General Synod: called to be a “big” church
I am an historically-inclined kind of guy so I am always looking for precedents and parallels from our history to our present moment. One that strikes me now comes from a man named Stephen Bayne. Bayne was a rector, a university chaplain, Bishop of Olympia in the United States, and then, from 1960 to 1964, the first executive officer of the Anglican Communion. (Synod this year will be hearing from one of Bayne’s successors, Anthony Poggo.) In that role, in 1962, he addressed the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada meeting in Kingston.
Here’s some of what he had to say then:
Our idea of the Church is too small, our understanding of the Sacraments is too small, our understanding of God’s action in history is too small, our understanding of Mission is too small. We think of Mission as gaining members for our club. We think of the Church as our little congenial club into which like-minded people come. We think of the Church as the English-speaking Union at prayer… And then we shrink; and our whole conception of the heroic virtues of the Christian life shrinks; and our whole understanding of obedience shrinks.
He cited the Parable of the Talents and the servant who hid his money in the ground, and then said:
Now that is a parable of the Church. That is exactly what happens to the Church. You have seen it happen. You have seen the Church disappear and a club take its place. You have seen the Gospel suddenly disappear and just quaint Anglican mannerisms take it places. You have seen the great acts of God disappear from the Church, and a barren recitation of the Prayer Book take its place.
The only way to be an Anglican is to be a big one. There is no other way. There is no safe way to receive all these gifts of God unless you are prepared to live the Christian life in extraordinary and heroic depth. Otherwise, it is not safe to be an Anglican.
But, if you want to live as a child of the Prayer Book, you have got to live with a big Church, not because we are big, but because God is big, and the Creed is big, and the Bible and the Sacraments — because the demands of the Christian life are big.
The language is, perhaps, somewhat dated (“heroic”), but I like the idea of being a “big” Anglican, of allowing the Anglican tradition to draw us out of the ever-present danger of becoming a club and into the broader sweep of Christian life. It’s what I hope we can aim for in our work at Synod.
So I was surprised and concerned recently to learn about a proposed resolution (A055) which would amend the canon on licensing clergy. I’m worried it makes us too small of a church.
The existing canon on licensing clergy lays out some basic ground rules for how clergy can be in ministry in the church and how they need to be licensed by a bishop to be in ministry. The proposed motion adds a definition of what it means to be “in good standing” and then states that “no bishop shall issue a license…except to a person who has been validly ordained and is in good standing as a bishop, priest, or deacon in the Anglican Church of Canada or a church in full communion therewith.”
I am aware that in dioceses across the church bishops are currently licensing clergy who were not ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada or a full communion church. These clergy have, through whatever combination of circumstances, found themselves offered or looking for a position in the Anglican world and found a bishop willing to hire them. It’s not many cases that I know of, but neither is it an insubstantial number. Bishops have used their discretion to draw these individuals into the ministry of the church. I do not generally have a problem with this as I do not think it poses a significant threat to the coherence of the church. Nor am I aware of any great hue and cry in opposition to this. Bishops are facing what is generally regarded as a shortage of clergy. In many circumstances I know that these non-Anglican clergy have gone on to fruitful ministries. Congregations are happy to have clerical leadership.
We should note that it is this sort of creative approach to ministry licensing that the report of the Anglican-United Church of Canada commission strongly encourages the churches (especially the Anglican Church) to consider. This is not to say that bishops have to license non-Anglican clergy. It’s just that the current canons do not erect a formal obstacle to them doing so.
Why, then, would the General Synod want to stick its nose into the discretion of bishops, particularly at a time when the ecumenical commissions of the church are encouraging such creativity?
Alas, A055 avails itself of no answer, either in the resolution text or by offering an explanation. Happily, it is moved by the Chancellor and seconded by the General Secretary, who were both on a recent webinar about the governance resolutions. During that webinar, they were asked specifically about the justification for this resolution and gave two answers. (You can watch their answer starting at 29:00 of the video. It’s about 90 seconds long.)
First, “to improve on our safe church practices.” There needed to be a definition of “in good standing” to ensure clergy who’ve engaged in misconduct in the past can’t be re-licensed. OK, though it would have been helpful to have some sense of the scale of this problem. It’s also not clear why we can’t define “good standing” in the church’s semi-official glossary of terms.
Second, well, I can’t really figure out what the second reason was. It was kind of circular and went something like this, “to clarify what I hope is normal practice already which is to clarify that we are only able to license clergy who are in canonically recognizable orders.” Got all that clarity? Me neither. If it is already normal practice, why do we need to “clarify” the canon? And if it’s not normal practice, then let’s bring that out in the open (as the Anglican-United report seeks to do).
The General Secretary concluded by noting that since this resolution needs to be passed by two consecutive Synods, “there is ample opportunity to give a bit of sober second judgment” and bring it back in 2025. That’s well and good, except that another resolution (also seconded by the General Secretary) would remove the requirement for approval in two consecutive synods and so remove the opportunity for precisely the “sober second judgment” that is being suggested here. This explanation for A055 is precisely contrary to the explanation given for the motion removing the need for approval at two consecutive Synods.
I work in ecumenical theological education and deal with questions of ministry all the time. Many of my students (though by no means all) hold their denominational identities lightly. Many of them are adult converts to Christianity and did not grow up in the church. They are drawn to different elements of different Christian traditions. Many struggle when they realize that in order to get ordained they have to “pick a team,” as it were. By necessity, the future church that these students will service will be ecumenical. By conviction and by desire, these students will make it so. It makes no sense to impose restrictions on the flexibility and judgment of bishops in assembling a clergy team for their diocese.
The proposed A055 imposes restriction and constraint at a time when the church needs flexibility and creativity. It is anti-ecumenical in spirit and effect at a time when the church needs to be maximally ecumenical. And it locks the church into a pattern of thinking that is decades out of date when we need to be looking to the future. It offends against the idea of being a “big” church. I will be voting against it.
Next posts will be from Calgary.
