Last weekend in Jerusalem the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) announced its intention to distance itself from the “militant secularism and pluralism” that has made sections of the church “compromised and enfeebled in their witness.” The group’s formal declaration lamented the church’s “acceptance and promotion” of a false gospel that has led “[m]any of its proponents [to] claim that all religions offer equal access to God” and to “promot[e] a variety of sexual preferences and immoral behaviour as a universal human right.”
It added that “manifest failure of the Communion Instruments to exercise discipline in the face of overt heterodoxy” had forced “provincial bodies in the Global South” to break communion with “bishops and churches that promote this false gospel” and to reach “the devastating conclusion that ‘we are a global Communion with a colonial structure.’”
These charges cannot be easily withdrawn. The rift has also been complicated by the formation of a conservative Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA) that will henceforth act as an alternative to the liberal wing of the church with which the Archbishop of Canterbury is often associated. This is a significant development for people of all faiths and perhaps even to those with none, for much of the success of the Anglican Church in recent times has come from its willingness to proselytize in the furthest reaches of the developing world. In fact the church’s surprising success throughout Africa has often been so striking that many well-established northern churches have tried to reverse the decline in their congregations by recruiting missionary clergy from the south.
While there have always been strong differences of opinion on questions such as same-sex unions or the ordination of women priests, the contemporary Anglican church has generally maintained a healthy dialogue throughout its internal disputes. This has been possible because of an acknowledgement within the church of the wide variety of social, political and cultural conditions in which local churches observe their faith.
One obvious example is the way in which Christians living in predominantly Muslim territories often fear the imposition of Sharia law while those living in Christian enclaves may insist on full religious freedom for all neighbouring faiths. (Reactions to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent remarks on Sharia law in Britain were largely determined by these perspectives.) It is also arguable that the ethnic and political confusions of a multicultural society often require a dash of postmodern relativism to keep civil life from degenerating into a series of endless quibbles and quarrels.
Developed democracies have learned how to encourage a healthy scepticism in their citizens as an antidote to the acrimony of religious and political disagreements. Less modern societies, by contrast, will often be wary of cultural flexibility and demand dogmatic uniformity whenever possible. Both approaches are useful in their natural contexts, but when the debate shifts to larger questions of general doctrine – and to ancillary disputes that turn on the niceties of scriptural interpretation –the problem of finding shared meanings becomes exponentially harder.
The church’s big-tent approach to these problems has long allowed it to tolerate a wide spectrum of social and political perspectives – many of which have been sharply at odds with each other. The Jerusalem Declaration seeks to end this latitude.
By forcing the issue onto the public stage the dissenting Anglicans have essentially delivered an ultimatum to mainstream liberals that failure to reach a timely accommodation with their objections will result in a full-fledged schism among the worldwide communion of 77 million Anglicans.
The Archbishop has tried to avoid this by urging conservative critics to argue their case from within. Earlier this week he observed that “If [the church’s existing structures] are not working effectively, the challenge is to renew them rather than to improvise solutions that may seem to be effective for some in the short term but will continue to create more problems than they solve.” But this plea may be too little too late. For though GAFCON has dismissed the idea of “departing from” its Anglican heritage its very formation has already made that departure a reality.
Ironically the impending schism has arisen at the same time as the evangelical movement has begun to re-examine its role in American politics. Since no prominent evangelical backed the presumptive Republican nominee during the primary season, it has become clear that there is no longer a predictable linkage between American Christianity and conservative politics. In fact, last autumn a poll taken among readers of a prominent evangelical magazine found Barack Obama the candidate (in both parties) most likely to adopt Christian-oriented policies. Whether this finding remains true after the bruising denouement to the Democratic primaries is yet to be seen, but the poll does suggest that the Christian vote has shifted away from the Republican base since the last election.
The next few weeks and months will determine the fate of the southern backlash against the “global Communion with a colonial structure.” Whether this leads to further divisions within the Anglican community or becomes the basis for compromise on the most contentious questions will depend largely on the spirit with which both sides join the debate. Given the developments so far, the church is not likely to emerge from this latest quarrel without major, perhaps irreversible changes.
