The economy of the Kingdom

The Primates of the Anglican Communion recently met in Dublin under the chairmanship of the Archbishop of Canterbury. To be more accurate, some of them met there. Fifteen stayed away. Twenty two attended. What divides this Communion (sic) is the question of the place of women and gay people in the church. The Archbishop has employed all his skill, holiness and learning to try and hold together a worldwide fellowship of Anglican churches. He has, according to his own words, placed unity above truth. It is now clear to most people that the unity he has laboured so faithfully to uphold will not survive.

The time has come to recognise that the economy of the Kingdom trumps the unity of the church as an institution. The word economy comes from a Greek word, oikumene which in the New Testament can mean the whole world or human race. Its root is the Greek for house: oikos. English borrows the Greek word as ‘ecumenical’. The ecumenical movement which came to prominence in church circles back in the 1920s has been largely concerned with the reunion of separated churches.

It is clear that Christians must now abandon this narrowly ecclesiastical view of what it means to be ecumenical in favour of an urgent search for a deep sense of what it might mean to recognise the unity of the one human race within which we might have a creative role to play using our understanding of what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. We have never before been so aware that we live in one ‘oikos’ and that it’s getting crowded (not to mention polluted). This demand makes Anglican Christian squabbles over the place of women and gay people fade into trivial inconsequence. The Archbishop has become trapped in a churchy view of unity. He could put his wonderful personal qualities at the service of a wider, deeper and older understanding of the 'oikumene' where unity and truth have an equal footing. What a wonderful contribution he could make!