It is hard not to see the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury as a judgment on the Anglican Communion. Here was an intellectually formidable, spiritually profound, morally courageous leader whose job was made unbearable by gangs of intolerant, uncharitable, divisive and squabbling intellectual minnows. The event should give the Church of England, and those most responsible for its future, pause for thought. Is it really going to have to look for a leader who has the constitution of an ox and the hide of a rhinoceros as his chief qualifications? Is it going to have to admit that it is not looking for spiritual, moral or intellectual leadership, because that would cause controversy?
There are some truths about the C of E that some people seem afraid to state. First, it is a Protestant church, and the Queen is bound to defend its Protestant status. Its priests and bishops, according to Roman Catholic teaching, are just lay people, not priests at all. The idea that it is really part of a wider Catholic church is a daydream. Second, it is a national church. It is the church of the English people. From its foundation, it has held together a range of religious beliefs, and is officially (on its website) divided into catholic, evangelical, and liberal sections. There is no place in it for people who say that only a certain sort of Christians are ‘real’ Christians — yet the oddity is that it is full of people who say precisely that. They are suffering from some form of willful blindness.
Third, it is a church established by law. Parliament is responsible for its liturgies and doctrines. It is woven into the political life of the nation: the ceremonies of national life are celebrated according to its rituals, and the monarch is enthroned with its blessing. Judges who say that English laws can make no distinction between religions and beliefs have just forgotten, or have wished to obscure, the facts of English constitutional history.
That these truths may seem outdated, and are denied by so many, illustrates the crisis the C of E is in. What sort of a religious organisation is it? And is there any place for any such organisation in England any more (note that I am speaking only of England)?
Alain de Botton has recently proposed to establish an atheist cathedral in London, apparently not realising that there are already atheists in our Anglican cathedrals who feel quite comfortable in their positions. But then it all depends on what you mean by atheism. If you mean there is no objective but invisible person called ‘God’ who looks after people and makes sure they get parking spaces when they pray for them, quite a lot of Anglicans are atheists. But if you mean there are no objective moral ideals and demands, no ultimate mystery about the beauty and complexity of the cosmos, or that art does not open the mind to depths of significance and meaning, then very few people are atheists.
Evolutionary psychology suggests that the outlook for a wholly secular society is poor. Some feeling for God — that is, for the sense of a reality other and greater than what we observe with our senses, but somehow known in and through the sensory world — is built by evolution into the structure of the human brain. We are, at our best (and our worst), moved by devoting ourselves to causes greater than ourselves. Religions act as foci for such hardwired beliefs, giving them particular names and forms.
It matters what sort of religion we have. Closed-minded, anti-scientific, intolerant and hate-fuelled religion is bad — but it too has its roots in our evolutionary past. However, as Richard Dawkins says, we are not the prisoners of our genes. We can modify, but not wholly uproot, our genetic inheritance. Rapid changes in English society make such modifications unavoidable. The opportunity for the C of E today is so to modify its traditional basis that it becomes the guardian and tutor of our natural religious instincts.
The Protestant heritage can best be expressed today as the encouragement of freedom of thought and rational criticism of all authority. The church should raise the big questions about human meaning, purpose and value, and encourage their exploration, without pretending it has the final answers.
The national basis of the church must today take fully into account the diversity of modern England, and aim to be fully inclusive — open to all without exception, but not seeking to decry alternative options of thought and belief where they are conducive to human well-being. It will never be, and never has been, the church of all English people. But it can be a national church, in expressing the moral and spiritual ideals of our society and aiming to promote compassion and spirituality throughout society.
Establishment in its present form may not remain. But the church can continue to reflect and help to shape the moral and spiritual values upon which our society at its best is founded — freedom, democracy, justice, a concern for the flourishing of all persons, and a concern for the weak and disadvantaged. All religious and humanist groups can co-operate in this, but it is beneficial to have a national institution formally committed to promoting those values.
This requires a liberal and humane approach to the Christian faith, a commitment which is not narrowly restrictive and doctrinally inflexible, but which preserves a distinctive vision of God as morally demanding, unrestrictedly loving and personally enabling. That vision is seen in many different ways in the person of Jesus and the inner power of the Spirit which filled his life and is present in human hearts. There is no thought here that God is not seen in other ways, too. But this is a way that should attract by a desire to love the good for its own sake, not by a fear of punishment by a basically vindictive God.
Many — I hope, most — Anglicans in England already believe this. But there can be a certain timidity about making senior appointments in the church which, afraid of the anger of those who want a much more exclusive and doctrinally divisive church, and who seem obsessed with gender and sexuality, will opt for a safe and therefore insipid archbishop. What the Church of England needs is an uncompromisingly liberal archbishop, who can lead a Protestant (which must now mean critical and questioning), national (which must now mean inclusive and tolerant) and established (which must now mean committed to the promotion of broad humane and spiritual values) church in an age of rapid scientific advance and moral change.
But isn’t this just what Archbishop Rowan tried to do? I think it is, for to be liberal in this sense does not entail that you have to be theologically unorthodox, and he was not. So am I just asking for another sacrificial victim to the petty hatreds and prejudices of the church? No, I am asking for something much harder — a fundamental change in the structures of the church and its ministry.
First, the C of E would have to stop pretending to be part of one unified worldwide Christian church. It would have to accept that it is one distinctive Christian institution, with friendly relations, but no desire for institutional unity, with many other churches — including African Episcopal churches. Second, it would have to stop any ordained ministers from pretending that they alone are ‘true’ Christians, and get them to accept, as a condition of ordination, that they are part of one inclusive church with many diverse interpretations of Scripture and tradition, none of them certain and unchangeable. Third, it would have to accept that its real basis is not the acceptance of some formal creed, but a basic commitment to an objective morality, and loyalty to a God believed to be revealed in and through Jesus, with many interpretations of that revelation being possible.
This should not really be difficult, since it is what the C of E in larg e part already is. But it needs to be said, unequivocally and clearly. The C of E is a liberal and humane expression of the spiritual aspirations and experience of the people of England, built on the foundation of a long Christian heritage. The most important task for the C of E now is to establish whether or not its leading members regard this as its distinctive identity. If they think it is, and say it is, the next archbishop will have an easier ride.
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