question is how diocese (local church) relates to province (group of local churches with common cultural, national or ethnic characteristics) and province to Communion.  A covenant would work out these relationships, local and international, and tackle the huge disparities and anomalies in how these terms are used and are weighted in different parts of the Anglican Communion.  (Colin Podmore is the authority on the confusing use of these words).

People are in a hurry over this process but I myself should expect it to take 50 or 100 years to get it right, especially now the English cultural backage is being stripped away in post-colonial fashion.  A comparison with Roman Catholic ecclesiology would be appropriate in terms of time-scale.  A century separated Vatican I and Vatican II - and the discovery of the balance between universal primacy (Vatican I) and collegiality and the local church (Vatican II).  Since Lumen gentium there have been forty years of work on collegiality, synodality and subsidiarity and the work has barely begun.  Meanwhile Anglicans are strong on Province and Communion - without being good at either - and RCs are strong on diocese and papal primacy - without getting either quite right. 

Mentioning Lumen gentium, we shall probably (with a prevailing wind) come up with a Lambeth document of this genre.  There will remain a dangerous hole - a way of arbitrating competing hermeneutics.  But all of this will either sound dry and technical or warm and obvious. The newsmen will despair.....  I myself have just turned down a media invitation to build up a Kasper story this weekend.  ('Bishop of Ebbsfleet defects to Rome as Cardinals declare Anglican-Catholic relations dead in the water' is not a story I want to give any impetus to.  For one thing, I have promised to wait for the February 2009 Synod.  For another, if there is to be a new 'Parting of Friends', which seems inevitable, it will be a process not an event, a journey and not a story.)

I predict (dangerous this) that Lambeth 2008 will be of intense interest to theologians, ecclesiologists and church historians but a great disappointment to the newshounds.  I am not predicting success or solutions to Communion crises and I remain in impaired communion with the Communion but a committed member of the Conference.  The English bishops have voted for my job description to be scrapped but Anglican bishops of all stripes seem to have valued my noisy taking part in the forum.  At least two women bishops have been very affirming - to use the C of E word.  One senior woman has told me that, of course, she realises that the issue is not gender but authority.  Another, initially very suspicious of me, has become very warm and supportive.  And - but this is a story not to go into - I even had a brief and very cordial word the other day in the coffee queue with the presiding bishop of TEC.  Mind you, I suspect that, like Chris Sugden, she hadn't quite spotted who I was.

Lambeth has been much too long but it needs another couple of weeks and we are into the last two days - slightly less for me.   And, Radio 4 having long turned into the World Service as I write, so to bed.

Good night campers

+ Andrew

Friends, Romans Catholics and Countrymen. I met the Bloggers' Minder yesterday (Thursday) at the Gulbenkian Theatre tea rooms - half a dozen bits of plastic garden furniture under a Greenwood Tree, something between 'afternoon tea on the lawn' and the gathering of African Christians shaded from the sun. Not conversational enough, said he (the Minder), and stop banging on about women's ordination. A yellow card, I thought, but we're in the closing stages of the match. Seriously, he was friendly and appreciative and promised me that, though only three people have written in comments, my blog has a wider readership than I might imagine. Dan Brown proportions? Under the same Greenwood Tree - I seem to remember the next phrase is 'come lie with me', not a good way to go on 'the Bishop and Human Sexuality Day' - I found Christopher Cocksworth (who once caught me out - whilst an Anglo-Catholic curate) preaching on Justification by Faith. I also saw Francis Bridger, who used to be my neighbour in Nottingham. His was the low church at the top of the hill and mine was the high church at the bottom of the hill. He had forty eight lay readers, minimum qualification 'consultant surgeon', I had a motley group of servers, none of whom ever did the same thing in  the same way twice, and a children's choir of interesting youngsters, most of who had found their way to mass despite parental apathy or hostility. And a cantor who shouted at me and shouted at them.  But they were the golden days.

Now, Father Baines, what should Mr Burnham say to you? I think you've seriously misunderstood Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue. When Dr Fisher visited the Vatican, they did their best to call him 'Dr Fisher', no robing was allowed, no photographs and he - later the hero of Trent Rectory - had to pretend that he was calling in on the way back from somewhere else, otherwise the Protestants would have been revolting. When Michael Ramsey went, he was in Convocation robes, the Pope gave him his episcopal ring - wasted on a lay man - and he was known by his title, feted and photographed. Similar gestures were made to Archbishops Coggan and Runcie - including a visit to Runcie's cathedral. The present Archbishop, it is said, would haved censed and sprinkled the coffin of JPII at the end of the funeral rite, if only the Orthodox present had been able to agree amongst themselves which of them should represent the Orthodox world in this significant gesture.  And when Rowan visited Benedict, he was given the privilege of a papal altar, at the Dominican Church, to celebrate the Anglican liturgy and, moreover, was received at the door with incense and holy water, as bishops are when, in the Catholic rite, they solemnly visit.  (Don't know if that happens to you, Nick, but it happens to me a lot and, when they sing Bruckner Ecce sacerdos magnus with trombones, I haved to look round to see whether someone really important has slipped in behind me.)  These are all symbolic matters in a symbolic world but, if you want to do the ecclesiology, have a look at the books produced in 1996, the anniversary of Apostolicae Curae.  Since 1896 we've had 'the Dutch Touch' (Old Catholic input into episcopal consecrations), increasing convergence on the theology of ordination as authority and not just charism, consultation on ordinal texts (the new CW Ordinal went to Rome to be checked through), and the work of ARCIC on Ministry.  But I'm getting boring and, sadly, most of that is history. 

Two more things before breakfast: first, how lovely it was to hear from John Martin about evangelical-catholic convergence and how disappointing that this should be dismissed by some of our correspondents as cynical political manoeuvring. It didn't work but - to be honest - I continue to find that my greatest support and encouragement is not from the high church liberals, who put the same clothes on as me and use rites and ceremonies similar to me (though toned down and Englished a little), but from the excellent evangelical bishops who treat me as an exotic grape picker, who can reach some of the rarer varieties of grapes in the vineyard and harvest them for the Lord.  I'll even hand out prizes: Birmingham, Coventry and Lichfield.  (And when I say Coventry I mean the last one and the new one: the new one will be just as supportive....a word of prophecy).  So leave off the cyncical stuff.  We're co-workers, them in their way, me in God's...  (A jest not a jibe).

And what about sex?  The Indaba group was quite good but the Bishop of Harare - brave man - is persuading us to move on a bit and talk about supporting persecuted Christians, and we're going to break out and do that today, instead of what the programme says we should be doing.  In my view it could go either way on the sex.  (No joke intended).  Quite where we'll get to by Sunday, whether there'll still be an Anglican Communion, does rather depend on the Americans, but there are mixed messages coming out.  There is even a chance that the whole Indaba methodology will be vindicated and that we shall leave not only on a nimbus of niceness but with something of a deal.  The deal I should like to see is that homosexual marriage is a first order issue - a first order disorder - but that how, quietly and pastorally, we deal with disciples in homosexual relationships is a second order issue.  We need to leave room for conscience and difference but not explain away the weight of biblical teaching and exegesis in the tradition.  Not sure that would work but it has worked in England.  There have to be no more V G Robinson cases.  The bishop is the husband of one wife, Scripture tells us, and nothing makes me think either that that means the bishop can be a woman or the wife a man.  Whoops, I'll have the blooging minder after me.  But, if I get a red card, you'll only lose the Saturday and Sunday blog.

And no, friends, Roman Catholics and countrymen: much as I have enjoyed being a guest blogger at Lambeth, I have no intention in becoming a blogging blogger thereafter.  I like reading the postings but otherwise have more than enough to do keeping the e-mail Inbox empty. 

PS I went to Ebbsfleet yesterday. Ebbsfleet Lane had a sign saying 'Road Closed' but I went a nd had my picture taken standing by the St Augustine Cross, the basis of the Ebbsfleet logo.  We (the Bishop of Richborough and I) also went to Richborough castle, quite near the Viagra factory, where some of the building seemed very tall...) I demanded from the English Heritage lady that the Bishop of Richborough be paid his rents and tithes.  Instead we bought lemon curd and chutney and mischievously peeped at the castle ruins without paying the admission charges. What next? They'll be charging people to visit cathedrals next....

+ Andrew

Greetings to Bultmannites, Spongites, and Zoroastrians.  (Will that do, Nick?)  Greetings also to all who love the Lord Jesus. 'Living under Scripture - the Bible and the Bible in Mission', yesterday's theme, was motherhood and apple pie where we were - but I am a frequenter of Walsingham, and when it's on the menu, I nearly always choose the apple pie.  Meanwhile my good friend John Martin - how I miss those editorial meetings of New Directions board back in the 90s - when, as the Anglo-Catholics chuckled at and parodied outrageously the lunacies of the Church, John would do his rejoicing with those who rejoice and his weeping with those who weep whilst calming bringing us back to the project and the demands of godliness.  I have always suspected that 'the project' was what, in one sense, 'did for' John as CEN editor: the reading public weren't where we were and the evangelical-catholic synthesis, creatively at work in the States, was just not part of our story.  And, as John suggests - and much to my chagrin as an evangelical Catholic (a bit like a Catholic evangelical but you swap round the adjective and noun functions) - not, even now, quite our story.  I won't flog this one further - I promise - but, please note, I wasn't asking Fulcrum for anything more than support for our essentially hermeneutic (though, exploring a different ecclesiology, it comes to slightly different conclusions about who can be presbyters).  Enough, but thanks for writing John.

Yeterday's story for me was the Cardinal Kasper address.  It was obviously going to outgrow its scheduled venue - which would have been an insult to a Prince of the Church. (Come on, readers, allow me a little irony: having met Walter Kasper, he wouldn't pull rank on a curate if he thought the curate was doing a good job).  His talk will be published in full as, I hope, will Bishop Christopher Hill's response.  (Neither of the other Anglican responses were as interesting but Christopher, friendly fallen angel, knows the territory and had some intersting things to say about the Protestantpolity of our church government, its relationship with the emergent nation state in the sixteenth century and its need to evolve.  Zizoulias and others were mentioned: clearly what we have is a parliamentary style of synodical government, based on amending, blocking, dividing, lobbying, rotten boroughs and voting each other down.  Gets us into trouble, doesn't it?)

Kasper clearly thinks we Anglicans are in trouble: though he prays for the unity of the Anglican Communion, he thinks the same-sex stuff would put us outside the Christian mainstream tradition and that women bishops puts us firmly outside the apostolic succession of Faith and Order.  Heading this way, the goal of full sacramental communion, and mutual recognition of orders - ambitions of ARCIC (which he pronounces Arch-itch..) become unattainable, and the thrust of joint mission, envisaged by IARRCUM, a lost opportunity.    

He did however indicate unambiguously that, unless the Anglican Communion desist from its present innovations, the goal of Anglican - Roman Catholic dialogue cannot be the full sacramental communion which has driven the ARCIC process for 40 years and more recently the work of IARCCUM too. He made much of our 1,500 years of shared life (75% of Christian history), to us as part of the Western Rite, a severed part of the Western Church.  Speaking warmly of the Caroline Divines and the Oxford Movement, he encouraged us to seek to form a new Oxford Movement. 

Although Cardinal Kasper drew 100 - allowing for hangers-on, that was probably 1/7 of the Lambeth Fathers - I didn't see a Lambeth Mother there (we have, I think, 13 of them) - it is clear that Anglican-Roman Catholic stuff is not on the radar for most people.  The IARRCCUM self-select I attended earlier in the week was 50% RC observers and visitors and, of the remaining seven, one was an Anglican lay theologian (Mary Tanner), three were traditionalist bishops and two of the remaining three were there to give position papers on IARCCUM progress in their countries - USA and NZ.  It was good to have a Nigerian there - an impressive guy - but he turned out to be a young RC archbishop.  Cardinal C M O'C did a self-select earlier in the week on 'Dead in the Water or Money in the Bank' - a reflection on Anglican-RC dialogue these last 40 years - and, though he was politely optimistic, he was speaking to an audience of less than 20, some of whom were from his team. 

Not moaning but reporting what others might not be in a position to report.  Meanwhile I need a good shave and shower: we're doing human sexuality today.  That still seems to be everybody's favourite subject: I'd rather it was handled at self-select sessions in, say, the Isle of Skye.  That might be far enough away to stop these agendas so dominating the Gospel task.  Oh, and I caught my first glimpse of Vicky Gene last night: in the bar at Rutherfords.  I'll make a note in my Observers Book of Rare Species. 

God bless, all you pagans and Wykehamists (yes, I know it doesn't mean that - I was at New College in my youth and still go there for a spot of good music in a space which Cardinal Kasper's folk and mine shared from 1379 to the early 1530s).

+ Andrew

I am not sure where we got to on Tuesday 29th (Equal in God's Sight when Power is abused).  Riding Lights did a splendid performance for us in the Big Top, highlighting the abuse of women and Jesus' counter-cultural recognition of the dignity of women. There was considerable dramatic licence - the stitching together of different stories as if they were one narrrative: e.g Jairus, ruler of the synagogue, also being earlier the accuser of the woman taken in adultery.  He was also the spokesman of those who thought Jesus was delaying unduly,and shouldn't be bothering with the woman with the issue of blood (we saw the filthy rags with the obvious reference to Isaiah 64:6) on the way to heal Jairus' daughter. Once or twice it felt like NRSV Mark II - the story of the Prodigal Daughter found its way in.  Perlease....The whole session on domestic violence and the abuse of women was apparently a commitment of Lambeth 98 but, to give the organisers of Lambeth 08 their due, it was relevant not only to some of the contexts of conference participants but to the general flow of the Conference.  (I'm still waiting to be told that, as an opponent of women bishops, I am implicated in the abuse of power and not accepting of the equality of women but it hasn't happened yet.)

We had an interim Presidential Address after Burmese Evening Prayer - which allowed the Archbishop to present us with the anxieties of each of the factions preoccupied by the single sex issue.  The trouble with 'on the one hand' and 'on the other hand' is that the two hands don't meet and, of course, if the hands don't meet there can be no applause.  The interim Presidential Address was accordingly met by silence, a silence which was neither hostile nor a pool of deep stillness.  My own feeling was that the film of the Burmese cyclone - which we had watched before the Magnificat - and the bravery of the Burmese Anglican community in response ought to make us all ashamed that so much of the Conference is preoccupied by, as one observer said, 'what white men do under their duvets'.  And when I say 'Conference' I mean, of course, those attending. 

Borrowing other people's bon mots - this one will make New Directions which, like Watchtower and Big Issue, are often routinely acquired without people engaging with their contents - I quote an observer from Lewisham (now that narrows it down...).  He is suggesting that  St Martha (whose day it was when we looked at gender equality) is the real foundational Apostle.  She beat Mary Magdalen to it when it coms to confessing the resurrection and the claims of Christ (John 11:27).  Perhaps we should stop wondering why Matthias squeezed Mary Magdalen out of a rightful placed in the apostolic college and start wondering why Martha wasn't brought in at that point.   

Off today to 'Live under Scripture' and look at the 'Bishop and the Bible in Mission'.  I shall feel like a fish back in water and Fulcrum readers will know what I mean.  

Prayers and best wishes to all who seek to live under Scripture.

+ Andrew

A very busy day: bible study on I AM the gate, an Indaba theme of relations with other faiths, a session on the Windsor process (with impassioned contributions from different viewpoints), a very small group on IARRCUM, not many of whom were Lambeth bishops - are any of the bishops interested in that? - and a magisterial lecture on the notion of 'Covenant' from the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sachs.  I remembered my OT lectures and that there are a series of OT Covenants, not just the one 'Old Testament'.

One to watch out for if the text is published.  A standing ovation after the lecture and another after the questions.  No relativism here and not many signs of supercessionism amongst the audience questions and reactions.   Meanwhile everyone will have left with at least one good sermon under their belt.

This is not a good moment to guess what will happen tomorrow and what impact on the proceedings today's (Monday's) sessions in a hot and clammy sports hall and a very warm big top will have on the Conference.  I imagine that the Americans will be having urgent discussions.  It is already clear that TEC won't rule the world and, if they did, everfy day would not be the first day of Spring. 

Two other points to mention in a rather bland - sorry I'm tired and it's after midnight - posting. One is that some of my correspondents have been talking about 'human rights', a phrase, admittedly, I myself used, though in description of a contemporary convention.  Not my field, but I think the whole language of 'human rights' has emerged from - and is a secularised version of - Catholic social doctrine which, of course, is as keen to mention duties and responsibilities as it is to speak of the rights of the individual.  In short, it isn't all about individual flourishing but about healthy and cohesive community flourishing - not that that in itself necessarily affects what conclusions people come to on particular issues.

The other will annoy the 'evangelical centre' and might be seen as an abuse of the hospitality offered to me.  I did receive an e-mail today, however, from an American evangelical and I think I must pass it on: 'I am still hoping, without much basis,' she writes, 'that the Fulcrum evangelicals will realize that if they don't support the no-WO faction now, their own goose will shortly be cooked'.  This is a point I myself made on an earlier post and I don't personally know the author of it.  One of the irritations about blogging is that people often comment on what they think you've said rather than on what you have actually said: I think the case here, please note, is not about women's ordination but about the need for Fulcrum evangelicals to support those for whom women's ordinations is a deal breaker.  There is quite a bit of talk about this on campus - with at least one woman bishop anxious about the liberal drift of N America and lots of evangelical bishops wondering how they can help the Anglo-Catholics remain a vibrant and authentic part of the Church. 

Without giving away the Sachs lecture - which it would be a shame to precis here - there was an awareness that Covenants ultimately bring together very different, and seemingly irreconcileable opposites - God and humanity, for example.  The audience would have been reflecting on the the salvific work of Christ on the cross - or perhaps the admirabile commercium doctrine of atonement.  If Anglicans are looking for the bringing together of opposites, then, at this point at least, we're not short of material.  It does all rather depend - doesn't everything? - on grace.  WIll we be graced in this way these next few days and in the coming weeks and months?

God's blessings on my readers and a particular prayer for those for whom what I write is troubling or facile.

+ Andrew

A Sunday diversion....

Close to Ebbsfleet and too far from Ebbsfleet parishes, this being a 'free Sunday' I found my way to early mass.  I then went to visit the Friars at Aylesford, a place I had never been to.  Heaving with cars - indeed expecting a vintage car rally there this afternoon -  the place was also heaving with people.  A large Caribbean pilgrimage and, whilst I was walking around, an enthusiastic musical congregational rehearsal for what promised to be a lively mass.  I had chance to talk to one or two of the friars, including a very young Carmelite on a year's visit from India, and had chance to to talk to the Prior about how the contemplative vocation is lived out in the midst of a bustling pilgrimage centre.  It all felt like the Anglo-Catholic inner city worship I so often am privileged to be part of - but here on a larger (not to mention viable) and manifestly universal scale. 

I came back to lunch at the Origins in Darwin and a particularly clever-clever - but I thought unpleasant - editorial on Newman and Anglo-Catholicism in the CEN.  There was insufficient distinction between the Tractarians and the Ritualists - different movements - but this picture is altogether like describing football solely in terms of fouls and penalties or the Olympics solely in terms of steroid abuse.  As for the stuff about Newman and Ambrose St John, are we entirely entirely unable to understand friendship nowadays?  Time to read St Aelred of Rievaulx on friendship.

The CEN editorial was probably right about liberalism but I must leave its critique of evangelicalism to others.  I have to say, however, that if evangelicals took ecclesiology a bit more seriously - perhaps I mean listened to us and our ecclesiological concerns a bit more attentively - we shouldn't be in the mess that General Synod landed us in on 07/07.  The evangelicals allowed - indeed unwittingly colluded with - the liberals' policy of terminal care for orthodox catholics and - CEN Editor please note - orthodox anglo-catholics are not as easy to parody or dismiss as Evelyn Waugh's cruel jibe suggests. 

+ Andrew

An anonymous reader - User 1782 (and I don't understand why people blog anonymously) - complains that I'm not listening but have suppositions about outcomes.  I suspect that all bishops here both have some preconceptions about the outcomes and, if they are indeed listening, are more than prepared to be surprised by the activity of the Holy Spirit.  In my defence, I suggested more than one possible outcome - something to listen out for, and indeed contribute towards - and at least I am making some public guesses about outcomes, which render me particularly susceptible to being proved spectacularly wrong in my judgments.  So, I am listening, but bless you for reminding me - us - that we must listen hard.

Saturday - was 'the Bishop and the Environment'.  I wouldn't abuse this space by treating you to my 'man on the Clapham omnibus' views on the Environment.  (One bishop came up with 'if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down'. I think that only works if we drink enough water for the yellow to be very pale indeed.... But I suspect that, if we were to pursue this, this blog would be going down the drain). 

But there are one or two seeds of theological reflection I should like to sow. One is that the Anglican Communion is an ecclesiological eco-system and, if we rediscover mutual interdependence and responsibility, a theme of earlier Anglican encounters (Toronto 1973 seems to leap from my rather unreliable memory), a butterfly in Florida (or New Hampshire, or wherever) might cause a hurricane in Africa or Asia.  We might together learn the truth of this.  The second is that, as sub-group of the Indaba group I was in had a make-up of seven from the one third world and one from the two thirds world, I thought it a pity that I couldn't be in a group, two thirds of which were from the developing world.   That led me to wonder whether the policy of spreading us all out so finely was not missing the opportunity to hear about what groups of West Africans think about this and groups of Latin Americans think about that.  Too late for the environment but possibly not for other groups.  Thirdly I was reminded of Pope John Paul II's coining - and use of - the phrase 'human ecology', something that West Midlands Bishops (Anglican and Roman Catholic) recently studied together.  Human ecology - parenthood, family life, community, human interaction nationally and globally - has to be at the heart of the Christian proclamation of life in abundance.  Lifestyle not just recycling. 

Finally, and I realise that this is the fourth of 'one or two' seeds of theological reflection, a couple of liturgical remarks to pass on.  From me there is the thought that the steep decline in the use of the psalms - so that only one or two are used on any one occasion rather than a fuller Benedictine diet - might co-incide with the loss of Creation imagery in our worship and the hurried invention of Celtic substitutes (most of which are neither truly Celtic nor a good substitute for the rich language of the Psalter).  From a young American bishop, 'when did we English start sitting down to pray in public?'  The biblical attitudes, of course, are standing in the Presence of God or kneeling - or rather prostrating.  Matthew 6:6 presumably permits sitting down privately to pray but that is individual and not liturgical worship.

God bless you if you read this and - User 1782 and others - forgive my insensitivities.

+ Andrew

Let me begin not with the heterosexual bunnies, cavorting around the place, but with the sly fox I spied, slinking away at night with one of the poor rabbits in its mouth.  1 Peter 5:8 sprang to mind: a fox is hardly a roaring lion but the devouring was certainly about to take place, under our very noses.  It was an image not entirely removed from the spiritual forces of which Cardinal Dias warned us the other night.  His talk of angels and devils made one or two English bishops uncomfortable: here was rank mediaevalism (always a boo word for liberals but, for Catholics, less a reminder of the Black Death, the multiplication of masses and 'pigges bones' - sorry, no Chaucer to hand to check the spelling – more a reassuring reminder of apostolic continuity, society working as community and people actually going to Mass – even if they were too afraid to receive Holy Communion frequently). There is a battle of God and Evil and some of it is happening here.  The banality of Evil needs no describing but some of it, at least, is the way the human rights agenda of North America – gay marriage and the rest – has completely undermined the priorities of the developing world to maintain a strong, biblical and truthful witness in societies in which Muslims look askance at Western decadence and in which homosexual practice is a serious crime.

How all this plays out in the indaba groups is what we are about to discover in the next phase of the conference.  English bishops have an important role here: we need to show that our practice with regard to homosexuality, easily derided as 'hypocritical' or oppressive, is one of the few areas in which we can and should continue to dominate the culture of the Anglican Communion.  Our practice, I would say (though some bishops have told me that this is unsustainable) is to proclaim Christian marriage, the family and the gospel integrity of singleness – 'eunuchs for the kingdom' is a phrase that might need some repackaging – and yet all framed within a compassionate pastoral context that moves people on a stage when we – inevitably - fall  short of these gospel principles.  That, I am sure, is as far as we can go and it is, of course, the long-established stance not only of the Church of England but of the ancient churches East and West.

For me, however, all of this is a bit of a sideshow, important though it is.  The central demand upon the Anglican Communion is to discover what authority it should look to to arbitrate between its warring hermeneutics – sola scriptura, the three-legged stool, the Lambeth Quadrilateral (holed under the waterline by disparate approaches to – and hence the lack of interchangeability of – Holy Order).  We have almost lost what previously (and somewhat dubiously) unified us: Englishness, the Crown, the Empire, the Commonwealth, 1662, the 39 Articles and (as regards Scotland and USA) an affectionate, but ambivalent, deference to English polity and piety.  Not sure that all that amounts to much spiritually: this may be the big chance to establish what might be called a 'reformed Magisterium' (I can hear Pullman pulling his teeth out).  The Covenant could be that but there are some huge steps necessary: North American repentance, the end of Provincial Autonomy, the banishing of those who do not accept women's ordination (that's me gone – mind you I am at a Conference and not properly in a Communion at present), the restoration of the sovereignty of the Word of God – angels and devils included.  We shall be starting working on that this week (not assuming that everyone else, so far, endorses what I have said….)   Time to break bread together…alas, for me, that means breakfast and not eucharist.  Eucharist for me is at lunchtime with some other of the ecclesiologically marginalised.

+ Andrew

The Indaba process is, I think, evolving.  It seems to have begun like a Western ecumenical Lent group - buzz in pairs, talk in quartets, report back with coloured pens and stick it all on the wall and have bright ideas about what is strikingly common and what is strikingly missing.  The problem has been Western haste - five topics that would each keep a UN department fully deployed for years despatched in half a morning - instead of (as I understand it) a long period of listening and consultation on a single pressing matter - a meeting lasting days.  But 'they' are listening to us and it should evolve. 

A Lambeth Conference which devoted itself to a single topic would be highly criticised but there is, I think, a single topic to be pursued.  It isn't the consecration of Gene Robinson or Women bishops - which are symptoms and striking examples of unilateralism and Provincial Autonomy (not to mention forcing the agenda to move on by controversial and prophetic action, a persistent N American trick) - but 'how is authority discerned and exercised amidst conflicting hermeneutics'.  The Covenant might be the answer - but is it still possible to bring sola scriptura and the three-legged stool of scripture, tradition and reason back into the same big tent (!)?  We might still have time to do that - in the sense of both Indaba groups in Lambeth and in preserving the Anglican Communion. 

But, for some of us, those for whom the issue of Holy Order is a first order issue - both in the sense of preserving sacramental certainty and ecclesial identity and in being faithful to the biblical revelation, in which there is a very nuanced and essential balance of gender (Man and Wife, Bridegroom and Bride, Christ and the Church) imaged specifically in our sacramental celebration - the Communion is no longer a Communion.  Fatally, previous Lambeths failed to perceive that you couldn't both have women bishops and not have them in the one Communion (unless you were merely waiting for theological primitives, such as Anglo-Catholics, to catch up).  But Anglo-Catholics are not so theologically primitive and we need, at the very least, the Habgood doctrine of reception, which spawned the 1993 Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod and which means that the gender experiment in ministry is provisional until it is received by the universal Church.  Unfortunately that was a rather male solution - with women in receipt of much of the negativity of provisionality (which inevitably feels like 'personal provisionality') and the signs now are not only that the Church of England has foreclosed on the doctrine of reception but that the other provinces, which are already committed to women bishops, haven't a clue about what the Habgood doctrine of reception was trying to say and do.

In short, the Anglican Communion, via its Indaba groups and its plenaries at Lambeth, needs to head for a new settlement.  One possibility is a split into evangelical and liberal Communions (in which there might be room still for traditionalists of all stripes in the former - if Sidney behaves on lay presidency and evangelicals don't get as upset about Mary as one or two of them seemed to be when Cardinal Diaz gave us his memorable phrase Fiat, Magnificat and Stabat as models of Christian discipleship).  The other is to say that the cork is out of the bottle on women's ordination but we (which wouldn't include me) could nonetheless 'all' regroup round a Covenant-monitored common hermeneutic (which certainly could not include serial monogamy or homosexual marriage) and maintain the Communion, which would be a godly thing and faithful to the Lord's high priestly prayer.

Early morning rambles - sorry about the lack of brevity.

Warm Christian greetings to all who love the Lord and his holy Word

+ Andrew

Andrew Burnham is Bishop of Ebbsfleet, one of two Provincial Episcopal Visitors ('flying bishops') in the Province of Canterbury. He looks after parishes which have petitioned for 'Extended Episcopal Care' under the Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod (1993). A former Parish Priest in Nottingham and Vice-Principal of St Stephen's House, Oxford, he is the compiler of A Manual of Anglo-Catholic Devotion and its pocket version (SCM-Canterbury Press). He is married, has two grown-up children and lives just outside Oxford.

You can comment about Andrew's blog by adding a post on the Fulcrum Forum thread concerning Andrew's Blog from Lambeth.