The Questioning Christian

Anglicans Don’t Need Pope, Curia

Written by

D. C. Toedt III

in

Read the Heretic’s Corner’s comment on the Windsor Report. Excerpt (paragraphing added):

To expand [the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury], as the [Lambeth C]ommission suggests, flies in the face of our historic understanding of what the Anglican Communion is: a family of creedal churches that can trace its origins somehow to the Church of England.

The Anglican Communion came into existence not because of a plan, but because faithful Anglican Christians journeyed throughout the world and took their church with them, planting churches and missions that eventually, through their common understanding of the faith, evolved into national churches and finally, into a loosely defined international communion.

As Prof. Bill Countryman noted recently, Anglicanism happened, and to try to wrestle it into worldwide conformity under an office that has been previously largely symbolic seems not only a futile gesture but one that seeks the type of centralized authority we opted out of during the English Reformation.

The commission’s call for a “council of advice” that would assist and advise the ABC in his newly expanded role is equally disconcerting because it is, in essence, a recommendation that the Anglican Communion adopt a Curia of sorts. Again, this appears to be a move to enforce unity amongst the churches of the Communion without regard to the historical and theological implications involved.

* * *

… The commission tried hard, but its suggestions are mostly either impractical, ahistorical, or proposes changes in polity that will make it very difficult for the ECUSA to sign onto. It takes no account of the culture of the church around the world. It seeks to impose a centralized authority within Anglicanism. I don’t think it’s going to work. That’s too bad, because maybe it really was our last stab at unity within diversity.

Is it time to learn to walk separately? I hope not, but maybe we should start trying on some new walking shoes soon. Just in case.

Comments

3 responses to “Anglicans Don’t Need Pope, Curia”

  1. bls Avatar
    bls

    Actually, it wasn’t exactly a “journey.” It was colonialism and imperialism that spread the Anglican Church worldwide. So there is that kind of history involved, also.
    I agree, of course, that the best of all possible worlds is a “loose organization” of national churches, one that has no central authority. That’s one reason I joined the Episcopal Church. The Society of Friends is like this as well, and it’s no accident that you get a very wide variety of understandings in both denominations. To me, this is a very good thing; it also allows for a more mystical approach to religion, which is what I prefer.
    I certainly don’t want to see an Anglican Pope. I don’t think we should assume that the Africans are going to get their way here, in any case. They have the numbers, all right, but it doesn’t mean that they are correct in what they are doing. If they want to walk, let them walk. If an openly-gay bishop in a tiny diocese in another Province is really the point at which they choose to break up the Anglican Communion, let it be on the record that way. And if they end up forcing an Anglican Pope, we should walk ourselves, because it’s not Anglicanism any longer.

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  2. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    To me, this is a very good thing; it also allows for a more mystical approach to religion, which is what I prefer.
    If you have been to one of the Eastern Orthodox churches, you will understand that they have mystical masses and have a central authority in their Metropolitan. I don’t see how Anglicanism can survive without a “core” doctrine considering (currently) the “core” doctrine is different among different countries.

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  3. bls Avatar
    bls

    Yes, the EO seems to be an exception to the rule. It likes to consider itself “unchanged” from the age of the Apostles, so perhaps that’s why. But I’d never join that church, for many reasons.
    I don’t know, though, why you think that Anglicanism doesn’t have a “core doctrine”; it does. It’s called the “Nicene Creed.” The Society of Friends, of course, doesn’t even go that far, and it seems to survive nicely.

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