Alienating Anglican Moderates

A Review of To Mend the Net (by Drexel W. Gomez and Maurice W. Sinclair. Carrolton, Texas, The Ekklesia Society, 2001)

By John Sorensen

Reviewer's note, November 2003: The book under study was the foundational document of the current efforts of American conservatives and Anglican primates to create a structure to discipline the Episcopal Church, USA. Now that the primates have gone to work at the request of the American Anglican Council, the following critique of this book, written in 2001, is worth considering as we prepare for the future.

The book To Mend the Net proposes measures designed to curb certain modern ecclesiastical innovations said to have imperiled the unity of the Anglican Communion. The editors of this work are Drexel Gomez, Archbishop of the West Indies, and Maurice Sinclair, former Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone of America [Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay]. No authors are listed for any particular chapter or section, a strange choice for anonymity in a book about the truth of the gospel. According to the jacket, the book was written by "a small team of bishops and scholars," and the apparent members of the assisting team are commended at the beginning: Bill Atwood, Robinson Cavalcanti, John Chew, Emmanuel Gbonigi, Peter Moore, Christopher Seitz, Peter Toon and Philip Turner. With the book's uneven and sometimes polemical style, at the end, the reader is left wondering, "Who wrote this? Why can we not know who wrote each section?"

One premise of the book is that three modern, Western innovations have imperiled the unity -- that is, "torn the net" -- of the Anglican Communion. They are, first, the "ordination of women," seen as a "serious dilemma" in its own right, but "intolerable" when "imposed against conscience" (p. 11). A new sexual ethic that emphasizes "pleasure and individual fulfillment" is background to the practice of the "wealthiest of our member churches" providing the other two innovations (if not the first). These are, second, the "ordination of active homosexuals" and, third, the blessing of gay partnerships (p. 11). While the ordination of women is only a "serious dilemma" (read, 'we can't stop it although we'd like to') for the Anglican Communion, gay ordination and gay unions are experiments "devoid of Scriptural or historic precedent, lacking in majority support in the Communion and with totally unforeseen consequences" (p.11).

Another premise of the book is that the forceful use of the authority of the Anglican primates is required to censure the errant bishops and restore unity -- repair the tear in the fabric of the Communion.

The Anglican Communion is not one single net, easily torn, but many nets cast from many boats in many waters. Indeed, this is the biblical image; there has never been just one netÉ An acknowledgement that a Southern Cone fishing crew might have a different composition than a North American boat would have been an excellent place to begin.

To Mend the Net uses the imagery of torn nets, being mended by the sons of Zebedee, to illustrate how the three innovations have torn the "fabric of the Anglican Communion" (p. 9). The image of the torn net is meant to graphically illustrate a torn and damaged Anglican Communion. But, it also illustrates a central flaw of this book. That is, the Anglican Communion is not one single net, easily torn, but many nets cast from many boats in many waters. Indeed, this is the biblical image; there has never been just one net. This theme should have been developed further. An acknowledgement that a Southern Cone fishing crew might have a different composition than a North American boat would have been an excellent place to begin.

At the most liberal extreme, there is certainly no room in the Gomez & Sinclair fleet for gay apostolic boat captains, nor room in their nets for practicing gay Episcopalians who believe that God blesses their lifestyle. Not even if they are a small minority, oceans away, in a few boats. This will sadden those who believe that dioceses that so wish should be able to make room for minority gay clergy. Nevertheless, many in our church still hold that gay ordinations and unions are indeed true "innovations" still unacceptable to a faithful biblical church. American traditionalists will be happy that these bishops prefer a conservative net.

What is especially unfortunate about the book is its apparent rejection of female apostolic boat captains. The book repeatedly lists the ordination of female clergy with the ordination of gays, and gay marriage unions as "innovations" (e.g., pp. 11; 44; 68-69). The writers habitually group all three "innovations" as practices not yet achieving full approval from the rest of the Anglican Communion. This devaluing of women's ordination betrays a deep Gomez & Sinclair distrust of an "innovation" now practiced even in Canterbury's England. It makes the credibility of the book very low for all but the most conservative in the U.S. Episcopal Church. For those of us who might be classified as moderates, it is difficult to be sympathetic to a critique of gay political innovations when women's ordination is criticized as well.

Some of the rhetoric is so caustic that the authors seem far beyond any Anglican norm of reasoned discourse. The authors really are from another continent. Or, was this section written by one of the Americans commended on the jacket?

This book becomes particularly unpalatable in the section, "The Formularies & the Limits of Diversity: The Twentieth Century" (p. 93-105). In short order, the authors lament the loss of the Elizabethan Prayer Book and critique the U.S. church for producing the innovative 1979 Book of Common Prayer, creating "new doctrines" and causing the "departure of thousands" from the Episcopal Church (pp. 99-101). Doubtless some still share these sentiments. But, the rhetoric is like what I remember from the 1970's American Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer. It is hard to understand how this diatribe would make a U.S. Episcopalian sympathetic with the conservative need to slow down modern innovations in the church.  Some of the rhetoric is so caustic that the authors seem far beyond any Anglican norm of reasoned discourse. The authors really are from another continent. Or, was this section written by one of the Americans commended on the jacket?

There is a shape to the book. The preface, a "Proposal" for restoring unity opens the book. Next, two chapters wrestle with two documents promoting Anglican diversity: The Virginia Report and the report of the Eames Commission. Then follows Chapter Three, "Authority in the Anglican Communion," Chapter Four, "The Formularies & and Limits of Diversity," and Chapter Five, "Scripture and the Holy Trinity in The Virginia Report." The book concludes with a brief summary of the original Proposal to wield primatial authority to reign in errant churches.

What To Mend the Net proposes is the "exercise" of "enhanced responsibility" of the primates (p. 9). The book makes an urgent argument, especially in Chapter Three, for the primates of the provinces to exercise this restrictive authority, thereby avoiding rupture and "explosive reaction" in the Anglican churches (p. 12). In their reasoning,

Three recent developments, in particular, have brought this matter to a head. (a) The widespread refusal of dioceses, especially in the United States, to respond positively to the Lambeth 98 resolution on sexuality and (b) the recent decision of the ECUSA's General Convention to monitor progress towards women's ordination in all dioceses and (c) its placing of non-marital sexual relationships alongside marriage for support by the Church. Such revision of the Christian Ethic is unacceptable to a majority of Anglican Provinces and to an important sector within the member church most affected by it. Should it go unchallenged by the Primates Meeting, the immediate prospect is of a division within ECUSA leading in its turn to a split in the Communion with the various Provinces lining up on the different sides.

To respond to this crisis, the authors believe that they have a "better way" (p. 13), a new "truly Anglican polity" for the whole communion. This polity would include: "The Archbishop of Canterbury, in consultation with the Primates and Bishops, withholding the invitation to certain provinces when calling together the Bishops, or even 'suspending communion with a given Province or Diocese'" (p. 13-14).

As outlined at the end of the book (pp. 127-128), a series of progressive disciplinary measures are recommended for overly innovative Anglicans

Not addressed in all this discussion is by what authority a small group of Anglican primates should have the right to veto the carefully considered and lawfully made decisions of the various provinces and dioceses, through their deliberative bodies of bishops, priests and laypersons. Knowing Anglican polity and history, it is hard to imagine how this veto or shunning power can be characterized as "truly Anglican polity." It is not. A community of over-powerful primates is only "Pope" writ large.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey generously called this book "a serious contribution to debate." The debate, of course, is over whether the innovators and conservators in the Anglican Communion can co-exist in the same church.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey generously called this book "a serious contribution to debate." The debate, of course, is over whether the innovators and conservators in the Anglican Communion can co-exist in the same church. During this debate, perhaps they can reflect upon what it means to have many nets and a variety of fishing boats in our various provinces, and find a way to be faithful to this evangelical portion of the biblical witness as well as the ethical one.

In the interim, we would do well to remember that we had an event called the English Reformation, whereby the church in England freed itself from the tyranny of the Pope. King Henry VIII was glad to insist that England -- and the English church -- must have the right of self-governance. England, crown and church, was to be free of meddling by Spanish and Italian Princes and Prelates.

After reading To Mend the Net, I wonder how Thomas Cranmer, King Henry VIII's Archbishop of Canterbury would view this scenario: Foreign Anglican bishops from places as distant as the West Indies and the Southern Cone claim veto power over innovations in the English church. I, for one, find it no improvement to replace the tyranny of the pontiff with the presumption of the primates.

[Ed. Note: An authors' summary of this book is available at http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.org/summtomend.htm]

The Rev. John T. Sorensen is rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Plattsburgh, New York, located in the Diocese of Albany. He may be reached by email at lakesinai@charter.net