HALIFAX – As synod draws to a close, I find myself wondering what it was all for. After so many words, motions, resolutions, procedures, discernments, presentations and earnest ponderings, I am beginning to understand the impulse that drives some to enter a silent monastic order.
What has been achieved and what will happen next?
The sexuality resolution, when it finally arrived, was sufficiently woolly to allow the blessing of same-sex unions to continue informally, while avoiding – for the moment at least –censure from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Those who set unity above all saw it as a masterpiece of Anglican compromise, conservative and liberal zealots as an exercise in dissembling.
In order to remain solvent, the national church will cut its budget, lay off staff and dioceses will continue to close and consolidate parishes, selling church buildings to almost anyone who will buy them. The next Anglican General synod will take place in 2013 – if the church can afford it. The cost of this synod, excluding airfares, webcasting, building space and internal media coverage was around $900 per person, totalling $360,000.
The Anglican Covenant – the document that is supposed to prevent Anglican provinces from making radical decisions unilaterally – will be studied for three to six years. The Secretary General of the Anglican Communion confided to me that “things move slowly in the Anglican world”. I likened it to an Entmoot: he didn’t laugh. How many people will still be regularly attending an Anglican Church in six years is anyone’s guess. Mine is that it will be significantly less than today’s 325,000.
One of the notable things about this synod was who wasn’t there. There was little interest from the secular press, visitors were sparse and blog comments were at nothing like the levels seen for the Synod of 2007. Even big name Anglicans like Katherine Jefferts-Schori (from the US Episcopal Church) attracted only a motley bunch of specialty Anglican journalists. For the most part, the secular press was absent.
The church is trying to use social networking to spread its message, so it had a twitter account where a dedicated tweeter typed in endless 140 character messages to edify the curious. There were 114 followers, a half of which were probably already attending synod. To put this in perspective, Stephen Fry has 1,550,779 followers – and he doesn’t even talk about sex all the time.
Why is this? It’s because most people no longer care what the Anglican Church does – whether it is blessing same sex marriages or demanding an end to global warming. The Anglican Church spends much of its time questioning the faith that has shaped not only it, but the last 2000 years of Western civilisation. To fill the void, it has idolatrised “inclusion”, thereby alienating to the point of exclusion many who are determined to hold fast to orthodox Christianity. The church’s quest for relevance has become an accommodation to secular culture and it now finds itself in a market where it cannot and never will be able to effectively compete.
At synod I met and enjoyed the company of a number of people with whom I agreed. A few of them were from the Zacchaeus Fellowship, a group of Anglicans who help gay men and women resist acting upon – and in many cases reverse – unwanted same-sex attractions. In spite of the fact that gay advocacy voices are often heard in plenary sessions, the Zacchaeus group was not invited to speak at any of the plenary sessions. In fact, they have never been invited to speak at any plenary meeting at any synod: it’s hard not to conclude that, in spite of the nautical theme for synod, most of the rigging was in the choice of speakers.
Of course, I met far more people with whom I disagreed. Nevertheless, they were all gracious and friendly, even after reading some of the articles I had written. I am grateful to the synod staff, clergy and delegates for making me feel “included” and, to allay any suspicions of friends at home, no, I am not suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
This article is also on Holy Post and Eternity Magazine
