John Twisleton on The Anglican Communion in New Directions

Keeping the main things the main things

Sitting in my mud confessional in the interior of Guyana dealing with a brisk flow of penitents compared favourably with lonely hours in the confessional at my previous location at St Wilfrith, Moorends or in the parishes of St Luke, Holbrooks or St Giles, Horsted Keynes later in my ministry. What a privilege it seemed to spread my wings for a few years to the wider Anglican Communion and a Diocese of unquestionable Anglo-Catholic privilege with faithful keen to do the main thing in Christianity which is coming to God and doing business with him, here in a direct way hallowed by the Christian centuries. It was a special honour to run the seminary created as memorial to Archbishop Alan Knight, Bishop of Guyana from 1937 to 1979, who made his Diocese one of the great centres of  Catholicism in the Anglican Communion. My own service at the Alan Knight Training Centre (AKTC)  for indigenous clergy, rewarded by a Canonry, bore evident fruit not least in the consecration of one former seminarian whom I spoke to last year at his first visit to England for the troublesome 2022 Lambeth Conference.  

 Mainstream believing

Writing about the Anglican Communion must start for me with my investment in priestly and ministerial formation in the Diocese of Guyana since 1987 where the struggle to ‘keep the main things the main things’ was less against ecclesial innovation and biblical conservatism than making sure the seminarians and their families deepened their discipleship as well as getting food in drought and medicine to counter malaria. Church attendance was an order of magnitude greater than in my native Church of England so I felt my priestly gifts were being very well used, not least in raising up more priests. Guyana’s forested interior remains broadly inaccessible so before AKTC a priest would go to centres annually to celebrate the eucharist. After AKTC over twenty Amerindian (indigenous) priests were present across the land to say Mass daily, foster Christian discipleship, raise up vocations and challenge the mining and logging enterprises which often devastate Amerindian communities by polluting rivers and destroying the forest. The clergy and people of the Diocese of Guyana remain dear to my heart even as their Faith, for the most part, steers mainstream like mine and that of many readers of New Directions away from the church innovation and biblical conservatism infecting the Anglican Communion. Keeping the main things the main things honours the faith of the Church through the ages refusing to betray it or narrow it down.

Church innovation?

The Anglican Communion retains much of the richness and momentum of Christian faith I encountered in Guyana and back home in England, seeking to make the meaning and power of the word of God and the eucharist available to all, in season and out of season. Since the Reformation, which asserted the primacy of personal faith, Christians have divided over the doctrine of the church and the necessity of episcopacy. Anglicans attempt a balanced view seeing Christ’s authority carried forward in Christian tradition on the ‘three legged stool’ of scripture, tradition and reason but with the last seen as inhabited by the Holy Spirit. The third leg makes clear how Christianity has an eye to thinking in the wider community whilst keeping loyal to scripture and the consensus of faith granted to the church by the Holy Spirit through the ages. What is difficult about Christianity today is both its counter cultural nature and our need to discern, in a fast changing culture, the challenges of the Holy Spirit to develop afresh the way faith is lived out. Over my lifetime the Church of England has given qualified approval to the remarriage of the divorced within the lifetime of their previous spouse and the ordination of women. It is now heading towards approval of the dedication of same-sex marriages. All three developments have or will include a provision for dissenters rare in the Anglican Communion but a privilege of the English sense of fair play enshrined in our Law. Dissenters like myself are promised to have their rights protected until the specified changes, possibly gaining the support of the universal Church, become a clear development rather than an innovation. Significant lesion of Anglican membership to Roman Catholicism or ‘continuing Anglican’ Churches over the years seems linked to the frustration of bearing with a Christian tradition without a hardy referee like a Pope. The significant challenge from a major section of the Anglican Communion to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lesser ‘first among equals’ referee status through his approving current Church of England legislation is the fruit of a similar frustration particularly among Evangelical Anglicans worldwide.

Biblical conservatism

Since February 2023 General Synod recommended approval of same-sex union blessings both the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans and the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) have announced a state of impaired communion with the Church of England and that they will no longer recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury as "first among equals" in the Anglican Communion. The GAFCON communiqué from Kigali has this conservative evangelical assertion: ‘The Bible is God’s Word written, breathed out by God as it was written by his faithful messengers (2 Timothy 3.16). It carries God’s own authority, is its own interpreter, and it does not need to be supplemented, nor can it ever be overturned by human wisdom’. Whereas would-be church innovators risk displacing scripture and tradition, GAFCON and its followers risk displacing tradition and reason as they come close to affirming the literal interpretation of scripture. The Church Times (21 April 2023) however quotes one English observer:  ‘Comparing the conference in Kigali with the Synod’s February meeting in London, Mr Pearson-Gee said: “If General Synod had 100th of the joy that is present in this gathering, it would be transformative. . . There’s no talk [here] about how churches are going to go carbon-neutral: it’s all about mission and evangelism, it’s all about the Great Commission, and, as a result, I think there’s a huge level of excitement here.”’ A strength of Evangelicals is keeping the ‘main thing’ of joyous outreach the main thing. Kigali’s concern about undermining Christian mission in many cultures which see homosexual acts as alien stands in tension with the call to preach God’s love as inclusive of all people that lies at best behind General Synod’s recommendations. The plain sense of scripture seems hostile to homosexual physical acts but using plain words of the Bible without interpretation can be pastorally damaging. The widespread Anglican reading of the Bible with an eye to tradition and Spirit-inspired reason is godly and more than submitting to ‘human wisdom’ (Kigali communiqué).

Keeping the main things the main things

The Anglican Communion is being shaken to pieces. Those on the Catholic wing have impaired communion with the centre due to the ordination of women without consensus. Now disturbance of the Reformed or conservative Evangelical wing who, with traditional Anglo-Catholics reject same sex marriage as an innovation, has raised a tumult splitting the Communion and displacing the Archbishop of Canterbury. Whether church innovation or biblical conservatism are countered, time will tell. Meanwhile, writing at Pentecost, I am reminded of another way of looking at  the Anglican conundrum. As we work and pray for church unity some are seeing a bigger picture opening up both consoling and exciting under the auspices of the prophetic movement True Life in God (TLIG) tlig.org. The vision is of the Holy Spirit’s quest for more hunger for God across the churches, the visible union of Christians, one altar, one date of Easter, one episcopacy, one reading of scripture on things like sexuality and an universal primate and referee to better keep the main things the main things. I recommend the spiritual ecumenism of TLIG as one servant of these ends dear to many Anglicans. Meanwhile we continue to pray: Come, Holy Spirit!

Canon Dr John F Twisleton Pentecost 28 May 2023