[Dialogue] Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori reflections on meeting of Anglican Primates

[Len Hockley]

Episcopal News Service
February 20, 2007
[ENS]Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori offered the following
reflections following the February 15-19 meeting of Anglican Primates
near Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
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A Season of Fasting: Reflections on the Primates Meeting
The recent meeting of the Primates in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was a
challenging one. Fourteen new primates joined the group; three
longer-serving primates were unable to be present. It was a great joy
to meet and begin to know a number of the primates, and to renew
friendships with others. While much of our time and energy was focused
on the Episcopal Church, several other agenda items were of considerable
interest to many of those who gathered.
The Design Group for an Anglican Covenant submitted an initial draft for
consideration by the Primates' Meeting, which in turn commended it to
the Communion for consideration, debate, and revision before the Lambeth
Conference next year. This covenant is a further step in the Windsor
process, engaged in the understanding that all human communities need
boundaries in order to function. Anglicanism has always valued a rather
wide set of boundaries, and boundaries are a central issue in the
current debate - where are they, and how wide a space can they contain?
The Covenant in its current draft attempts to define what the essentials
and non-negotiable elements of Anglicanism might be, and how the
Communion might live together in diversity.
The new United Nations observer, Hellen Wangusa, was installed during
our meeting, and also led a discussion on the Millennium Development
Goals. The Goals are directed primarily toward the governments of this
world, both those in the developing world, who will have to design the
systems to implement the goals, and the governments of the developed
world, which are asked to contribute 0.7% of their annual incomes. She
challenged us to recognize that these goals only go part way toward
achieving full healing in the world, and that our own vision is of a
world entirely reconciled and healed in God.
We also heard about the work being done on Theological Education in the
Anglican Communion (TEAC). This body has produced thoughtful and
creative, outcome-based guidelines for theological education of our
baptized and ordained members.
The highlight of our meeting was the visit to Zanzibar and the
remembrance of the end of the slave trade. We worshiped at the Anglican
Cathedral in Zanzibar, built over the old slave market. Slavery was
outlawed in British Empire in 1807, but it took another 90 years for the
trade in Zanzibar to finally come to an end. Anglicans were a profound
influence all through that period, and the Sultan of Zanzibar only
signed the final treaty when faced with British warships in the harbor.
David Livingstone is commemorated here for his tireless efforts to put
an end to the ancient and inhuman practice of slavery. The struggle to
end slavery has some parallel with our current controversy, and we can
note the less than universal agreement about the moral duty of
Christians over a lengthy period. The United States also experienced
major division over slavery, even though the Episcopal Church did not
fully divide. Some see that part of our history as shameful, while
others see it as a sign of hope, and that, too, has current parallels.
We traveled home from this meeting at Carnival, the farewell to meat
(carne vale) that comes just before Lent begins. That is an image that
may be useful as we consider what the Primates' gathering is commending
to the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church has been asked to
consider the wider body of the Anglican Communion and its needs. Our
own Church has in recent years tended to focus on the suffering of one
portion of the body, particularly those who feel that justice demands
the full recognition and celebration of the gifts of gay and lesbian
Christians. That focus has been seen in some other parts of the global
Church, as inappropriate, especially as it has been felt to be a
dismissal of traditional understandings of sexual morality. Both
parties hold positions that can be defended by appeal to our Anglican
sources of authority - scripture, tradition, and reason - but each finds
it very difficult to understand and embrace the other. What is being
asked of both parties is a season of fasting - from authorizing rites
for blessing same-sex unions and consecrating bishops in such unions on
the one hand, and from transgressing traditional diocesan boundaries on
the other.
A parallel to this situation in our tradition might be seen in the
controversy over eating meat in early Christian communities, mentioned
both in the letter to the Romans and the first letter to the
Corinthians. In those early communities, the meat available for
purchase in the public market was often part of an animal that had been
offered (in whole or in part) in sacrifice in various pagan religious
rites. The troubling question in the Christian community was whether or
not it was appropriate to eat such meat - was it tainted by its
involvement in pagan religion? Did one participate in that religion
(and thus commit apostasy) by eating it? Paul encourages the Christians
in Rome and Corinth to recall that, while there may be no specific
prohibition about eating such meat, the sensitive in the community might
refrain if others would be offended. The needs of the weaker members,
and the real possibility that their faith may be injured, are an
important consideration in making the dietary decision.
The current controversy brings a desire for justice on the one hand into
apparent conflict with a desire for fidelity to a strict understanding
of the biblical tradition and to the main stream of the ethical
tradition. Either party may be understood to be the meat-eaters, and
each is reminded that their single-minded desire may be an idol. Either
party might constructively also be understood by the other as the weaker
member, whose sensibilities need to be considered and respected.
God's justice is always tempered with mercy, and God continues to be at
work in this world, urging the faithful into deeper understandings of
what it means to be human and our call as Christians to live as
followers of Jesus. Each party in this conflict is asked to consider the
good faith of the other, to consider that the weakness or sensitivity of
the other is of significant import, and therefore to fast, or "refrain
from eating meat," for a season. Each is asked to discipline itself for
the sake of the greater whole, and the mission that is only possible
when the community maintains its integrity.
Justice, (steadfast) love, and mercy always go together in our biblical
tradition. None is complete without the others. While those who seek
full inclusion for gay and lesbian Christians, and the equal valuing of
their gifts for ministry, do so out of an undeniable passion for
justice, others seek a fidelity to the tradition that cannot understand
or countenance the violation of what that tradition says about sexual
ethics. Each is being asked to forbear for a season. The word of hope
is that in God all things are possible, and that fasting is not a
permanent condition of a Christian people, nor a normative one. God's
dream is of all people gathered at a feast, and we enter Lent looking
toward that Easter feast and the new life that will, in God's good time,
be proclaimed.
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