Breaking up gently

If the Anglican Communion split up, could anybody tell?

Even by the standards of Irish stately homes, Dromantine is a splendid pile, set in many acres of rolling green parkland. If its mighty stone walls could speak, they would have much to say about inter-Christian squabbles. In the days of the original, Scottish Protestant owners, a Roman priest would rarely have darkened their doors, although most locals are Catholic. This all changed after the First World War: the house was bought by the Catholic Church and became a place which few Protestants cared to enter.

Everything is much easier now, of course. The house's Catholic managers, many of them ex-missionaries from Africa, are bursting with enthusiasm for ecumenical encounters. So they were delighted when more than 30 prelates of the Anglican Communion, the spiritual leaders of 77 m Christians from all over the world, spent a week with them. As their purple-robed guests stretched points and tried to bridge the almost unbridgeable, the smiles on the faces of their black-suited hosts seemed to widen.

In the circumstances, the proceedings at the primates' meeting were remarkably polite, as one would expect of a fairly loose association of self-governing Christian churches with common origins in the cerebral, cool-headed Church of England. But politeness and common cultural origins will not be enough to hold together a religious federation which has been in crisis since 2003 when the American branch ordained an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, and an Anglican diocese in Canada approved a right of blessing for same-sex couples. Both these moves infuriated the conservatives, who are strongest in Africa and the developing world.

What the primates in Dromantine decided was to ask, very politely, if the North American liberals would stay away from regular participation in the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the so-called "instruments of unity" that holds the Communion together. This voluntary absence would last, it was gently suggested, until 2008, when the next of the Communion's ten-yearly policy-setting meetings is due to take place.

Behind this careful language is the hard reality that even if the primates had resolved to restore unity at any cost, they could not easily have done so. As Canadian Anglicans have pointed out, their archbishop cannot simply tell a diocese to stop blessing gay unions; dioceses too have their own democratic procedures. And that in turn raises the question: is it all worth the effort?

In theory, the Anglican Communion is supposed to be a group of interdependent but autonomous churches. That only works if they all think and believe more or less the same things. Anglicanism has neither the vertical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, where the Vatican can whip dissenters into line, nor the doctrinal unity of the Orthodox Church, where rival Patriarchs can be at war with one another (sometimes literally) but accept each other's spiritual authority. Instead, Anglicanism has inherited a very British set of instincts, one that aims to blur doctrinal differences and hopes that its component parts can somehow rub along like a fractious but ultimately affectionate family.

But modem families do in the end break up, as their members grow up and go their separate ways, That's just what seems to be happening to the Anglican Communion. As Edith Humphrey, a Canadian-born theologian, has argued, "the Anglican Church is fragmenting already, people are peeling off in different directions, whether to the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox or the nonconformists."

If, as now seems possible, the liberal leaders of the American and Canadian churches decide to walk alone, conservative movements within¹ those countries will probably insist that they, at least, want to remain part of the Anglican majority. This will put the Communion's leader, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a tight spot. Personally liberal, but determined to maintain Anglican unity if at all possible, he will have to consider how far he should go in fostering internal splits within various national churches. If he encourages the North American traditionalists and eschews the liberals, he will find himself doing exactly that Making such choices is especially difficult in a church which puts so much emphasis on softening hard edges.

Indeed, so soft have those edges become that the outsiders are entitled to ask: what difference would it actually make to Anglicans in the pews, or indeed anybody else, if the Communion were to break up? Not a great deal, probably.

Archbishop Williams has urged bis fellow prelates to make sacrifices for the sake of unity. But he knows that, on both sides of the divide, there are people who see principles at stake - principles not worth sacrificing for the sake of good manners. He must hope, then, that those Catholic Irish eyes were smiling with sympathy rather than Schadenfreude.

The Economist

Exercise 1. Give Russian equivalents:

inter-Christian squabbles; ecumenical encounters; to stretch a point; to bridge the almost unbridgeable; the cerebral, cool-headed Church of England; a ten-yearly policy-setting meeting; to whip dissenters into line; to blur doctrinal differences; to rub along; to be (put) in a tight spot; to foster internal splits; Anglicans in the pews; at stake; Schadenfreude

Exercise 2. Find in the text the English equivalents:

прелат, духовный лидер, примас, произвести в сан, епархия, одно­полые пары, восстановить единство любой ценой, благословлять го­мосексуальные союзы, Ватикан, патриарх, теолог, сохранить единство, сглаживать острые углы

Exercise 3. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the text about (in one sentence)?

2. What caused the crisis that the Anglican Communion has been in since 2003?

3. What decision was taken at the primates' meeting in Dromantine?

4. How is Anglicanism different from a) the Roman Catholic Church b) the Orthodox Church?

5. What is very typical of the Anglican Church?

6. Who is the present leader of the Anglican Communion?

7. Why can Archbishop Williams find himself in a tight spot?

8. Does the author of the article think attempts to maintain the Anglican unity are worth the effort?

9. Comment on the last sentence of the article.

TEXT VI.