Erika and I had a long discussion on Facebook about myrather controversial post ‘Some good advice for Rowan’. My concern, in the discussion, was missionamongst the people of England. My feeling is that we expect our public figuresto be more accessible than in the past, and a good relationship with the Pressis important. In addition to this, values have changed and authenticity is seenas one of the most important virtues, hence Rowan’s apparent turn around on thehomosexuality issue is difficult.
Erika pointed out that anything Rowan says on the issue willbe distorted by the Press, and if Rowan explicitly expressed his personal viewsthen various Provinces would take their bat home. She then mused:
Maybe that's the problem, that Rowan sees himself first andforemost as head of the Communion, not of the CoE, and it may well be true thatwhat's good for the one is not good for the other. I don't know how hedeals with that tension?
I think this is very true, I have noticed it many times overthe last couple of years on various issues. The most recent is the Covenantdebate, where I was surprised that the material that was sent to the Dioceseswas extremely biased on the Pro-Covenant side. I assumed that a fair debatewould be a priority. Someone commented to me that of course Lambeth would sendout Pro-Covenant material – after all it was Lambeth and the Archbishop ofCanterbury who have backed the document.
It seems to me that the Province of Englandwould be better served if the role of Primate of the Church of England and therole of Head of the Anglican Communion were separated. I think there must be endlesstensions for him between the two roles. I think we need someone focussed onhelping us with mission in England and I believe that there are directconflicts between the corollaries of that objective and the challenges ofkeeping the Communion together. Erika goes on to say:
I certainly am beginning to think that we need a debate about the roleof the ABC and whether it is right that he should also be head of the CoE (oreven that he should always come from within the CoE, come to that!). If theWakefield vote is anything to go by, synodical Government is still quitehealthy here, although I think the link between PCCs and Deanery Synods andmore than that, between Deaneries and Diocesans is appallingly weak. If we do wantgrassroot involvement and not just church politicians, maybe that's where weneed to start.
I think this is an exciting idea. I would love the churchesthat I serve to feel empowered to influence the Church of England. When Itrained as an engineer, I was taught a style of management called ‘TotalQuality Management’ which is an empowering grass-roots style of running acompany. Each week I lead a ‘Continuous Improvement Group’ which consisted of thepeople who worked for me on the shop floor. They were the ones who were at thecoal face – they understood the frustrations and the things that stopped themin their ‘mission’ to get the product out. By understanding their frustrationsand their ideas, and the ideas of everyone, we influenced the whole company tobe more effective. We all became interested and knowledgeable in the workings ofthe whole company. Morale went up withefficiency – we wanted to come to work to make a difference. As Erika says, Itoo would love to see the whole thing more strongly connected up from thegrassroots to the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, the Church of England is a loose federationand this may be challenging, as BishopAlan says:
The simple fact is you can’t write a cheque to “TheChurch of England” because it doesn’t, in any simple corporate form, exist, letalone have a bank account! What does exist is a messy bundle of severalthousand ancient and modern trusts and corporations in context .
The other question is whether we all think we are agrassroots organisation. Certainly that video introducing the Churchof England says we are, and I liked that a lot. But do we all agree? Erika commented that:
The role of the Communion has been debated through the issueof homosexuality and there seems to be an interesting split that those whoare in favour of women priests and gay rights are also more liberal in generaloutlook and in favour of a democratic church, whereas those who want toimpose their own traditional views on sexuality and gender roles tend also tofavour more centralised and policed structures of governance.
Erika and I want to open up this debate – what do you think?