The Editorial in the current issue of the Roman Catholic International journal, “The Tablet” highlights both the Archbishop of Canterbury’s proposed visit to Zimbabwe and the rumours about his retirement.
The editorial states:
The proposed visit by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to Zimbabwe next month highlights one of the Anglican Communion’s most divisive disputes. Zimbabwe’s Anglicans have been drawn into a bitter quarrel which centres on the activities of the Revd Nolbert Kunonga. He has proclaimed himself “Archbishop of Harare” in place of the bishop recognised by the rest of the Anglican Communion, Bishop Chad Gandiya, and has seized church property, including the cathedral. Allied to the regime of President Robert Mugabe, the Kunonga faction claims to be more authentically biblical in its version of Anglicanism because it rejects any accommodation with homosexuality in the Church, especially moves in the United States to allow homosexuals to be ordained or appointed as bishops. This reflects a homophobic and patriarchal approach to sexuality which is deeply rooted in many African cultures, across denominations.
“Archbishop” Kunonga has been excommunicated by the Anglican province in southern Africa. The Archbishop of Canterbury brings with him not much more than the power of persuasion, though he can demonstrate the solidarity of the rest of the Anglican Communion with the dispossessed Anglicans who have been forced to celebrate Holy Communion in Harare Cathedral car park. But the Anglican division over homosexuality is beyond any immediate solution and has vexed Dr Williams’ primacy since he was appointed in 2002.
There is speculation that he would like to retire long before the required age of 70 and return to academic life. His own sympathies regarding homosexuality have always been progressive, but he leads a Church, in England and overseas, where majority opinion has not caught up with him. On behalf of that conservative majority opinion – to the dismay of some of his own liberal circle of friends – he has tried to maintain the Anglican Communion’s unity, albeit with diminishing success. Parts of it are in de facto schism over the issue; a de jure break-up cannot be postponed for ever. A formal split would seem like a personal tragedy for this kindly, learned and liberal man. He is the last person to want to preside over one.
For Dr Williams, or more likely his successor, the unavoidable question has to be whether the received model of Anglican unity, based on an ecclesiology more Catholic than Protestant, is still realistic when many parts of the Anglican world are not prepared to play by its rules. There is no central Anglican authority, a situation that did not seem to matter when a general consensus existed as to what Anglicanism stood for. Its absence now makes the task of the Archbishop of Canterbury, titular head of the Communion and chief defender of its unity, uniquely burdensome. Other international Christian denominations, such as the Lutherans and the Methodists, have felt that the universal dimension of their faith was sufficiently expressed by a looser federal structure, without any attempt to impose uniformity of doctrine or church order. If that pattern is the one towards which Anglicanism is inexorably progressing, any attempt to head it off will be a wasted effort. With his experience, it would not be surprising if Dr Williams was beginning to think he has given it his best shot, but that the task may be beyond even human capability.