+Andrew: Conversations with the Primate

Hello! Welcome and welcome back to Conversations with the Primate. This is the second segment in the series and today I am speaking to you from our home in central Toronto.

I want to begin with a word of sincere appreciation for the response to the first telecast. We heard quite literally from Conception Bay to Victoria and most places in between. Just a wonderful response and obviously the notion of a conversation is very much appreciated.

I'd like to quote from one or two of the emails I've received. Probably the most satisfying came from Estevan, Saskatchewan. Kenn and Joyce Beggs, thank you very much for your email. Here's what they said. "Well done. We watched the webcast and felt so included in the life of our church. Watching for the next conversation." Ken and Joyce that's exactly what this series is about - to try to include as many Anglicans as possible in the conversation and in the life of the church as it develops.

I heard from a lot of you who identified yourselves as either young people or young adults and obviously this is your medium and specifically I'd like to quote from Paul Donison. Paul from Fort St. John, BC. And Paul what you said to us was, among other things "I was impressed as a young person in your willingness as Primate to encourage our national church to hear the voices of the worldwide Communion especially in the wake of the Windsor Report. My generation is one of the first, it is argued, that has been consistently challenged to think globally. The rise of post-modern scepticism towards western dominance has sparked my generation to be constantly asking 'What do other cultures think of this or that?' No matter what the issue we are a global communion and I believe that my generation, that is the under 30s, demand that we in the west honour the voices of the global south. Let us walk together and never leave a sister or brother behind."

Many thanks Paul; you give me a lead into today's conversation because what I would like to speak about is communion and specifically the Anglican Communion and a particular challenge and opportunity, which presents itself to us at the moment.

Communion is a very important concept to me personally. Some years ago, a very dear friend, Bob Matthews was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And as Bob approached the end of his life each time we saw each other he'd take up again the conversation around What is the meaning of life? And is there a way we can sum that up in one simple sentence or a few words? And over the 15 months that he lived after his diagnosis the closest we came was the word communion. God's gift of communion. God who in and of himself is communion, God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who calls us into communion with himself with one another with this magnificent creation and with our own deepest selves. Within the world we have opportunities and signs of that communion and we in the Anglican Church have developed a worldwide fellowship known as the Anglican Communion and I'd like to spend a few minutes talking to you about that.

The Anglican Communion is a product of the 19th century and a product of the expanding British Empire. As new colonies opened up around the world Church of England chaplains went with the forces, and went with the settlers and gradually small colonial churches grew up in various parts of the world. In time several of those were sent bishops, usually appointed by the Crown, as was the custom in England. In fact the first four bishops in Canada were appointed by the Crown never having visited or seen the country before their arrival. Over time the Communion has grown to a point where at this stage there are 164 countries in which the Anglican church is present worldwide and when bishops gather at the Lambeth Conference every 10 years there are now over 650 bishops present and they represent not simply English colonial bishops but bishops from an enormous range of cultures and backgrounds and histories. In recent years the real population explosion within the Anglican Communion has been in the global south to a point that the average Anglican, if there were one as I mentioned in the last telecast, is not white and does not speak English as a first language. And that has implication for the way we make decisions.

Another thing that has an enormous impact on our life is modern communications. Fifty years ago if a decision was made in India it wouldn't be heard about in England or in Canada for weeks or months if at all. Today if a decision is made in New Hampshire or in St Catharines it's heard in Khartoum 10 minutes later. Instant communications and very often those communications are sound bites, emails, often with a prejudice and often not with an adequate context. So when we make decisions there is a reaction, there is an impact throughout the Anglican Communion.

Today the Anglican Communion is organized into 38 independent national churches known as provinces. We all look to the Church of England as being our roots and we look to the Archbishop of Canterbury as being the senior archbishop within the Communion. There is however no central authority, no central magisterium, if you like, as there is in the Church of Rome. That makes it complicated when we make decisions that alter tradition. For example, when the Anglican Church took a stand against slavery that was not initially universal. When parts of the Anglican Communion allowed women a voice in the councils of the church that was certainly not accepted universally. When parts of the Communion ordained women that was not accepted and at this point in history still is not in some parts of the Communion. Recently an issue that is very much before the whole Communion is that of the church's attitude towards people of homosexual orientation. What should be our approach to them? How should they be included in the life of the church? Should the full range of the church's sacraments be available to them? In Canada the issue came before us when one diocese asked its bishop if he would, in select cases give his consent to the blessing of committed relationships of same-sex couples. The bishop refused the first time he was asked by his synod and he refused a second time some years later but when it came before the synod a third time there was a slightly larger majority and he concurred with the decision of synod. Since that time in the diocese of New Westminster I understand that some seven couples have received the church's blessing.

The second issue came from the United States of America where in the diocese of New Hampshire a gay priest who was living in a relationship with a same-sex partner was chosen by the synod by an overwhelming majority to be the new bishop of the diocese. And the General Convention of the American church concurred in that election and Bishop Gene Robinson was elected. There has been a very strong reaction from many parts of the Communion and particularly the global south, which now finds itself in a majority position. Decisions were made and they felt left out of the conversation and are now reacting accordingly.

The Primates of the Anglican Communion called upon the Archbishop of Canterbury to establish a commission to propose to the Communion ways in which we could maintain a maximum level of communion as a worldwide family while still holding within ourselves a variety of positions on some important issues. That report was chaired by Archbishop Robin Eames, the senior metropolitan in the Anglican Communion. He is the Archbishop of Armagh. And on the commission were theologians and church representatives from the whole spectrum, from very liberal all the way to arch conservative. They met three times, twice in Windsor once in Kanuga in the United States and have now produced the Windsor Report, which was tabled on the 18 th of October and is now before the Church. And I have just returned from the Canadian House of Bishops where we received the report for the first time and have now commended it to study by dioceses across the Canadian Church.

We are looking for some initial response to that report that I'll be able to take with me to Ireland in February next year when all the primates gather together and they too, the other 37 primates will have responses from their churches and together we'll discuss those. There's a longer-term issue as well. It's a lengthy report. It's a complicated report and it calls for some serious attention at all levels of the church. So over the next few years diocesan synods and eventually the General Synod of the Anglican Church in Canada will look at the report and respond to it officially.

I encourage you to look at the report. You can either print it from the Internet, as I have done, or it is available in hard copy from the Anglican Book Centre here in Toronto at Church House.

The report calls for a number of important things. First and foremost, it asks the Bishop of New Westminster on behalf of the diocese to express regret for the distress that the decision of that diocese has caused in some parts of the communion. And Bishop Ingham has already very fully and freely offered that expression of regret. It's not regret for the action itself in that the church locally must make decisions under the direction of the Holy Spirit that it believes are appropriate to the pastoral needs of the church in that place. The diocese of New Westminster made its decision but perhaps did not account adequately for the impact that it would have elsewhere in the communion.

The report asks the Episcopal Church of the United States and the diocese of New Hampshire to express regret for the distress that they have caused by their decision to ordain Bishop Robinson. And the presiding bishop, Frank Griswold has already expressed his regrets on behalf of the whole church for that distress.

The report calls for a moratorium on either the blessing of same sex relationships or on the ordination of openly gay bishops and the churches have yet fully to respond to that request. Then it puts before the church throughout the Communion a proposal that we might develop some kind of covenant, an agreement among the independent churches of the Communion as to how we will deal with important decisions in the future that may give rise to disagreement and conflict within the Communion. It includes reference to the Lambeth Conference of Bishops, reference to the meeting of the Primates of the Anglican Communion, reference to the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, which is an international council, comprised of bishops, clergy and laity. That proposal requires a great deal of study; both by our dioceses and by the national church itself.

What I invite you to do at this point is to consult the Windsor Report and if you have a personal response to it, to send your response to us at Church House in Toronto. There is a small response team that will be gathering those responses both from you and from official bodies of the church and compiling those in a way that can be put together for me for the meeting of Primates in February. We want to include just as many of you as possible in the conversation. Please remember the issue here is not whether the ordination of homosexuals is right or wrong. The issue here is not whether the blessing of same gender relationships is right or wrong. The issues is how the Anglican Communion worldwide and indeed across Canada can maintain its unity in the presence of disagreement.

I look forward to your thoughts and look forward to being back with you for the next segment of Conversations with the Primate.

God Bless You

Please send responses to the Windsor Report to [email protected]; you may write to the Primate at [email protected]