Fulcrum Bloggers

This will be my last Lambeth blog, but I wanted to wait a few days before writing it. I think that was probably wise because it is important to get away from the hothouse to do some cool reflection.

I was asked late on Sunday night to do the Today programme on Radio 4 on Monday morning. The first question? 'A New Zealand bishop has described Lambeth as 'an expensive exercise in futility'. How do you respond?' I laughed. This question is like being asked, following Chelsea's 5-0 defeat of a Milan club the night before: 'Well, you didn't get a draw, did you?' The media script is still unchanged; I think they actually have nothing to say or ask about reality, just their single story about the collapse of the Church.

The problem is that this conference frightened quite a lot of people simply because it did not conform in design or conduct to the comfortable culture with which many in the Church are familiar. Points could not be scored and votes won. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his final Presidential Address, thanked the bishops for sticking with the process, despite their misgivings, and for not seeking platforms outside the conference on which to ply their wares. Had I been the Bishop of Winchester or Exeter, I think I might have been embarrassed at this point.

My own view is that the Archbishop showed extraordinary leadership in sticking to the process and not being deflected from it. Lots of others got very jittery before and during the conference, but he held his nerve and deserved the standing ovations he received at the end of the final plenary session. Again, the problem here is that people have a monochrome understanding of what leadership actually is. It is not (as Rowan himself said at a meeting at Lambeth in February this year) about 'heroism' - doing dramatic things. Leadership means listening to advice, but being willing to hold your nerve - in Rowan's case silently - and handle the consequences later.

Are we any further forward than we were before the conference? I think the only answer can be 'yes'. We live in a world in which there have to be winners and losers - a world in which power is gained and lost by either aggressive or surreptitious engagement with the 'other'. The Christian response to this is seen in open arms of the crucified Christ who lays down the power of 'winning' in order to reconcile people (relationship). This conference enabled those who were willing to build genuine relationships, not by avoiding the hard issues, but rather by tackling them head on in a context of prayer, Bible Study, reflection and respect. That, after all, is why we witnessed such moving conversations in the last couple of days where people of opposing views expressed how they had moved in their understanding (if not in their conclusions).

Those who think the conference was about resolving 'issues' once and for all must be disappointed - as well as unrealistic. This conference was not designed to address homosexuality and get everyone to agree; rather, it was set up to enable bishops to listen, learn, argue their case and hear a response, confident that they would be listened to within a safe place of godly respect. This was liberating.

Where do we go from here? Rowan's proposals for the moratoria and for the Pastoral Forum received overwhelming approval. The conference has allowed us to be realistic and prophetically countercultural in our way of taking these discussions forward and shaping a programme of mutual education for the next decade as people are now willing to listen and learn. The big question is, however, how this will be shaped - and this needs to be addressed very soon. The Primates will meet later this year and ACC14 will meet next May. In the context of the entire history of the universe that is not too long to wait.

I sign off with questions still in my mind. I remain both annoyed and embarrassed by the behaviour of certain people at Lambeth and would encourage Anglican Mainstream to address what seems to me to be unbiblical behaviour. I remain unconvinced by Andrew Burnham's wriggling about traditional Anglo-Catholicism and its inherent gay culture - to say nothing of the refusal to address the fact that in the eyes of Rome even his orders remain invalid. Either I am stupid or there is something that just not 'work' here.

I enjoyed blogging Lambeth. I am not sure how useful it was or whether I would have been better off using the time for other things (like sleep). But, there it is. I sign off with gratitude to God for Lambeth, thanks to those who engaged with what I wrote and thanks to Fulcrum for the invitation to blog in this way. I'll re-read what I have written in a year's time and see whether or not it still looks reasonable then. In the meantime, we carry on praying, studying the Scriptures, worshipping, serving our communities in the name of Christ and proclaiming in word and deed the good and liberating news of God's presence in Jesus Christ now to be embodied in the Church that bears his name.

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

This will be my last blog because I have to go back to Bristol on Monday.  The reason for this is that my second daughter, Charis is getting married on Saturday and my wife needs some support in the myriad of last minute things to do!

Today has been the last Indaba group for me and I thought it was excellent.  This was partly due to the facilitator who I think has been excellent and partly due to the process, which has been under pressure at points, but I now think is starting to pay dividends.  Indaba protocol means that I am not able to speak in any detail about this.  However, I can confirm that these groups appear to have created a 'space' for people to express very divergent views without creating the kind of division that people are expecting.

I think it must be quite frustrating for the media, who have not been able to pick over the bones of massive feuding.

Today we had the group photograph, in itself an interesting logistics problem.  Imagine trying to get 600+ bishops to do what you want them to do!  Unlike 1998 when we did it with passive acceptance, today we sang, in good harmony, the words of John Newton's hymn, 'Amazing Grace' whilst the photographer and his assistants arranged us for the photograph.  In its way it said something of the spirit of the conference.

Let me end by saying a thank you to the thousands of people who have apparently logged on and read the writings of myself, +Nick Baines, and more latterly, +Andrew Burnham.  I hope that you have read something of the reality of what we have been sharing in over the past ten days.

Finally, a thank you to Fulcrum for giving me the opportunity to offer some reflections.

The truth is that getting a dispensation to go home on Monday was something I viewed as a potential bonus as I came with a level of anxiety as to what might happen.  I can honestly say that the past ten days have allayed my fears and I shall drive home on Monday with a heavy heart because of what I might miss.

My hope and prayer is that what has been achieved in the first ten days will provide a platform for the final seven days.  I have learnt that it is much better to talk to people than talk about them.  That is why I am so disappointed that some people chose to stay away.