Let's keep the peace in the Anglican family

TAPPAHANNOCK

--When a gay family member comes out of the closet, relatives often have a wide range of responses. One shrugs and says, "Sure, I've known for years he was gay." Another shouts, "It's wrong! Kick him out of the family!" Others might never have thought that a member of their own family could be gay, but they want to keep family relationships going with as much love as they can.

When the Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop more than four years ago, it got a similar range of responses. The Episcopal Church is the American part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, so it has relatives around the globe. Anglican bishops in places such as Canada have been largely supportive; some African bishops have said the Episcopal Church should be immediately excluded from the Anglican Communion. The majority of the Anglican Communion, however, simply wants to keep the family relationships with the Episcopal Church going with as much love as they can. A new document, the St. Andrew's Draft of the Proposed Anglican Covenant, makes it more likely they will be able to do so.

The Archbishop of Canterbury appointed a design group to write a draft covenant for the Anglican Communion to consider. The first draft would have given power to a group of 38 church leaders known as primates, one from each of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion, to determine, in extreme circumstances, whether one province's controversial actions meant that it could no longer be a full member of the Anglican Communion.

Responses from around the Communion warned against giving so much power to this small group, all of whom are bishops, and all of whom are male except Katharine Jefferts Schori, the primate of the Episcopal Church. Anglicans advised that a decision that affects the entire Communion should be made by laypeople and clergy as well as bishops, and by women as well as men. Therefore, the new version of the draft covenant provides a larger role for the Anglican Consultative Council, which includes these other voices.

The most important development in the new draft covenant is that it provides numerous opportunities for various groups to decide to handle controversy not by excluding anyone, but by either agreeing to disagree, or by continuing conversation about difficult topics.

Every 10 years, the Archbishop of Canterbury invites all 850 bishops in the Anglican Communion to a family reunion called the Lambeth Conference. Although he gave in to conservatives' demands that the gay bishop not be invited, he invited all the other American bishops. Five primates were still angry that the American bishops were invited, and those five have refused to attend Lambeth this summer. But the family reunion in July will go on, as planned.

The bishops at Lambeth will add their input about the draft covenant, and then a third draft will be written. Even those who are not in favor of gay bishops have serious concerns that a covenant that can be used to exclude the American church over this issue could also be used in the future to exclude another church over some other controversial issue. So it is possible that the third draft may remove methods for excluding churches.

Anglicanism was formed in the Elizabethan Compromise, Queen Elizabeth I's decision in 1559 that the best way to deal with different beliefs was not for Protestants and Catholics to fight wars over them, but for everyone to worship together with a Book of Common Prayer that allowed both groups to keep their beliefs without excluding anyone.

Despite calls for schism and exclusion in the 21st century, the Anglican Communion has not kicked out the Episcopal Church so far, and there is reason to hope that despite the disagreements in the family, the Anglican family will still pray together, and stay together.

 

Lucia Lloyd is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Virginia.

 

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