Anglican Apologetics

When it comes to apologies, quality means more than quantity

Sees flag of St George, leaves…

Three quarters of the way into the 12 Steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous program of recovery, one is invited to make “direct amends" to those one has wronged, “except when to do so would injure them or others.” All of the 12 Steps are structured by commitment to a profound humility, but #9 is particularly striking in this regard: it’s a reminder that if you’re not careful, even your contrition can be ego-driven or selfish. That is, without proper reflection, even the way you say sorry can be more for your own sake than for that of the other guy.

It’s not for me to say whether the three apologies issued here in Canada last week by the Most Reverend Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, were the kind of apologies that did more harm than good. What does seem to be clear, both explicitly and implicitly, from media coverage of his visit, is that the tour was built primarily around the Archbishop’s schedule rather than those of Indigenous communities or Residential Institution survivors; that too few of these survivors were included in the meetings; and that the Archbishop’s apologies, though beautifully worded and evidently heartfelt, were far too short on new material commitments to addressing the damages wrought by the church. Shame and embarrassment are similar, albeit distinct feelings — but last week Canadian Anglicans, like me, had reason for experiencing a very great deal of both.

It’s hard to overstate the damage done to Welby’s visit by the shocking resignation, barely a week before it began, of National Indigenous Archbishop Mark MacDonald for unspecified “sexual misconduct” — although this will likely be the least of the devastating medium- and long-term fallout from this news. Readers of the Anglican Journal, the official newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada, used to read MacDonald’s monthly columns right next to (and in equal size alongside) those of Primate Linda Nicholls; he had been an exemplar and a leader and a mentor to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Anglicans all across the country, perhaps especially in the vital, and maybe quixotic, work of attempting to decolonize the Anglican Church — formerly the Church of England in Canada. His resignation left shock and heartbreak.

MacDonald, along with Nicholls, had both invited Welby to Canada to apologize — though for the life of me, if the apology was not to be accompanied by some sort of new material restitution, I struggle to understand what anyone had hoped it would accomplish. Here is a point of ecclesiological fact which has been missing not only from the media coverage, but seemingly from the whole communications strategy of the visit: the Archbishop of Canterbury is not the Anglican Pope. Coming on the heels of Pope Francis’s apology in Rome this spring, that was the analogy practically begged for by an apology from Welby. But Residential institution survivors and Indigenous peoples had already received two apologies — one in 1993, and a second in 2019 to address the spiritual abuse deemed omitted from the first apology — from the highest authorities in the Anglican Church of Canada, which is, unlike the Catholic Church in Canada, a self-governing body.

This is part of the confusion owing to Anglicanism’s being a half-Catholic, half-Protestant denomination — episcopal (bishop-governed) but national churches. If you are a Roman Catholic priest in Canada, there is a direct chain of doctrinal and organizational authority that eventually leads to Francis himself, who bears, as far as you’re concerned, the inherited authority of the priesthood ordained upon the Apostle Peter by Jesus Christ. The worldwide Anglican Communion, on the other hand, is a collection of self-governing national churches (whose membership are today mostly African) — all of which are in communion with the See of Canterbury, but don’t take orders from it, on theology or human resources. That’s why the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the United States were, for instance, quicker to ordain women than the Church of England, and proceeded with blessing same-sex unions and even performing same-sex marriage rites wholly independently of it.

There was, of course, a time when the Church of England had more direct power in the far-flung regions of the British Empire; a CBC news story noted at one point that, “Welby also said survivors in Canada are not the only consideration: he noted the Anglican Church and other religious institutions have harmed Indigenous communities in the Caribbean, Australia and elsewhere” — which is one of those sentences that says a lot more than it intends to. But it’s worth remembering that for the years of mandatory Residential institution attendance for Indigenous families — roughly a century of kidnap and brainwashing and sexual predation and homicidal negligence and worse — the Canadian Anglican church was self-governing.

The Archbishop of Canterbury does, certainly, carry enormous gravitas and spiritual symbolism in the Anglican world, and it’s not remotely inappropriate that he should apologize for the schools. But it should have been made clear, to all parties, what the apology was meant to add to the formal apologies already issued by the church, as well as what new material restitution might be offered by the Church of England in addition to that provided by the Canadian church so far.

I suspect that at least part of what motivated last week’s under-baked apologies was the very real possibility that there is simply no apology thorough enough, well-composed enough, good-intentioned enough to cover the vast depravity and fathomless evil of those so-called schools. The church, which is meant to mediate God’s forgiveness, doesn’t have the power to absolve itself of the cruellest and most protracted crime in this country’s history. There is no one left in any position of responsibility anywhere in the church who views the institutions as anything less than an utter moral calamity; the Bishop of the Diocese of Isles & Inlets, the Right Reverend Anna Greenwood-Lee, has described the church’s historical commitment to the spread of Anglo-Saxon imperial cultural norms as a “heresy.” But in our Book of Common Prayer, Anglicans ask for the grace to praise God “not only with our lips, but in our lives,” and by that logic, the verbal beauty of a written or spoken apology must be matched by actions just as far-reaching. They haven’t been.

So what has our church done? We paid into a negotiated settlement along with other churches responsible for running the “school” system at the ultimate behest, as Justice Murray Sinclair reminds us, of the Canadian government (the American Episcopal/Anglican author the Reverend Canon Stephanie Spellers has documented the ways in which the Anglican church has been a reliable ally of power elites throughout the Anglo-American and Commonwealth world — although in this case the United Church of Canada was also involved, as well as the Presbyterian Church, and the large majority of the “schools” were run by the Roman Catholic Church).

The year before the Church’s apology in 1993, the Anglican Healing Fund was established to support community projects aimed at redressing some of the untold damages done by church-run institutions. Now in its thirtieth year, the fund is primarily aimed at supporting language revitalization at this point. And in 2019 the church voted to create a self-governing Indigenous Anglican church, though the pace, scale of, and support for the roll out of this initiative have all been subject of at least some concern.

Is it enough? Go hold your kid, then tell me if you think so. What could ever possibly come close to being enough?

Rev. Spellers has an idea. In her book The Church Cracked Open, Spellers, who is Black and addressing herself to a historically affluent WASP church membership, argues that there is clear biblical precedent for the liberation of people (and institutions) choked by their own (often ill-gotten) possession and privilege: kenosis, or self-emptying. The giving of oneself first that God endows to Creation, then that Christ gives to humanity. Her title refers to the extravagant breaking open of a jar of ointment by the Unnamed Woman, with which she anoints Jesus’s body before his crucifixion — over the protests of Judas, Christ’s betrayer, who only cares about how much the ointment is worth.

There are moments in Spellers’s book when the need for this sacred process of ‘emptying out’ the church is invoked in the name of combatting high-concept problems such as Whiteness, or in the service of such goals as Becoming Beloved Community; my friend and local elected Indigenous leader Khelsilem has spoken about the challenge of mobilizing people around conceptual language such as this, which can often feel abstract — and understandably so, partly because it is categorical language meant to make sense of big, broad patterns. But there is nothing abstract about liquidating Anglican church assets en masse to make further restitution for damage done by Residential “schools.” It is straightforward. It is concrete. Most importantly, it’s literally what the guy we worship told us to do: sell your stuff, and give the proceeds to the people who need it.

Based on previous statements by Linda Nicholls, our current primate should in theory be amenable:

I think our preoccupation with buildings has been to our detriment… I’m not saying we don’t need buildings—absolutely, we need some, but do we need as many as we have? … You feel the prayer that’s been soaked into the walls of a cathedral or church that’s been there for a hundred years. That’s not to be discarded lightly, but it is to say, if it is getting in the way of the ministry and mission to which you are called, then we have to ask that question.

We wouldn’t be able to continue with the church as it has been; for Spellers, that’s not a bug but a feature. If we ever came close to giving up what might be necessary to help revitalize the languages destroyed, or begin to restore individuals, families, and communities from the trauma inflicted — though as Sinclair says, the government must be made to pay for the majority of this work — it might mean having to start again as a church with nothing; or at least, nothing in terms of capital, real estate, or much beyond love of God and neighbour. For those worried about what this might mean for the church as a viable organization, I turn to the words of Archbishop Welby’s predecessor, Rowan Williams:

Wherever you’re aware of some sort of conflict between church and society, or world, ask yourself: am I interested in defending the security of the church, or simply being the church — and so being the presence of God’s compassion and God’s transformation wherever and however it happens.

Or as some Jewish guy once said: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Support is available for anyone affected by the lingering effects of residential school and those who are triggered by the latest reports. A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for residential school survivors and others affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419. (posted from CBC News)