Archbishop of Canterbury's Remarks at General Convention

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

The 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church
July 9, 2009

Meditation

One thing you learn very quickly as Archbishop of Canterbury is that everything you say is scrutinised and interpreted and picked over for hidden meanings and agendas. Something tells me today will be no exception…

But because I don’t actually like coded messages or hidden agendas, and because I believe they’re an aspect of a whole rather unhealthy culture of suspicion – not to mention conspiracy theories - I’m going to begin by saying two things as simply and directly as I can, so that we can get on to the more important matter of reflecting together on the Scripture passages we have been given in this Eucharist.

The first thing is to say thank you. Thank you for the invitation to join you on this occasion and to share something of my mind with you; and so thank you too for your continuing willingness to engage with the wider life of our Communion. I do realise that this engagement has been and still is costly for different people in different ways: some feel impatient, some feel compromised, some feel harassed or undervalued, or that their good faith has been ungraciously received. I’m sorry; this has been hard and will not get much easier, I suspect. But it is something for which many of us genuinely are grateful to you and to God.

And it’s related to the second thing I want to say. Of course I am coming here with hopes and anxieties – you know that and I shan’t deny it. Along with many in the Communion, I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart. But if people elsewhere in the Communion are concerned about this, it’s because of a profound sense of what the Episcopal Church has given and can give to our fellowship worldwide. If we - if I – had felt that we could do perfectly well with out you, there wouldn’t be a problem. But the bonds of relationship are deep, for me personally as for many others. And I’m tempted to adapt what St Paul says to the Corinthians in the middle of a set of tensions no less bitter than what we have been living through and in the wake of challenges from St Paul a good deal more savage than even the sharpest words from Primates or Councils: ‘Why? Because we do not love you? God knows we do.’

Well: to business. Our readings put before us a vision of Christ’s Church that is both simple and alarming. We have been called and chosen. It is not that we have ourselves chosen Jesus, and it is certainly not that we have earned the right to be chosen by him (because we’re so orthodox or so open or so faithful or so creative or whatever). We have simply been spoken to by Christ and our fellowship has been created by his word to us. What is more, that word makes us his friends; and as his friends we share some understanding of what he is doing because he has allowed us to overhear his eternal conversation of love with the one he calls ‘Abba, Father.’

So we’re ‘holy’, a holy people, a holy nation, because we have been brought within earshot of that eternal conversation, that immeasurable intimacy. We know that this is Jesus’ business – living in an intimacy with the Father that opens him up to the needs of creation, so that the eternal conversation overflows and transforms an entire world. As John’s gospel tells us time and again, we come to be where Jesus is; and that is our holiness. Not what we have achieved, what we have held on to, what we can trade for rewards from God, but simply the fact of being in the Holy place that is Jesus at prayer. The intimacy of the Source and the Word becomes intimate to and in us. And we turn to the world so that our humanity, newly transparent to God the Trinity, can itself become a word, a transforming message and gift – a humanity living in mutual generosity, intimacy with each other and delight in each other, like the delight and intimacy that exists for ever in heaven.

This is what we are here for as a Church. Our life as church declares to the world that God’s longing is for a humanity like this, a humanity broken open for intimacy. Broken open: because there is a cost in the creation of the humanity that God longs for. At the very beginning of all things, and at the very beginning of the story of God’s people, the word of God speaks into a dark emptiness and brings life and light. By sheer divine freedom, God brings light, makes a humanity where there was no humanity, a community where there was no community. And God makes us able to receive his mercy where once we could not even understand that we needed it. In a word, we have been called from nothingness; but this means that we still stand over that abyss of emptiness – an inner void that only the Word of God can hold and fill and make to be something that is real and living. Sin is our constant temptation to slip back into nothingness, into unreality – the void of our own individual desires and agendas, the void of a self that deludes itself into the belief that it is really there on its own, independent of God and of others.

So when God in Jesus Christ restores humanity to its proper place in God’s heart, Jesus has to face full-on the strange power of nothingness, the power of the terrors and dreams that are generated out of the self in its urgent attempts to keep itself alive by its own strength. Jesus dies because we don’t want to die – to die to our fantasies and self-centred plans and dreams. To follow him is to risk stepping into life by recognising that something in us must die – so that everlasting and true life may live.

The Church is a place where indestructible life is made manifest: it “presents and represents in its corporate life creation restored in celebration of the Word of God” – words from one your own prophets, the greatest Episcopalian theologian and perhaps the greatest American theologian of the twentieth century, William Stringfellow; not the least of the gifts which the Episcopal Church has given the rest of us. Stringfellow is writing about the calling of the Church to be a ‘holy nation’ - a community that is free from every kind of local and uncritical loyalty so as to show the world what an institution looks like when it lives by the self-communication of God. And above all, he says, it is an institution which looks death in the face and declares it to be overcome.

Our contemporary world is still very recognisably the world that Stringfellow wrote about in the seventies and eighties, a world in which death and nothingness have what looks like a powerful advantage. We collude with the death of the poor, with the almost unimaginable ravages of HIV/AIDS in Africa, with the ruination of small economies in the strange adventures of the global market, with the impending extinction of the possibility of human existence in some parts of the world by rising water levels. In the last nine months, we have learned, with more surprise that we should have felt, how our financial affairs are based on a passionate quest for “growth” that has increasingly led us to make profit out of literally – nothingness, out of empty words and manufactured figures. The poisonous effect of death and nothingness can be seen in a reeling international economy and a fearful bewilderment about our human future, not only financially but materially, as inhabitants of a planet in which limitless material growth is impossible. And in this world, the Church is there to name death and to promise life – the life that comes in relationship, not selfish speculation or protective barriers against the poor, but relation with God through Jesus Christ and with each other, relation that is grounded in our knowledge of the will of God for the wealth and welfare of God’s creation.

To be holy is to be a witness for life in the face of these and many other forms of death. But Stringfellow adds another dimension to this. We have to face and acknowledge death in ourselves – not just death at work in the world in general, not death at work in other believers that we disapprove of, but the fact that we like all other believers we disapprove of, but the fact that we like all other believers are where we are and what we are because we have called from nothingness and still experience the drawing of death and emptiness in our own depths. Because of this, we proclaim the victory of life through our corporate confession and repentance: Stringfellow says ‘if want to know what you can do to justify yourself, the biblical response is: You must give up trying to justify yourself and confess your utter helplessness in the face of the power of death….The repentance at issue is such that it apprehends the empirical risk of death or of abandonment; that is, the risk that there is no Word of God to identify you and give you your name. Without that gift of your name, you do not exist; you are dead or, as they say, as good as dead.’

Life is proclaimed not in our achievement, our splendid record of witness to God, but in our admission of helplessness and of the continuing presence and lure of death in our lives. To be able to speak of this, and not to retreat in fear or throw up defences is part of true life; it is to know that our name is spoken by the Word of God and that we do not have to battle in resentment and anxiety to create an identity of our own. It is already there: we are already called friends. we are already bound to each other, and our life is invested in each other, in those we see and those we don’t, those we like and those we don’t. We are in the holy place with Jesus, a holy nation, a royal priesthood.

Here at the Eucharist we state who we are and where and why. We give voice to our hunger and helplessness; we name death, in us and around us; we give thanks that we are called from emptiness to life, and our own true names are spoken by the Word. May this gathering be a sign of life in the face of death, a declaration of who we are in Jesus and with one another, in the heart of God the Holy Trinity: chosen friends who, miraculously, know something of that God’s longing for what has been made.

Presiding Bishop's Opening Address

I am interested in the following statements from the Presiding Bishop's Opening Remarks. I agree with her claim that the discernment of Christ's will is a work of the whole body, not just individuals within it. I make very much this same point when I argue that the discernment of General Convention must take into account and invite the input of our partners in full communion around the globe as well as in our own lands.

I am intrigued, perhaps the most, by her suggestion that subsidiarity be our hallmark in going forward - especially as regards "the big picture issues we can't yet agree on."

She said, and I quote:

• Reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus...[is] a form of idolotry...putting me and my words in a place that only God can occupy...
• There is no I in ubuntu... [which literally means] "I am because we are..."
• [We must not subscribe to the] heretical and individualistic understanding...[as opposed to the truth which says that] my needs are not the only significant ones
• We are our siblings keepers...we have no existence without them
• How do we keep the main thing the main thing? "God's mission is our reason for existence, and it has most to do with loving our neighbors..."
• We should be in the business of subsidiarity. the church as a whole should not be doing mission work that can be done better at a more local level. we should leave smaller things and more local issues to more local parts of the church. we might also consider putting in that category the big picture issues we can't yet agree on, the ones for which we have many more local and varied understandings, recognizing that different contexts might require different responses....
• We will fail if we choose business as usual...

Sudan Upholds Partnership with Episcopal Church

Sudan primate upholds 'mutual understanding, true partnership' with Episcopalians

By Matthew Davies, July 07, 2009

Click image for detail

[Episcopal News Service] Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan (ECS) has written to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and all the bishops, priests, deacons and laity of the U.S.-based Episcopal Church underscoring the importance of partnership between the two churches and offering an update about the urgent situation in Sudan.

In his June 30 letter, Deng expressed his gratitude for the invitation to attend the July 8-17 General Convention in Anaheim, California. Deng is one of more than 70 international and ecumenical guests expected to share in the Episcopal Church's triennial policy-making gathering.

"I am humbled and honored by your invitation to this convention and I greet you all in the precious name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," said Deng, who was enthroned as Sudan's archbishop and primate in April 2008. "Thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to ... cement the ever growing relationship between our churches on the sure foundation of mutual understanding, true partnership and above all the love of Jesus Christ our Lord who covers all multitudes of sin." The full text of Deng's statement is available here.

Jefferts Schori told ENS that the Episcopal Church "has long been concerned about the disastrous conditions in Sudan, and I expect the convention will respond with heightened advocacy efforts and humanitarian responses to the tragedy in Sudan."

Deng made headlines during the 2008 Lambeth Conference for telling media that he thought openly gay bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire should resign. His comments were made at an impromptu news conference organized by a British journalist, who like many journalists present was frustrated with the closed nature of the Lambeth Conference.

While Deng has said that he does not agree with some of the Episcopal Church's recent decisions regarding human sexuality, he has been clear that its partnerships with Sudan should continue.

The U.S.-based Episcopal Church has long-standing partnerships with ECS through companion diocese relationships, Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) programs and the advocacy work of the Office of Government Relations.

Current companion relationships include Albany (New York) with the Province of Sudan, Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) with Kajo Keji, Chicago with Renk, Indianapolis with Bor, Missouri with Lui, Southwestern Virginia with the Province of Sudan, and Virginia with the Province of Sudan.

In his recent letter, Deng urged the Episcopal Church "to retain the peace of the Sudan as a top priority, working to prevent further genocide and assisting in the humanitarian effort to bring better living conditions to believers.

Deng explained that he has undertaken major tours of Southern Sudan during the past year and has "witnessed first hand the suffering of my people and the increasing fear of communities on the ground because of a situation of ever-increasing insecurity."

Sudan, Africa's largest country by area, has been devastated by two back-to-back civil wars spanning some 40 years. Although that war officially came to an end with the January 2005 signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the northern Government of Sudan and the southern people, a conflict lingers in the Darfur region of western Sudan that is reported to have claimed more than 300,000 lives. The CPA was negotiated with the involvement of U.S. envoy to Sudan John C. Danforth, a former U.S. Senator from Missouri and an Episcopal priest.

Despite initial hopes for the success of the peace agreement, southern Sudanese leaders have been frustrated by the northern government's refusal to live into the major terms of the agreement, including sharing of oil revenues and the drawing of fair borders.

Sudan is scheduled to hold its first democratic elections in 24 years in February 2010 and a 2011 referendum will give southerners the opportunity to determine whether to secede from the north or remain a unified country.

Jefferts Schori told ENS: "We will pray for the people of Sudan, and we will do what we can to give evidence of the faith that is within us, knowing that God expects peace for all our brothers and sisters, not war and privation."

Deng said that the U.S. Government "has a duty to prevent Sudan from returning to war," and urged General Convention to increase its advocacy "on behalf of the Sudanese people to President [Barack] Obama, Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton and Special Envoy [Jonathan Scott] Gration. We need to let those in the west who support the cause of peace, freedom and justice for Sudan know that the churches are key partners in the work of peace-building on the ground.

"God bless Episcopal Church of America. God bless our partnership; and God bless the Episcopal Church of the Sudan," Deng concluded in his letter.

-- Matthew Davies is editor of Episcopal Life Online and international correspondent of the Episcopal News Service.

Tobias Haller Piece

God crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave him to the people of the desert for food... -- Psalm 74

The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, in his great workLeviathan, posited that the good of the corporate political body transcended the rights of the individual members as a way of ensuring the greatest well-being for the whole. This idea received more precise formulation in the work of philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham, and there were echoes of it in early communism as well.

We find an earlier instance of it in the language of Caiaphas: it is expedient that one should die for the many. And, of course, that makes moral sense so long as the one who dies is offering him or herself freely and without constraint, in utter freedom of choice to be an atoning sacrifice. But it is a horror and a crime when the many choose, compel, and constrain one of their number to suffer on their behalf, a scapegoat and victim without choice or freedom.

My point in this is to stress that the church as a body ought never tread the path of Caiaphas, speaking in terms of acceptable losses and victims and scapegoats for the greater good -- suggesting that the few should suffer for the sake of the many. In doing so the Church becomes false to its own ends, as well as to its beginning.

For the church exists for the benefit of each an all of its members, not for the many of its members against the few. Moreover, the church was made for humanity, not humanity for the church; it is not an engine fueled with human flesh, to be kept running at any and all costs, blind to its purpose as it consumes the very substance of which it consists, like Ouroboros eating its tail, or a horrific autoimmune disease.

But some will say, The church is the Body of Christ. And so it is. And the Body of Christ was not ordained to be lifted up, carried about, or adored, but to be put to the use for which it is intended: salvation. The church is not an end in itself, but a means to a greater end, a transcendent end. It is not an institution to be maintained at all costs, at the loss of its true self. It is the church as a whole that gives itself for the life of the world, if it is to be true to the one in whose name and by whose grace it exists.

Partnership and Communion in Christ

Nigel Taber-Hamilton has posted a piece on Episcopal Cafe which raises plenty of valid points. He points to shifts in culture and the failure of the Episcopal Church to do successful mission and ministry in light of such new realities.

But, he also makes a couple of largely false claims as well, upon which the actual thrust of his piece hinges.  The thrust being that we must now move forward with what we have perceived to be our faithful response to Jesus -- and that to do otherwise is a form of "appeasement" and unfaithfulness to Jesus.

He argues that we as a Church must not "make any decision based on what others might (probably will) do," or, "allow those who claim some authority – even as a first among equals – to influence our decision-making solely through their role."

The fallacies are these: 1)it is not clear even to us what a faithful moving forward means and 2) it is not possible to say that we can be faithful to Christ while acting in ways that so utterly disregard the clearly communicated concerns of our partners in faith.

Specifically, as to the first point, there remains a significantly wide range of opinions among faithful Episcopalians about what to do vis a vis the inclusion of gay persons in the full sacramental life, and ordained life, of the Church.  As well, it seems to me that even if General Convention were to decide on a couple of resolutions, for example, but were to pass them by a relatively slim majority -- I am not persuaded that such a decision would constitute the agreement he argues we have.  On the second point, there is a notion of catholicity which I have, which is rooted in a notion of covenant-making and partnership, that most of us have I think, that says that the right relationship between partners in life as in ministry requires faithful listening and mutual submission.  Is it good in marriage, for example, when one spouse simply goes ahead with a plan of action that the other spouse has plainly objected to and has said might constitute grounds for divorce?  Doesn't the 'non-appeasing' spouse really have a duty to weigh the other partner's faithfully expressed convictions?  Is there not any possibility that when one has blended and bonded one's life with another that one of the values of such partnership is that one's partner very often offers a much-needed check and challenge to one's own individual desires and sense of what is 'right?'

The Episcopal Church is in full communion with a number of churches -- Anglican and Lutheran.  Hopefully, we will enter into full communion with more -- such as the Moravians, and perhaps one day the Methodists.  Are we to believe that we value such relationships -- which are intended to mirror also the kind of union enjoyed between Christ and the Church -- so little as to say, "We cannot make any decision based on what others might (probably will) do," or, "allow those who claim some authority – even as a first among equals – to influence our decision-making solely through their role."  Might it not be perceived rightly by current and potential future communion partners that we are not really interested in full communion, but rather a much less interwoven bond that looks more like a convivial coexistence which invites no challenge to existential and essential autonomy?

If indeed we cannot allow our partners in Christ to influence, nay share in, our discernment of Christ's own mind -- then I seriously doubt whether we can be considered at all faithful in such discernment.

Seeds of Schism in England Planted

In a recent post, I stated that underlying the formation of the Anglican Church of North America was the necessary claim on their part that The Episcopal Church was no longer a valid Anglican or even Christian church. Such a claim is necessary for them to believe they are operating in good faith as they work towards replacing The Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Church of Canada, in these lands.

The movement which has begun ACNA is now doing the same in the United Kingdom with what is called the FCA. Of course this is going to be the forerunner of a schismatic entity in Great Britain. What's hilarious is that the movement says they are going to do these things, they then do them, and all the while they also have their own advocates and spin doctors simultaneously denying that they are doing anything of the sort. I am reminded of the old joke about how the Germans invaded France by walking in backwards and saying they were leaving. On the one hand this movement -- which exists on both sides of the Atlantic, with its roots in former members of The Church of England as with The Episcopal Church and Church of Canada -- says that TEC, CofC and CofE are essentially apostate, heretical and even Satanic, and on the other hand they say they would never say such a thing.

Anyhow, here is a piece by Toby Cohen for the UK website Religious Intelligence:

A new power in the Church of England is waiting to take control if the current leadership permit any further liberalization, warned the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) UK at its launch in London today.

Over 1,600 people turned up at Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, including leaders from around the Communion, to celebrate the fellowship which currently describes itself as a movement rather than an organization. However, Archbishop Bob Duncan, of the new Anglican Church in North America, made clear that FCA UK could follow the route of the North Americans in forming a new Church if they saw the Church of England stray too far from its traditional roots.

He said: “The American Church and the Canadian Church are radical churches. They are revolutionary Churches. Our hope is that that’s not what the Church of England will be. It really depends on- the ability for the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans to be a force within the Church of England depends on- the attitude of the leadership of the Church of England.”

That leadership was criticized in no uncertain terms by the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Rev John Broadhurst, the Chairman of Forward in Faith International, who said: “Satan is alive and well and he’s residing in Church House.”

Consecrating women as bishops in the Church of England without proper provision for those opposed to the move would prompt FCA UK to challenge the current Church leadership. The Bishop of Lewes, the Rt Rev Wallace Benn, maintained that the fellowship was hopeful that this would not be necessary.

He said: “I think we are hopeful that the Church of England will see sense and provide properly for loyal Anglicans of both integrities. The Lambeth Conference talked about both integrities being loyal Anglicans and for a Church to want to push out one or the other is very unfortunate and should not be a Church dividing issue if proper action is taken. I think most of us are optimistic that some sort of solution will come out of that.

“If the Church of England was to be foolish and to drive people out of a conscientious issue then we would need to look for help and support from elsewhere. At the moment we’re not pessimistic.”

Archbishop Gregory Venables, Primate of the Southern Cone, underlined how serious the theological distance was between FCA and other parts of the Church, he said: “This is about the essentials of theology, and that’s where the division is coming. Those who say there is only one way; Jesus Christ, stand with us, stand with him, and those who say there are a lot of ways, Jesus is one of them. That is what this division is about and it’s not schism, it is real separation over Gospel truth.”

While speculation surrounded the retiring Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, as to whether he would be taking a leading role with FCA, he said: “I’m just a foot-soldier.”

Testing of Paul

The Pope recently exhumed the crypt of the Apostle Paul, long buried beneath the Vatican, and allowed the human remains inside to be tested.

The tests came back postive -- at least as far as age goes. Testing affirms that those bones in that crypt date to the time of Paul. They date to the era when Roman, Greek and Jew alike heaped insult, persecution and hardship on the likes of Paul. To the time when Paul, the brilliant Jewish rabbi turned evangelist for Christ extraordinaire, would ultimately lose his head for the sake of God's grace in Christ.

I’m sure glad I’m not Paul. Aren’t you?

If I were Paul -- for sure by now – I’d have been whipped with 39 lashes; beaten with rods three times; stoned once; shipwrecked three times; cast adrift on a salty sea for 36 hours. And, so often, I'd be hungry, tired and weak. I'd have no wife, no children, and my only home would be the cross I carried. I’m glad I’m not Paul, because if I were, I’d be suffering more, and one day they'd cut my head off.

Yet, as a Christian who believes in the power of God, I feel very lame at how glad I am that I am not suffering like Paul -- or the thousands of witnesses to the faith in the earliest generations. Or the thousands even now in so many places -- on the front lines against the evils of the world.

I mean I'm a Christian -- but I ate burgers and hot dogs on the Fourth of July, lit off fireworks with my kids, and was happy to be free and alive in a rich and democratic land.

It always gets me to thinking, when I hear 2 Corinthians, "Am I really engaged with Christ as Paul was? Or the other disciples and apostles and martyrs? Am I really engaged?" It's an important question. It's a necessary one -- for those seeking to be followers of Christ. After all, if real disciples practice costly discipleship -- what am I doing? Am I giving praise to God in all things? Am I aware that God's grace is sufficient for me? Am I content -- which is to say fulfilled -- by knowing that my life exists for the sake of Christ?

What about you?

Paul certainly suffered a lot -- for the faith. He also was privy to visions and revelations that typical joes don't often have. He didn't have a family or the comforts of earthly home and hearth -- but, he did have the gift of an unbelievable mental genius, an unbelievable work ethic, and an unbelievable genius for surviving some dicy situations. Yes, he was mightily afflicted, and mightily gifted by God. And twenty centuries later -- we're still interested enough in him to check out his bones, and read his mail.

But you and I -- are different. We are almost certainly less mightily gifted and less mightily afflicted. We are almost certainly not going to achieve even a teensy fraction of his stature historically and theologically in Church History.

But...we have our circumstances. We have our blessings, and our thorns in the side. We may not have the Roman empire after us, but we all have somebody or something after us -- don't we? Some form of sin, fear and death are piercing us so that we may not boast of our greatness. We may not be Paul, but we have our circumstances. We have our blessings. We have our thorns. And we are all just a phone call away from circumstances far better or far worse than we are prepared to take.

No, we are not Paul, and we don't need to be Paul. For it is not Paul we serve, and it was not Paul whom Paul served. We do not proclaim ourselves, and as Paul well knew, it is not ourselves which ultimately matter.

No, whomever we are, and wherever we are, whatever our blessings or cursings may be, Jesus Christ is seeking us -- in His Grace -- for healing, for courage and for joy.

Jesus Christ is calling us as we are, and equipping as we are, to become not more like Paul, but more like Christ by the power of Christ which he sends to us in prayer, sacrament, Word and worship.

I am sure that Paul did not want the kind of iconic heroe worship that even his bones are important to people. But I do believe he did want all that he had and had to endure to serve a sacred purpose -- and that's why he offered all of his circumstances and life to Christ's power.

May the same be said of us. Whatever our personal circumstances -- we may offer them to Christ -- and witnesses we will be. Christ will work through our weaknesses of faith, of courage, and of thankfulness -- and work wonders through even the smallness of our lives.