Confessing Evangelical

Rowan Williams' address to the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Nottingham is well worth reading, even if - as Chris Johnson points out in his summary of the address - it will almost certainly come to be seen as Dr Williams' eulogy for the Anglican Communion.

What particularly impressed me was the seriousness with which Dr Williams tackles the issue of sacramental communion between Christians. Very often, this issue is swept aside by advocates of open communion - "We all love Jesus so we should all share in the Lord's Supper together. Anyone who says otherwise is a sectarian bigot" - but the Archbishop of Canterbury here recognises that things cannot be as simple as all that; and also that we are not faced with an either/or question of full communion versus sectarian hostility towards one another:

We can’t guarantee anything at this point. We can’t ignore the seriousness of what divides us. But if there is no easy solution, and there is not, we can at least think about this simple suggestion. If it is difficult for us to stand together at the Lord’s Table as we might wish, can we continue to be friends?

It sounds so weak, doesn’t? But, I actually think it is of great significance. It is a way of saying that we do not know how to go on being visibly full brothers and sisters, that we can find no clear visible way of expressing any sense of being together in the Body of Christ. But this is the case already with a number of other Christian bodies, and several other Christian bodies view us in this way, notably the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. And yet we maintain respect and often something more than respect. Friendship in Christ, it seems, is possible even when sacramental communion isn’t.

Dr Williams goes on to ask "what we are prepared to do to nourish this sort of friendship?", and continues:

Friendship in Christ is a willingness to share prayer, to listen without rancour to each another, to respect and even enjoy difference, to be patient with each other, not expecting quick healing of divisions but not walking away every time difference raises its head.

Friendship in Christ is best and most creative when it is linked with sacramental fellowship; but if that fellowship is hard or controversial, we need to remember from our ecumenical experience that this need not and should not mean a spirit of bitter contempt towards each other. It has taken the great churches of the world centuries to make this sort of friendship a routine matter, but, thank God, it is so now for the most part.

Dr Williams continues by imploring his listeners not to let "the language we use about each other ... slip from proper and honest disagreement towards contempt and mutual exclusion". Because, while we may not be able to kneel together at the altar:

Yet as baptised believers, we still have something to offer each other; and the friendship of the baptised should remain, whatever else divides.

The issue of "open vs close(d) communion" can lead to some pretty heated discussions, and I'm not trying to reopen that particular argument now. Suffice it to say that I agree wholeheartedly with the following words from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, para 1398:

The more painful the experience of the divisions in the Church which break the common participation in the table of the Lord, the more urgent are our prayers to the Lord that the time of complete unity among all who believe in him may return.

In other words, "common participation in the table of the Lord" should be our goal, what we are aspiring to and yearning for, rather than something we simply take for granted as if it lay within our power to achieve. And equally, we should not simply take our divisions at the Lord's Table for granted: they should be a source of anguish to us, and spur us on to pray and work for these divisions to be overcome, for the church to return to a "time of complete unity" in which God's people share a common confession of a common gospel, a common faith in Jesus Christ.

And, in the meantime, this inability to enjoy the blessing of "common participation in the table of the Lord" makes it even more important for the "friendship of the baptised" truly to be seen in our relationships with one another and with other Christians.