By George Sumner

Sometimes, amid irreverent riffs, a comedian becomes a court jester. During the banquet at the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod, comedian Bill Carr diagnosed the synod as afflicted by Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The Anglican GAD litany is familiar: the demographic arrows and the national office’s budgets point down; the culture’s de-Christianization moves apace; and the conflict over sexuality abides as its implications for breaking national and international communion hover closer.

Planners of the synod, which met on June 3–11 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, reached for what has become the standard antidote: a version of indaba. On the most contentious issues, the goal was to render the synod legislation-free. Carr opened and closed his shtick with the words from Philippians 4:8 that we should think on whatever is true, honorable, and lovely. To its credit the synod did evince a more charitable and patient mood. It perceived accurately that the family runs the risk, at this juncture in history, of flying apart, in the face of which all sides expressed a desire to maintain conversation and communion. Whether the synod’s directions will suffice to counteract these centrifugal forces remains to be seen.

In that same spirit of Philippians, we may note some of the more promising of those directions. Though they are in large measure at the geographic outskirts, indigenous Canadian Anglicans are at the very heart of our spiritual and moral life. Synod took steps to find appropriate avenues of self-determination within the wider koinonia of our Church, and to recognize Mark MacDonald as the Anglican Church of Canada’s first national bishop to indigenous Anglicans.

Synod welcomed news of the initiative called Fresh Expressions; whether one follows its lead or not, Fresh Expressions challenges the Church not simply to increase attendance and giving units but to proclaim the Gospel. Here as elsewhere the goal is to keep mission, in the parlance du jour, about the “missional.”

Synod agreed to spend the next three years studying the Covenant in preparation for a decision in 2013. Archbishop Frederick J. Hiltz struck a more critical note in his presidential address about what seemed to him the “excluding” nature of Section 4 of the Covenant, but the Covenant received a more sympathetic presentation from Bishop George Bruce of Ontario, who emphasized its relational nature.

On the subject of same-sex unions, a seasoned Episcopal observer might, like Yogi Berra, have felt “déjà vu all over again.” Organized table conversations yielded a non-legislative summary statement, and yet the synod passed that summary as a resolution. One might well worry that the descriptive will slide into the permissive in a way reminiscent of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention of 2000.

The summary reported, with descriptive accuracy, that no consensus exists for a “legislative decision” in either direction. But does that state of non-decision extend the Communion’s moratorium on rites for blessing same-sex couples? It is not clear. The document also speaks of “accepting” that different contexts will act in different ways. What exactly does this mean? Conservatives can rightly reassure themselves that no formal doctrinal change has occurred. Synod spared the Church a bloodbath and bought more time, but will the “discernment” statement be read, beyond the bounds of the descriptive, as a warrant to continue with same-sex blessings in individual dioceses? Time will tell. Anglican Communion Secretary General Kenneth Kearon, who visited synod, might well have asked: Did synod make a decision that violates the moratorium? No. Did the synod express its intent to observe the moratorium? Likewise, no.

Anglicanism struggles to become the communion that it is. One anomaly of this process is the following: at present, the Communion sees Canada only as it looks to the General Synod and House of Bishops, and yet the synod’s power to order its own dioceses’ lives and decisions is controverted. In other words, the lack of clarity we find is not only due to the studied ambiguity of expression that fears the division clarity would bring. It is also structural. Even as the Communion puts its shoulder to the task of implementing the Covenant, it must think about the relation of dioceses and provinces. While in the Episcopal Church the terminus ad quem for this kind of unclarity was granting consent to two bishops in same-sex partnerships, the Anglican Church of Canada has no parallel moment. As Canon Kearon enacted the Archbishop of Canterbury’s first disiciplinary measures on June 7, he cited this question of the relation of provinces to dioceses, from the report of the Windsor Continuation Group, as one requiring further consideration.

In a speech to synod on June 8, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori addressed the comparable situations of the Episcopal and Canadian churches. Her speech included brief accounts of the earliest worship in each country, of similar 19th-century missionary endeavors, and issues in which both churches share an interest. But she included a series of references to the unresponsive and unhelpful English mother church with which we both have had, purportedly, to contend. The allusion to her recent contretemps with the Archbishop of Canterbury was not hard to discern. Appeals of this sort are always complicated for a nation which would discern its own identity even as it looks both south across the border and east across the Atlantic. Bishop Jefferts Schori’s “Don’t Tread on Me”-ism does not self-evidently fit Canadian experience. Still, given the prospect of Communion sanctions, however mild, the implied pursuit of an alliance may well prove appealing. Here too time will tell.

While the music on the deck was more cheerful, below the waterline the boat is taking on water. Dire cuts are required for the national church staff, and around the edges of synod one could hear rumors of reduced contributions from strapped dioceses. Whatever becomes of “local option” in the political sense, one can perceive a shift toward the grassroots in a variety of ways. In a culture as pluralistic as ours, with central bureaucracies as challenged as ours, a period of hunkering down, for conservative and liberal alike, may be in the offing. In such a climate, what are the more local imperatives before us that will make a positive and telling difference for the Church? As Rahm Emanuel has said, you never want a crisis to go to waste.

First, dioceses, like the national church, will in some cases be compelled to cut their central administrative staffs. This travelling light could become an occasion not only for parish-level financial relief but also for a renewed focus of attention on their lives and welfare.

Second, traditional parishes, dioceses, and groups, be they catholic or evangelical, need to invest their energies in becoming a vigorous and distinct fellowship of witness, locally and jointly, within the Anglican Church of Canada. In some cases the structures may perceive how much they need this minority for the revitalization they seek. In other cases they will not. At the local level, they need to pray for the welfare of the larger Church, and find in its midst a future and a hope. A number of younger, more traditional bishops, recently elected, are in this regard a source of encouragement.

Third, theologians need, for their part, to make the theological case for the Covenant, which is to say, the case for the Church catholic as it is given to us, in a time of fragmentation. They need to join in partnerships to produce resources and train leaders for evangelism and catechesis (e.g., the partnership of the Wycliffe Institute of Evangelism and the Diocese of Toronto on church planting). Being simultaneously loyal, local, coherent, and catholic will be the challenge for the conservative Anglican minority.

Synods have their place, but more telling will be what takes place, for weal or woe, at more local levels. The troubles of Anglicanism are all too familiar. Less often noted is the continuing attraction of young adults to traditional Anglicanism. The majority of the faculty at an evangelical seminary attend Anglican churches. A room full of twentysomethings from a vital campus ministry of King’s College, Halifax, are excited about theological study. Amid all our very real troubles, rumors of our death, like Mark Twain’s, have been exaggerated. Traditional Anglicans have, at the ground level, their calling and their work, on behalf of the whole and with hope for the future, before them.

The Rev. Dr. George Sumner is principal and Helliwell Professor of World Mission at Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.