Archbishop Hopes for Restraint, Stresses Value of Episcopal Church

Preaching a meditation on Thursday morning at General Convention’s Holy Eucharist, the Archbishop of Canterbury observed that every word he writes or preaches is “scrutinized and interpreted and picked over for hidden meanings and agendas,” adding that he expected this day would be no exception.

Archbishop Williams said two clear things to The Episcopal Church on Thursday morning: Thank you for your engagement with the Anglican Communion, and the Anglican Communion loves you. The warm words included some implicit exhortation, however.

“Of course I am coming here with hopes and anxieties. You know that and I shan’t deny it. Along with many in the communion, I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart,” he said. “But if people elsewhere in the Communion are concerned about this, it’s because of a profound sense of what The Episcopal Church has given and can give to our fellowship worldwide. If we, if I, had felt that we could do perfectly well without you, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

The bulk of the archbishop’s meditation focused on Christians being called forth from nothingness.

“Sin is our constant temptation to slip back into nothingness, into unreality — the void of our own individual desires and agendas, the void of a self that deludes itself into the belief that it is really there on its own, independent of God and of others.”

The archbishop mentioned that he drew some of his morning meditation from the late William Stringfellow, a lay theologian, gay man and attorney who defended Bishop James Pike against charges of heresy.

Archbishop Williams called Stringfellow “one of your own prophets, the greatest Episcopalian theologian and perhaps the greatest American theologian of the 20th century.”

“Our contemporary world is still very recognizably the world that Stringfellow wrote about in the ’70s and ’80s, a world in which death and nothingness have what looks like a powerful advantage,” the archbishop said.

“We collude with the death of the poor, with the almost unimaginable ravages of HIV/AIDS in Africa, with the ruination of small economies in the strange adventures of the global market, with the impending extinction of the possibility of human existence in some parts of the world by rising water levels.”

Two theologians who addressed about 50 supporters of the Chicago Consultation in the early afternoon made clear that they want The Episcopal Church to continue pushing for greater acceptance of openly gay or lesbian bishops and the blessing of same-gender couples.

Seminary dean Jenny Te Paa of New Zealand, who served on the Lambeth Commission, said the commission would have written a different report if it had gained a better understanding of The Episcopal Church’s polity. She said members of the commission were subjected to “a wealth of mean-spirited diatribe.”

Dean Te Paa said she was surprised to hear Archbishop Williams say on Wednesday night that “normal is no longer a given.”

“I thought, ‘Hello, Archbishop? Normal has been defined for too long by too few,’” she said.

Jean Shaw, dean of divinity at New College, Oxford, said she believes the archbishop has been slow to learn the polity of The Episcopal Church. “I don’t think Rowan understands entirely, and Jenny alluded to this, that you can’t just get bishops to do what you want them to do,” she said.

Dean Shaw said that after teaching in California for several months, and participating in a march against Proposition 8, she sees a culture gap between England and the United States.

“I think the culture gap means you shouldn’t wait, pace Roman in the preface to his sermon,” to push for more change in the Anglican Communion,” she said. Nobody has the authority to expel The Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion, Dean Shaw said.

“You are the large majority of The Episcopal Church. You are really a very important witness. Do not go back on it, please.”