Global South Anglican

On Schism and the Anglican Communion…

Simon: We were talking about what your job involved and there are some grand themes which are interesting to discuss. There’s the nuts and bolts of being the Archbishop. There are ‘Church of England parish notices’ and some of these are very important issues. And most of the headlines recently about the world-wide Anglican Communion have featured words like ‘rebels’ and ‘schism’ and ‘row’. Is there anything wrong, in your opinion, with schism. Is it always a bad thing?

Rowan: I think if schism were always a bad thing we would not have had the Reformation and the Church of England wouldn’t be here. You know there are life and death issues, I think, where some people in the Church have to say: ‘This is a real major conscience question: we can’t stick together.’ That’s what happened at the Reformation. It’s what happened in the German churches in the 1930s. And I think it’s important that we remember those cases are there in our history. I think we’ve also got to be aware of the danger of - something again really - romanticizing, overegging our present situation and thinking, perhaps, we’ve got to those situations when we haven’t, we’re just dramatizing.

Simon: So, in your opinion, can this divide between the African churches - to oversimplify it - on one side and the liberal churches of Canada and America and, to an extent, this country, can that be bridged?

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