My brother’s keeper

According to the commentariat the General Synod of the Church of England is obsessing about women bishops today. The twitter sphere is buzzing with it. A bit disappointing, then, that the day begins with a ‘debate’ about the plight of Christians in Nigeria. Or… about time we got some proportion into the significance of what preoccupies us (the Synod as well as the commentators)?

The new Bishop of Durham reported from a recent visit tomNigeria on behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He described the situation of the church in northern Nigeria as “systematically, deliberately and progressively being eliminated”. He explored political, economic and religious developments there and reminded us of the complexity of such realities. The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke of “the threatened disintegration of a society under pressure from Boko Haram, one of the most extreme organisations in the world”.

The importance of this debate this morning is that it exemplifies again the vital nature of the Anglican Communion. The Archbishop of York expressed the essential solidarity within the community – emphasising, as did others, that this is not just about us defending other Christians, but defending all people and minorities in Nigeria – by stating that whatever happens to ‘them’ happens to ‘us’. Hence, our prayers, support, advocacy and encouragement to politicians to use their weight in addressing this disastrous situation.

Several speakers in the debate related stories of how diocesan link relationships demonstrate their real value at times like this. Real people meet real people… on the ground… unalloyed by spin or selective reporting.

This is the heart of the Anglican Communion beating strongly: not about issues, but about fellowship in Christ, rooted in a common humanity under God, unafraid to speak truth to power.

Now back to women bishops…

 

A three-way relationship

Relationships change everything.

The media often have a perception of the church that allows through their filter only anything that has to do with sex or conflict. The 2008 Lambeth Conference involved a load of relationship building that didn’t press the buttons of the people looking only for conflict. It is hard – nigh impossible – to measure relationships.

In the last thirty years Anglican dioceses have established links with other dioceses in parts of the world where the culture, language and church is different. For the last eleven years of my ministry in the Diocese of Southwark we were closely linked to dioceses in Zimbabwe. Bradford is linked with Southwestern Virginia in the USA and Sudan.

A three-way link is a gift. Looking at developments in the American diocese though the lens of an English diocese is interesting enough. But, to look through the eyes and listen through the ears of Sudanese Anglicans provides a whole different challenge.

Yesterday I had a long conversation with Bishop Andudu who has been forced into exile from his Diocese of Kadugli in Sudan. While he was having medical treatment in the USA his home was destroyed, his cathedral torched, his office looted, his people attacked and dispersed. Andudu cannot now return to his people, so is ministering to his people who are exiled in a variety of places including Southern Sudan, Egypt, the USA and the UK.

While Bishop Andudu is here in the USA the Archdeacon of Bradford is in Sudan with another of the Bradford clergy.

The Youth Council here in Roanoke has raised $35,000 to fund 142,000 food packs for Sudanese refugees who have been expelled from their homes since the conflicts and ultimate separation of Southern Sudan from the north. This evening we will help them pack them, ready for transport to where they are needed. Who said all young people are selfish narcissists?

The young people have with them a remarkable man with a remarkable story to tell. He is a Sudanese rapper (former child soldier) called Emmanuel Jal and he has been brought over from London to work with the young people here in Roanoke. I am writing this as he has 200 teenagers on their feet dancing. Even Bishop Andudu is dancing. I am sparing everyone’s embarrassment and sitting at the back writing…

This is the Anglican Communion. This is what the media misses when thinking, writing or broadcasting about the Anglican Church. Sudan has a different response to some of the ethical and social challenges faced in the USA or UK, but we are all here together and focused on making a difference where we can.

It is a remarkable sight (and sound). It is the sound of a common vocation and a common humanity in and though a common church. It is colourful. And it is very loud…

 

 

 

The real Anglican Communion

There we were, thinking the Anglican Communion was all about conflict and tension, scrapping and bitching, and someone has to spoil it by telling a different story. Where’s consistency when you need it?

I am in Oxford for the annual meeting of all the bishops in the Church of England. It might surprise some, but what we see and hear here blows a mighty wind through some of the preconceptions we assume to be normal.

For example, Chad Gandiya, Bishop of Harare in Zimbabwe, describes movingly how his dispossessed and oppressed people are resiliently growing the church through heroic witness to Christ and a rejection of violent resistance to the Mugabe police state. The Anglican Church in Zimbabwe – a place where the rule of law is an idea soaked in fantasy – faces enormous struggles in the face of unjust and often violent state action; but, they refuse to bend to the pressure to deny Christ. Furthermore, they depend on the solidarity and prayer of Anglicans around the world: they know they are not alone and are not abandoned.

In this place of oppression Anglican Christians have no option but to focus on what matters and not be sidetracked by other stuff (matters that preoccupy those of us who do not have enough to do). And they know how to rejoice when the pressure is on. Their song won’t be silenced – and we sang it with them this morning.

Listening to Chad, whom I last met up with in Harare, I was conscious of the importance of the strong and unique links between the Diocese of Southwark and four dioceses in Zimbabwe (the fifth, Harare, is linked with the Diocese of Rochester). And although my new diocese, Bradford, is linked with dioceses in Northern Sudan, Zimbabwe is seared into my heart.

Chad was followed by the Bishop of Peru who described a very different context for Christian discipleship and ministry. The contrast was striking. South America is a different country (if you see what I mean) and the outworking of Christian faithfulness and witness is necessarily different. Working with very poor people, the Anglican Church there (and in other parts of the Southern Cone) is deeply rooted in soil that refuses to separate discipleship from social action and pastoral care.

Bishop Wolfgang Huber was the Protestant Bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg and Chair of the Council of the EKD until his retirement a couple of years ago. Since then he has been deeply involved in national ethics bodies, writing and lecturing, and doing public theology in and through the media. He was the inspiration behind the courageous launch of a decade of reform for the EKD which will culminate in 2017, the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Reformation in Wittenberg. This has meant a sometimes reluctant church facing the reality of a changing world and asking hard questions about form and substance.

The point I am making here is really simple. There is no such thing as ‘discipleship’ that isn’t worked out in a particular context. And the context dictates the shape and priorities of that discipleship. Which is why the realities of particular contexts often generates tensions with those whose context is different: Africa is not America is not Germany is not England.

Which brings us back to the point the Archbishop of Canterbury made, following the model of Jesus himself (compare Matthew 5 with Matthew 10): disciples are first learners (incompetent) who are called to take responsibility (growing competence) and create the space in which other people can then learn and grow and take responsibility and so on.

But, the learning demands the humility of listening and not imposing my own contextual complexion on those for whom this might not be immediately appropriate. In other words, we stand back and look and listen and learn about what it means to be the Christian Church in Zimbabwe or Peru or Germany or England. And what is revealed can be enlightening, challenging, disturbing and encouraging at the same time.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Oxford

 

Blair in reverse

There is a lot of talk about Anglicans becoming Roman Catholic, but we rarely talk about those who cross the Tiber in the opposite direction.

In December 2006 I was in Paris, having been invited to preach at St George’s Church there. A few weeks before I went I was asked to confirm a young Frenchman called Régis Blain during the service. Since then we have kept in touch from time to time. Recently we were in email contact and I invited him to write something brief about why he decided to become an Anglican in France – several people here were intrigued, especially after Régis created a page for Common Worship on Facebook. This is what he wrote (in the form of a letter to the most famous Englishman to have converted to Roman Catholicism in recent years) – I thought it was an interesting ‘take’ on things I don’t often refer to:

A letter to Mr. Blair : a new French Anglican writes to a new British Roman-Catholic

Recently, Bishop Nick Baines, who confirmed me at the Anglican St Georges Church in Paris in December 2006,  told me that some of his colleagues were ‘intrigued’ by the fact that a French citizen would choose to be Anglican. I’d like to explain how this is possible by writing an imaginary letter to the former Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair.

Mr. Blair,

You are British Citizen and you have an Anglican background. You decided to become Roman Catholic 3 years ago. It’s your right and I respect it. I ‘m a French Citizen with a cultural Roman Catholic background, and I decided to become Anglican from the Church of England 4 years ago.  It’s my right too. 

Guardian journalist Andrew Brown reported (June 22,2007):

For the last decade at least he has made it plain that he prefers Catholic services, and perhaps Catholic priests, to Anglican ones.

I myself prefer William Temple, the ’Anglican Churchill’ (who was in Normandy  in June 1944) or the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams to all the Popes of Rome (except John XXIII). I had the chance to meet different priests from the Episcopalian Church and the Church of England here in Paris, in the US and in Turkey and I find I like them perhaps better than the Roman-Catholics priests. 

I have to confess that I praise you for your honesty and consistency in becoming Roman Catholic. I become sceptical when the ’extremes’ want to change the spiritual and liturgical history of the Church of England. I have always thought: if you are deeply evangelical, why don’t you join a true Protestant community? If you  feel more Catholic than everything, why don’t you join the Roman Catholic Church? There is no problem in the end.

So you did right and I’m sure I did right too.

I like the diversity of the Anglican Communion – from all the countries – and I do recognize that everybody can be ’high’ or ’low’ church. But people like me, and former Roman Catholics who were looking for freedom of thought and worship, have joined the Anglican Communion. I think we are strongly opposed to any form of intolerant orthodoxy (sorry for the pleonasm), but at the same time we need tradition, history, honesty and also freedom. 

I like also in your former church what it has taken from Catholicism, Protestantism and Latitudinarism. Therefore it seems to me that the Church of England is a proof of historical consensus and wisdom,  a moral and spiritual space for everybody, a pact between the community, the church and the state.

Anglicanism represents also, for those who know history, the memory of refuge in the 16 and 17th centuries. Some French pastors and lay people were integrated within the Church of England during this time. I guess you know this fact. For example, today the  old Huguenot Church Eglise du St Esprit in New York City belongs to the Episcopalian Church. To this day there is still a Huguenot Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral.

What I like above all about the Anglican Church is its modesty and tolerance.  Like Mr David Cameron, I don’t have any ‘direct line’ to God and I need – I guess like you and him – a priest and a prayer book.

I know there are good places for worship and good priests within the Roman Catholic Church. But in my case after attending so many services and talking to so many priests and pastors, I could not find better representatives of Christ than Anglican priests and in particular those I met from the Church of England.

From my perspective, the diversity, tolerance and creativity of my church offer the best means to win the fight for an updated and renewed Christianity, far from extremes and anomie. I also hope that all Anglicans, Catholics and Protestants can work together to keep the churches open and full and not open bars or galleries in them. We will try to keep honest in our thinking and behaviour as imperfect Christians with varying degrees of faith.

My wish is that your compatriots could really appreciate the religious patrimony they have and I’m sure you do.

Yours sincerely,

Régis Blain (France)

 

Covenant and politeness

As always, Maggi Dawn has provided a helpful and provocative response to the Archbishop of Canterbury‘s response to the TEC 2009 General Convention’s response to the sexuality questions currently anguishing the Anglican Communion. Tom Wright has also responded fully and clearly, but it is Maggi who expresses some of the emotional exhaustion many people are experiencing about these vexed matters. She writes:

Like many others who belong to the Church of England, I’ve oscillated between making a thoughtful response and throwing in the towel altogether over the impossibility of finding a solution to this mess. I’m dismayed at the number of excellent, hardworking, moderate-thinking ordained people who have called me this week and spoken about the possibility of resigning over this. People are utterly weary at the way this one issue seems to stick our feet to the ground when day to day mission and ministry is about the whole of life.

Jane Shaw has written with clarity about the inner workings of the Episcopal Church, and rightly points out that the issue of inclusion is vital to Mission. The Episcopal Church, she points out, “…is not going grey in the pews. It is a Church that has young people engaged and involved at all levels. It is, therefore, a Church that will thrive and grow into the future — and that cannot necessarily be said of other Churches in the West. And those young people have an enormous passion for mission… And, for the vast majority of that younger generation, the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people is a no-brainer, a non-issue. To go against full inclusion would be to offend their sense of the gospel — God’s good news to all people — and affect their Church’s capacity for mission. Me? I don’t think the covenant is a good idea, yet I hesitate to criticize Rowan’s proposal when I can’t come up with anything better myself…

Basically, my church is sleepwalking into disaster. We are going to die because we are so damn polite and we don’t like offending people… Whether you agree with the covenant or not, ++Rowan is to be applauded for making a sincere attempt to move forward in an impossible situation. But we shouldn’t just leave it to “the people in charge” – ordinary people who are concerned about the future of the Church should not assume they can do nothing. We all need to think and pray and speak up in an attempt to help create a solution that works.

I think it is unlikely that Maggi would find anyone who is not exhausted by all this – other than Chris Sugden (& co) who has made it his life’s work to break the Communion apart and, I think, gets energised by conflict. Yet the complexity she recognises is more complex still – hence the problem. Many of us would like to walk away from it, but that doesn’t solve anything for the world the Church is there to serve. It is the ecumenical element that most imposes itself on my own consciousness.

There are essentially three historic Christian blocs in the world: Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican. I know this ignores free churches and Pentecostals (for which I apologise, but time is short), but in ecumenical terms these are the big players. Deal with politicians internationally (as I have to, from time to time) and these are the three that appear on their (albeit sometimes limited) horizons. For the Anglican Communion to fall apart, be dismantled or neutered might not have any impact on the particular provinces involved, but it would remove from the worldwide ecumenical table a Communion (rather than a federation of similar but autonomous churches). This would deprive the world of those uniquely Anglican perspectives and experiences that no other Church will bring.

This is not special pleading. The Anglican Communion commands massive respect around the world precisely because of its ability to hold together a disparate group of churches from disparate cultures and with disparate histories together in one Church. And, as Bishop Kallistos Ware observed during the Lambeth Conference, the struggles being endured by the Anglican Communion are not simply those of the Anglican Communion – we are doing them on behalf of others who are watching.

I don’t believe in the proposed Anglican Covenant. I don’t think we should need one nor have one. The relationships that hold us together as a Communion should suffice. But, my own sensibilities aside, I don’t see any other show in town to help us remain together for the sake of the world (which has always been the vocation of the Church). We don’t live in an ideal world and we certainly don’t live in an ideal church. But our decisions should be taken in consideration of the Church’s witness to the world and its engagement in matters of politics, economics, culture and values at levels (and in ways) that will be detrimentally affected by the collapse or further fragmentation of the Communion. And I say that fully cognisant of the fact that people ‘on the ground’ suffer the consequences – and that is always very uncomfortable.

Whereas I share the frustration and exhaustion of those clergy who have spoken to Maggi about resigning, I think that to do so would be self-indulgent and achieve nothing. Their voice would no longer be heard and their perspective weakened. I hope that, like many of us, they will stay and pray and struggle on. Sex is not the only (or, even, the most important) challenge facing the world and we still need to be focusing on those others: climate change, poverty, injustice, health (including the western world’s shameful waste and obesity…), etc.

Tomorrow I go to Zimbabwe where there are more pressing matters than the internal struggles of the Anglican Communion – and I say that even in the light of the Church’s internal struggles there. This is the real world…

 

Breaking up is (not) hard to do

Why should I or anyone else get worked up about an institution splitting into bits (especially when I am on holiday)? After all, it happens all the time, doesn’t it?

I have referred before now to the great gift the Christian Church offers the world in flagrant contravention of its founder’s injunction (“Love one another as I have loved you”), that injunction’s purpose (that by this love “they might know you are my disciples”) and its fundamental  ministry (“reconciliation”): constant fragmentation on grounds of (im)purity. In this, the Church shows itself to be no different from any other human institution; the problem, however, is that the Church is the body that is called not to fragment – precisely in order to challenge the ways of the world as evidence of the reconciling power of God in Christ.

So, when people question the suggestion that ‘unity’ should have priority over ‘truth’, it must surely be possible to assert that ‘unity’ is an essential part of ‘truth’ and not in opposition to it.

Yet, what is going on in the Anglican Communion is not a new phenomenon. I was among a group reflecting recently on the fragmentation of the Left in Britain in the 1970s and ‘80s – especially in relation to what became known as ‘entryism’ in the old Labour Party. I was a student of modern languages and politics at the time, but mystified by the self-destructive internal fragmentation of Marxist groups in British universities during those decades. The revolution was never going to happen while the ultimate goal was constantly made subservient to the internal purities of self-defining factions. Furthermore, the rest of the world could only laugh at the impotence, self-consumption and growing irrelevance of such groups – not only on grounds of their absurd ideologies, but the phenomenon of self-destruction in the name of the goal they were simultaneously defeating.

James Purnell, the Labour Minister who resigned from the British Government recently, wrote in the Guardian newspaper on 20 July 2009 (p.26):

Being clear that we want a more equal society may also allow that debate to be open rather than narrow. One of the most attractive things about New Labour in the 1990s was how pluralist it was – with many strands of leftwing thought coexisting, and learning from each other.

Over time, New labour became too much of a sect – we went from big-tent politics to small-gazebo politics. Perhaps in response, the left has become balkanised into smaller groups, based on small differences. If we recognise that our common goal is a more equal society, we may be able to remember that there is more that unites us than separates us. And where there are differences, we may just see that as an inevitable but manageable pluralism, rather than a reason for division.

Purnell was bemoaning the loss of focus on a common vision in favour of a concentration on factional purity or rightness – somehow reminiscent of the judgement that ‘the operation was a success, but the patient died’. However, the question that really matters both for politics and the Church is: who suffers when our focus goes awry and we so easily fragment? Yes, the Party suffers and the Church (as institution) is weakened. But the sole answer that really matters can only be that (a) the fragmentation of the Party lets down the country and the people whose interests it purported to support and (b) the fragmentation of the Church lets down the world to whom it is called to offer not only a message but also evidence of reconciliation – with God and, therefore inevitably, with others.

The glory of Anglicanism has been its almost unique vocation in holding under one roof a range of different and diverse groupings and emphases. Those who wish to split may be ‘right’ in their theological or ecclesiological focus. They might even be passionately right. They might even feel better to be rid of those who, though theologically close in many respects, have become an embarrassment to ‘the righteous’. But there is also something curiously self-indulgent about the hearty way in which the fragmentation they drive is presented as either inevitable or self-justifying. Or, as Barack Obama observes in a different context, ‘When two locusts fight, it is always the crow who feasts’.

 Who benefits and who suffers?

I’ll come clean. When I was a child in Sunday School in Liverpool in the mid-1960s, my thriving church was suddenly divided by a faction going off to found a new ‘house church’. Those who left charged the minister with not being a Christian on the grounds that he didn’t speak in tongues. All I knew is that my Sunday School teacher was there one week and gone the next. We now look back on those days with embarrassment and regret – partly at the arrogance of such division based on a single narrow theological difference. The wounds of that loss still, I think, shape me.

We had just had Billy Graham. Later we had John Wimber. Then we had Willow Creek. Now we have New Wine, Spring Harvest, Keswick and a million other ‘identities’.  Most of these enrich the wider church while holding Christians together under one roof. Yet some position themselves over against others – being more theologically pure, more ecclesiologically consistent or more biblically adherent. But it seems to me that they all bring with them the danger of seeking or offering some sort of panacaea to the church – that if we only get the formula right, God will bless us with some sort of ‘revival’ and all will be well.

This is a seductive delusion and it is time it was killed. If we so easily fracture, then today’s consistent ‘church’ will fragment tomorrow when the internal need for greater purity will create an unsustainable tension and the same old patterns will repeat themselves ad infinitum. Or should that be ad nauseam? I guess it depends on whether you see it from the perspective of the church… or that of a sick world in need of reconciliation.

 

It’s raining… it must be time for a summer holiday

The weather in London is awful, so it must be time for a summer holiday. We are going up north to a place where there is probably no wireless internet connection and poor mobile reception. So, I might be quiet for the next couple of weeks. The day after I get back, I fly to Zimbabwe for a week or so – and I am not planning on getting any blog posts out from there with any regularity.

But, if the rain is pouring in the real world, it is also pouring in the Anglican world. By deciding (and the bishops endorsing) to allow for the consecration of actively gay bishops and the blessing of same-sex relationships, the Episcopal Church in the USA has consciously decided to walk away from most of the rest of the Anglican Communion. That is their prerogative and one can understand the rationale behind their decision even if one profoundly disagrees with it. Furthermore, it is entirely within the remit of the polity to do such a thing. But, regardless of the content of the decision, the fact of it means that a line has been crossed from which there seems to be no going back.

In one sense, this is not a bad thing. After years of the phoney war, something has now happened and positions can be taken either with or over against it. That is life… and at least we all now know what we are dealing with. (Of course, real life is a bit more messy than this and TEC still contains clergy and people who strongly disagree with the General Convention decisions, but do not wish to leave their church.)

What isn’t true, however, is that the ‘Covenant is torn to shreds’ – as the Church of England Newspaper puts it in its front-page headline. TEC might well have decided not to engage with it, but that doesn’t mean it has no future or that TEC’s presence is crucial to its success. If anything, its imminence could be regarded as having forced the issue within TEC and the ground has now been cleared. I wonder why the CEN prints a misleading headline like that over a report that says no such thing. The Covenant – whatever one thinks of it – is not designed simply for TEC, but for the Communion.

Still, we should be thankful for small mercies. Tom Wright’s letter to the CEN got printed. In it he challenges the CEN ‘to do better’ in its support of FCA and its lazy critique of English bishops:

Since when is there ‘a drift of appointment of bishops… who must be ‘politically correct’ … on all things from Islam to sexuality?’ I challenge you to publish a full list of diocesan bishops appointed under the present Archbishop and say which of them come into this category. It would be interesting to compare this with an equivalent list of those appointed under the previous Archbishop.

Monochrome? Hardly. If there is anything uniform about the appointments to dioceses over the last seven years, it is an energy for mission, a robust theological and ethical orthodoxy, and a willingness to articulate the challenge of God’s kingdom across this country in the face of secular, postmodern and relativist revisionism. Doesn’t fit the FCA mythology does it?

I am glad Tom wrote this. I was sorely tempted to do something similar, but am getting fed up with using energy fighting stupidities within the church instead of using energy for the work of mission and ministry. I wonder if such lists will be forthcoming – or if we will just continue to get this lazy and misleading unsubstantiated insinuation.

I won’t be holding my breath.

 

The long view

Being a long way from home inevitably makes you reflect on domestic matters with a different perspective. Sitting in a Central Asian capital city, having been in conference with a vast range of world religions, the scandal of Christian division is all the more acute.

Waiting for my next appointment I was catching up with emails and read Bishop Graham Kings’ article on the Fulcrum website at http://fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=437. The questions he poses are astute, but I doubt if he will get any response.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans will be established on Saturday (as I understand it from a distance). This is a self-indulgent distraction from the real stuff of Christian mission in a fractured world that cries out for reconciliation. FCA is not needed, is a distraction and offers the world yet another example of Christian fracturing.

After the irregular ordinations in the Diocese of Southwark several years ago I asked a couple of those involved to show me where they find the biblical sanction for lying, misrepresentation and subterfuge. I have never had a reply. Despite protestations of innocence, the scheming behind FCA does not give us confidence that dodgy behaviour will receive the same biblical or ethical scrutiny as is applied to questions of sexual behaviour.

I don’t know who FCA is really for. I am not aware of evangelicals really wanting it and will be interested to see who joins the party. Graham Kings suggests that the take-up for this weekend has not been great – if so, that should not come as any surprise. Most evangelicals – it seems to me – just want to get on with the ministry and mission to which they are called as Anglicans and are fed up with schemes for fragmentation.

The intriguing conundrum that I cannot resolve is how Forward in Faith and Reform can unite despite such serious contradictions in their cultures, priorities and practices. It seems they can only do so with a massive dose of pretence that the world is not as it is: that there is no gay sub-culture in FiF’s constituency and lay presidency does not happen.

I hope Graham Kings’ questions will be answered and that his warnings will be heeded. Maybe, when I get back from Kazakhstan to the familiarity of England my perspective will change. But, sitting here and thinking about the world, some of these internal Anglican shenanigans do look like trumped up, self-indulgent and self-important side-shows.

 

Anglican Communion – still not falling apart

The Primates (can we not find a better word?) of the Anglican Communion have been meeting in Egypt and have issued a number of statements during the course of their deliberations. These won’t necessarily come as good news to those who wish to see the Communion fall apart. It seems the big guys have been doing the Christian thing and relating to each other as Christians and adults.

The full Communique can be read on the Anglican Communion website. The Communique reinforces what many people ignore which is that we are preoccuppied with more than sex and conflict. Look at the common statements on Gaza, Sudan (Darfur), Zimbabwe, climate change and Anglican Relief and Development work. These don’t diminish the importance of the divisive matters, but they do put them into context. They also counter the image that all we are interested in is sex and conflict.

One bit that intrigued me, though, was the part of the Communique that reads as follows: ‘The role of primate arises from the position he or she holds as the senior bishop in each Province.  As such we believe that when the Archbishop of Canterbury calls us together “for leisurely thought, prayer and deep consultation”, it is intended that we act as “the channels through which the voice of the member churches [are] heard, and real interchange of heart [can] take place”.’ From conversations during the Lambeth Conference (July last year) with bishops from a number of provinces (especially one or two who formed Gafcon), their primate doesn’t confer with them at all. In one case they were surprised that the primate could speak in their name without consulting them or knowing what their views on certain matters are.

So, I would be interested (simply out of curiosity) to know how the primates can be confident that they do indeed represent their bishops accurately. I guess such an inquiry would lead to the same conclusion as the Lambeth experience itself: what it means to be a province, a diocese or a bishop differs significantly from province to province – that we use the same language to mean different things. I don’t see this as a problem, but I do think it should be acknowledged.