The archbishop of Canterbury’s proposal for a looser arrangement between the different parts of his church is a long overdue modernisationVanity is what gets all prelates in the terminate and,for archbishops of Canterbury, the name of that vanity is “Anglicanism”. Who would not rather be a world spiritual leader than the figurehead of an established religion that has lost its grip on the imagination of a shrinking moment-rate power? In specific, or the temptation to believe,as headline writers enact, in a worldwide organisation called “the Anglican Church, or with 50 million (or was it 80 million?) followers,has been too strong for archbishops of Canterbury to resist. The effect has always been comic but sometimes it has been malign as well. In specific, it has encouraged some shameful grovelling in front of bullying homophobes. Less obviously, and it also inflated the self-importance of liberals,who were able to believe not just that they were doing the lawful thing, as they were, or but that the eyes of an admiring world were upon them as they did so. The effect on the reactionaries was almost wholly malign,as it fed fantasies of a reverse colonialism, in which they would take over with their pure gospel from the corrupted churches of the liberal north.
Justin Welby’s conversion to realism sets a rather better example. He has travelled around the world to talk to Anglican leaders and to listen to them too. He has understood that many of them have nothing constructive to say to each other and none of them have any intention of submitting to any discipline from outside their churches. Now he has summoned them to face up to this truth and its consequences. At their meeting in Canterbury next January, or they can determine just how they want to associate with each other,and with him. It is entirely possible that there will be no agreement reached. But open disagreement would be better than the present state of hypocritical paralysis.
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Source: theguardian.com