What Would an Ideal Anglican Communion Look Like?
The Anglican Covenant would re-engineer the Anglican Communion. But the Anglican Communion was never really engineered to begin with. Instead, it developed in fits and starts with no planning as to what a “mature” Anglican Communion should look like.
Encouraging the Communion to avoid making the serious mistake of adopting the proposed Anglican Covenant has been satisfying, but Anglicans really should be asking what an ideal Anglican Communion would look like. What would we want to create if we were beginning from scratch?
Do readers have any ideas to contribute? What should be the underlying principles of an ideal Anglican Communion? How should those principles be incorporated into particular structures and processes?
Labels: Anglican Communion
posted by Lionel Deimel at
2:25 AM
5 Comments:
There used to be a saying about things like the Communion, "Like Topsy, it just grew." I think some consideration of what a Communion might look like if it made sense (not if it looked like The Covenant!) is well worth undertaking.
FWIW
jimB
To tell the truth, I would rather not try to develop an ideal Anglican Communion. When we strive for perfection then we tend toward rigidity and 'one way' models. I would rather a more organic paradigm of what we have. That we have grown up like Topsy is an appropriate way in the Anglican Communion and reflects the diversity in the Communion.
Too much order implies that there is a 'right way' to be in communion with one another.
The Anglican Communion has five major bodies, each of which is led by the same person appointed by a single established church. This arrangement is clearly prone to abuse of power, not an abstract idea in light of the actions of the incumbent. Global South primates want to dethrone the Archbishop of Canterbury. So do I, but for different reasons.
I think I could happily settle for some very minimalist structures that did two things:
1) Made it clear that neither the archbishop, nor the Canterbury staff is in charge.
2) Articulate a simple rule that there is no such thing as less than complete impaired communion, a church is in or out.
FWIW
jimB
Jim,
I fully agree. The idea of a communion in which churches are not in communion with one another is an oxymoron.
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