THE ANGLICAN UNSETTLEMENT

Church of England is not fit to lead at the Lambeth Conference

cutting-files who changes his name every decade or so and has been variously known as Barnes, Robinson and Jenkins. Anglicanism, and the Anglican Idea mysteriously survive. It was partly with the aim of celebrating the Anglican Idea that Archbishop Benson convened the Lambeth Conference in 1888. It was not just an Imperial exercise, in which the Primate of England patted colonials on their heads. Already there were in the Anglican communion flourishing autocephalous churches which owed no direct descent to Canterbury. The most obvious example is the Protestant Episcopal Church of America, which de- rived its orders from the Scottish Episcopal Church. Benson knew this, and I think he wanted a conference at which Anglicanism could take stock of itself and also very politely suggest to the outside world, not 20 years after a rather different assembly in the Vatican, that it was possible for bishops to convene without (in Bishop Butler's memorable phrase) 'pretending to gifts of the Holy Ghost'.

The arrival of the Lambeth fathers for the conference of 1988 is a good moment for the English to remind themselves that Anglicanism is something much wider and stronger than the national Church. Over the last decade the Church of England has suffered from three fairly major handicaps. The first has been a hostile and ignorant press. Journalism (not just ecclesiastical) has become tangibly coarser in recent years. The particular qualities which shine most brightly in the Church of England (tolerance, delicacy, responsiveness to nuances of meaning and experience) are not easily described by the five-inch brush of the columnists. If a man believes in the Bible but is far from being a fundamentalist, and accepts the findings of modern biblical scholarship, it is easier and more exciting to say that he is an atheist. Those who would want discussion of sexual morality to be seen in the general context of our fallen nature can be seen much more entertainingly as Wets Dithering About Gays. Since even intelligent commentators seem to think that it is the Church's prime task to teach Simple Morality, and in particular to condemn homosexuality and divorce, it is not surprising that the vulgar papers should be no better. And, of course, we have grown used to the fact that any pronouncement by churchmen about urban life, or poverty or the place which money should have in our lives is seen as a belligerent attack on the Prime Minister.

The bishops who are in the firing line on these occasions are, alas, themselves the second great handicap of the contemporary Church of England. Any practising Angli- can who has met a representative handful of parish clergy in this country must have wondered why so few, if any, of them get promoted. The vicars and curates you meet tend to be hard-working, sensible, pastor- ally minded people. They can stand up once a week in a pulpit and give utterance without making fools of themselves. Of how few contemporary bishops could this be said! The Revd Michael Saward, Vicar of Ealing, has convincingly argued that the Evangelicals are the most lively group in the Church at present, but they are repre- sented most inadequately in the House of Bishops. Are the men who appoint the bishops really like Sir Humphrey on Yes, Prime Minister? Why do bishops tend to get drawn from the tired old stock of theological colleges and, deader still, theology faculties at universities? Anyone familiar with academic life knows that it is mainly the dum-dums who read theology. To choose bishops from among the professional theologians is to go shopping in a bargain basement where the goods, never of high quality in the first place, have a very uncertain shelf life.

The third disability suffered by the C of E at the present time is its General Synod. Other churches in the Anglican world have synodical government so it seemed a good idea (particularly to Anglo- Catholics) that the English should follow suit. But they didn't. Few Anglicans in England ever vote for the elections to Deanery or Diocesan Synods and it is from this rag-bag that the members of General Synod are drawn. It is inevitable that those who get elected will be those whose par- ticular hobby is sitting on committees, passing resolutions and enjoying the sur- prisingly frequent free trips to York and London which membership of the Synod affords. The idea of their representing 'the mind of the Church' is simply laughable.

Given our three handicaps — the press, the bishops and the Synod — it is inevit- able that this year's Lambeth Conference will seem like a fiasco — the end of Anglicanism, the conference to end all conferences, etc. Every time the Bishop of London is seen having coffee with one of his confreres on the campus of Kent University, there will be speculations ab- out a Lefebvre-style schism. The great issue will be seen to be whether or not women in Newark, New Jersey might be raised to the episcopate.

But the arrival of the overseas bishops is an opportunity to see things differently.

Anglicans in England tend to be apologetic about themselves, and to speak as if it would really be much better to belong to some other denomination. Lambeth might remind us that Anglicanism has very posi- tive qualities of its own. You see those qualities most clearly in those parts of the world where you could be pardoned for thinking that the sex, or erotic preference, of the clergy was of rather marginal im- portance.

One thinks of the Middle East, and especially of the Church in Israel. In the Bishop of Jerusalem, Samir Kaffity, the Anglican Church has a tough-minded man of faith. As he motors down each week to visit the wounded in the Anglican-run hospital in Gaza, I do not suppose that the resolutions of the English General Synod are uppermost in his mind. His Cathedral Church of St George feels like an oasis of common sense, of calmness, of Christianity which does not need to justify itself either by extreme dogmatic pronouncements, or by the gun. In such a setting, the tradition- al Prayer Book phrases — `to pass our time in rest and quietness' — 'in keeping the mean between the two extremes' — 'de- cently and in order' — lose all the quaint old-fashionedness which they might have in England. They are precisely those qual- ities which are needed in that political atmosphere. They are precisely the qual- ities kept alive by the Anglican church in the Middle East.

The feeling given off by St George's, Jerusalem, is similar to the feeling you get if you spend some time in St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh. Once again, every- thing I have said about the Israeli situation applies here. The qualities displayed by Church of Ireland people, and by their calm, well-ordered church interiors, are very much more than a sum of negatives.

They are the qualities most urgently needed in Ireland — calm, balance, com- mon sense, reverence. I am afraid that they are not qualities which have always been abundantly obvious in some of the non- Anglican denominations which perhaps enjoy greater popularity in the holy land of Ireland.

In South Africa, Once again, one sees very distinctively Anglican qualities of decency, and they do not look wet or weak in the least. Archbishop Tutu's courage, like Samir Kaffity's in Jerusalem, is mani- fested precisely in those qualities which, were he a bishop in England, the newspap- ers would most distort or despise. When one saw newsfilm of Tutu restraining vio- lent mobs with his own hands, removing burning tyres from people's necks, and risking imprisonment by confronting the South African police with their own brutal- ity, you saw that there was a great strength in 'keeping the mean between the two extremes'. Tutu has many enemies among right-wing journalists in England. But he has never budged from a twin position of demanding that his people be treated like people, while abhorring the anarchy and violence which the regime in South Africa has provoked. All his values manifestly derive from the Bible and the Prayer Book.

I do not think that South Africa, Israel and Ireland are stray examples. I do not think it is an accident that the voice of reasonableness in these places is so often the Anglican voice. (Not exclusively the Anglican voice, but distinctively so.) I find the American church very inspir- ing. I know it is meant to be the villain of the piece at present, by those who break their hearts about ordained women. In fact, when I go to the USA I find a church which is vigorous, and religious and im- pressive. One could list a hundred exam- ples, but one which strikes any visitor to New York is the Cathedral of St John the Divine. It is not only one of the most (the most?) splendid Gothic churches in the world, whose high standard of music and liturgy uplift the most hard-bitten casual visitor. It is also the centre of an extraordi- narily energetic programme of educational and social work. Most readers will know it is on the edge of Harlem and some of the worse 'urban problems' in the world. As in some of the great slum churches of Victo- rian England, the splendours of worship go hand in hand at St John the Divine with tireless and imaginative involvement in social works. The one thing grows out of the other. The Dean (an almost alarmingly energetic figure) has personally set up a Youth Opportunity Scheme which rivals our entire national programme in terms of money raised and numbers trained for work.

The Lambeth Conference should be a chance for the English to learn something from all these sister churches. I could have given examples of the sheer heroism of church people in Uganda; or the relief work being done by Anglicans in Ethiopia; or the exemplary and pioneering work done for Aids victims in the USA and Australia. It is not a case of 'their theology is so wishy-washy that you must fall back on defending them for their good works'. It is rather that you can discern what their theology is by what they do. By their fruits. . . .

Anglicanism should not be judged by the sometimes sad example of the Church of England. Of course, at the Lambeth Con- ference, there will be headline seekers. Some of the American bishops are bound to be very silly. Those of us who actually go to church, as opposed to merely reading about bishops in the newspapers, will continue to find alive there the values which in other parts of the world are both so threatened and so strong. I am glad to be in communion with St John the Divine, New York, with the Anglican Church in South Africa and Jerusalem and Mel- bourne. Above all, I am glad to be in communion with the Church of Ireland. These places and people enshrine values which are not to be despised or taken for granted.

F.E.Smith claimed that the Welsh Dis- establishment Bill 'shocked the conscience of every Christian community in Europe', and we may be grateful that he did so because it provoked one of Chesterton's funniest poems. The passage of time can make quarrels within the Church of Eng- land seem hugely insular. Every time the issue of women's ordination crops up, there will be journalists 'posting bills on the Cotswold hills to tell us we're in the soup'. The arrival of the Lambeth fathers, carrying with them so broad an experience of human life in all its agonising complex- ity, should help to put things in perspec- tive. Like Welsh Disestablishment, the Women issue is one which Christians will survive. 'Chuck it, Smith' should be their final hymn before the bishops disperse and once more go their separate ways.