'Every particular or national Church': Anglicanism is not defined by global structures

Over recent decades, however, the bonds of unity within the Anglican Communion have been stretched and strained amid deep disagreements concerning the ordained ministry of women within the Church and, more recently, questions about human identity and sexuality ... There is a real prospect of the fragmentation, or even dissolution, of the Communion over the coming years if we do not pay urgent attention to matters of ecclesiology: the contours of communion, the limits of diversity, and means of persevering together amid division.

So reads the foreword of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals of the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order (IASCUFO). The Proposals are set forward in a 44 page report, including a revised "Statement of the nature and status of the Anglican Communion, as that term is used in the Constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council", and "several overdue adjustments to the Instruments of the Anglican Communion, with a view to reaffirming and reclaiming the ideals, commitments, and vocation of Anglicanism". The conclusion of the IASCUFO Proposals, however, offers a significant note of caution:

We offer these suggestions in partial address of the profound differences and divisions between Anglicans. No doubt, it will take the churches of the Communion some years to recover a proper trust of one another.

This does leave one wondering how the very Instruments of Communion which have failed to prevent the Anglican Communion being "stretched and strained amid [the] deep disagreements" of recent decades - even when 'adjusted' in light of the IASCUFO Proposals - can possibly lead the churches of the Communion "to seeking a highest degree of communion".

What, in other words, if the model itself is broken?

Something of this was reflected in the failed Anglican Covenant proposals: an understanding that the role of the Instruments of Communion had to be intensified, and exercise authority, if they were to enable that "highest degree of communion". Thankfully, of course, the Covenant failed, precisely because it obscured, undermined, and compromised a key aspect of what it is to be an Anglican church: what it is to be, in the words of Article 34, a "particular or national Church".

If, however, the current model of Instruments of Communion has failed, and if "adjustments" to those Instruments are unlikely to change things, and while the Covenant was (rightly) found incompatible with the commitment to national Churches, perhaps another, quite different direction of travel should be considered. This was hinted at by Ben Crosby, in a very insightful reflection on the IASCUFO proposals:

it should not escape our notice that the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Reformed Churches, despite having similar sharp disagreements among member churches about marriage and sexuality, have not been so deeply embroiled by conflict.

Why, then, not become more like the Lutheran World Federation and the World Communion of Reformed Churches, rather than seeking to increase the importance and influence of the Anglican Communion's already failed structures? In becoming the means of defining what it is to be Anglican, an unsustainable weight has been placed on the Communion structures. This is not least because the historic identity of Anglicanism has been diluted to the extent that what can appear to define Anglicanism are the failed Instruments of Communion. As Ben points out, this again contrasts with the Lutheran and Reformed experience:

While those federations have, arguably, a lower expectation of unity across member churches, it seems to me at least plausible that the lower level of conflict within them is also explicable by their unembarrassed commitment to a particular doctrinal heritage, a commitment that allows institutional membership to function less centrally in determining Lutheran or Reformed identity.

While it is true that the IASCUFO Proposals do recommend that the Statement of the nature and status of the Anglican Communion should describe the churches of the Anglican Communion as "bound together through their shared inheritance", it does not outline the content of this "shared inheritance". We might, it is true, regard such "shared inheritance" as implied elsewhere in the Statement:

the Catholic and Apostolic faith and order as they are generally set forth in the Book of Common Prayer as authorised in their distinct Churches.

This is indeed one aspect of what maintained communion between those churches historically described as Protestant Episcopal and in communion with the Church of England. However, it falls very significantly short of, for example, the Church of Ireland's Declaration of 1870, the Anglican Church of Canada's Solemn Declaration, and the Fundamental Declarations and Ruling Principles of the Anglican Church of Australia. 

If we are to have hopes of a renewed commitment to the "shared inheritance" of such Protestant Episcopal churches, we should not be looking to the Instruments of Communion. These Instruments have been entirely incapable of negotiating a modus vivendi on the matter of human sexuality. Can we imagine what might happen if they were somehow tasked with meaningfully defining and then upholding the "shared inheritance" of Anglicanism?

Rather than turning to such unwieldy global structures, it would be wiser and - we might say - more Anglican to focus on "every particular or national Church" as a means of renewing our "shared inheritance". It is national synods and conventions which have received the Articles of Religion, revised the Book of Common Prayer, and maintained the threefold orders. It is national synods and conventions which have established the presence of Protestant Episcopal churches in communion with the Church of England. And its national synods and conventions - not the Instruments of Communion - which govern and have canonical authority within "every particular or national Church".

I was baptised according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of Ireland, not of the Anglican Communion, in a Church of Ireland parish church, not in a parish of the Anglican Communion. I vowed at ordination that I "believe and accept the doctrine of the Christian faith as the Church of Ireland has received it", not of the Anglican Communion. In taking the required subscription before ordination, I promised to "submit myself to the authority of the Church of Ireland, and to the Laws and Tribunals thereof", not to the Instruments of Communion. I read the services, administer the sacraments, and pray the offices in the Book of Common Prayer "according to the use of the Church of Ireland", not of the Anglican Communion.

This is the nature of Anglican experience. We are Anglicans not because of Instruments of Communion but because of the nature and commitments of "every particular or national Church": threefold orders, Book of Common Prayer, Articles of Religion (even when the historic affirmation of the Articles by PECUSA and SEC has been forgotten by those churches), and the rights and liberties of national churches. It is this which defines what it is to be Anglican, what it is for us to know life in Christ in the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" (always recognising, of course, that other Christian traditions have different commitments and experiences which allow them to know life in Christ). Alongside this, the Instruments of Communion - and their recent turmoil - fade into insignificance. 

Here, then, should be our focus and hope for renewing the "shared inheritance": seeking in "every particular and national Church" a renewed reception of and commitment to that inheritance. In terms of the international structures of the Anglican Communion, it would be much preferable - and wiser - to have the loser and more realistic structures of our Lutheran and Reformed brothers and sisters. Perhaps this might, in time, come. Until then, disputes about the structures of the Instruments of the Communion, and who controls them, are a distraction and not a serious means of addressing the need to renew the "shared inheritance".