Ardour and Order: Can the Bonds of Affection Survive in the Anglican Communion?

In the life of the Anglican Communion today, an approach which expresses ‘ardour’, a response to the Gospel which tends towards freedom from institutional restraint, is favoured over an approach of ‘order’, which sees the regulation of the life of the church as itself a witness to the ordered will of God. There is both an ‘ardour of the left’, which seeks to loosen the restrictions of canon law to allow a greater ‘inclusiveness’, and an ‘ardour of the right’, which is prepared to override traditional understandings of jurisdiction in the defence of ‘orthodoxy’. The First Epistle to Clement bears witness to an ancient tradition of respect for order in the life of the church. The ‘Windsor Lambeth Process’ in the Anglican Communion – as developed by the Primates' Meeting at Dromantine in 2006, and affirmed at their meeting in 2007 at Dar es Salaam – furthers just such an ordered approach to the life of the Communion, by its requests to the North American Churches through due process, by the development of mechanisms to address questions of alternative episcopal oversight, by the Listening Process to address the moral questions under debate, and by the process to draft and adopt an Anglican Covenant. These initiatives are all intended to strengthen ‘the bonds of affection’, and to secure the future of the Anglican Communion as an international family of Churches.