I want to build on the excellent article last week by the Rev. Matt Wilcoxen calling for a more synodal form of governance in the ACNA. It has become painfully clear in the last six months that the governance structure of the Anglican Church in North America is not merely flawed but fundamentally broken, and that serious change needs to happen in order for the province to survive, and for both laity and clergy to be protected.
I will submit to you that the dysfunction we have seen over the past six months and extending to the last several years is not merely coincidental or the product of several unrelated incidents happening within a short time span: these problems are features, not bugs. From the beginning, the Anglican Church in North America was designed to limit the influence of the laity and lower orders of clergy, to concentrate control in the College of Bishops, and in particular to grant significant influence and power to the Archbishop. This concentration of power has resulted in recurring blindness to potential issues within the province and an inability to react to these issues. Without a transition to a more traditional synodal form of governance, these problems will persist, even with an overhaul of the disciplinary process.
Backing up a bit, it’s important to answer the question: why is it that the ACNA is non-synodal, i.e. why do the laity and lower orders of clergy lack real influence in the governance process? The answer is a fairly simple one: the founding bishops of the ACNA, particularly Abp. Bob Duncan, had a deep distrust of the synodality of the Episcopal Church, broadly known as the “General Convention.” In the General Convention, conservatives regularly lost ground to progressive forces, due in large part to procedural issues within TEC’s vast and arcane canonical system. When the ACNA was formed, the desire was to shed as many of the perceived issues of the Episcopal Church as possible, and with that went traditional Anglican governance structures.
You will notice that in the ACNA the collective body of the bishops is referred to as the “College of Bishops” rather than the “House of Bishops.” To those unfamiliar with traditional Anglican practice, this may seem like a perfectly innocuous change designed to create some space between the ACNA and TEC, but it belies a deeper shift in attitude. To be clear, Anglicans do not have “colleges” of bishops. Roman Catholics do.
And from this we can understand the current place of the bishops in the province: they act much more like Roman Catholic bishops, wielding power with a lack of accountability to the laity or clergy. Their ability to control the Constitution and Canons, as well as the oversight of the provincial organization, is un-Anglican. Perhaps this was necessary in the early days of the province, when strong, centralized leadership was needed to get the thing off the ground, but the time for maturity has come. As Chris Hill has pointed out, around 20% of the bishops have been bad eggs, and on top of that numerous other dysfunctions exist with no clear path forward through the bishops for resolution.
How do we reform, then? Having surveyed a number of other Anglican provinces, I believe these are some high-level changes that can occur in order to return us to a more historic Anglican practice. Obviously, these would take significant work and constitutional/canonical changes, but it’s important to voice the need for shifts of this magnitude.
1. Get rid of the Provincial Assembly. This body serves little purpose. It exists to rubber stamp canonical changes from the Provincial Council (which itself serves little purpose at the moment), and has no reason to exist other than to have a giant body of people get together and appear unified e.g. it has “youth representatives” who are allowed to vote. It also meets far too infrequently (every 5 years) to really have an impact, and therefore is an impediment to positive change.
2. Overhaul the Provincial Council (PC) to be a true synod. As Matt has pointed out, it already has the ability to do this, and it can give itself the powers to function in this way. Have a normal synodal process where resolutions are debated publicly and voted upon with well-established rules of order that are publicly available at all times. This should be the central action of ACNA governance, rather than the formality it currently is.
Further reform should occur in that the PC should be broken into three houses: bishops, clergy, and laity. All three houses must approve a resolution by a 2/3 majority vote, and in cases of particular sensitivity, say the ordination of women, the threshold could be 3/4 majority. Each house can also take the option to go and debate/vote separately from the others.
The Provincial Council should also directly appoint members of the Governance Task Force (now the Constitution and Canons Committee), or other committees, and it should be responsible for the administration of the province via an expanded Executive Committee that becomes a Standing Committee. Likewise, the Archbishop should be elected by the Provincial Council, in a public vote, rather than by a secretive conclave of the College of Bishops.
The benefits of such a system help to solve many of our current problems. It would force everyone in the province to work together in order to properly steer the ship. At the moment, the College of Bishops runs the province. Not only does this create isolation and distrust, but the bishops are too overwhelmed to handle everything that needs done. A synodal process is a collaborative one, and it allows for much more flexibility in how we tackle the problems before us.
It will also help eliminate the bottleneck at the provincial level around needed change by bringing in the talented laity and clergy of the province to help solve the problem. An example: the current overhaul of Title IV has been attempted for years, but has failed. This happened in secret and often for political reasons e.g. an archbishop didn’t want to look bad. A synod would have been able to avoid this; it would have created a task force that would have given public reports and recommendations, and who would have been held publicly accountable.
3. Expand the Executive Committee into a Standing Committee. The job of a Standing Committee is both to run a province but also to ensure that the synodal process runs smoothly. The current Executive Committee is too small for this and places far too much of a burden on the twelve members. Likewise, the Executive Committee has become a bit of an “insiders” club, with a revolving door mentality that preserves the status quo.
The Standing Committee should be the ones who really handle provincial administration, ensuring that discipline runs smoothly, that staff are people whom they select and hire, that money is distributed correctly to provincial initiatives, and that the Archbishop has what he needs to represent the province well. Such a system creates accountability and transparency, avoiding situations where people say things like “I didn’t feel comfortable reporting this because so-and-so works for the Archbishop” or “the provincial office has produced talking points.”
4. Reduce the role of the Archbishop significantly. In our current situation, we have one of the most powerful archbishops in all of Anglicanism. With the proposed changes to the Canons, he has enormous influence over the process for change, as well as discipline and provincial administration. This has consistently proven to be a net negative for the ACNA, with personalities, reputational management, and ego regularly getting in the way of needed change.
Anglicans do not have popes. Our Archbishop should largely serve a role as a figurehead, representing the province and developing relationships within it. Potentially, he has a few “break glass” disciplinary powers when all else fails. Ideally, we don’t even have an Archbishop. Elect a Primate for a six-year term, then he can go back to being a normal diocesan bishop, instead of the awkward system we have now with “Archbishops Emeriti” floating around.
5. Let the bishops be bishops. Bishops are pastors, and they oftentimes do not make for great statesmen. In the ACNA, we require far too much of our bishops, asking them to both shepherd a diocese and manage a province at the same time. If the bishops become more of a “house” and less of a “college” then they can still offer the same pastoral guidance while not being the bottleneck for any and every change.
There are other changes that need to happen that we can’t get into here, particularly on a diocesan level, but if we want to make progress on these problems, whether it’s geographic dioceses, discipline, the ordination of women, doctrinal confusion, etc. we need a synodal system. Counting on the bishops to overcome all of their interpersonal politics, disagreements, and time constraints clearly is not going to cut it. Abp. Duncan recently said that the ACNA is going through “adolescent trials” and he’s right: it’s time to grow up.