Why The Anglican Communion: No Diversity, No Unity

Before one answers , “Why The Anglican Communion?” one needs to answer, “Why the Church?”  To recap my answer to that question: “Q.  What is the mission of the Church?  A.  The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (Book of Common Prayer, page 855).  

But that unity cannot be forced by one person on another.  Ultimately, the source of human unity is in the One who made us.  We can aid in that reunification or we can hinder it, either by promoting factions and schisms, or by trying too hard to stamp them out.  In Genesis 11, we read a story of how the human race tried to maintain unity by building a huge city with a tower reaching up to heaven. In other words, they tried to find unity in power.  That would have become a nightmare for all those on the short of end of the big stick;  and so, the story goes, God gave us all different languages and different cultures.

In another one of those paradoxes for which Christianity is famous, there can be no unity without diversity.  Our diversity as peoples must be acknowledged and respected before we can begin to see those things that bind us together as one people.  We all have a particular legacy from our families, our tribes, our countries.  And the Church has to accomplish its mission within that diversity, not impose its unity on top of that diversity.

In the year of our Lord 597, Bishop Augustine came from Rome with a mission from Pope Gregory the Great to reestablish the Catholic Church in the island once known as Briton but now called England by the Anglo-Saxons who had invaded and settled it (Yes there was a church, established in Roman times still there, but eventually they accepted the greater unity of Rome).  Having established his headquarters at Canterbury, Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.  Justin Welby is the 105^th in that line of archbishops.

So from that church that we describe as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, came an English branch.  And as the English spread their empire abroad, that church went with them, from America to Tanzania to Hong Kong.  Even in our 1979 Episcopal prayer book, you will find prayers that Anglicans have prayed together in English since 1549.  We have a legacy that is unmistakably English, for better and for worse.  But it is part of the diversity of Christ’s Eucharistic Body the Church.  And as a former Baptist, I am glad to have adopted this legacy as my own.

And what was once an English church is now an American church, a Honduran church, a Sudanese church, a Singaporean church.  Rooted in Canterbury, we are now what retired Virginia Bishop Peter Lee called a community of friends.  We do our best to proclaim the Good News in very different settings, cultures and challenges. 

Amid the misunderstandings that arise from this diversity, it is tempting to re-impose a unity from the top down.  It is equally tempting to walk away from any attempt at unity.  But as an Anglican, I am committed to respecting the diversity of my fellow Anglicans wherever they are, while giving thanks for the common legacy that has been handed down to us, and provides the basis for our continued unity as friends.  Outside the Church is a world that spins madly on between dictatorship and secession.  In the Anglican Communion, I find hope for a unity amid diversity, and diversity within unity.