Editorial Matters: crisis in the Anglican Communion

The coming year will be decisive for worldwide Anglicanism. Attention has moved, thankfully, from a single dispute to the harder question of what the Communion is and how it must change if it is to hold together.

Why this is different

Some treat the present trouble as a repeat of the arguments over the ordination of women. The comparison misleads. The presenting question touches conduct that the bishops at Lambeth, only a few years earlier, agreed to call incompatible with Scripture. The earlier debate was also handled through consultation, and the Communion deliberately made room for a period of reception. That patience was not extended here.

A crisis at three levels

The difficulty runs within the innovating provinces, between those provinces and their neighbours, and through the four instruments that give the Communion its shape. Each will have to be addressed, and none will be settled by procedure alone.

Whither the Communion

The Anglican Communion has never been a body with a central legal authority. Its unity has rested on mutual loyalty and the common counsel of bishops. When that loyalty is set aside, the Communion is left with few tools and much prayer. What is being tested is whether interdependence can be chosen freely, or whether it will only ever be honoured when it is convenient.

The essays in this issue take up mission, the reading of Scripture and the shape of Anglican identity, and they are best read as contributions to that larger question.