Whither Thou Goest

By Eric Von Salzen

Several years ago, my wife and I were in London, and we spent a few hours in Southwark, the formerly slummy, but now trendy, area on the south side of the Thames, and of course we had to see the great Southwark Cathedral. As we wandered through this ancient edifice, we noticed a little side chapel dedicated to John Harvard, whose name adorns my alma mater. We went in, just to look around, but a moment later, a vested priest and a couple of helpers entered and we found ourselves participating in a midday Eucharist. Although we were in a foreign land, we felt entirely at home with the service, because, after all, it was the same service we have at home.

It’s good to be part of an international communion. It’s good to know that wherever you may go in the world, if English is spoken there, it’s likely there’s an Anglican church in the vicinity.

Still, though, when I was confirmed at the Washington National Cathedral 18 years ago, it was the Episcopal Church that I understood I was joining, not the Anglican Communion. Oh, of course I knew that the Episcopal Church was a member of the Anglican Communion and that, in some sense, at the tip top of the clerical totem pole sat the Archbishop of Canterbury. But that fact didn’t make me feel that I was becoming an “Anglican” rather than an “Episcopalian”, any more than the fact that the United States is a member of the United Nations makes me think that I am a citizen of the world, rather than an American.

I recalled these experiences recently when I read the post-Anaheim reflections of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams described two “conceptions” of the Anglican Communion: one, “essentially a loose confederation of local bodies with a cultural history in common”, the other, “a theologically coherent ‘community of Christian communities’“. That’s nicely put, but what surprised me was Williams’ insistence that the latter conception, the theologically coherent community, is what the Communion presently understands itself to be, and what it has understood itself to be, particularly during the last half century. Until I read this, if you had asked me to free-associate “loose confederation of local bodies with a cultural history in common”, I would have responded, “The Anglican Communion.” If you’d said “theologically coherent Christian community”, I’d have said “The Roman Catholic Church”.

I thought it was a point of pride to Episcopalians that we don’t insist on theological cohesion, that we worship together even if we disagree with each other. And I thought that was an “Anglican” feature of our church.

How could I have been so wrong?

The second surprise to me was the Archbishop’s assertion that the forthcoming Anglican Covenant will demand that the component churches of the Communion choose between these two “conceptions”. The purpose of the Covenant, Williams says, will be to “intensify existing relationships”. Those “whose vision is not shaped by the desire to intensify relationships in this particular way”, who favor “a more federalist and pluralist” approach, will not be cast into the “outer darkness”, but they will not be part of the “‘covenanted’ Anglican global body” either. I think he’s saying they won’t be part of the new Anglican Communion.

I had been under the impression that the Covenant drafters had been moving away from an authoritarian model under which agencies of the Communion could evict provinces from the Communion if they failed to conform to the theological cohesion. I was hoping we would see a kind of “Mere Christianity” covenant that would remind us of those things on which we agree, and to which all Anglicans could comfortably subscribe.

Have I been wrong about that, too?