Contrapuntal Notes to Rowan Cantuar’s Music: A Response to the Consultation Paper on the Covenant

A Response to the Consultation Paper on the Covenant Proposal of the Windsor Report (March 2006)

Michael Nai-Chiu Poon, Singapore

Director, Centre for the Study of Christianity in Asia

S trange are the ways of Rowan Williams. To borrow his phrase, “It would be strange”, if for all his godly discipline and intellectual rigour, that “all were pursued in the absence of any acquisition of a skill – any capacity to do something in a particular way. Just as we might say it would be very strange to learn a language without learning how to speak it (CEFACS Lecture, 3 November 2004)”. How Canterbury deals with the present Communion crisis in practice is puzzling.

The latest Consultation Paper on the Covenant Proposal of the Windsor Report is a case in point. It is another instance of his failure to first consult his fellow primates in major decisions that involve the whole Communion.

The Primates at Dromantine asked Canterbury to follow up on the Windsor Report’s Covenant Proposal as a project with a clear time line “between now and the Lambeth Conference 2008 (Dromantine, 9)”. Canterbury followed up by setting up “a small working party” convened by the Deputy Secretary General. It is intriguing that under the short section “Provenance of this Document” of the Consultation Paper, the most important verbs were all in passive voice. Minds that are familiar with drafting insurance policies and legal documents are at work to evade the question “who makes the decisions”. Who chose the team? Who decided that only those who could come easily to London for two day meeting? Why London? We wonder!

More importantly, what is their brief? The Working Party asked fundamental questions about the Covenant. It is beside the point whether those issues are intellectually valid. The Group asked “Is the concept of an Anglican Covenant still viable?” as the first question (para. 3). Why use the word “still”? Has there been a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit since Dromantine that the Communion now lives under a new dispensation? The Group then capped their questions by revisiting the time-frame: “What sort of timetable is desirable for the covenant project?” Has not the Primates agreed to Lambeth 2008 as the target date? (See Dromantine, 9)”.

The Group then weaved an elaborate and long drawn decision making procedure. They preferred setting up a drafting group rather than taking the obvious way of asking the thirty-eight primates to work through their provincial structures. This drafting group in its turn would produce texts for consultation among “interested parties especially [and hence not exclusively, my comment here] other Communion bodies (e.g. IATDC, IASCOME, ACLAN, ecumenical commissions, the Global South) (para. 23)”. What defines an “interested party”? What makes an opinion from such parties valid? All commissions of the Communion are set up with clear terms of reference. It would be odd and expensive if they now take up a new brief that is not their business at all. Surely Canterbury and the Secretary Generals were aware of that when they tried to cut down expenses in setting up meetings in London.

If there is an Anglican way, as Rowan Cantuar reminds us, it surely would be our insistence on truth – truth at all cost. This is why we insist on the need for discernment. In Bishop Stephen Neill’s words, we are willing “to tolerate for the time being what appears to be error (Anglicanism, 422)”. Since Dromantine, we see however a growing disregard of discernment. We read of ACC’s Chair playing the democratic-ACC card and apologizing without mandate to the Anglican Church of Canada. We see the Anglican Communion Office changed the structure of the Communion by promoting Canterbury to be the focus of unity. Williams announced that Lambeth 2008 would be a resolution-light “training and development” gathering. Are these measures orchestration of the “Anglican Way”?

The Anglican Way, if it existed at all, does not consist of one mega-narrative that draws its strength from the technological and financial clout of Wall Street. Those outside the Western world perhaps at this stage can do little to counter the public media exercises the Anglican Communion Office and Lambeth Palace use to stifle voices from the Global South. Somehow Lambeth and the Communion Office based in the United Kingdom can find funding from financially rich Provinces to reshape the Communion without going through due processes of consultation with the Primates. But Williams will leave a legacy of bitter recrimination that will set back the good work of some of his saintly predecessors. Perhaps with good intent Williams wants to wait it out for some ‘difficult’ primates to retire in the coming years. Let time bury issues, so he may think. Church history tells us that bitterness festers even after the original contenders die. Discerning truth requires the moral courage and intellectual integrity to confront issues head on, and continue to hold conversations with colleagues even if such is difficult. I fear that Williams has lost the courage to consult his fellow primates after Dromantine.

The Communion is in a changed age, as the world also is. The thirty-eight provinces of the Communion are fully autonomous; each church lives and witnesses in different political and cultural conditions. We need God’s grace to see this to be a gift and not a liability. The problem with the West is that it continues to cling to a Christendom mind-set, thinking that it is the centre, and organise the Communion along traditional categories. Somehow, given the proper evangelical-liberal mix, spiced in with an ethnic balance, then it would work – is not Britain the centre of the world? This may work for the demographically changed societies in America and Britain. It would not do for the Communion. For British and American friends need to understand Africa, Asia and Latin America on their own terms and on their own turf. They need to move out of their parochial attitude to learn and embrace the histories and geographies of the wider world.

Williams compares theological education to playing a music instrument (CEFACS Lecture, 2004). I assume he sees the present problems with the Communion arise from a lack in theological skills that good education offers. ‘Let’s reeducate the Communion’ is the new clarion call. The Anglican Way that TEAC indeed is a musical score that makes for good background music: it offers soothing notes that drifts from nowhere to nowhere. Everything is reshaped and ideological purified; all is encompassing, provisional, incomplete and contextual. TEAC uses jargons that confuse rather illumine: What do “contemplative pragmatism”, “inhabiting doctrine”, “doing theology by preaching, liturgy, hymnody, and artistic creativity” mean in practice (See the Questions and Issues to be explored by the Target Group “the Anglican Way”)? Williams would learn well the lessons of the complete failure of similar projects that missionaries undertook in China in the early twentieth century. TEAC would do better if instead it explores what theological education is proper for British and American churches. They are the first who need reeducation. History of the worldwide church would be important in their curriculum. Learning languages other than English that they may converse with Christians of other dialects is another (Acts 2: 8-11).

Charles Maier speaks of writing history to be a way of discerning truth in this way: “The historian must create a narrative that allows for contending voices, that reveals the aspirations of all actors, the hitherto repressed and the hitherto privileged. . . . This does not mean banally insisting that both have a point. . . .It means listening to, testing, and ultimately making public their respective subnarratives or partial stories. To resort to a musical analogy: written history must be contrapuntal and not harmonic. . . . that the careful listener can follow them distinctly but simultaneously, hearing the whole together with the parts. (Charles Maier, “Doing History, Doing Justice” in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions, ed. R Rotberg and D Thompson (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000), 274-275).”

Williams and TEAC need to think through how we can encourage contrapuntal notes in the Communion. Lambeth Palace and the Communion Office should begin putting the use of public media and financial budget under the discipline of truth. I remember vividly a General Assembly of (Anglican) Council of the Church of East Asia in the late 1980s. Missionary agencies for the first time ceded to the request to reveal to regional Anglican churches their funding policies and financial budget. This step helped churches and mission agencies to build trust among one another. So far, Williams has not made a public stance on the ideological reshaping of the Communion that his colleagues in Lambeth and St Andrew’s House use to undercut discerning processes in the Communion.

Canterbury needs to discern the Communion agenda with the Primates. This is his duty and task in this changed time.

Pentecost 2006

    Comments & Responses

  1. Poon “tells it like it is”

    except that of course the communion agenda has BEEN DISCERNED.

    no more discenrment needs to be done! Only decisions made.

    Posted by  on  06/06  at  02:44 PM

  2. Decision #1: ECUSA is out. This cancer on the Body of Christ must be removed forthwith, and the faithful remnant given adequate oversight from a godly primate untainted by the radical revisionism of the West.

    Posted by James Gibson  on  06/07  at  04:47 AM

  3. At the heart of Dr Poon’s queries are the issues of authority and leadership in the Anglican Church and in particular, the authority of Scripture.

    That remains a knotty question that an Anglican Covenant must address upfront. It is at the heart of the present debate.

    There appears to be nothing in the public domain (i.e., the internet) that suggests that Biblical authority is being addressed in the context of ‘negotiating’ a Covenant.

    I assume such a covenant would need acceptance by each diocese and national church.  Not much chance of that, I suspect.

    It is difficul to understand why this notion of a ‘Covenant’ is being pursued at all, unless it is just another of the political panaceas that emerge so often when we try to find a lowest common level of agreement, not a via media but a via inferior.

    Ian Welch, layperson, Canberra

    Posted by  on  06/07  at  07:36 AM

  4. The Primates asked him to perform a task. He did it. They did not tell him how to implement the task.  If they wanted done in a given form they should have stated that in the request. The Primates are free to reject the plan. The Primates can also act in groups to offer other plans. Why not attempt a proposal of their own? Why put the Archbishop in charge in the first place? 

    “We read of ACC’s Chair playing the democratic-ACC card and apologizing without mandate to the Anglican Church of Canada.” The Primates do not have the authority to order ACC to do anything. They are not members of ACC and may it please God they never will be made members.

    “For British and American friends need to understand Africa, Asia and Latin America on their own terms and on their own turf. They need to move out of their parochial attitude to learn and embrace the histories and geographies of the wider world.” Parochial? Is that another way of saying different? The Global South is free to develop in any manner that it defines as best for itself. The Church of the West is equally free to develop that it sees as best for itself.

    “They are the first who need reeducation. History of the worldwide church would be important in their curriculum. Learning languages other than English that they may converse with Christians of other dialects is another (Acts 2: 8-11).” Why bother to learn a language that is not accepted as the language of business? Anglican - let me see is that related to English? We do know Greek, Latin and Hebrew would they do as business languages?

    Posted by  on  06/07  at  09:49 AM

  5. Poon touches on what many around the Communion are wondering about too. Perhaps he was a bit too strong in judgment of the motives behind the actions. I like to believe that ABC and ACO sould have manage it better but not without good intentions. And ABC and his office are working under tremendous pressures currently. But the points are well made and need to be said.

    It is heartening that there is some serious thinking (and talking) coming from folks like Poon. We all just need to think a lot more deeply about all that has been going on. In the midst of it, even as we debate, there are many signs of hope that responsible and well-informed Anglican leaders could help shape a new and stronger Communion. It is when we love the Church that we need to tell it as it is - often with passion - so that we hear each other clearly. 

    In a nuanced way, Poon jibes at other issues and it is too bad that some don’t quite get it (e.g Mcabe).


    Timothy, clergy in Global South

    Posted by  on  06/07  at  05:18 PM

  6. Ian: “It is difficul to understand why this notion of a ‘Covenant’ is being pursued at all, unless it is just another of the political panaceas that emerge so often when we try to find a lowest common level of agreement, not a via media but a via inferior.”

    The Windsor Report explains clearly why a Covenant may be needed. Read it if you can.


    Timothy, clergy in Global South

    Posted by  on  06/07  at  05:21 PM

  7. I am curious if Dr. Poon might clarify

    The Anglican Way, if it existed at all, does not consist of one mega-narrative that draws its strength from the technological and financial clout of Wall Street.

    Is “mega-narrative” interchangeable with “meta-narrative”?  If so, I have to firmly disagree with Dr. Poon: we do have a meta-narrative because we have been given a meta-narrative in Christ: Word, Sacrament, Church.  The Gospel is the ground of the meta-narrative of God’s work in the world.

    Second, I am in full agreement that the “Western” churches need theological education.  TEAC is welcoming of local works, but not quick to put up the recommendations.  It’s disappointing.  I think it would be poor to assume that ++Williams is unaware of the theological poverty of the Western churches, though.  I imagine he is quite well aware of it, actually.

    However, one must ask: what defines Anglicanism beyond its various local expressions?  In a very real sense, it ought not matter whether or not a book is written by someone in Africa or New Zealand or Cuba or Canada or England wherever: if it is Anglican, then it’s Anglican, right?  Or am I wrong?  If I am wrong, then Anglicanism doesn’t exist.  And if so, we’re wasting our time.

    Yet, I believe that there really is Anglican doctrine and it can be found quite clearly.  Go read St. Richard Hooker, or St. Augustine of Hippo, or St. Michael Ramsey, or St. Basil the Great, etc.  Go say the Nicene Creed.  Worship with the Book of Common Prayer (any version, for that matter).

    But again: What is Anglicanism beyond the local context?

    Posted by ben  on  06/08  at  12:18 AM

  8. ps I, too, believe that Dr. Poon has been a bit harsh in his criticism of ++Williams.  This paper was merely a working paper.  It is not the covenant. 

    I find it strange that there are those in the “Global South” that are upset by constitution of the committee.  As an American, no Americans were invited to help compose this working paper.  But I do not care?  Why should I care if they are all from Sri Lanka or Tokyo or London or wherever?  I recognize the failure of ACO to make Global South news as available on the AC website - indeed, it is primarily England that gets the news.  But, is this entirely ACO’s fault?  I don’t know.  But even if it is, the composition of the working group from around London need not be taken as a slight to the Global South.  One wonders whether or not an inferiority complex isn’t the reason for criticizing this paper so harshly?

    We do well not to assume.  We do well to be charitable.  “Suspicion will steal the purity from your soul.” - St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love In Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female” - and neither Western nor Southern!

    Posted by ben  on  06/08  at  12:26 AM

  9. Ben

    The Windsor report and proposed Covenant version along with some practical guidelines is already a ‘working paper’ of sorts. Just read ths paras on the Canon lasw and Covenant. Next stage should build on it and here is where RW and Primates should be expected to select the team, widely represented, to help draft the covenant and discuss the process. Such a team should be expected to be in constant contact w their Primates. This way you get a wider buy in and participation, allaying fears of control, selectiveness in determining the process. These things have happen in the past before and may explain the lost of trust i.e. suspicions.

    RW need to lead it with the Primates and the Communion need them to do that. The rest of us, no matter how gifted, cannot do their job.

    Once Rw and the Primates have determined the direction, it is easier for the rest to work through the details.

    I dont think it is ‘inferiority complex’ - these folks are highly regarded in their acedemic world! There is a lot of concern as you can imagine for many who love the Church and oft times, frustrated by the lack of clear leadership and communcation between those who should be talking.

    And as we know, the PoR is bearly competent.

    By the way, Michael is not on the Global South leadership in anyway. He just simply say things which many of us are also asking.

    Posted by  on  06/08  at  01:17 AM

  10. from Ben: Item 8

    “One wonders whether or not an inferiority complex isn’t the reason for criticizing this paper so harshly?

    We do well not to assume.  We do well to be charitable.  “Suspicion will steal the purity from your soul.” - St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love In Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female” - and neither Western nor Southern!”

    There is also the sin of envy to consider. Pride is also a factor. Any attempt at a real dialogue ceased long ago when the Global South said it will be our way or no way for the ‘Communion’.

    Posted by  on  06/08  at  01:44 AM

  11. mccabe: ‘Any attempt at a real dialogue ceased long ago when the Global South said it will be our way or no way for the ‘Communion’.

    Another sweeping statement. I think it only exists in a media-world with no correpondence reality.

    Posted by  on  06/08  at  07:03 AM
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