Focusing on unity rather than divergence would make the Anglican debate more inclusive

In the wake of last week's meeting of Episcopalian primates on gays in the priesthood, the Bishop of Meath, Richard Clarke , …

In the wake of last week's meeting of Episcopalian primates on gays in the priesthood, the Bishop of Meath, Richard Clarke, suggests the church is asking itself the wrong question.

It seems that the Anglican Communion is presently fixated on finding an answer, by any available means - some rather dubious, it has to be said - to the question, "How much divergence can we, as a communion, bear?" I find myself musing as to whether this is not entirely the wrong question to ask. Indeed it appears a suitable query only for those who wish to answer either with a categorical "very little, if we are to remain faithful", or else (at the opposite end of the spectrum) with something along the lines of "as much divergence as we like". The rest of us are left with nothing to say and little to do.

A better question would surely be, "How much unity do we really need, to be a communion of churches?"

Historically, this was a question which, until the present day, has been answered by Anglicans in broad brush strokes rather than with any demand for precision and exclusion. And when the question is framed in this way - seeking to ascertain the degree of unity we actually need - it is at least a discussion in which all of us may take part.

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Should we not all be permitted to be part of a dialogue on the nature of Anglicanism, rather than leaving the discussion entirely to the entrenched and the enraged? We might say at the outset that the Anglican Communion is emphatically not a single assemblage of ecclesiastical provinces with one central authority figure. It cannot be such, and should not attempt to become so.

Nor can we produce a superstructure of curial authority without damaging the very foundations on which Anglicanism is based.

However much some (but only some, it should in fairness be said) of those attending the recent primates' meeting in Dromantine might wish it otherwise, such a meeting was most certainly not empowered to speak for the entire Anglican Communion; even less may it claim to be its ruler.

It might therefore be far more fruitful if the Anglican family were to set out to establish again just how much we need to have in common, for the notion of a communion of churches to be sustained.

Traditionally we have fallen back on a list that may seem minimalist: the four-fold shared allegiance to the scriptures, the creeds of the universal church, the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, and the historic episcopate - what, since the late 19th century, has been known among Anglicans as the "Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral".

Given that much of the current imbroglio within the Anglican Communion on issues of sexuality revolves around the interpretation of scripture, what the Lambeth version of the Quadrilateral has to say about the scriptures is surely instructive. It speaks of "the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as 'containing all things necessary to salvation', and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith". No markedly rigid or exclusivist definition is to be found in those phrases.

Anglicanism is, at its most authentic, a community which seeks to bring people to the love of Christ, not by assuring them that they have to match up to certain requirements before they have a place in the church, but rather by taking them as they are, and where they are. Tolerance may certainly be seen as a weakness by some, but any demand for a spurious if enforced uniformity to one interpretation of "biblical standards" is something far worse.

Most disturbing of all in the current Gaderene rush for standardisation is the use of communion as a weapon. When any notion that sharing in eucharistic communion is to be restricted to those who measure up to "my" personal standards gains credence, the end of any faithful witness to Jesus Christ follows closely behind.

If we take the idea of the communion of saints with any seriousness, we must surely come to accept that we are in communion (in that sense) with many people - of other centuries, places and cultures - whom we might have neither admired nor even understood. Yet we are united with them in Christ, and we should have a profound reverence for that God-given relationship with the saints and martyrs of every age and culture.

As a corollary (and remaining in our own time and place), I have certainly discovered in recent years that I regard myself as in a deep spiritual communion with friends of other Christian traditions with whom I am not - technically - in eucharistic communion. It is sometimes very easy to love individuals with whom one is not in eucharistic communion. It may also be very difficult to love others with whom one is in sacramental communion.

We should not find it strange. Such is the economy of God. But we run perilously close to defacing the Body of Christ when, within our own traditions, we will share eucharistic communion only with those we perceive as being in our own image and likeness. Sanctity is grappling with the business of loving God and being loved by God; it is not a moral beauty contest.

When we ask the question seriously as to how much unity we really need in order to remain in communion with one another, we may come up with surprising results. The extraordinary mercy and love of Christ can make friends out of many who have little enough in common with one another.

Perhaps we may then also begin to look beyond the issues that divide towards those which should unite us. One of the tragedies of the recent Anglican primates' meeting was the way in which its communique revealed so clearly that most of the issues which matter deeply in the real world were squeezed in almost as an afterthought. The world has long since moved on beyond the place where the church has now impaled itself. Making a political issue of the physicality of sexuality is relevant to few outside the church, and probably to few enough within.

And so, in terms of asking different questions, I was wryly amused when, as the primates were meeting in Dromantine, I happened to be engaged in a parish visitation within my own diocese and was asked by someone whom the local rector and I happened to call upon (a person neither very young nor, I suspect, very radical), "Do the primates really not have anything else to talk about than gay bishops?"

The Most Rev Richard Clarke is the Bishop of Meath and Kildare.