Archbishop: confrontation and compromise in the Church

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, addressing the Methodist Conference on Tuesday (29th June), explored what today's Church could learn from the confrontation and compromise reflected in the lives of Peter and Paul.

In a wide-ranging speech including reflections on ecumenism, the wider society, and fresh expressions; the Archbishop warned against a simple interpretation of Peter's ministry being one of hierarchy and order while Paul stands for some kind of creative newness.

Listen to Archbishop Rowan's full address.

Dr Williams described their essential difference as being:

Peter knows who Jesus is and Paul knows what Jesus means… two different kinds of commitment and clarity that aren’t always going to sit comfortably together.

As a result, key questions for the Church include:

On what do we compromise? At what point do we say the best is the enemy of the good? If we want to move six inches forward rather than try and move forward 12 inches and fail, is that defensible? That affects us in quite a range of areas.

He highlighted one of those areas as the

vitally important context of our work together with fresh expressions… one of those areas in the life of your church and increasingly in the life of Anglican communities where the pressure towards generous ecclesial mess and the pressure towards holding on to what naturally makes us recognisable to each other grind up against each other.

The Archbishop added:

Jesus is the one who wants to pour out his hospitality for everyone who wants to share his body and blood for the life of the world and here we are trying to deal with those people who barely even know that they don't want to go to church because church is so remote from them. We want in Jesus' name… to feed them as Jesus would want to feed them.

It was too simple to say that Petrine ministry would solve it all, he went on.

What if you end up in a situation where something is compromised, compromised so profoundly that it's not quite clear that what you are doing is recognisable – not a compromise about details of order, let along hierarchy and authority but some sort of compromise about whether you're offering the wholeness of what you've been given?

The history of the Church's mission is a history of many efforts to reach to, and speak with, those who won't instinctively and immediately understand the language you are talking. Some of these have been amazingly creative and right, and some of them in the long run have been corrupting and wrong, and some of them, it's too soon to say. There's no alternative but to keep going back together to the Gospel.

His challenge was in how to share the risk, posing the question:

What's the life I’m prepared to lay down in this? The question is addressed to Peter and Paul, you and me, Methodists, Anglicans, Catholics, Pentecostals and all the rest.