Cross-posted at Communion in Conflict

I have not even had time to (re-)read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pentecost letter before being presented with another primatial communication: A Pastoral Letter to The Episcopal Church, which will probably, like papal encyclicals, become better known by its opening words, “Pentecost continues!”

 The second sentence is a wonderfully succinct summation of the dominant progressive perspective and its central Scriptural hermeneutic: “Pentecost is most fundamentally a continuing gift of the Spirit, rather than a limitation or quenching of that Spirit.” I particularly appreciate that last phrase, because it is an allusion to 1 Thessalonians 5:19. As I have written elsewhere, 1 John 4:1 counsels, “test the spirits” and 1 Thessalonians 5:19 enjoins, “Do not quench the Spirit.” The goal of Conflict Ecclesiology has always been to seek a “space” wherein one can “test the spirits” while being careful to “quench not the Spirit.” I have written at length elsewhere about the challenges this balancing act presents (if you search my blog for the keyword “quench,” you will find those posts). My main critique of progressives on my blog lo these many years is that in their anxiety not to quench the Spirit, they often fail to test the spirits, and my main critique of traditionalists is the converse, that in their anxiety to test the spirits they risk quenching the Spirit. The Presiding Bishop here levels this latter charge against the Archbishop of Canterbury, without however addressing how she and the progressive wing of the Episcopal Church may or may not be adequately testing the spirits.

Instead, “Pentecost continues!” provides a useful précis of the progressive metanarrative. Already, those on the more traditionalist side of things, such as my friend Fr. Tony Clavier, have begun to challenge the Presiding Bishop’s historical assumptions and accuracy. I am no historian, but I do know that history is often deployed by all sides in a conflict much the same way Scripture is: as proof-text and self-justification, and so I think that the Presiding Bishop’s use of history here is less informative as an objective presentation of facts about the past and more useful as a guide to the progressive mindset, which values and privileges its own understandings of such things as diversity, inclusion, and justice far above those which the traditionalist mindset values and privileges, such as unity, consensus, and discipline. This is not to say that progressives do not also value unity, consensus, and discipline, or that traditionalists have no regard for diversity, inclusion, and justice; simply that in the “hierarchy of truths” that each mindset has constructed, these values are differently ordered, sometimes leading to misunderstandings, conflicts, recriminations, and — most importantly (to my mindset), talking past each other.

In future posts I hope to delve more deeply into the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pentecost letter as well as into the progressive narrative so eloquently displayed in the Presiding Bishop’s pastoral letter. For now, I would simply like to highlight where both letters surprisingly converge, that is, where they actually display something like real dialogue, wherein the parties do not talk past each other, but to each other, mind to mind and heart to heart, and proceed from there to a few observations on where they talk past each other.

Significantly, the Presiding Bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury both point to an essential feature of life in communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury writes, “A time of transition, by definition, does not allow quick solutions … and it is a time when, ideally, we need more than ever to stay in conversation.” The Presiding Bishop writes, “We do earnestly hope for continued dialogue with those who disagree, for we believe that the Spirit is always calling us to greater understanding.” I am sure the Presiding Bishop would agree that the “greater understanding” to which the Spirit perpetually calls us is not necessarily the understanding that we advocate, nor that of one’s opponents, but may be something entirely surprising and other — not merely a Hegelian synthesis, but a transcendent gift of grace that allows us to live in communion even in the midst of conflict.

Where the Presiding Bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury are talking past each other, unfortunately, is precisely on the issue of what constitutes an unwarranted “imposition.” The archbishop’s letter makes it clear that he views the actions of the Episcopal Church as well as the cross-border interventions of other churches as unwarranted impositions. The Presiding Bishop makes it clear that she views the archbishop’s attempts to exercise the very limited disciplinary measures afforded to him by his office as primus inter pares as unwarranted impositions.

But again, there is one note of agreement. The archbishop acknowledges that “The sobering truth is that often our attempts to share the Gospel effectively in our setting can create problems for those in other settings” and the Presiding Bishop “recognizes that these decisions are problematic to a number of other Anglicans.” She continues, “In all humility, we recognize that we may be wrong, yet we have proceeded in the belief that the Spirit permeates our decisions.” The archbishop recognizes that the Presiding Bishop and others have done what they “have felt they must in conscience do.”

And that’s the rub, my friends: While the archbishop is willing to see TEC’s actions as those of a church whose individuals are acting “in conscience,” he cannot affirm that the Spirit “permeates” those decisions. Why? Because to him, the sign of something permeated by the Spirit is precisely whatever will allow all “to recognize each other as part of the Body of Christ because we can hear in each other the voice of Jesus praying to the Father.” He does not deny that TEC is a part of the Body of Christ, nor that it is praying “in conscience” to the Father, but he is pointing out that we are nowhere near to that place where we can hear in each other the voice of Jesus himself. The Presiding Bishop, in essence, claims that TEC is speaking to the Father with the voice of Jesus in the power of the Spirit, proclaiming the Gospel faithfully in the Church and in the world, whether or not others can hear that voice. The Presiding Bishop is asking those who disagree or who hear other voices (which may also be voices of the same Spirit, but “in ways that do not at present seem to cohere or agree”) to trust her witness “that the Spirit permeates our decisions.”

So the question is: Should we trust her? The Archbishop of Canterbury writes sorrowfully of “a very mistrustful climate” and points to the fact “that we have no way of making decisions together so that we are not compromised or undermined by what others are doing. We have not, in other words, found a way of shaping our consciences and convictions as a worldwide body. We have not fully received the Pentecostal gift of mutual understanding for common mission.”

In apparent response to this, the Presiding Bishop writes of “attempts to impose a singular understanding,” which is where the letters begin again to talk past each other. “Mutual understanding” and “a singular understanding” are not the same thing. If I am reading the Pentecost Letter correctly, the archbishop’s goal is not to impose “a single understanding” but to create a space wherein “new vehicles for conversations” across the divides may be developed that could possibly lead to mutual recognizability over time.

But time is not on the archbishop’s side, and the Presiding Bishop knows it. For if “the Spirit permeates” TEC’s corporate decisions, then there is nothing within the internal culture of TEC to restrain full-throttled forward momentum, nor any real reason to; and this, the Presiding Bishop assures us, is said and done “in all humility.”

So where we are left is with TEC stating that whether or not it is wrong, it believes it is right, and that since this is a sincere belief not intended to harm anyone, TEC should be allowed to continue its work undisturbed, and has every right to repudiate any outside interference that might threaten to slow it down. Given this position, it is understandable that the Presiding Bishop takes umbrage at the archbishop’s letter. To my mind, however, what most disturbs the Presiding Bishop about the archbishop’s letter is precisely that which calls the Presiding Bishop and the progressive wing of TEC to account for how it can claim that “the Spirit permeates” its actions, when TEC has consistently resisted submitting those actions for appropriate testing.

The irony here, I suspect, is that the Archbishop of Canterbury may in fact believe in his heart of hearts that if only TEC would submit its actions for thorough and patient Communion-wide testing, TEC would, in time, be proven substantially right in its core theological claim “that gay and lesbian persons are God’s good creation, that an aspect of good creation is the possibility of lifelong, faithful partnership, and that such persons may indeed be good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the Church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones,” without however precipitating a worldwide schism and doing “spiritual violence” (to borrow an apt phrase from the Presiding Bishop herself) to the Body of Christ.

But apparently, the Spirit of God is in a hurry, and why not? When you’re the Spirit — or have the Spirit — you should be in a hurry. Right? After all, “justice delayed is justice denied,” or so I’ve heard.