If there is a future for ECUSA and the Anglican
Communion, then what?
Ephraim Radner
 
 
What if the Episcopal church actually “turned back”
from its decisions of GC 2003 and their
presuppositions – that is, what if she “repented” on
the matter of gay blessings and consents and
ordinations and consecrations?   How would we start
talking to each other again, how engage the deep (some
would say irreconcilable) differences among us?  I ask
the question not because I assume such a turning back
is about to happen.  Hardly.  But it may happen, in
God’s grace and for the sake of something greater than
we can perhaps see today.   And, imagining such an
event helps us also to see what a directive like the
Windsor Report implies for the future of our church,
should it be embraced.   It is a future that, it
seems, many do not wish to see – at least, given the
bitterness and consternation abounding in the face of
even the practical possibility that the Report’s
recommendations might be positively taken up by our
House of Bishops.  So, in the midst of our
decision-making leading towards General Convention,
why not ask, “how are we going to have to deal with
one another if in fact we choose to follow Windsor?”. 
Indeed, we may not want to wade into the Report’s
wake.  But we should at least know what we are
avoiding.
 
Let me address this through the single question, “how
will we talk to each other?”.   There are many
strategic and polity-related questions that have
exercised the minds of concerned Episcopalians and
Anglicans (and, it seems, many who are no longer
members of our church!) over the past three years, on
blogs, in back-rooms, at far-flung conferences.  These
are essential matters to clarify, to be sure.  But
Windsor has made discussion and “dialogue” and
“listening” an important vocation for the communion,
precisely in light of our failures on these fronts up
until now.  Obviously, many people groan inwardly and
outwardly at the prospect that more discussion will be
the fruit of ECUSA’s “repentance”;  and well they
might – it is a penance perhaps too hard to bear.  But
this reaction is largely, I believe, because our
discussions in the past have been increasingly
perverted and off-the-mark.  Windsor’s directing
outline has implications for what a true discussion
might be, and they point towards something different
than past attempts and claims and theological
engagement.  It is to these implications that I want
to turn.  I will break this down into two categories: 
first, what ought to be the context of our speech, and
second, what will be the topics we need to address.  
 
I.  The context of our future discussions
 
a.  The Presumption for Tradition
 
The Windsor Report, if embraced, points to a radical
reordering of the playing field for the conversations
of the Episcopal Church, at least in comparison with
the past.  For the entire thrust of the arguments for
and from “communion” posit what I would call the
“presumption for tradition” in our speech.  Because
communion assumes and demands the reality of a network
of “bonds” among members of the Church, it is this
bonding that will inform the parameters of our speech.
 And the logic of such bonding comprehends networks of
connection that stretch far and wide, temporally and
geographically,  indicating the living relationships
of bequest, thankfulness, responsibility, and
subjection that, taken as a whole, represent
“tradition” in a broad way.  Now traditions can be and
often are questioned and challenged;  that is a part
of the very “network” that maintains the bonds of the
communion.  But the questions and challenges, for all
that, take place  within and not outside this larger
network, which is presumed because it is in fact real
and living and defines communion as something more
than a concept.
 
The presumption for tradition means that any future
discussion of the presenting issue of, in this case,
sexuality, can only take place within a commitment to
this larger network of bonded bequests, especially in
terms of teaching, discipline, and witness.  One of
the great failures of past discussions of sexuality,
in ECUSA at any rate, has been an insistence that the
topic bear no relationship with the full range of
Christian commitments given us in our tradition:  the
authority of Scripture, catholic witness, the
character of common life and the Eucharist, conciliar
polity, the doctrine and reality of the Holy Spirit
and the nature of revelation, and so on.  It is not as
if people have not realized that all these things are
implicated; but ECUSA has moved forward with its
innovations on the matters of sexuality in deliberate
disjunction from any understanding of how these other
matters relate and are affected by changes in sexual
discipline.  The result, in part, has been a kind of
crack-up of the fabric of ECUSA’s teaching altogether,
as bits and pieces of Christian belief and commitment
are disengaged from each other, consciously and
unconsciously, and individuals and groups go off in
all kinds of directions, liturgically, theologically,
and exegetically.    The failure to impose or even
consider “discipline” in matters of liturgical
non-conformance and teaching – “open communion”,
experimental Eucharistic language and rites,
relativization of the Scripture even in formal church
settings and so on – is not simply due to a failure of
will, but to a now embedded sense that Christian
practice is made up of a conglomeration of unrelated
elements that can be juggled about at will, without
compromise to the Gospel and the Church life together.
 It may by that the crack-up is something with which
people are happy.  But we at least now have to
acknowledge that it is an actual dynamic that has been
at play in our increasingly disjointed and dismantled
life.
 
Any future discussions in our church, and the context
in which we “talk to each other”, must therefore
presume the traditions we were given and that we vowed
to uphold and that bind us to the larger Communion. 
If there are challenges to these traditions, they must
be made humbly and patiently, and convincingly to the
whole Church.   If this does not happen, we shall
simply repeat the fragmenting and finally hostile
confrontations of the past.  Ultimately, this new
playing field will be founded upon the theological
virtues that in fact nourish and are nourished by the
presumption for tradition:  faith (in the goodness and
giftedness of the communion of saints), hope (in God’s
leading through the gifts God has already in fact
given) and charity (that we can be open to receiving
and being led in the context in which we have been
placed, and thus can do this gently and joyously).
 
b.  The representation of tradition
 
One important practical outcome to this presumption
for tradition is that more formal discussions must be
organized so as to represent the tradition of the
Church in a formative fashion.  By and large, over the
past several decades, the committees, commissions, and
councils of the national church and of many dioceses
have had at best token representation of tradition-
and communion-oriented witnesses.  This tendency has
come to a head in the recent theological delegation to
the ACC and the special Commission on Anglican
Communion Relations that will report on Windsor to
General Convention, each of which has radically
embodied a rejection of the Church’s tradition
altogether.  Seminaries and commissions on ministry
and the so on will be challenged by an embrace of
Windsor not only to become more “diverse” (something
they rarely are, to an abusive fault), but actually to
aim at a tradition-oriented center.   This would prove
a radical challenge to current institutional and
intellectual orderings, one that, frankly, it is hard
to see the insecure, who so populate most human
institutions, being able to tolerate in this church in
particular.  The Episcopal Church, and indeed,
Anglicanism as a whole in North America of all
persuasions, has been afflicted for decades by such a
severe theological inferiority complex (perhaps
rightly assessed and founded) as to have slid into
some of the grossest forms of anti-intellectualism
possible in an otherwise highly educated church that
is filled with some quite brilliant minds and
expansive hearts.   Still, there simply is no way that
the playing field will make any difference unless the
teams that are put forward are committed (because
desirous) to abiding by the rules of the game, however
discomfiting these will prove.
 
II.  Topics we will need to address
 
Now let me note, in the most sketchy and incomplete
way, some of the topics that will need to be discussed
anew, with the seriousness of an engaged and fearless
mind and heart, if a re-commitment to our Communion
bonds is to be real and fruitful.  These will need to
be discussed within the context of the “presumption
for tradition”;  but they will need to be discussed
nonetheless, openly and responsibly.  The Lambeth
Conference, Primates, ACC, and Windsor itself have
made this clear in general.  And unless there is a
willingness to engage such questions, the “bonds” we
claim are our lifeline as a Church-in-Communion will
be window dressing at best, lies at worst.
 
1.  Scripture and its meaning and authority.  We all
know this topic is critical.  But here we need to
begin with the acknowledgement (or at least entertain
its critical weight) that we have failed in engaging
this topic according to the tradition’s presumption
that the whole Scripture is to be the “ultimate rule”
of our reflections and discipline.  Protestant
sensibilities and habits have tended to the definition
of specific doctrinal principles within Scripture,
which has resulted (over the past few centuries)
precisely in the more revisionist limitations of
Scripture’s breadth according to narrow or abstracted
ideals.  Legitimate worries over mutually antagonistic
proof-texting derive from the fact that few of us read
the whole Scripture with anything like an expectant
sense of its comprehensive ordering of the world’s
reality – we have lost the ability to get beyond our
local commitments within the Scripture itself.    It
is not as if these matters have not been addressed in
the past – questions regarding the Law and the Gospel,
Canon, figuration and history, and so on.    But we
seem to have reached a nadir, within our church among
almost all parties, with respect to the patient
engagement of these matters both foundationally and in
terms of practical argument.  The fact that we are
still hurling texts about shellfish and Acts 15 at
each other indicates that we have not even begun this
reflection adequately on a fundamental level within
the church.  As Windsor has pointed out, this only
makes ECUSA’s forging ahead with its disciplinary
innovations all the more rash and destructive.
 
2.  Within the context of a re-engagement with
Scripture’s reality and breadth, we need to reflect
upon the Church’s theology of creation:  what does it
mean to have a divinely “created purpose”?  what is a
human being in terms of such purpose?  Current
technological challenges in the realms of genetics and
genetic engineering (as this pertains also to
fertilization methods) have pressed these questions
more quickly than we have been able or willing to
engage and resolve them.  The presumption of tradition
demands some clear parameters of discussion here, and
of decision-making, but does anyone know what these
parameters are in these cases?  And how do the vast
inequalities of technical resources within the world
and our churches around the world inform our
assumptions about and approaches to any of this?
 
Obviously, in speaking of the “theology of creation”
within the context of Scriptural authority at this
time, we must be particularly concerned with matters
of sexuality and marriage.  While there is much
scientific and pseudo-scientific material being cast
about, almost randomly and quite thinly, within our
churches, there has been no real effort at attempting
some kind of coherent integration of either this
material itself or of an informing Scriptural vision,
let alone of the two together, in a way that allows
Scripture to illuminate in a primary fashion.  So,
while we are not likely to reorder the lines of
division over women’s ordination within the Communion,
it is time to revisit the discussion, given the
connections some have seen between the current
conflicts over homosexuality and the “tradition”
regarding the role of women in the Church.  This too
must be talked about. We are still infants in all of
this, including most of our leaders and theologians. 
The presumption of tradition on this score ought at
the very least to humble us into a basic tentativeness
before “new” information, as well as press us into a
deliberate, careful, and restrained study.
 
3.  The following topics, individually and as related
to each other, will need intense and prolonged
scrutiny and reflection:
 
a.  Procreation and Child-rearing:  while this topic
has had a traditional focal location in theological
anthropology, it has only had a passing interest
(usually of a purely political point-scoring kind on
various sides) in the current debates in the
Communion.  Given its central and even primordial
place in Christian theology of the human person, this
must come to the fore.  Rowan Williams has written
provocatively about this, as have writers like John
Saward, and others from non-Western traditions.  Is
one of our primary purposes as human creatures in fact
to procreate and to raise children?  If so, why and
how?
 
b.  Family:  Obviously, the question of the Christian
family is related to the above.   Among the issues
here that we have failed to think about adequately are
the elements necessary to fulfill the divine vocation
to “form” children, and/or spouses in their mutual
relationship.  Formation is a cultural question in a
general sense, and will force us to examine the lines
of influence between non-Christian and Christian
“culture”,  both locally and intimately, as well as
more broadly and globally.   We have barely scratched
the surface of learning from one another in the larger
Communion about these matters, and American
insouciance to considered and integrated practice
represents, just in this area, one of the most glaring
aspects of our cultural arrogance and folly. 
 
c.  Divorce and remarriage:  one thing that has
emerged in the present conflicts in ECUSA and the
Communion is that there is some kind of organic link –
though not clearly understood – between the changes in
our marriage discipline with regard to divorce, and
changes in other areas of sexual theology and
discipline.   Given that these changes with regard to
divorce and remarriage are relatively recent, yet
long-standing enough as to provide data and evidence
to be studied, it appears that a serious
reconsideration of the meaning, effects, usefulness
and faithfulness of our marriage canons needs to be
pursued, again on a much broader Communion and
Scriptural basis.
 
d.  Friendship:  an aspect of the debate over
homosexual partnerships that has generally been
ignored is the character of friendship that the
Christian Gospel both encourages and shapes –
friendship, that is, that is non-sexual in its
orientation and that engages persons of the same or
different sex.  In the context of the current struggle
in Britain over the Civil Partnership Act, some
theologians (like Andrew Goddard) have pressed for
just such an exploration of friendship in a newly
focused way.  There are, of course, vast resources
within the Christian tradition to aid in such
exploration, much of which has been forgotten in the
contemporary era.  But the question has been rightly
asked as to whether modern sexual confusions (and no
one can deny that such confusion is rampant) are
informed by a lack of Christian direction and
encouragement with respect to friendship itself.
 
e.  Human passions and their meaning, control , and
direction:  much imprecise and mutually contradictory
statements have been made in the current conflict
concerning the nature of human impulses, emotions, and
appetites, especially as they relate to the vocation
of Christian holiness.    This is not only about sex
and sexuality, but also about other aspects of the
human character and personality.  The fact that so
much anger and bitterness (not to mention
self-justification for the same) colors our current
conflict on all sides indicates that we are fairly
un-self-aware about the shape of the “redeemed” human
person granted us in Christ through the Holy Spirit.  
 The sometimes hysterical reaction to “change” in
sexual “identity” – both among proponents for such
change and also among its skeptics and opponents –
indicates deep misunderstandings and certainly
disagreements about the nature of Christian “ascetics”
and its relationship (see above) to Christian and
non-Christian culture.   The focus of so much
discussion regarding Christian identity upon the
Prayer Book’s “Baptismal Covenant”, limiting because
of its generalities, has acted to derail reflection on
traditional elements of the Christian person in this
regard.
 
f.  The exercise of ecclesial discipline: 
Laissez-faire and random reactionism has characterized
the last few years in ECUSA and the Communion itself,
with little control (and self-control) being exercised
in the face of unfulfilled promises, behavioral
scandal, contradicted teaching, liturgical subversion,
episcopal encroachments,  refusal to talk openly and
prayerfully, and so on.  A part of this dispiriting
mess can be blamed on a widespread misunderstanding
(and sometimes willful rejection) of the reality and
character of Christian and eccleseial discipline.  
This topic has obviously come up in a concrete way
with respect to ECUSA’s place in the Communion.  But
just here there is evident a deep confusion over the
Scriptural and traditional motives, meanings, and
purposes of discipline.  
 
f.  Pastoral realities of human compassion and
protection:  One of the greatest casualties in the
current conflict of our Communion has been the
fundamental Christian call to compassionate response
to and protection of the vulnerable.  This has been
evidenced by expressed hatred, in various contexts,
towards homosexuals, conservatives, Africans,
political liberals, bishops, women, and on and on. 
The presumption for tradition that Windsor implies
must be the new playing field is not about a victory
of one “party” in the church over another, as if there
are scores to be settled and people to be picked off. 
It is, as I said, about faith, hope, and charity lived
out in the Church within the vast world of God’s
creation.  This is not a word we are hearing, nor is
it one we are seeing.  Repentance will involve a turn
towards this most basically, but only if it can be
identified clearly and understood compellingly.
 
 
There are, no doubt, many other topics that we will
need to discuss and “listen” to one another about.  If
they seem, at a certain point, to take in the whole
scope of the Christian faith, that is perhaps only
because we have wandered so far from one another –
parallel to the fragmentation of the larger Church
Universal – that the claim of “one body, one Spirit,
one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God
and Father of us all, within the unity of the Spirit
and the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3-6) has become either
a vague metaphor or an eschatological hope to which we
are not responsible for the time being.  But this is
also a travesty of the Christian Gospel.  The Windsor
Report would have us change the playing field so that
our goals might no longer be aimed at such vanity, but
at the substance itself of our common trust in Christ.
 And this is far more than a game;  it is “the upward
call of God in Christ Jesus” given to the
“mature-minded” (Phil. 3:14f.).    Are we ready for
such a well-aimed maturity?