Rowan Williams might be forgiven if he agreed with George Orwell’s observation that the worst advertisements for both Christianity and socialism are their adherents. The election of the Right Rev Katharine Schori to be Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States may be as much a reflection of the rivalries within that body as a calculated challenge to the wider Anglican community. Yet it will still have the effect of pouring more petrol on a raging fire. Her elevation may well entrench attitudes within the Church of England over the appointment of women bishops, deepen the Anglican divide on homosexuality and render a formal schism more probable.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is all too aware that the Lambeth Conference over which he must preside in two years’ time may be the moment of final conflict, not of compromise or consensus. It has been his misfortune to personify the trauma of the Anglican faith more broadly. Dr Williams is by instinct a liberal, as his initial decision to back the celibate homosexual Jeffrey John to be Bishop of Reading three years ago indicated, but has discovered that his post obliges him to act as an institutional conservative (as his subsequent move to persuade Dr John to stand down illustrated). Ever since, his tenure has been framed by the fear of his flock fragmenting.
The Anglican Church today appears less a “rainbow coalition” than a cast of angry, incompatible, colours. The Church of England in England is split between the liberals, the evangelicals (who come in a variety of shades) and the Anglo-Catholics. Internationally, it is polarised between sections (but by no means all) of the American Church, who see themselves as having escaped from the dominant Moral Majority tendency in Protestantism and of Africans, notably from Nigeria, whose principal theological competition has been from Islam. This has long been a potentially unstable combination.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has sought to urge restraint on everybody. He did so again in his reaction to the elevation of Bishop Schori yesterday. His aim has been to minimise public hostilities and then seek a truce that will keep all sides within the fold at the Lambeth Conference. Yet it is surely obvious that containing Anglican factionalism is beyond his capabilities.
That being so, Dr Williams has to take certain risks with his leadership. He would be wise to recognise that a serious dispute is unavoidable and to dedicate himself to finding the least damaging formula for easing friction inside the Church. It is not impossible that the warring camps might be willing to remain in a federation, a looser organisation than the current Church, in which they were all in communion with the Archbishopric of Canterbury, but not, technically, with each other.
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To achieve that end, Dr Williams has to abandon the notion of being an “honest broker”, which, in reality, has made him appear weak and become an advocate for his own solution. The quest is to manage differences rather than hope to split them.
The Archbishop needs to provide a series of addresses and sermons setting out his vision for a decentralised Church, preferably in a language and style that is accessible to those who do not hold a doctorate in theology, and make the case for Anglicans to stick together, but with a less adhesive glue. Divorce is not a course that a faith should undertake lightly: an unorthodox marriage would be a better option.