Sydney Innovations

Well, it's official: The Episcopal Church is not the only 'innovator' or 'reappraising' church in the Anglican Communion. The Diocese of Sydney, home to nearly half the Anglicans in the Church of Australia, has chosen in diocesan synod to permit the laity and deacons to preside at Holy Eucharist. By so doing, they have elected to abandon a core element of Anglican order - namely - the catholic understanding of Holy Orders and the particular charism of the presbyter and bishop as eucharistic celebrants.

The Diocese of Sydney, which has long been an evangelical stronghold in global Anglicanism, has remained true to its basic theology - which is primarily Calvinist, Reformed and 'Low-Church' to the extreme. As true reformed protestants, lay presidency should be no surprise. What is confusing is the way the Sydney episcopal leadership appears to be saying two things. On the one hand, when speaking with their allies among the global realignment movement, which is seeking to develop a 'new' Anglican Communion apart from any connection to Canterbury, the Episcopal Church, etc., Sydney's bishops claim to adhere to the traditionalist, orthodox, Anglican formularies of the 1662 BCP/Ordinal, the 39 Articles, the Homilies, etc. Yet, here we see quite plainly that at the same time they are approving the synodical decision to go forward with a vision of the church and its order that goes against these very formularies.

That they are doing so is obvious to both Matt Kennedy, reasserting blogger, and Tobias Haller, reappraising blogger.

Kennedy writes:

Personally, while I understand the biblical arguments and grant that they have merit (though I do not entirely agree), I think this is a disastrous decision. How can we criticize TEC for taking steps beyond agreed upon standards when we turn and do the same?

Tobias writes:

The Sydney Synod has approved in principle the ideas of diaconal and lay presidency at the Holy Communion, suggesting a delay in implementation for laity but a sooner licensing for deacons, including women deacons. This has created, as perhaps an unintentional consequence, some concern among the more catholic conservative allies with Sydney against the liberal-trending spectrum of the Anglican Communion.

I have no difficulty understanding the extreme protestant position on this score — it has been well spelled out in terms of the priesthood of all believers, the lack of scriptural clarity on the subject, the fact that deacons can baptize so why can’t they celebrate, and so on and so forth. I also have no difficulty understanding the practical implications, and the needs of isolated or small communities. On neither of these do I find the arguments persuasive, but I do find them comprehensible.

What I find hard to understand is how any who so pride themselves in the 1662 BCP and Ordinal and Articles of Religion can adopt a position so at odds with the limpid clarity of their requirements, and what they present as a model for what it means to “minister in the Church.” The Articles demand that no one minister without being called; and the calling of a deacon is well spelled out to be (at most) an assistant in the ministrations limited to priests — also clearly listed in the order for making them. To read, as the current move has it, assists in as presides at seems to be an example of eisegesis at its most wishful and contrary. And this doesn’t even get into the murkiness of what it means for a lay person to “minister” (in the fulsome sense in which the classical documents use the term) — since as Richard Norris once said, a lay person authorized by a bishop to preside at the eucharist is properly called “a priest.”

So the issue for me — quite apart from my opposition to the move on other grounds — is the logical inconsistency of taking steps so at odds with sources of authority that are brandished in other controversies as touchstones of stability for the emerging Anglican Communion 2.0.