“Variable Geometry” – the new good disagreement?

The Archbishop of Canterbury chose to riff on some familiar themes in his Presidential Address to General Synod.  The first was the danger of ‘fear’ – this time in the context of ‘suffering’ and ‘enemies’; the second was the need for the Church to deal well with internal conflicts, “if we are able to minister effectively externally to our nation and world”.

A quick survey of his Presidential Addresses shows just how familiar it all was.

Fear of the other

Fear of ‘the other’ is the cardinal sin according to the Archbishop – it causes people to form “self protecting, and reinforcing huddles” (2024); to meet in “a hermeneutic of conspiracy” (2015); to act like a “dysfunctional crew heading for the rocks, different groups all strive to grab the wheel” (2016).  Fear is the “greatest enemy of dialogue” (2016), which “encourages a bunker mentality” (2018) and “make[s] a lion out of shadows” (2020).

This year, Archbishop Justin challenged Synod saying, “The fear and suffering that come from division make us look at other people as our enemies and we have to resist that illusion in faithful and honest community. Causes of fear, which leads to a sense of enmity are well disguised as uncertainty, unpredictability and uncontrollability of life and like barnacles on the hull of a ship, they attach themselves to make us see other people as our enemies, and that is the devil’s work.”

The prize of visible unity depite functional diversity

If fear is the cardinal sin – then finding a way to deal with the Church’s internal conflicts is the prize, as he explained in his first Presidential Address in 2014 – “There is a prize, the quest for which it is worth almost anything to achieve. The prize is visible unity in Christ despite functional diversity.”

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