The disintegration of the world’s third largest Christian ecclesiastical community marches on. (The Roman Catholics with more than a billion members and the 300 million member Greek Orthodox communions are the two largest; the Pentecostal and charismatic movement worldwide is larger than the Greek Orthodox community but is not organized into a single group of churches.) This week, the center of attention has moved from the dismal flailing of the American Episcopal church to the equally disheartening infighting in Britain, and the issue has moved from ordaining gay bishops to the question of how to handle the Angl0-Catholic minority in the Church of England who object to the ordination of women as bishops.
The Church of England has been edging toward the ordination of women bishops for some time; a minority bitterly opposes this step, believing (like the Vatican and the Eastern Orthodox churches) that only men can serve in the ‘holy orders’ of the church. The Archbishop of Canterbury had introduced a resolution at the General Synod or convention of the Church of England that would allow parishes and priests who objected to the ordination of women bishops to remain under male supervision. It was hoped that this opt-out would allow dissenters to remain in the Church of England rather than going to Rome; the news this week is that the resolution was defeated. Leaders of Britain’s Anglo-Catholic minority (Anglo-Catholics are Anglicans who believe that there are or should be virtually no theological differences between Anglican and Roman Catholic teaching) are now threatening to secede.
This is a very Anglican dispute. Historically, the Anglican Communion has claimed to be a “via media” or middle way between Protestantism and Catholicism. This tends to infuriate both Protestants and Catholics who find Anglicans unbearably self-righteous and smug; there is much quiet gloating in various Christian circles as the Anglicans tear themselves apart. Nevertheless, Anglicans have seen the peculiar course of the English Reformation as leading to a church that was both Catholic and Reformed, holding fast to the core truths of the Christian faith and respecting tradition while ridding itself of the abuses and errors that Protestants associate with the Church of Rome. Given this position, it is not surprising that ever since England broke from Rome under Henry VIII the Anglican Church has witnessed bitter theological controversies between its more Protestant leaning and more Catholic leaning members.
The differences sharpened in the nineteenth century. The Oxford Movement saw men like John Henry Newman, John Keble and Edward Pusey develop a fully articulated Anglo-Catholic theological position while reviving Catholic liturgical practices (“bells and smells”) and ultimately establishing Anglican monastic orders. At the same time, the evangelical revivals that swept Victorian Britain greatly strengthened the Low Church or Protestant party, and a third force also emerged, the “Broad Church” movement that thought both High Church Anglo-Catholics and Low Church evangelicals were entirely too conservative in their approach to Christian doctrine and that it was perhaps more important to get along than to tear the church asunder over small points of (irrelevant and perhaps dubious) doctrine.
Because the Church of England is a state church (its bishops are appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister, Parliament ultimately has the right to determine what Prayer Book it uses, the bishops sit in the House of Lords, the Queen and her family and heirs cannot leave the Church of England or marry Roman Catholics without losing their right to the throne), many of its doctrinal disputes have ended up in court or have been decided by government action. In the past, decisions like the establishment of a joint Angl0-Prussian missionary bishopric in Jerusalem and the Privy Council’s decision in the Gorham case deeply disturbed Anglo-Catholics by appearing to give a decisively Protestant cast to the Anglican faith. Over the years, a significant number of Angl0-Catholics including at least two future cardinals (John Henry Newman and Henry Manning) have left the Church of England for Rome over issues like this, but most have stayed.
The fight over women bishops is in many respects a typical Anglican squabble between the Catholic and Protestant trends in the church. For Anglo-Catholics, the issue is clear and it is vital. The sacred orders (bishops, priests, deacons) are the common property of all the churches — Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican. The Anglican church acting alone has no right to change 2000 years of church teaching and practice — and in any case, many Anglo-Catholics agree with Benedict XVI that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is a matter of divine law rather than human tradition. (The Roman Catholics and most Eastern Orthodox do not believe that Anglican orders are valid and insist that Anglican ‘priests’ joining these churches must be re-ordained.)
What the Archbishop of Canterbury proposed was a classic Anglican fudge. The ordination of women as bishops would go ahead in Britain, but parishes and priests whose consciences were offended could deal with male bishops instead. Unfortunately (in my view) this approach has been defeated by those who argue that the core question is one of the rights and dignity of women. Women bishops should not be ‘less-than’ their male counterparts, they argue. For centuries the church has wrongfully denied women their proper place in ecclesiastical affairs. Will justice even now not be done?
I take the point, but ultimately this seems Puritan rather than Anglican to me. A church that attempts to straddle the Catholic/Protestant divide and also seeks to maintain a global fellowship without an authority structure comparable to the Vatican and the Pope needs to be unusually tolerant, even on matters which some consider matters of principle. Without a tender regard for the sensibilities of minorities, the Communion is unlikely to hold together. Quiet little exceptions and pragmatic fixes that cannot withstand the glare of strict logic are a necessary part of Anglican life.
On the strict merits of the question, I am with the women. I think that Pope Leo XIII was completely correct from a Roman Catholic point of view when he declared all Anglican ordinations “absolutely null and utterly void” back in 1896. Anglican orders and Roman Catholic orders reflect different ideas of priesthood, and although many thoughtful and conscientious Anglicans think otherwise, I think they are wrong. The ordination of women as bishops makes perfect sense in an Anglican context, however wrongheaded it may appear to the Pope.
Nevertheless it seems to me that the Anglican thing to do here is exactly what the Archbishop of Canterbury proposed: graciously to accommodate the real spiritual concerns of a minority party in a theologically diverse Christian communion. That he has been vilified by militant liberals only increases my respect for this remarkable prelate, bravely struggling to fulfill his responsibilities in one of the church’s most difficult hours.
On the question of whether a special provision to salve tender consciences reduces the standing of women bishops, I think that what applies in a secular context does not fit the life of the church. Women MPs should be equal to their male counterparts in every respect and would be rightfully angry if anyone suggested that they operate under a different set of rules than the men. But the Christian church lives by different standards. I do not think any bishop, male or female, loses authority or stature by an act of forbearance and Christian charity. Insisting on prerogatives and points of prestige that damage the church, on the other hand, violates the core spirit of the faith.
The history of Anglicanism is a history of schism. Most of the tens of thousands of denominations in the United States today ultimately descend from groups who broke away from the Church of England over one issue or another since the time of James I. Those who broke away did so on the basis of deeply felt principles that were, they believed, too vital to compromise. That is fair enough. The ideal of a community of Christians who remain together despite serious differences of opinion on important theological issues is not the only ideal, and I can honor those who have chosen to break up the communion over issues of principle even as I struggle to keep the old flame alive.
But the Anglican ideal of forbearance and compromise also has a place. It’s not always enough to be theologically correct; one must also sometimes be Christian. The Anglican Communion is in trouble today because too many of its members are giving their inner Puritans free reign. Where liberals are in the majority, as in the US and to a lesser extent the UK, they are imposing their vision and values in ways that are forcing conservatives toward the exits. Where conservatives have the upper hand, as in some of the African and South American provinces, the conservative majorities are also suffering from an excess of zeal. Liberals and conservatives both need to cool down, to remind themselves that to be Anglican is to acknowledge that the church is inevitably a mixed bag: it is more Noah’s ark with a lot of different species awkwardly trying to keep out of each others’ hair than a can of sardines where everyone looks alike and faces the same way.
I think that’s the way God wants it to be, and that is why I am keeping the faith even as I watch so many of our supposed leaders doing everything they can to rip the church to shreds — motivated, as they say, by nothing but the highest regard for justice and right.