Something new being born: Wrapping up General Synod

Posts and diary entries from the Anglican Church of Canada’s 2023 General Synod, meeting for part of that time conjointly with the Evanglical Lutheran Church in Canada. Earlier posts in this series are here.

So what to say in conclusion about the 2023 General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada?

I am not convinced the General Synod is “the Anglican Church of Canada at its best,” but it can be pretty good. There were a number of debates that I really appreciated listening to and in which I heard views that were new to me. It is a great introduction to the diversity of the church, including the unique and wonderful nature of Newfoundland Anglicanism, diverse expressions of indigenous Christianity in remote communities, and so much else. I just so valued snapshots into the life of these different expressions of the Anglican way of following Jesus in Canada.

Part of the reason I struggle to think of Synod as the church at its best is that there seems to be a very basic uncertainty about what General Synod is. At times, we seemed to be functioning like a Board of Directors for the General Synod Office, passing resolutions about finances or the pension committee or hearing reports about the work of staff and the resolutions it produced. At other times (so much of the time, it seemed), we were talking about the General Synod itself and our governance. At other times, we were trying to speak as the church assembled to the rest of the church and the world. This last piece produced the most interesting debates and resolutions but also the ones that are most likely to be forgotten or ignored.

At times, the mood of Synod felt a little too upbeat. The reality that I experience is that the church (congregations, dioceses, para-church institutions) is under immense pressure with real questions of institutional survival. We see that in the report of the church’s statistician to General Synod — yet that report received not a single moment of discussion. We heard hints of this in a comment from one delegate who wondered out loud when we were going to start talking about the future of the church after the pandemic. But at times the business of Synod seemed divorced from those realities. There was one night where we heard a report from the Strategic Planning Working Group and then the Anglican Foundation of Canada and someone commented to me afterwards that it was almost offensive how upbeat it was. Certainly that evening didn’t reflect the reality of the church as I experience it, aside from some passing references to “challenges.”

The business of Synod is almost entirely shaped by A resolutions, which are those that come from the church’s committees and boards. Those committees and boards are staffed by General Synod Office staff so the A resolutions are going to reflect the work of those staff members. If we don’t have a national staff position in evangelism or discipleship, for instance (and we don’t), then we’re not going to get an A resolution on this and not be able to discuss it. There was a C resolution about this but it did not, alas, get considered. Instead, we spent a considerable time talking about justice. This is not the place for a critique of the justice agenda of the church but I think we could use some more critical reflection here.

There was in certain instances an evident lack of adequate consultation in the lead-up to Synod, which meant a lot of it took place on the floor itself. This was true in relation to the motions on anti-racism, which clearly could have benefited from incorporating indigenous perspectives much earlier on. It was also true about the Israel-Palestine resolution in which Jewish perspectives came very, very late in the day. It was true in relation to the canon on extending the primacy as well, I think. There had been a pre-Synod webinar about this resolution but the format did not allow for any but technical questions and the whole thing fizzled out early.

There was repeated emphasis on ecumenism (including from me), which is perhaps not surprising given that part of the meeting was joint with the Lutherans. I believe that the future of churches in this country is going to be increasingly ecumenical but I still don’t think that the penny has truly dropped for us as a church yet. We saw this in a misguided canonical change on licensing (which was helpfully amended out of existence).

It was pleasant to meet Lutherans and share a building with them but I would not support an effort to hold a joint meeting again until we have amended our governance structures to permit (though not require) joint business meetings on certain issues. The joint sessions with Lutherans took up loads of valuable time in which we were largely talked at. Some of these were good presentations but it wasn’t clear what they produced. There was table conversation but this was of widely varying quality and not nearly as good as hearing what people had to say in floor debates when people tended to be more prepared and focused.

I have been trying to puzzle through what explains the defeat of the canon to extend the primate’s term in office. You could blame this on bishops who don’t like the current primate. Perhaps, though those who voted against weren’t necessarily obvious allies. But the vote was quite close in the Order of Clergy (a few changed votes would have led to its defeat there), and much closer than, say, the vote on the marriage canon in 2019. There is certainly a generational tension that is part of this and that was clear in the debate. I also think there was a desire to really speak about the role of the Primate in the life of the church and even re-consider the whole canon on primacy. When the chancellor kept stressing how minor a change this was, that was precisely the problem. I think some people wanted greater change, not just fiddling around the edges.

The vote on the primatial canon was one reflection of the way in which the church is at a moment of change. There is an increasingly vocal indigenous voice in General Synod. There is disquiet and dissatisfaction with using western parliamentary procedure (more on this in a minute) in what is becoming an inter-cultural body. The next Synod will need to elect a new primate and one suspects that Linda Nicholls might be the last Baby Boomer to serve as primate. We were told that about half of bishops are new since 2019. By the next General Synod, almost all of those bishops who saw the church through difficult General Synods over the marriage canon will be retired.

It was noteworthy to me that four of the substantive motions prepared by the Governance Working Group failed to pass as designed: the two-synod and change to super-majority requirement motions were postponed; A055 on licensing was passed only after an amendment gutted it; and the motion to extend the primate’s term in office failed. Each of these motions were rooted in a canon law approach and avoided or ignored theology. This was most evident in A055 that entirely lacked a theology of ministry and treated a theological issue as a matter of a simple canonical fix. What I was sensing by the end of Synod is that people are interested in a more theological and more inter-cultural approach to these questions of governance and church structure. The Synod did adopt a C resolution calling for an exploration of consensus styles of decision-making. The mover of the motion talked about needing to move beyond “colonial forms of debate and settler methods of decision making.” I’d like to see the Synod be better resourced to consider questions like the one about the role of bishops in the church. The Governance Working Group had also brought forward a motion authorizing a new set of rules of order, which we did pass, but many speakers during the week lamented how culturally-specific these rules are. It remains the case that the business of Synod is conducted entirely in English, even as this is the first language of a decreasing percentage of delegates. This is a church that is changing in some quite significant ways. The proposed changes to governance were not in step with this reality.

I think there may be some energy in the right places to explore new ways of working, and I hope that work can be started in the coming years. If a Governance Working Group goes forward, it may be helpful to ensure that it is not comprised entirely of white English-speakers. The motion on consensus made me think back to my own opposition to the transformational aspirations the Synod adopted for the church. From Quaker models of consensus, I’ve learned that there exists the option to say something like, “I am opposed to this but will not stand in the way of it going forward.” That’s basically how I felt about the transformational aspirations but the structure of the current system forced me into a yes/no decision.

I think the real question is whether we can pull off this change without it being forced upon us. In other words, are resource constraints and church shrinkage going to so reduce our options that we won’t be able to set our own course for the future? Or can we take hold of this moment and be open to the transformation God is working in our midst? Something new is struggling to be born but I think we are still trying to figure out just what it is and how we can best midwife this birth.

Someone asked me towards the end of Synod if I would consider being a delegate again. I’m not sure. It is an immense expenditure of energy and focus that has left me exhausted. But I’m grateful for the opportunity, grateful for what I learned, and pleased to have had this chance to see a bit more of the church in this country. Thanks for reading along on the journey.