The Road to an Anglican Civil War
I am a southerner, and the son of southerners. To reflect upon my heritage is an exercise in nuance.
On a sultry day in mid-June I stepped out of my car in front of a stately historic home in Morrisville, North Carolina. Set a few blocks off of the bustling main streets and nestled next to an old train track, it retained an air of a bygone era. This, the Williamson Page House, was the home of my ancestors. As I gazed at the white columns and 19th century edifice, I reflected on something my cousin had said that morning when I announced my intention to visit the home: “The house is hauntingly beautiful. Haunting, because amongst our family who lived so well, there were their slaves. Slaves whose stories we will never know.”
I am a southerner, and the son of southerners. To reflect upon my heritage is an exercise in nuance. My great-great-grandfather, an inheritor of the Page House, was – according to my grandmother – the youngest Captain in the Confederate Army, and his regiment formed right there on the lawn of the Page property. Although his military career was apparently lackluster, after the war he served for over two decades as the Wake County (the capital district of NC) Sheriff. Ought I to be proud of him? As I said, this type of reflection is an exercise in nuance for, as that other great southerner once said regarding the implications of slavery on his native south: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever”1
The justice of God, which Jefferson so rightly feared, did come in the form of the bloodiest war in American history. To read about the founding generation of our Nation, I can both appreciate the compromise that was struck to bring this common cause coalition together to found this union, while regretting – along with so many of the founders – that this compromise was allowed to persist beyond that generation. As America came of age, the scourge of slavery was like an open wound that became infected and allowed to fester. By the time of the Civil War, loyalties had become so entrenched that it took bloodshed to resolve them. We may rightly wonder what may have happened had slavery been abolished in the late-1700s rather than the mid-1800s; an intention that many of the founders advocated for, but my own southern ancestors resolutely resisted. Such musings lead me to ecclesiastical reflections.
There is a remarkable correspondence between the founding of the United States and the recent founding of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) upon these same shores. A founding whose implications has ripples and resonance beyond the Anglican world. Of it, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger wrote on Pope St. John Paul II’s behalf: “I hasten to assure you of my heartfelt prayers for all those taking part in this convocation … I pray in particular that God’s will may be done by all those who seek that unity in the truth, the gift of Christ himself.”2 In this Anglican founding, too, a compromise was struck. In the American founding the colonists had inherited from the British the controversial Trans-Atlantic slave trade which they agreed-to-disagree on in order to found a union where – as they said – “all men are created equal” (Declaration of Independence). In the ACNA’s founding, these conservative Anglicans had inherited from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada the controversial practice of women’s ordination which they agreed-to-disagree on in order to found a province which was – as they said – “consistent with the historic faith and order of the church”3
As a priest in the ACNA and an American, I am thankful for both of these foundings brokered upon compromise. But as a southerner, I am deeply chastened. My obstinate ancestors – among others – stood in the way of the vision of all men being created equal. Ultimately, bloodshed was necessary to fully realize that vision. Over the past sixteen years since the ACNA’s founding, that initial compromise which brought together such a providential coalition of diverse Anglicans with a singular gospel mission has become like an infected wound. Our compromise on such a central and visible aspect of ecclesiology desperately needs the antibiotics of godly resolution. Otherwise, it will fester – in many ways it already has – and will certainly result in grievous conflict and figurative ecclesial bloodshed.
When infections are left untreated, often scalpels or saws are required to prevent permanent damage to the entire body. In the U.S., the scalpel of God’s justice was a horrific war. If I might amend Jefferson’s quote to my own context: “I tremble for my church when I reflect that God is just and true; that his justice cannot sleep forever when his truth is obscured.”4 If you will, the question of whether or not women can be ordained has become the ACNA’s slavery. This compromise has shackled us to a unity that can only be obtained through compromise. And this compromise cannot end well because whether this is a justice issue (women’s equality) or a salvation issue (sacramental validity), both justice and salvation are at the core of the Gospel and are thereby first-order issues of the most pressing sort. Neither can both be right; but whichever one is, its resolution demands to be sought at all costs for either side. Or, as the great philosopher of our time wrote: “neither can live while the other survives.”5
But, to continue the analogy, we are still in the late-1700s of our church’s life. There is still time for us to settle the compromise without the necessity of bloodshed. The infection may yet be treated with antibiotics rather than a scalpel. But, time is fleeting; God’s justice and truth cannot sleep forever. In the course of ecclesiastical and salvation history there are innumerable examples of God’s patience staying his justice that his people may repent. But, we dare not try his patience, lest this whole limb of Christ’s Church be amputated for the sake of his truth and the health of his whole body.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
Sybill Trelawney (J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix)
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