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Conflict as Communion: Toward an Agonistic Ecclesiology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2019

Kyle B.T. Lambelet
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Abstract

Though Anglican theologians, clergy, and laypeople have written and spoken extensively about the current status of the Anglican Communion, the conceptualization and practice of conflict has itself remained largely unexamined. This essay argues for the necessity of a better theology of conflict, one rooted in a Trinitarian account of unity through difference. It shows that Anglicans have tended to think of conflict-as-sin or conflict-as-finitude. The essay commends a semantic shift that develops conflict-as-communion. Conflict is a means of grace that animates the divine life of the Trinity, enables God’s work of salvation in history, and is a natural part of good human sociality. This theology of conflict can allow generative relational practices, some of which are already in use across the Anglican Communion.

Keywords

agonismAnglican CommunionconflictBruce KayeperichoresisTrinityJohn Webster
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , November 2019 , pp. 133 - 147
Copyright
© The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2019 

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Footnotes

1

Kyle B.T. Lambelet is a postdoctoral fellow at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.

References

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8 One notable exception to the announcers of doom are historians. See Chapman, Mark D., Anglican Theology (London: T & T Clark, 2012 Google Scholar). See also the volume edited by Power, Thomas P. (ed.), Change and Transformation: Essays in Anglican History (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013 Google Scholar). Another exception are priests and canons like C.K. Roberts who are thinking with Scripture about ecclesial conflict. See Robertson, C.K., ‘Courtroom Dramas: A Pauline Alternative for Conflict Management’, Anglican Theological Review 89.4 (2007), pp. 589–610 Google Scholar. While I sympathize with aspects of Roberts’ project, I still find his essay overly concerned with conflict as a problem to be managed.

9 Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 72.

10 Bates, A Church at War: Anglicans and Homosexuality, p. 137.

11 The Lambeth Commission on Communion, ‘The Windsor Report’ (London: The Anglican Communion Office, 2004), paras. 22–42.

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21 It is essential for my argument to disaggregate conflict and violence. While the theological dimensions of this separation will have to be taken up elsewhere, see Lederach, John Paul, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997 Google Scholar); Lederach, John Paul, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation (The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding; Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2003 Google Scholar); Lederach, John Paul, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

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27 As Karl Rahner rightly argued, ‘the “economic” Trinity is the “immanent” Trinity and the “immanent” Trinity is the “economic” Trinity’. We cannot know about the internal life of the Trinity without knowing about its effects in the world. Rahner, Karl, The Trinity (trans. Joseph Donceel; New York: Continuum, 2001), p. 22 Google Scholar.

28 This is not, as John Milbank might accuse, an ‘ontology of violence’ because I have disaggregated conflict and violence – an elision that leads to significant confusion in Milbank’s work. See Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edn, 2006 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

29 Lederach, Building Peace; Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation; Lederach, The Moral Imagination.

30 Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation, p. 33.

31 Springs, Jason A., Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society: From Enemy to Adversary (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 256 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Participation is the key theological concept that animates Bishop Victor Atta-Baffoe’s account of ecclesial unity. See Atta-Baffoe, Victor, ‘Living in Communion within Anglicanism’, Journal of Anglican Studies 14.2 (November 2016), pp. 226-35Google Scholar. He retrieves this concept from Richard Hooker. See Hooker, Richard, ‘Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V’, in Keble, John (ed.), The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker: With an Account of his Life and Death by Isaac Walton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1836), II, chs. 51–56 Google Scholar.

33 MacDougall, Scott, ‘The Covenant Conundrum: How Affirming an Eschatological Ecclesiology Could Help the Anglican Communion’, Anglican Theological Review 94.1 (2012), pp. 5–26 Google Scholar.

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35 Kaye, Conflict and the Practice of Christian Faith, p. 8.

36 According to the Virginia Report these are the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council, though these are not as stable and authoritative as some would like. See Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, ‘The Virginia Report’, in Anglican Consultative Council, Rosenthal, James, and Currie, Nicola (eds.), Being Anglican in the Third Millennium: The Official Report of the 10th Meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council: Panama, 1996 (Harrisburg, PA: Published for the Anglican Communion by Morehouse Publishing, 1997 Google Scholar). See also Doe, Norman, ‘The Instruments of Unity and Communion in Global Anglicanism’, in Markham, Ian S., Hawkins, J. Barney IV, Terry, Justyn and Steffensen, Leslie Nuñez (eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Anglican Communion (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013 Google Scholar).

37 Rowan Williams, ‘Archbishop’s First Presidential Address’, quoted in Kaye, Conflict and the Practice of Christian Faith, p. 166. See also Douglas, Ian T., ‘Authority, Unity, and Mission in the Windsor Report’, Anglican Theological Review 87.4 (2005), pp. 567-74Google Scholar (573).

38 See also Wondra, Ellen K., ‘Problems with Authority in the Anglican Communion’, in Kwok, Pui-lan, Berling, Judith A., and Paa, Jenny Plane Te (eds.), Anglican Women on Church and Mission (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2012), pp. 21–36 Google Scholar.

39 Lederach, The Moral Imagination, pp. 78–80.

40 Kwok Pui Lan, ‘From a Colonial Church to a Global Communion’, in Kwok et al., Anglican Women on Church and Mission, p. 14.

41 One example that transpired on an elite level but is still positive is represented in the Final Report from the International Anglican Conversations on Human Sexuality called together by Archbishop Cary following the 1998 Lambeth Conference. See http://www.anglican.ca/faith/focus/hs/ssbh/hsr-bishops-1999/

42 Douglas, Ian T., ‘An American Reflects on the Windsor Report’, Journal of Anglican Studies 3.2 (December 2005), pp. 155-79CrossRefGoogle Scholar (155).

43 Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation, p. 31.

44 Kwok Pui Lan, ‘From a Colonial Church to a Global Communion’.

45 Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation, p. 49.