Chapter
54 … Why I defied the Archbishop
Checks and Balances
This is a feature
of the free world that we often take for granted. We shouldn't!
Look at two leaders: Kim Jong-il in
North Korea and any President of the United States.
Kim is an absolute ruler. North Korea
may have some sort of parliament, it may have judges and law courts,
but the hard reality is that anyone at all who does anything at all
that Kim does not like ends up in front of a firing squad!
Then there is POTUS. He (or she) has
some huge powers. They are Commander-in -Chief of the most powerful
armed forces on earth and they can declare war by their own authority
alone. But in other areas they do not have the power to act on their
own. Healthcare changes for instance. Congress and the Senate have
the power to block the President. Then again Congress can be blocked
by the Senate, and even if both houses agree on some legislation the
president can veto it. But then again the President has to deal with
a (relatively) free press and TV, and public opinion. So there are
all these checks and balances on power to try to limit misuse of it.
And it mostly works:
Where would you prefer to live? The
United States (or some other free world country) or North Korea?
Now Presidents might like
to have all the power, but they don't. Past Presidents have tried to
introduce measures only to have the Supreme Court rule them
unconstitutional. Maybe for a fleeting moment these presidents envied
their Communist counterparts … just maybe. Can you imagine any
North Korean court telling Kim he couldn't do something he wanted?
But it is precisely things like this splitting up of powers that
makes the free world free!
It is called “checks and balances”:
one person or body's set of powers balancing out possible abuses by
another body's powers. And we all know the old saying: power corrupts
and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And this does not just apply to
government of states.
I recounted earlier my experiences in
the Naval Reserve – of spending 36 hours adrift at sea on a
disabled patrol boat because a young Petty Officer engineer would not
bring himself to use the power that Naval regulations gave him to
countermand the orders of the big brash barrister-cum-Lietenant
Commander who wanted to go at full speed regardless of fuel
consumption. Even in the navy, where in wartime a sailor can be
hanged for disobeying the captain's orders there is some division of
powers: the chief engineer can and must when necessary
say: “Sorry Sir, we don't have enough fuel to do that.” and the
captain must give in!
The Anglican Church – possibly
particularly in Australia – has checks and balances built in
everywhere.
I don't mean in Australia particularly
because we were originally a convict settlement – although that has
given a certain larrikin streak to our national character! I mean
that when in the late 1800's and early 1900's our national
constitution was being formulated, they made many improvements on
the English model we were adapting. For instance in England the
Anglican Church was the official national church. In Australia no
denomination was favoured over any other. Likewise when church
constitutions were being formulated they had to take this into
account, which produced a host of differences (and I think generally
improvements) to the English model.
Not that I am knocking the English
model. In the 1662 “Articles of Religion” it reacted to absolute
claims by Rome with the doctrine that we all make
mistakes, and pointed out the historical fact that even general
church councils had been wrong even on doctrinal points. (qf the
Arian heresy). So “power sharing” was creeping in – at about
the same that time that Kings and Queens were being introduced to the
idea of power sharing with Parliament.
The Anglican Communion is a bit quirky
that way – the Archbishop of Canterbury, unlike the “Bishop of
Rome” in the Catholic Communion, is not the top dog of a single
hierarchy. He is, as they put it, only “first among equals”. He
can't give orders to the other Archbishops, and so on down the line.
For instance: Sydney is the capital of
the Australian state of New South Wales. So the diocese that covers
Sydney has an Anglican (and a Catholic) archbishop.
There are other dioceses in New South Wales, they only have bishops
leading them, the archbishop of Sydney is in protocol their superior.
But in protocol only! The archbishop of Sydney cannot interfere in
how these bishops do whatever bishops are legally allowed to do in
their own diocese.
For readers who find this all a bit
irrelevant and are starting to wonder if I have a point here: YES, I
do – please bear with me.
So when I was at theological college
there was this situation. Sydney was theologically conservative and
“evangelical” the other dioceses in New South Wales were by and
large theologically liberal and “Anglo-Catholic”. The Archbishop
of Sydney, much as he might want to, could not influence these
dioceses that were notionally under his care. Yes he even had to
smile and consecrate whoever they chose under their own constitutions
as their next bishop, no matter how much he disapproved of the man's
theology!
But occasionally an evangelical
minister trained by Sydney's theological college was appointed in one
of these dioceses by some broader minded bishop. Later a more
doctrinaire bishop might be appointed and naturally wanted to get rid
of this evangelical minister. We were lectured in college about how
this attempt was frustrated by the rules of the church. The same
rules that stopped the archbishop from meddling in other dioceses in
his state also forbade the bishop of a diocese from getting grid of a
minister who had not done anything sinful or heretical. The rules
also limited how much the bishop could interfere in a parish. This
had allowed the gospel to be preached in many towns where otherwise
it would not have been
So for
all these reasons I valued the
doctrine of checks and balances over the “absolute ruler” model.
I was not “standing up for my rights” when I refused to
resign when the Archbishop said he wanted me to. I was on one hand
standing up principles that I believed were important. On the other
hand I was refusing the archbishop's unlawful demands out of duty of
care for my congregation.
No one should take on pastoring any
church unless they truly believe God has truly called them. And that
has to be accompanied by appointment according to the rules of their
denomination. (PS remember how Saul was both anointed king by God
through Samuel, then later also acclaimed king by the people.) While
one needs both these things to pastor, you only need
one in order to stop!
If you believe Christ has rescinded his
call you should resign! If the denomination rescinds your appointment
according to its rules, well you have to go! But you go with a clear
conscience before God. If you have neither and you leave, you are
just like the “hireling” shepherd who runs away when it all gets
too hard … well we know how Jesus the only true Good Shepherd
scorned that behaviour!
So I stayed on pastoring at St Luke's
Vermont because it was my duty before God to remain pastoring the
flock that had been entrusted to my care until either he released me
or the church lawfully removed me.
This principle of checks and balances
gave me both rights and obligations. For my part I never shirked the
obligations. Wherever the rules of the church said the vicat had to
defer to another body on any question I gladly did – be it to the
Archbishop, Synod, the parish's church council, the Church Warden's,
or a vote at a (lawfully convened!) congregational meeting.
I respected the
limits placed on my authority by the very church rules that conferred
on me whatever authority I had as vicar. I expected the Archbishop to
likewise respect the limits placed on his authority by the very rules
of the church which gave him whatever authority he had as archbishop.
He didn't.
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