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agreement between Christopher Wells and myself was that I would consider
the ACI essay in light of our dialog. I think that we have likely both
realized that “What it will take” is less suited to elucidating
our rhetorical journey than we thought it might be. This may have caused
me to seem rather more cynical than I intended. Let me, therefore, offer
some final, more sober thoughts, on the task before General Convention.
In “What Should General Convention 2006 Do?” I
commented in detail on the proposed resolutions. In the main, I will
stand by what I said there. Although I believe the Special Commission
made a few serious errors—A169 is defective in nearly every way—the
resolutions are surely a reasonable place for General Convention to
begin. I think they suggest a church in disagreement making a sincere
attempt to be a good citizen of the community. (Not being a student of
theology, I sometimes find it easiest to fall back on political
metaphors. Please excuse me for doing so.) This characterization of what
we are doing makes me think of the Declaration of Independence, not
because we are declaring our independence—though that matter is surely
on the table—but because the Founding Fathers found it necessary to
explain to the world what they were doing. It was a good precedent.
We should declare plainly what we are doing
(and not doing) and why. It was good that we were asked to explain
ourselves at the last ACC meeting, leading us to produce To Set Our
Hope on Christ. That is a good model, even if we cannot produce a
book every time our church makes a decision. In particular, we should, in a resolution, say what
we consider the nature of the Communion to be, an organization we do not
expect to change until it is agreed that it should change. I think,
moreover, that we should say what we require and what we are not happy
about. I do worry about changing the nature of our relationships, but I
am not unalterably opposed to considering it. Whatever
“autonomy-in-communion” turns out to look like, however, we will need to
consider whether it is consistent with our own theological
understandings.
Despite the suggestion by the ACI and others
that change is happening slowly, from an historical point of view,
events within the Anglican Communion have occurred very quickly, perhaps
too quickly. We need to come to a broader understanding of who we are as
the Episcopal Church and what we understand by Anglicanism before we
make precipitant changes to the Anglican Communion. We need to slow down
enough to do whatever it is we are about to do right. Once the Anglican
Communion is either broken or transformed, there will be no going back.
Previous: Resolutions for What Sort of Communion?
or Against Craftiness! by Christopher
Wells
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Christopher Wells
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