Synodality: the regional level in the Anglican Communion

In the history of the Anglican Church the top-ranked issue of the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century was disputes on women’s priesthood. As a result of these debates, the Anglican Church began to ordain women as deacons, then as priests, and finally as bishops. In Orthodox view, it was the radical change of the doctrine and the deviation from the apostolic tradition, though at the beginning of the 20th century the Anglican Church was considered as one of the closest churches to Orthodoxy. The first critical step in the direction of women’s priesthood was the opening the diaconate to women. Both in Russian and Western theological science little attention has been devoted to the analysis of this first step, since historically the hottest theological discussion was on the issue of women’s priesthood and women’s episcopate. However, the decision on women’s diaconate was very important since it actually opened the way for all subsequent decisions on women’s priesthood in the Anglican Church. This article offers an analysis of the historical processes and theological discussions that brought the Church of England to the appearance of deaconesses and then women deacons. The article considers the revival of sisterhoods and monastic communities in the Church of England in the middle of the 19th century, the initiative to revive the rank of deaconesses in 1862 and subsequent official decision of the 1920 Lambeth Conference, as well as the relevant reports of the Commissions of 1897, 1908, 1919 and 1935. Then we analyze the discussions about the functions of the deaconess, as well as additional factors that influenced the decision to allow women to be ordained as deacons. One of these factors was the general crisis of the diaconal ministry and the desire to strengthen the role of the laity in the life of the Anglican Church. As a result, the 1968 Lambeth Conference opened diaconate to all laymen remaining in secular occupations (both men and women). The Church of England turned out to be one of the most conservative churches in the Anglican Communion – it introduced women's diaconate almost 20 years later, in 1987. Conservative groups were concerned that this decision would put the Church of England on a "slippery slope" towards women's priesthood and women's episcopate. Subsequent history proved that these fears were completely justified.

This article deals with the burning issue of moral decision-making by major church assemblies,such as regional and general synods. Moral decisions by church assemblies have createdmany conflicts in churches in the past and at times did an injustice to the prophetic testimonyof churches in society. The question arises as follows: To what extent should church assembliesbe involved in moral decision-making? The central theoretical argument of this study is thatalthough the notion of a ‘biblical ethic’ is valid, synods and council of churches should beextremely cautious and even hesitant to formulate moral decisions because of differences inhermeneutical approaches and the principle that the church is primarily the ‘local congregationof believers’. The church is not in the first instance a national, general or international socialstructure that should pass conclusive resolutions and that testifies by way of moderators orelected church leaders. To unfurl this central theoretical argument, the researcher refers to thecurrent hermeneutical discourses and proposes certain ideas regarding the possible role ofthe church with respect to moral decision-making. In view of the information provided, apoint of view is advocated regarding the way in which churches could be involved in moraldecision-making today.

This chapter sets out the position of the monarchy in relation to the Church of England and the Church’s relationship with the legislature. It describes the relevant constitutional law, including the oaths taken by the sovereign on accession and at the coronation, and the position of Roman Catholics. It goes on to explain the special arrangements for Church of England legislation under the Church Assembly (Powers) Act 1919, the role of the Second Church Estates Commissioner, and the arrangements for episcopal membership of the House of Lords.

ELLEN K. WONDRA*On January 14, 2016, the Primates of the Anglican Communion announced that they had passed resolution requiring that for period of three years Episcopal Church no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies, should not be appointed or elected to an internal standing committee and that while participating in the internal bodies of the Anglican Communion, they will not take part in decision making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity.* 1 action was taken in response to the Episcopal Church's 2015 decision that the sacrament of marriage is to be available to same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples.2 Notably, the resolution makes no mention of this subject. Rather, it is about doctrine and discipline, and who has what kind of authority to make determinations about both.A week after the meeting, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said that the Primates had that the Episcopal Church not participate in the activities stipulated by the Primates,3 whose actions he clearly supports. In his address to the Church of England's General Synod, the Archbishop used the term to describe the Primates' actions, term used in the drafts of the still-unapproved Anglican Covenant.4 Further, Archbishop Welby has said, This decision binds the Primates as group, but not any Province or other Instrument of Communion. It is powerful and morally forceful guideline.5At the beginning of the April 2016 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, Archbishop Welby gave report on the Primates' meeting, in which he said that the Primates' gathering had to balance three things, freedom, order and human flourishing. He specifically rejected the idea that the Primates had imposed sanctions or suspension, while also indicating that could be expected for any province that promotes its own autonomy over that of the catholic interdependence and mutual accountability of others.6 He noted that no of communion can legally bind the actions of any other, while also noting that the 1988 Lambeth Conference had passed resolution stating that the Primates have an enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters, such that the Primates are a key to growth of interdependence within the Communion.' Archbishop reported that he had fulfilled his responsibility as an instrument of communion, which included asking Episcopal Church of interfaith or ecumenical bodies ... whose appointment he controls, to stand down, and they have done so.8 Archbishop has also appointed the Task Group for which the Primates called.At the end of its meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council passed resolution saying:The Anglican Consultative Council1. receives the formal report of the Archbishop of Canterbury to ACC 16 on the Primates' Gathering and Meeting of January 2016; and2. affirms the commitment of the Primates of the Anglican Communion to walk together; and3. commits to continue to seek appropriate ways for the provinces of the Anglican Communion to walk together with each other and with the Primates and other Instruments of Communion.9When asked what this resolution meant for the the Primates had called for, Archbishop Welby said, The consequences stand.10 Episcopal Church representatives to the ACC said that beyond [the Archbishop's] report, ACC members seemed to have little energy for answering the primates' call for consequences, for discussing disagreements over human sexuality, or for taking up the call of Anglican Communion Secretary-General Josiah Idowu-Fearon to pursue the Anglican Covenant. Yesterday [April 18, 2016], in fact, resolution that sought to pursue further consequences against Episcopal Church was withdrawn just before it was scheduled for debate.* 11In other words, three of the four instruments of communion of the Anglican Communion12 have now acted in response to the actions of the Episcopal Church, and indicated that similar may follow from possible actions of the General Synods of the Anglican Church of Canada (to be held in July 2016), the Scottish Episcopal Church (to be held in 2017), and any others that may make decisions similar to those of the Episcopal Church. …

Ecclesia Anglicana by virtue of its provenance is English in texture and fibre … All too often the bishop has become a carbon copy of the English bishop whose office and style has been accommodated to the English culture, particularly the upper-class culture. A classic example is the African bishop being addressed as the Lord Bishop of Cape Coast or Tamale or Freetown. The title reflects an English culture and social structure which are irrelevant to the African situation … While African or Asian or Pacific Anglicans contribute to their own captivity to the Anglo-Saxon ecclesia Anglicana , the captivity is also imposed from outside. This extract from an essay by John Pobee, a Ghanaian Anglican, comes from Sykes and Booty's 1988 Study of Anglicanism . As if to reinforce the ‘Anglo-Saxon captivity’, Pobee's contribution is the only one to emanate from the South. The aim of the present book has been to demonstrate that, despite the burdens of colonialism and the ‘colonisation of the consciousness’ to which Pobee adverts, indigenous forms of local Anglicanism have asserted themselves. Even they, however, have been discounted and marginalised in thinking about the nature of Anglicanism. In 1965 the theologian Anthony Hanson could say of Anglicanism … this Communion is still astonishingly English in complexion. Indeed it is probably in this respect the most monochrome of all world denominations … the Church of England on the whole goes its way without paying much attention to the opinion and reactions of the rest of the Anglican Communion, whereas the rest of the Anglican Communion on the whole tends to look to the Church of England for approbation before any important step is taken.

MORAL LEADERSHIP From Power to Partnership: Britain in the Commonwealth, The Church of England in the Anglican Communion, Report of the International and Development Affairs Committee of the Board for Social Responsibility, Church House Publishing, London, 1991, pages 120, £6.95. CONSTITUTIONAL MORASS Liberty and Community. Canadian Federation and the Failure of the Constitution, R. C. Vipond, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 1991, pages x + 249. DIVINE PROVIDENCE British Christians, Indian Nationalists and the Raj, Gerald Studdert‐kennedy, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1991, £10.95, pages 274. CARIBBEAN LEFT POLITICS Jamaican Politics: A Marxist Perspective in Transition, Trevor Munroe, Heinemann Publishers (Caribbean) and Lynne Riener, Kingston and Boulder, CO, 1990, pages 322. EXPLORING AND MAPPING INNER ASIA The Pundits. British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia, Derek Waller, University Press of Kentucky, USA, $30/£18.50, Distributed in UK by John Randall, 47 Moreton St, London SW1V 2NY. The Political Economy of Hunger, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen (eds), Volume 1, Entitlement and Weil‐Being, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990, pages 492, £40.

This article compares key aspects of the ecclesiologies of The Episcopal Church and the Church of England. First, it examines and contrasts the underlying logic of their structures and the relationships between their constituent parts (General Synod/General Convention, diocese, parish/congregation). Against this background, it then looks at the place of bishops in the ecclesiologies of the two churches (in relation to clergy and parishes, in relation to diocesan synods/conventions and standing committees, and nationally). The American Presiding Bishop's role is contrasted with the traditional roles of primate and metropolitan. Throughout, attention is given to origins and historical development. Reference is also made to the relevant constitutional, canonical and liturgical provisions. Rapprochement between the two ecclesiologies is noted, especially with respect to the role of the laity, but the article argues that this is far from complete. Each church's ecclesiology continues to be determined by its origins; important modifications have been made within that framework, rather than overturning it. It is hoped that the analysis will illuminate the current disputes within The Episcopal Church and the crisis within the Anglican Communion that they have prompted.

This is the third in a series of reflections about Anglican cathedrals written by those of us who have been given custodianship of these great buildings: Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Washington National Cathedral, and Salisbury Cathedral. Jane Shaw and Gary Hall have already described, from their context in the United States, how cathedrals across the whole Anglican Communion are icons of visible Christianity and mother churches within our dioceses. In the West, where churchgoing as a routine habit is on the decline- the Church of England lost a million regular attenders in the decade of the 1990s-our cathedrals are seen as beacons of confident, open Christianity making a difference through exceptional worship and outreach. What is happening within these buildings, whether small, middling, or large, is an intriguing phenomenon of contemporary Christianity. Regardless of size, they stand large on our landscapes, be they geographical or social, urban or rural.All of our Anglican cathedrals draw on the legacy of ancient foundations. Some, such as Salisbury Cathedral, have capitular foundations which go back over a thousand years, with buildings that predate the dissolution of the monasteries, Reformation zeal, the transforming worldview of the Enlightenment, and the collapse of empires. Some have libraries that contain manuscripts as early as Anglo Saxon. For all of us life tends to be measured in decades rather than weeks. Even twentieth-century cathedrals draw on those same ancient rhythms and habits of worship, shared common life, hospitality, outreach, education, and learning. In South Sudan, where civil society is as fragile as anywhere on the Anglican map, new dioceses enthusiastically build themselves a cathedral, many with basic materials of corrugated iron and brick, and the then appoints a dean and canons who build the diocese with him in that tradition of wellordered liturgy and the proclamation of the Word of God.Here in the Provinces of Canterbury and York, the Church of England has recently started offering its bishops and deans a newly created form of professional training. The body that won the contract for providing this training is a business school, so most current episcopal and decanal leaders will have joined MBA students in Cambridge for intensive courses where the skill sets offered are not theological but organizational and managerial.You can understand the justification for this investment of the church's resources. Deans are responsible for significant and complex enterprises involving heritage buildings and historic environments, commercial operations and schools alongside being also priests and guardians of the spiritualities of these communities of prayer. If things go wrong in a cathedral it tends to make national headlines. In recent memory, one English cathedral has had to be rescued from bankruptcy, another from a crisis brought on by the Occupy movement, and another from the scandal of historic child abuse by one of its leading volunteers. All manage the more routine risks of reputation and finance, with a severe breakdown of relationships always the most painful of threats. In the face of such responsibilities deans could legitimately ask what provision the church makes for equipping them for the task. Hence most of the English deans have found themselves students of accountancy skills, project management, marketing, and other forms of strategic leadership in a mini MBA program.In the two previous articles describing the experience of the modern Anglican cathedral, my fellow deans Jane Shaw and Gary Hall gave abundant evidence of the popularity of cathedral life. From being narrowly and exclusively the seat of the bishop they have become a trusted public space in which the whole community gathers, extending a truly Christ-like model of the church as a safe space in which people of all faiths or none meet to do risky or difficult things. These are not primarily structures for congregational existence, though multiple congregations thrive within them. …

Percy Dearmer’s time as a visiting lecturer at Berkeley Divinity School in Connecticut, USA, at the invitation of Dean William Palmer Ladd, from July 1918 to February 1919, marked a turning point in his life and career. As author of The Parson’s Handbook (1899) and Vicar of St Mary’s Primrose Hill (1901–1915), he was immersed in the Church of England. From 1919, when he left Berkeley Divinity School, with no offer of a clergy post until 1931, he worked on the margins of the church as a university lecturer, writer, and co-director of an experimental worshipping community. The experiences he had between 1915 and 1919 shaped this ‘second’ Dearmer: loss in the war; a second wife and new family; work with the YMCA in France and India; travels in the Anglican Communion and, not least, time at Berkeley where he consolidated these experiences, becoming attuned to those who wanted a spiritual life but were disillusioned by institutional religion, as expressed in The Art of Worship (1919).

Within a British World, Anglicanism was both an agent of, and sustained by, cultures of Britishness. In turn the transformation of the Church of England into the worldwide Anglican Communion was profoundly shaped by the idea and existence of Greater Britain. After the Second World War the break-up of Greater Britain and the erosion of Britishness overlapped, and was interwoven with, the relative decline of Anglicanism in the 'old' Commonwealth. This chapter explores how senior British Anglicans perceived these developments. It first charts how British Anglicans visiting Australia after the Second World War were beguiled by its Britishness and convinced of the key role it should play in a Communion in which there were disintegrative forces at work. Yet they also worried about a weakening of the 'Anglican-ness' of the Antipodean dominions, fearful that Anglicanism might lose ground to Roman Catholicism. It was hence the implications of the decline of Greater Britain for their own Church that principally animated British Anglicans. But this focus did not preclude imperial sentiment, and senior Anglicans responded to perceived 'threats' through efforts to bolster the British connection as well as strengthen the Anglican Communion to maintain it in a position of worldwide influence.

ABSTRACTAny claim for the ecclesiological integrity of Anglicanism seems, at the moment, tenuous. The divisions within the Anglican Communion over the issues of human sexuality and gender do not seem easily healed, despite the efforts of the current archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and his predecessor, Rowan Williams. Despite the proud assertions of Anglican apologists down the ages that the Church was positioned, following the Elizabethan ‘settlement’ of 1588, with moderation and good sense as a via media between Rome and Geneva, this new five-volume history of Anglicanism reveals a church that has been in conflict from its very origins. In seeking to be a church for the whole of England, it was naturally constituted of competing theological and ecclesiological visions, influenced by continental reformations, that could never be entirely congruent – divisions which, at certain junctions since the break with Rome almost 500 years ago, have been the source of significant aggravation and tribalism. Those politico-theological tensions, the History underlines, were exported across Britain’s expanding empire, spawning vibrant new networks and associations that only served further to disrupt the fragile unity of the Church of England after the confessional state was dismantled by the British parliament in 1828–1832. Despite the enormous vibrancy engendered by this conflict of traditions, now stretched across a global Communion and influenced as much by post-colonialism and globalisation as older theological traditions, the final two volumes pose challenging questions for any who would seek to speak meaningfully of a single entity called the ‘Anglican Church’. This article suggests that the greatest threat to contemporary Anglicanism, however, lies in a postmodern retreat from the ecumenical task as truth becomes ever more contextualised, driven by a desire for peaceful cohabitation rather than institutional coherence. These volumes might suggest, rather, that Anglicanism’s hope (and its gift to the wider Church) is to be found precisely in its conflicted quest for truth and unity in faithful response to Scripture, tradition and reason.

In October 2022, the Church of England commissioned a study of the likely impacts of allowing the blessing or marriage of same-sex couples in church. This paper reports on a survey of key informers (bishops or chief executive officers) in dioceses in the seven provinces of the Anglican Communion that had at that time allowed either same-sex blessings (SSB) or same-sex marriages (SSM). Of 183 provinces or dioceses contacted, 62 (31%) replied to an online survey of which 74% had decided to allow SSB and 55% to allow SSM. While all provinces reported some losses of clergy or congregations, these were not as great as some had expected. Smaller provinces that had made spaces and time for those of differing opinions to meet together tended to report more positive outcomes than those where processes were dominated by synodical debates.Quantitative analysis using two scales of internal (church-facing) and external (society-facing) impact showed that dioceses that allowed SSM rather than just SSB reported more positive external impact. Those that had allowed SSM reported better internal and external impact compared with those who allowed only SSB or neither. Open answers offered critical reflections highlighting important lessons learnt in the process of making decisions.

This chapter presents the results of a comprehensive and in-depth interview process involving women in the senior posts of Archdeacon, Theological Educator and Cathedral Dean in the Church of England, and tries to discover something about how they construe or make meaning of their leadership roles. The Canons of the Church of England lay down, succinctly, the legal requirements for those in senior positions. The possible admission of women to the orders of deacon, priest and bishop was explored in a Church Assembly report of 1966. Women who get to senior positions in the church are often in a dilemma. Most have had previous significant management/leadership experience in the church or in other professions. Being trustworthy and having integrity in relationships was the most important personal characteristic in the exercise of leadership. The empirical research uses a method of interviewing called Repertory Grids, derived from a theory of personality proposed by George Kelly known as Personal Construct Psychology.

Homosexuality: The viewpoints of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) and the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa (NRCA) in 2007 These two churches, through their broadest assembly namely the General Synod and the General Church Assembly respectively, show remarkable similarities in their approach to Scripture on the matter of homosexuality, the position of gay people in church life and the time frame in which they took decisions on these matters. The point of departure for both is marriage as something only for one husband and one wife. This is explicitly complemented by the NRCA with a limitation of sexual intercourse to marriage, which rules out the possibility of homosexuality. In the DRC the same principle is tradition, thus basicly coming to the same conclusion as the NCRA. The reason for these similarities is not that the two assemblies openly copied each other, but the fact that they both are reformed churches in Southern Africa serving, mainly, Afrikaners. Perhaps these similarities supply another reason for the present increase in cooperation between the two churches.

ABSTRACTThe paper explores the rise of Reform in the Church of England, and critically examines some of the reasons why (theologically and sociologically) the movement has also developed an aggressive side to its character. After briefly considering the history of Reform (now ten years old) the paper deploys some methodological perspectives drawn from the late James Hopewell's contribution to congregational studies, before turning to some of the key issues that define Reform's agenda. Some further analysis examines the prospects for Anglicanism, where the Communion is bound together less and less by a common form of governance, and increasingly by a shared ethos and moral affinity. A conclusion discusses the relative strength of Reform within the context of the Anglican Communion as a whole. The paper is exploratory in nature: an exercise in testing a methodology within the broad penumbra of modern ecclesiology. The paper is not intended to be a definitive account or interpretation of Reform. From the outset, the author recognizes that the movement itself merits far more attention than one academic paper can possibly give it.