There Must Be Divisions Among You

Four days into the global Primates' meeting at Canterbury and no mass walkout of conservatives or liberals has taken place, yet, although media continue to report one is imminent, as they have done consistently for a couple of days. Getting 38 archbishops together from every wing of the Anglican Communion from New York to Nairobi is achievement enough: getting them to stay together talking and drinking mediocre wine over dinner without ludicrous grandstanding and mutual denunciations is surely a motion of the Holy Spirit.

It surely can't be that either side on the homosexuality debate seriously thinks they can actually 'win', at least in the medium term, in the sense of defeating and driving out the opposing party: neither the gays nor the gay-bashers are going away any time soon. All that can be settled is whether there is to be a modus vivendi for the Anglican Communion, and what it might look like. 

I have no idea how that could work, but the crucial element I would like to see emerging from the conference is a structure that keeps the mutual interdependence and discussion going. It's a commonplace that as one goes on in life one realises how little one knows; what we positively need, as individuals, as churches, is people who disagree, who can hold us to the account of values we claim to have but for all sorts of different reasons have a tendency to neglect. The liberals need the conservatives to hold them to the account of scripture, which is all we have that tells us about God; the conservatives need the liberals to hold them to the account of the experience, which is what tells us whether our view of God is realistic rather than projected from our own delusions, desires and fears. None of us can reach the truth alone. We all think we believe the right stuff and so can come to the right conclusions; we are all incorrect.

Of course the Roman Catholic Church has begun learning how to do Anglican disagreement. I once heard the Anglican Church being described by one ex-pat European to another as 'the Catholic Church without the Pope', whereas it might now be appropriate to invert the tag and characterise the Catholic Church as 'the Church of England plus the Pope'.

It could all be worse. Meanwhile, in the world of Orthodoxy, they're arguing over whether homosexuals can legitimately be spat at in the street.