Jesus ... suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing abuse for him. Hebrews 13:13

AST WEEK saw the release of Sex and the City, the movie. I tried in vain to download the synopsis in advance - I thought you might enjoy a plot spoiler from the pulpit - but, alas, it was locked, unavailable to prying eyes. I've never seen more than a minute or two of the TV series - I don't seem to see TV nowadays - and, I suspect, it's one of those titles - like Desperate Housewives - which is more suggestive than what actually goes on, on screen.

But, try as we may, we can't get away from Sex and the City. The whole of the Anglican Communion seems to be aflame with sex. Much of the energy behind the civil wars in the Episcopal Church, and throughout North America, seems to focus on gay sex - multiple marriages, even among the clergy, being ignored. Much of the energy this side of the Atlantic surrounds a different aspect of sex, the sex of the minister: whether women can be bishops and what happens to those of us who could not accept such a development. Without sex, the Lambeth Conference would scarcely be newsworthy, even in the silly season. Meanwhile most of us can't escape from the lure of the city - if not London or Rome, then the City of God.

There is a profounder analysis of the crisis in the Anglican Communion than either sex or even, as is sometimes observed, the clash between revealed religion and the kind of religion you make up. What we are seeing, I think, is the final collapse of colonialism in Anglicanism. The Episcopal Church, owing more to the Episcopal Church of Scotland than to the Church of England, has always been a troublesome cousin. Australians constantly agonise about whether or not they are in any sense British. African Anglicanism - in its Nigerian variety at least - flexes its muscles and flaunts its gathering strength against an ever-weaker mother Church of England. The point is well made that we in England have altered the very Gospel our missionaries took to Africa. What it all adds up to is the final collapse not only of colonialism but also of what increasingly seems to have been a fantasy, the Anglican Communion as an international Church, with an ecclesiological coherence to equal that of the Roman Catholic Church.

Our forefathers weren't imitating Rome. They not only rejected the papal claims but, building on the branch theory of Catholicism, they were trying to create something more like the Orthodox family of national churches, in line with a doctrine of the local church they had derived from Saint Cyprian of Carthage, the very doctrine Cardinal Kasper tried unsuccessfully to explain last year to the Church of England College of Bishops. In the end it is not only the polity of these churches that has been too disparate - their use of words like 'province' and 'diocese' - but the notion of 'provincial autonomy' which has finally wrecked the unifying force of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of Scriptures, Creeds, Ministry and Sacraments.

Moving closer to home, we in England have lived through the unravelling. From 1897 until 1947 - fifty years - the Church of England, and indeed the Anglican Communion, did its ecumenical ecclesiology in the light of the Archbishops' response to Pope Leo's encyclical of 1896, Apostolicae Curae. The South India scheme, the Anglican-Methodist Conversations, the Covenanting proposals, Porvoo, local ecumenical projects and local ecumenical canons have all contributed to a gradual weakening of what might be called an Anglo-Catholic ecclesiology. This is not entirely a tale of misery: there has equally been a powerful injection of reformed Catholicism into the warp and woof of ecumenical theology, as, for instance, in the BEM report adopted at Lima in 1982. There have been many signs of Anglicanism becoming for the World Council of Churches what Taizé has been for Catholic-Protestant co-operation. And we mustn't underestimate - or attempt to monopolise interpretation of - what the Spirit is saying to the Churches. It may well be the will of God that English Protestant Christianity is brought into a much closer relationship with continental Protestantism. But we, ourselves, are undone ... or, at least, so it seems.

But back to Sex and the City. The City - the polis - is the political grouping to which we belong. In other words, our ecclesiology. How we live as the Church. (Don't you hate phrases like 'do Church' and 'be Church'?) The City, to be blunt, is in crisis. Of course, as the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us, 'Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come.' That is the response of the Hebrews' writer to our text:

Jesus ... suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing abuse for him.

What might 'going outside the camp' - going beyond the city walls - mean? I think, myself, that there are - and will be - more than one honourable way of responding to the crisis we are in. To begin with, we must all stand at the foot of the Cross, as children of Mary and brothers of John. Not to do that is to be amongst the disciples who forsook him and fled. The evangelist doesn't quite tell us that the other ten apostles fled but he does rather suggest that there were just three people at the Cross, apart from the soldiers: Jesus himself, Mary and 'the disciple whom he loved'. We have to do better than the ten apostles, we have to go and stand with John, and accept the embrace of Mary at the foot of the Cross. That's where we stand as we find the gates of the city shutting us out, if that is indeed what happens. We not only must go there but we must bear the abuse of going there. Playing victim? No, there is only one Victim and he is enthroned on the altars of our Church and borne aloft on the praises of his people.

But what happens then? As I've said, I think there will be more than one honourable course of action. I have talked to priests of my age who've said that they must stay, look after their people and finish the job solemnly entrusted to them. I call that the 'Non-Juror' stance. Like the Anglican clergy who wouldn't swear allegiance to William and Mary at the end of the seventeenth century and the Catholic clergy who wouldn't swear allegiance to the French Revolutionary government a century later, the 'Non-Jurors' of the present day will soldier on and die out.

As they soldier on and die out, babies will be baptised, the faithful fed and the dead buried. It's a highly honourable course of action and one which many, because of their family circumstances, or because of personal entanglements of one kind or another, will be obliged to take. It's also a course of action which many young priests feel able to take: they have joined a church with an unsatisfactory ecclesiology - didn't we all? - and they are content to work within it and be subject to its limitations.

A second course of action is what the Bishop of Fulham has memorably described as 'swimming for it'. The boat is sinking. There's a large liner moored some distance away and the best thing seems to be for individuals to 'swim for it'. An honourable thing to do: to shift metaphors, it can't be a bad thing for a small church with small flocks and many shepherds to lose a few shepherds to a large church with large flocks and few shepherds. For some, standing with Mary and John means also standing with Peter, the forgiven and restored Peter to whom the Lord said 'Feed my sheep'. As Balthasar teaches us, as well as being a Church of Mary and a Church of John, the Church is a Church of Peter.

But, going back to the image, beware of jumping ship and swimming for it. When priests have asked me about this, my advice invariably has been - and still is: finish the job you're doing and, at the point where, anyway, you would be looking for a move, that might be the time to leave. After all, even if the Synod votes with two thirds in each house to make no satisfactory provision for us, we shall have anything up to six years before anything else significant happens. Six years is long enough to do many a parish job from start to finish. I shall have no hesitation in taking part later this year - whatever the Synod vote - in the licensing of new parish priests and meanwhile I shall be joyfully receiving a new deacon and ordaining a new priest.

One more course of action and one which I hope commends itself to many of you: to continue to work, as long as possible, for a journey together:

Let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing abuse for him.

This has been the policy of Forward in Faith for many years and, it seems to me, becomes more - and not less - urgent if the new dioceses we need to flourish independently are denied us. We have had two Ebbsfleet Festivals of Faith in my eight years. The theme of the first was 'Marching to the Promised Land: a Land of Milk and Honey'. When I was searching for a theme for last year's festival, one of the clergy suggested 'Let My People Go'. It seemed too provocative at the time but it is what many of us now want to say and some of us may need to learn to say.

There are, of course, several possible outcomes - not least that the synodical process produces stalemate and we continue on as present for the foreseeable future. It may even be, as one senior bishop has said, that the ordination of women is a mistake that will be corrected, though it will take a hundred years to correct. There will be those who look to Orthodoxy or to the Continuing Churches - though, when I polled my clergy two or three years ago, neither of these options had more than one or two takers.

But, assuming for the moment that a corporate journey going forth to [Jesus] outside the camp, bearing abuse for him is going to be possible, it is important that we should know both how to travel light and what to pack for the journey. We shall certainly need the Catechism of the Catholic Church in our travel-pack and, for some that will mean wrestling with paragraphs 2357 to 2359. We shall need also to listen to wise voices like Fr Aidan Nichols OP, whose books and counsel and talks have been so helpful. I hope you have read not only The Panther and the Hind but also The Realm, published this year, in which he takes seriously - and pays homage to - the Anglo-Catholic cultural and intellectual tradition. We shall need our pastoral experience, our inculturation, our catechetical and liturgical skill. We shall probably need to be a little less slavishly Roman: we shall need to be a bit more RSV and a bit less Jerusalem bible; a bit more on with fine liturgical music and a bit less indebted to 1970s folk masses; a bit more damask and a bit less polyester. It will require some of us older priests, brought up with Vatican II reforms, to be more patient and understanding towards some of the younger priests, with their maniples and miraculous medals. They come from a different culture, an age of heritage and retro, not an age of lunar landing and futurism.

A final thought: as any of the Anglo-Catholic bishops will tell you, this year we have seen bumper numbers of baptisms and confirmations, thousands of enthusiastic laity and, at a parish level, lots of good practice, hard work and catechetical and evangelistic skill on the part of the clergy. How ironic it is that, as our very ecclesiological existence is threatened, our Catholic way of doing things is coming into its own. Let's concentrate on what the Spirit is saying to the Churches, what he is saying to each one of us severally, and what he is saying to us together. I believe he is saying 'hitch up your wagons and join the caravan'. But, as yet, I have little idea when the caravan will leave and in what direction it will travel - except that it will be to a different city, the city of God.

Jesus ... suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing abuse for him.

The Bishop of Ebbsfleet
Bishop's House, Dry Sandford, Abingdon, OXON OX13 6JP
Tel: +44 (0) 1865 390746

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