What Kind of Church Do We Want the Anglican Communion to Be?

I think a great deal of our recent struggles have been attempts to answer that question. While much of the debate has been played out around issues of sexuality, biblical interpretation, ecclesiastical authority, or cultural values, these are only the outward and visible signs of a much deeper struggle. The core question is about community.

What kind of community do we want our church to be? How do we define it, and even more to the point, how do we live it?

While this fundamental issue seems new to us in light of the headlines about our contemporary divisions within the Anglican Communion, in truth it is as old as the idea of "church" itself. The gospel narrative gives us an insight into how the very first followers of Jesus began the debate over community as they walked beside their Teacher.

"What were you arguing about?" Jesus asks them. Their somewhat shame-faced but very human reply was that they were arguing about who gets to be in charge of defining community. After all, whoever is "greatest" gets the final word in answering the question about what kind of church we are. Much to their dismay, and I hope to the dismay of many soapbox leaders in the modern church, Jesus refused to give anyone the definitive role in prescribing community. That was a position that he reserved to himself because it was ultimately a judgment call and the one thing he wanted us to avoid was judging one another.

Our own apostolic frustration is clear: if we can not pretend to have the right to impose our own vision of community on others, and, if we can not sit in judgment on others who disagree with us: then what are we supposed to do? By the standards of the world, any community that would be so free and open would be too close to chaos for us to handle. It would mean that we would have to learn to live together even when we disagreed. It would mean that we would have to love one another even when we felt the others were completely wrong. It would mean that we would have to recognize that there was some sense of community greater than our own subjective opinions. And finally, it would mean that we would have to accept the fact that God loved us all equally, even if we tried to pretend that God loved us more.

What kind of chaotic community would that be?

It would be the same kind of chaos that we call family.

At EDS, we are committed to the care, nurture, protection, and growth of the Jesus family. We believe that what Jesus told us we must do. When Jesus said that we were not to "lord it over one another," but serve one another, he intended for us to do just that. When he told us not to judge, he expected us to act accordingly. When he said that we were to be constant in forgiveness, he meant it. When he denied us the right to forbid others from teaching in his name, he was serious. Whether it is theologically convenient for us, politically correct for us, or emotionally comfortable for us: at EDS we are holding to the gospel of Christ Jesus because we are taking the risk of living into the church as the family of God.

Jesus of Nazareth did not come to create organized religion. He came to invite us into family: into that chaotic, loving, frustrating, organic, flexible, forgiving, maddening community we all recognize because we were all born into it and live in it every day of our lives. As small as it may be, as large as it may grow, we are all familiar with the deep human need to be part of a family. The great test before the Anglican Communion today is not about sex, theology, or culture. It is about family. Are we willing to be a family or not? Are we willing to live together as the Teacher told us to live? As a community caught in the inevitable cycles of disagreement, are we willing to stop our own posturing long enough to listen to the Lord when he turns to ask us: "so what are you arguing about this time?"

© 2005 Episcopal Divinity School. Reprinted with permission from EDS News, Spring 2005, Volume XXX No. 2.

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston is President and Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
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