11th Meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, Dundee, Scotland

Wednesday 15 September 1999

As President, I welcome you all to this 11th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. On your behalf, I would like to thank the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Bishop Richard Holloway; Bishop Neville Chamberlain, all those in the local Church and the national Church who have been involved in the preparations, and the staff of the University of Dundee for the warmth of their welcome.

Our last meeting took place in Panama in 1996 - a memorable conference, in which we dealt with a number of important issues on behalf of our Communion, a number of which feature on the agenda this time, as do some of the vital matters which focused our attention at the Lambeth Conference last year. So I hope you will all feel a sense of continuity about our discussions.

It is very good to be here in Scotland as guests of the Scottish Episcopal Church. If there are occasions when some Scots feel overshadowed by their southern neighbours, few will deny that this year Edinburgh has had a pretty good share of the headlines, both in the political and the ecclesiastical spheres! I am sure I can speak for us all in offering our best wishes to the new Scottish Parliament in these early days of its life, as it seeks to promote a renewed sense of identity for the Scottish people, and to make a very significant contribution to the political life of these islands. It was good last night to be reminded in Aberdeen of the important part which the Scottish Episcopal Church played in the formation of the Anglican Communion. It was a church ready to take risks in the 18th century, and clearly the tradition continues! The lively debate on morality to which your Primus has contributed in a substantial way, though not un-controversially, is a very important one, and a little later in this address I will offer one or two reflections of my own as well as offering some thoughts concerning how we should handle matters where there is substantial disagreement among us.

Just recently, I have seen again a film I saw first a number of years ago. It moved me then, and it moved me again this time. It is called 'Mr Holland's Opus'. It tells the story of a young composer whose dream is to produce one great piece of music. In order to survive financially, he takes a temporary job teaching music in a school whose pupils have little interest in the subject. After a difficult start, he warms to his task, and over the years he manages to enthuse successive generations of pupils with a love for music; but his great opus remains a distant dream. He tinkers with it, jots down a few notes and phrases from time to time. Suddenly, retirement is in view, and all his frustration and bitterness boils over. At a retirement party given by his past pupils, it transpires that they have got hold of the manuscript, and Mr Holland is persuaded to conduct the orchestra in a performance of the work; but the punchline is spoken by one of the pupils. "Mr Holland", she says, "we are your great Opus; we are your work of art."

In the letter to the Ephesians, there is a similar reflection which has always caught my imagination. In Chapter 2 verse 10, the writer says: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

Or, as the New English Bible has it, "we are his handiwork". The Greek word is 'Poema' from which our word 'poem' comes. It means that the body of Christ is God's 'work of art', created to set forth God's love and God's good news. Isn't that a beautiful image? We, God's people, created and called by him, are crafted by him to be what he wants us to be, to do what he wants us to do. We are not required to be good and to do good in order to gain God's favour, or to placate him. Quite the opposite. It is God's intention in moulding us in the first place that we should walk in his way. God's grace takes us as we are and forms us in the image of the Creator. We are the 'clay in the potter's hand' (Jeremiah 18:6), the handiwork of God. In other words the impulse for mission, the living and preaching of the word of God, is not something that we decide to do. It is what we do, it is what we are created to do; and if we do not do it - either as individuals or as the Christian community - we are being rebellious, we are breaking the mould in which we have been made.

Of course, that is easy to say. We know, and scripture constantly reminds us, we are a rebellious people. God has given us the freedom to choose our path, and how readily we accept that freedom. The world in which we live offers us a myriad of temptations - to selfishness, to greed, to immorality of so many kinds. But God has also given us everything we need to 'choose life' in Christ Jesus, The Word made Flesh, the Way, the Truth and the Life. And even when we turn away from God, and choose ways other than the One he has given us, we are freely offered a way back. God always restores those who are penitent and turn to him. So the extraordinary truth of our faith is that God gives us everything we need to be faithful disciples.

We know only too well, however, that it is not as simple as that. The struggle to discern what is right and what is wrong, what is of God and what is not is the story of the human race from the beginning of history, as the stories in Genesis so dramatically remind us. But the fact that we are constantly facing an apparently insurmountable challenge does not excuse us from it. The search for a 'godly morality' is of the essence of what it is to be part of God's handiwork, not because it is imposed on us by some dictatorial and judgmental divinity, but because we have been given the gift of creation in the image of God and the grace to explore the call to full humanity.

Last time many of us met was in Canterbury for the Lambeth Conference. The more I reflect on the Conference, the more I am sure that it achieved a very great deal. On many things there was considerable agreement. Central to all, of course, was prayer, worship and Bible study. We paid attention to one another; we were drawn into new experience and new understanding of the struggles of our brothers and sisters in different parts of the world, and so much of what was framed in the resolutions demonstrated clearly that longing to be faithful instruments of God's love in the world. I felt that from that meeting of bishops there was a longing for the Church to be more effective as 'God's workmanship'.

For example . . . There was energy and determination in the resolution on International Debt, not just to preach to others about their responsibilities but to challenge ourselves. I know of one Church at least - the Church of Ireland - that has taken that seriously and resolved to increase is giving; and the campaign has continued and developed throughout the world. The Archbishop of Cape Town has continued to give a lead - and so has the Presiding Bishop of the United States - and I know that many Provinces have taken action with their governments. The huge demonstrations in London - which I was able to share in - and in Cologne around the time of the G7 summit in June have again made a profound impression on political leaders.

And, then, our concern, so powerfully expressed during the conference, about our relations with Islam has been further explored in a very important consultation hosted by the Church of Nigeria, under the auspices of the Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion. I believe this was a very positive experience for all involved and it underlines the importance of working together and supporting one another as we explore our developing relations with other faiths, which can vary so much around the world. It is vital work, not just for our own comfort as a Communion, but for the well-being of the world, for which all faith communities bear such a responsibility. So I want to underline my support for work in this area. I will be making a return visit to the University of Al Azhar in Cairo later this year, at the invitation of His Grace the Sheikh, to further our common search for the right way to relate to one another as faithful Christians and Muslims.

Another important ministry flagged up by the Lambeth Conference was that of how we relate to young people and minister to them. In all Provinces this is a huge challenge. But Lambeth gave fresh inspiration to us and has led to several initiatives. For example, I was delighted that, at my invitation, four thousand young English Christians came to London, with their bishops - fifty seven of them! - for a weekend of celebration and encounter, the main priority being to signal to the rest of the Church the importance of young people and the enormous contribution they can make to God's kingdom. We all learnt a lot! And we enjoyed ourselves as well, though whether St Paul's Cathedral has recovered from the experience, you must ask the Dean! I know that other gatherings are being planned - in the United States, for instance, next year and in Latin America in 2001.

And then, mission and evangelism. Section 2 of Lambeth 98 offered very significant challenges to us all and warned against putting mission and evangelism on the back burner. In a real way the 'decade of evangelism' never ends. We are constantly called to be a missionary church proclaiming Christ until he comes again. Thus it behoves ACC to ask: How may we take forward the mission of the Church? How may we deepen learning and teaching in this area? So I am glad that in the course of ACC-11 we shall have the opportunity to hear more - from MISSIO about their work and the whole question of how we develop our mission and evangelism in the future; (and in this context, I am especially looking forward to our visit to Glasgow, and to hearing from the Scottish Episcopal Church about their Mission 21 project). We shall hear about urbanisation, and the challenge to learn from one another as we seek to meet the challenges of the dramatic process of urbanisation in every part of the world; about the continuing developments in technology and their implications for matters of life and death, into which the Christian tradition must make a contribution. All these are examples of how the Lambeth Conference can initiate, share and encourage the common task of fulfilling our role as the 'handiwork of God', and there are many more.

It doesn't need me, however, to tell you that there is so much more to do. The world over the past year has faced so many crises and disasters. Natural disasters, as in Central America and Turkey, and the renewed threat of famine in Ethiopia and Somalia, stretch global compassion to its limits. It is a stark and urgent task for our Communion, together with all people of goodwill, to keep that compassion alive and to feed it. The violent eruption in the long-running political sore of East Timor is a potent reminder to us today of the knife-edge on which humanity treads, between just and peaceful development and chaos. The people of Kosovo, the people of Sierra Leone, the people of Kashmir and of Ireland need no reminder of the precipice on which they stand or have stood. And still the wars in Sudan, the Great Lakes region and so many other places continue. If these are some of the crises which have horrified us all, each one of us will know many other stories of struggle within our own countries and communities. All of them call for Christians to enter the struggle and to wrestle, in all humility, with the challenges they present, not in order to cast the stones of judgement, but so that the vision of God and his Kingdom that he offers, and which he has created us to pursue, may be realised.

But we do not always agree. In some of these problems which tax us, right and wrong appear easy to identify. In others, as a body, we are unable to discern an agreed course of action. There are many reasons for that - sometimes cultural, sometimes theological, sometimes contextual. Whatever the reason, the fact of division and disagreement is very uncomfortable to live with.

Some months ago, I had the opportunity to give a lecture to a gathering in Charleston, South Carolina. In that address which sought to address this matter of how we cope with disagreement, I referred back to that classic book of Michael Ramsey's, The Gospel and the Catholic Church. He was addressing the wider problem of Christian Unity, and he said this: 'The movement towards the problem of the reunion of Christendom is also compelled to see its problems in close connection with the Passion.' He goes on to say that the unity question will not be solved through easy humanistic ideas of fellowship and brotherhood but by the hard road of the Cross, and he concludes his passage with these words:

'The Cross is the place where the theology of the Church has its meaning, where the unity of the Church is a deep and present reality, and where the Church is already showing the peace of God and the bread from heaven to mankind.'

He might have gone on to say that where Christians are able to meet with the cross at the centre of conflict they will find sufficient resources to meet in understanding - even if, for some time, they will not find agreement.

You see, the process of opening ourselves to the creative will of God, of being the clay in the potter's hand, must inevitably lead us into difficult areas, which may indeed bring us into conflict with others; and the more strongly we hold our faith, the clearer our minds are about lines between belief and unbelief, between heresy and orthodoxy, the sharper will be the challenge. Now, some have said the idea that the 'diversity' and 'comprehensiveness' that have been our bywords can be held up as the defining characteristic of Anglicanism. I do not accept that. Of course we rejoice in our diversity, our openness, our blurred edges. That denotes a generosity of spirit which can sometimes be lacking in other parts of the Christian family. It is also a recognition that we cannot claim the whole truth for any one part of the church. We need each part to enrich the whole. We are all searching for that wholeness and fulfilment. We readily recognise the common but diverse search for truth, and we welcome honest seekers.

However, we do not live by the principle 'Anything goes'. I, and I guess most of us, do not accept that there are no cardinal doctrines, beliefs or limits to orthodoxy. The Virginia Report, which will be the focus of much debate later on, emphatically contradicts this mischievous notion and makes it clear that the limits of diversity are precisely conformity to the 'constant interplay of Scripture, tradition and reason'. So we must be very wary of any understanding of comprehensiveness that masks doctrinal indifference. Instead we need to view it as the breadth of a Communion exploring the fullness of a faith rooted in Scripture, anchored in the creeds, expressed in faithfulness to the Dominical sacraments and embodied in a faithful episcopally-led Church.

This means that we are a Communion constantly being moulded into God's handiwork, immersed in scripture, and the Church's teachings and exemplified in the life of the Master we seek to follow.

And, such a Communion will always be asked to be charitable and generous in our treatment of one another and also, on the other hand, to be under God's word and teaching.

Two things have crossed my desk recently which relate very closely this tension which we are experiencing at the moment. I made a light-hearted reference to Bishop Richard Holloway's recent exposure to the media in my introduction. His book, Godless Morality, is generous in intention. He is concerned to understand our world and make the gospel relevant. I find myself in agreement with some parts of it, but have to say that I disagree with his central thesis that God must be left out of the moral debate. In his introduction, he comments that "By claiming divine authority for the commandments and prohibitions, with eternal punishment for those who disobey them, religious moral systems operate on the basis of fear". It is certainly true that in history some parts of the Church have behaved in this way and some sects, even today, continue to operate on the basis of fear. But, surely, to conclude that we must turn our back on scriptural insights and teachings, the body of doctrine in the Church formed over the years and theological learning is an unacceptable option for us. If there is a 'godless morality', it cannot be a fully formed Christian morality. But all of us will have ample opportunity to talk this over with Bishop Richard informally during our Conference.

The other thing that has crossed my desk is the decision of Archbishop Moses Tay, a member of the Primates Standing Committee, to absent himself from ACC-11. In his letter to me, he expressed profound disappointment with the way that some parts of the Communion appeared to be ignoring or rejecting key resolutions of the Lambeth Conference. The heart of his concern, which I know is shared by others, is that the Communion is deviating from its traditional roots of faith. Now I sincerely hope that no one is in any doubt as to where I stand in these matters. For the nine years that I have been Archbishop of Canterbury, I have made the encouragement of a Church, confident in expressing its faith, outward looking and missionary in its vision a central theme of my ministry. But I am under no illusion that the process of arriving at such a position of confidence in the fundamentals and openness to the world in all its pain and all its glory has been or ever will be easy. Nor were we ever promised an easy ride. Even less were we assured that we would always get it right, or that the church would be protected from error, and we hardly need to explore our history very far to see the truth of that. I said earlier that we need to approach one another and the world in humility. There is no place for triumphalism of any sort. The great philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote:

"A Church triumphant is nothing but a sham. In this world we can truthfully speak only of a militant church. The Church Militant is related to and feels itself drawn to Christ in humble obedience. The Church triumphant, however, has taken the Church of Christ in vain … The triumphant Church assumes that the time of struggle is over; that the Church, because it has expanded itself, has nothing more about or for which to struggle … This is not the way of Christ … Christ's Church can only endure by struggling - that is by every moment battling the world and battling for the truth."

Now, we might want to take issue with that style of language, but in essence what he says rings true. Once any church or any part of the church steps away from the struggle, divorces itself from our continuing search, it loses part of what it is to be Christian. If we start to build fences around our particular perception of the truth, and to cut ourselves off from others who are different, we are in danger of saying to God 'We are your perfect creation, there is no more need of your craftsmanship'. But none of us would say that; and it is, at least partly, in that encounter with one another, with the crucified Christ at our heart, that God continues his process of moulding us into what he wants us to be.

Does this then mean that truth no longer matters? By no means. Some have said to me, following my address in the United States, that truth must take precedence over unity, and therefore the 'status quo' of the Communion or of a province must be challenged. To that I say, challenge by all means. Vigorous debate and healthy intellectual engagement on the basis of the faith we share are important ingredients of informed Christians struggling to share their faith with the world around. I have made it clear that we must engage in the reality of the life of the church and of the world.

But unilateral action is different. Let me remind you of what I said in that SEAD Address. No-one has the right to take decisions which affect the whole. The moment the 'local' wrests decisions from the whole, it is engaging in division. No diocese should take unilateral action which impairs the life of the whole province. Every House of Bishops must seek unity of vision for the sake of the Province it leads - and deviation from agreed constitutions will only weaken the Church bishops claim to serve. No Province should take unilateral action which affects and impairs the whole Communion - that only denies the nature of communion and declares that we are in reality no more than a federation of independent Churches. That clearly is not our ecclesiology and we have to say so, again and again and again.

And let me take that one step further, to engage in division is itself to undermine truth. The call to unity is at least as strong in Scripture as is the call to purity and holiness. 'I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church'. It is there as a fundamental tenet of our faith. So I hope that those who are tempted to go their own way, wherever they are, and for what ever reason they feel frustrated with the Communion will hold back, and have faith in the loving purposes of God. The unity of the Church is, after all, God's gift to us. It is not of our making. It is we in our disobedience who have fragmented, and fragmented again and again.

My brothers and sisters, we require a much bigger doctrine of the Church than we currently possess. The unity of the body is so precious that those who risk undermining it are hurting the One whose body it is. I have often been struck by St Paul's doctrine of the church in Ephesians. He says later in the epistle, 'Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her'. How can we despise what he loves? How can we turn our back on a 'handiwork' he has created; and the opus which he is composing? We are God's handiwork, and he has crafted us for a purpose. He has assured us over and over again that in his Son Jesus Christ he will be with us always even to the end of time, so the process of moulding continues in order that his mission will grow and develop. We are like clay in the potter's hand, and if we are to do the work of the Gospel and further the vision of the Kingdom of God, we have to engage with all the challenges which present themselves to us whether internally or externally. Each one of us here has been called and has responded freely to that call. We are not slaves of some perverse dictator in the sky who likes nothing better than punishing us when we go wrong. Our faith in God is a liberating faith. 'God is rich in mercy, and because of his great love for us, he brought us to life in Christ when we were dead because of our sins.' (Ephesians 2:4, 5) The message which we are called to proclaim is life-giving, it is a message of freedom from that which enslaves us.

We need to recognise and own our history - which, again, should prompt us to the greatest humility as we approach our missionary task. But to recognise and repent of our failings, and to seek with God's help to be more effective and true in our task is our constant quest. I cannot see how Christians can with integrity take God out of the equation. Our faith is in God the creator who seeks the fulfilment of everything that is. As we seek to collaborate in the building of that kingdom, we have been given a glorious and life-giving message. The challenge is not to leave God out of the search for good and truth, but to redouble our prayer, our waiting on God, our readiness to be crafted for the task to which God calls us.

Why? Because our God is about, to paraphrase that most beautiful of passages in Philippians, 'whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious ...'. And that is a vision for the world which is worth battling for, it is worth struggling for.

I am reminded of a beautiful story which I came across some months ago. A woman in a dream imagined a shop where God the Holy Spirit gave the fruits of the Spirit free of charge. In her dream she went along and said to the shopkeeper, 'I want peace, and love, and joy - and while you are at it, perhaps some holiness as well'.

God the Holy Spirit beamed at her and said. 'I think you have been misinformed, We don't offer fruits here - just seeds'.

So, as we get this 11th ACC meeting underway, perhaps we may be sowing a few seeds of the Spirit which in many different ways will grow into fruits of the Spirit in our Communion. There is no need for fear because God has not given us the Spirit of fear, but of power and a sound mind. Let us use that collective mind together for the sake of God's body, his handiwork, his 'Opus' and for his glory.