Stand Firm Interviews: Dr. Kendall S. Harmon

Part 4 of 4

The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall S. Harmon is a graduate of Bowdoin College, received his D.Phil. from Oxford University, and is Canon Theologian for the Diocese of South Carolina. He is editor of The Anglican Digest, which has the highest circulation of any periodical in the Anglican Communion, and he runs the web site TitusOneNine. He is one of America's leading voices of orthodox Anglicanism. I spoke with him via instant messenger during the week of July 12, 2004. All four installments of this series are available as a print-friendly PDF document. All 4 entries in blog format can be found here.

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Greg Griffith: In a recent conversation, you said that "those churches that haven't already joined the Network, or aren't moving towards joining it, are increasingly part of the problem, not the solution." Can you explain what you meant?

Dr. Kendall S. Harmon: We are in a culture and a church under judgment. God's judgment has many ways of working itself out, but sometimes the judgment is particularly direct in the midst of a people. That was the case in Jeremiah's day, and it is also the case in ours. One of the greatest challenges of being in a time of judgment is this: Not to decide is to decide. The boat is going out from the shore. You can try to keep one foot on the land and another on the boat, but it is unsustainable. If I ask a person like that and they say, "I have not decided," the reality is they will fall off the boat and quickly be on the shore.

This is the case with the Network, and where one stands in relationship to it. The Network is saying, "This is a decisive moment. The gospel really is at stake. If we do not stand now we will never stand. Will you stand with us?"

There are now only two broad possibilities of what is to occur: Either the international leadership will propose a very serious and meaningful solution, or there will be some kind of a tragic bifurcation. In either case, the presence of the community of the Network will be pivotal.

GG: In your presentation "Anglican Essentials and Our Future Call," you give a very compelling explanation – based on the work of some theologians gathered in Oxford – as to why Gene Robinson's consecration was invalid, along with other examples of how ECUSA has flouted the will of the Communion's instruments of unity. In this series of interviews, you've mentioned that Robinson has flatly stated how, in his opinion, Lambeth has no authority in America. If that's true, then presumably Lambeth has no authority anywhere. It's become clear that Canterbury can't expect to hold together a Communion over which it has no "real" authority, no way of making a structural response to a province it decides has strayed too far. Do you think such a structure will emerge from the Lambeth Commission, and if so, do you think they will have waited too long to implement it?

Dr. Kendall S. Harmon: Well let us look at what Gene Robinson actually said: "The Eames Commission does not have any authority over any of the 38 constituent provinces of the Anglican Communion." Technically he is talking about the Commission, which is working on behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates, and it will be reporting to them. The authority they have is derivative, but it is still there.

The main point is that your question speaks to the authority of Lambeth, and it represents the attitude of many Episcopalians: They say of the Episcopal Church "We are autonomous"… "We are our own province"… and similar such things.

It is simply untrue. The Archbishop of Canterbury has had to intervene in the provinces of Rwanda and the Sudan. We could debate in how direct a way he did so, but he did do it. That is real authority. If you read the documents submitted to the Lambeth Commission you may see that many argue that Dr. Rowan Williams has real authority. The right way to think of it is the New Testament image of a family: The father does not have juridical authority, but he has real personal and persuasive authority. Anyone who knows how healthy families work knows that.

The Primates also have authority, and as they have begun relatively recently to meet more frequently together, they have spoken of their desire to exercise "enhanced responsibility." It is highly significant that this very phrase—"enhanced responsibility" was something that they saw themselves exercising when they met and issued a statement in the middle of October 2003 in response to this crisis.

The key to this authority is some words from the Anglican Congress held in Toronto in the early 1960's: "Mutual responsibility and interdependence." That is how families work. When leaders lead, there is a submission to direction. You do not have to look any further for an example of this than a recent action of The Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa. Back in the spring their House of Bishops issued a letter prohibiting the blessing of same-sex unions and encouraging further discussion. According to The Living Church, the letter, which was read from pulpits on June 13 in many dioceses, affirmed the CPSA's commitment to the Church's teaching on human sexuality as articulated in Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference. The bishops stated they would heed the primates' Oct. 16, 2003 request "not to solemnize same-sex marriages but to continue in dialogue on this and related issues." Note carefully the language: They are heeding what the primates called for. That is real authority, and that is what mutual responsibility and interdependence looks like.

Note also the reference in the South African Anglican decision to Lambeth. At General Convention we heard one deputy utter the appalling words: "Lambeth is irrelevant." According to the widely respected Cambridge University Professor Owen Chadwick, in the Anglican Communion, Lambeth resolutions have an influence "so close to authority as hardly to be distinguishable from it." Professor Chadwick is correct, and the General Convention deputy is sadly mistaken. It is highly significant in this regard that the Primates, at their highly unusual specially called second meeting in 2003, "reaffirmed" the resolutions of Lambeth 1998.

So as for authority, it is clearly there if those who have been given it choose to exercise it.

Now to the question of what the Lambeth (Eames) Commission will do. One prays and wonders and rejoices that we do not know—we depend on God. But let us be clear about this much:

"Further dialogue" is something that some members of the Anglican Communion want to do, but they must know they can't. No "Anglican fudge" is possible. I think there will also be a temptation to offer something between a verbal rebuke and substantive discipline, and that will be insufficient. There is a possibility that the commission will come up with a set of choices which is then passed on to the Primates, with positives and negatives for each possibility. This is a way to play for more time, but all it will do is hand the problem to the primates; then the primates will need to solve it. Remember, too, the crucial situation of traditional Episcopalians in the U.S. and Canada. The Primates statement in October 2003 was concerned about them. The American and Canadian House of Bishops clearly failed them, and any solution will need to reflect that by offering some type of serious structural relief.

The key point is: This is it – there is no more time. If they try something "in between," the Primates of the Global South – and remember, their patience is being mistaken for lack of resolve – will not play that game. Something has to give. This is not about "reconciliation." It is a clash over the truth.

GG: There are many Episcopalians who don't support the pansexual agenda in the church, but are so filled with grief at the prospect of a split that they seem willing to tolerate the encroaching agenda for the sake of unity. What advice do you have for them?

I think they have to ask themselves very hard questions about what the Scriptures teach about responding to false teaching, about how the early church dealt with false teaching.

The Primates have made clear that this teaching is beyond the bounds of Anglicanism. It is more dangerous than bad medicine – it is potentially spiritually fatal. That is why, in the early church, communion was seen not simply as a matter of sacramental efficacy but also of Eucharistic fellowship, and they would not be in fellowship with false teachers.

They need to take seriously the fact that so many member churches of the Anglican Communion consider themselves in impaired or broken communion with the Episcopal Church. What would it mean for them to follow this lead for themselves? What would it mean for their children, whose spiritual welfare is part of their stewardship?

That is the theological side, yet there is also a more practical side to your question. They need to remember that the train is not stopping at this station, that Holy Matrimony for homosexual couples will be on the agenda for the 2006 General Convention. They may not be under constraint themselves to adopt this agenda but they need to understand that because a revision of sexual teaching has occurred, the pressure will come to them also. In 1997 Richard John Neuhaus wrote an article called "The Unhappy Fate of Optional Orthodoxy." In it he said: "Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed." It is already happening to clergy and some parishes, and it is the direction of the future. What then is God's call to them as that future unfolds?

These questions I know are difficult, but we are called to wrestle with them as Jacob wrestled with God at the Jabbok.

Realignment is now inevitable. We are to prepare fully. And yet also to remember the words of the psalmist who ends Psalm 131: Oh Israel, hope in the Lord, from this time forth and forevermore.

Posted by Greg Griffith at July 22, 2004 09:28 PM (GMT -6:00)