Hard truth about soft power
by Charles Raven, Gafcon:
How has the Anglican Communion managed to more or less stay together and even at times give the appearance of growth despite nearly twenty years of doctrinal and ethical chaos?
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s presence in Khartoum, Sudan, for the inauguration of the 39th Province of the Anglican Communion on July 30th illustrates the point.
This Archbishop had just chaired a General Synod which marked a further advance of the dominant LGBT lobby, in particular by agreeing to provide a service for gender transition and banning so-called ‘conversion therapy’ for unwanted same-sex attraction, which threatens basic faithful pastoral care.
Yet this same Archbishop takes the leading role as the Episcopal Church of the Sudan is born, notwithstanding his complicity with the Church of England’s accelerating drift from that apostolic Christianity which has sustained Sudanese Anglicans through much suffering.
Archbishop Welby regularly rises above such contradictions, as did his predecessor. How do they manage it? The answer has a lot to do with soft power, a term coined by James Nye after the end of the Cold War to describe a political strategy based on co-option rather than coercion, shaping preferences through relationship and incentive.
With long experience of running and then dismantling a global empire, the British Establishment was already well versed in this practice and the habit continues. Within the Anglican Communion it has two aspects.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
