What unity does the Church of England require?
by Martin Davie:
A response to the Archbishop of York’s article ‘Water is thicker than blood.’
What is the archbishop’s argument?
In his recent article ‘Water is thicker than blood’ in the journal New Directions[1] the Archbishop of York sets out his vision for the future of the Church of England in the face of its current internal disagreements.
The argument he puts forward in this article begins by noting that as a consequence of the work of the ecumenical movement the sad history of conflict and division between Christians as a response to the disagreements between them has begun to be replaced by a better approach, at the heart of which has been ‘the recovery of baptismal identity and the recognition of a common baptism.’ This approach, the archbishop writes, ‘has allowed us to make space for one another with disagreements and not in spite of them.’[2]
What the archbishop then goes on to ask is ‘whether we need to apply the same ecumenical theology to some of our own internal disagreements as members of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion.’[3] He does not go on to answer this question in relation to the Anglican Communion, but in relation to the Church of England he declares:
‘… that the bonds we have in Christ, and with one another through our baptism fixes us together as the body of Christ in ways that simply do not permit us the luxury of saying, as it were the eye to the hand, I don’t need you. Of course, we live in our tribes, societies, groupings and even denominations. It has ever been thus. And these things can provide many benefits. But baptism is deeper and more binding and cannot be undone. Therefore, I dream for the Church of England a better and more beautiful story where, even with the challenge of our current disagreements, we learn to inhabit a space where, although from time to time, we will be sitting at separate tables, we are still in the same room, recognising the image of the same Christ in one another, delighting in each other’s well-being and flourishing and refusing to give in to the pull of human history and human culture that would drive us apart.’ [4]
As he sees it:
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