Hmmmm….I think a lot of what you say is correct in this Nate, and as a Roman Catholic I would be the last person in the world to praise the current practice of authority within the Roman Church; all too often, Roman Catholics do fit into the “needing to be told what to do” camp, as much as our leaders often get their ecclesiastical jollies from doing the telling. But I think that the grid that you have used might be a little too blunt in analyzing the situation. You’ve distinguished, rightly, between the prime temptation of the Roman Catholic church’s members to far too easily give up our own struggling, our own judgment, our own responsibility for our faith, in the face of a rather strong and increasingly more intrusive system of authority; and the Anglican communion’s response to this temptation in making a suspicion of such structures of authority and resistance to the concomitant shirking of responsibility that these structures have, historically, encouraged.

I would like to raise the question, however, as to whether the tendency to give up one’s own authority is the only or even the primary temptation that faces members of the Christian community in their relationship to authority. Another possibility might be the danger of self-deception on the part of individuals and local communities, our ability to mistake essentials for inessentials and vice versa, and to be dead wrong at times, especially when colored by local prejudices, preferences, cultural superiorities, etc. In short: we tend to see our group’s way of answering a question as correct, and can’t understand how another group might think that we’re seriously distorting the Gospel. If I’m right, it seems that this is the danger that the Roman understanding of authority is, however hamfootedly, trying to address.

Now, I’m not trying to argue as a result of this that all Christians without a stronger sense of institutional authority are arrogant self-deceivers, anymore than you are arguing (and I’m confidant you would not want to argue) that all Roman Catholics are childlike shirkers of their own freedom out of fear or a human need for submission; I simply would like to point out that, posed as you have here, one might get the impression, caveats notwithstanding, that some [Roman Catholic] Christians are more childlike and “need more guidance and authority” and that some [Anglicans, and presumably some other Protestants], are real adults who “need more latitude.” I would argue that a healthy suspicion of a determining authority must be matched by as robust a suspicion of one’s own judgments and one’s own particularities. I’m happy to grant that the tendency of the Roman Church in the past eight centuries, and particularly in the last two, has been to undermine its own ability to speak authoritatively by speaking too often, too forcefully and, bluntly, too stupidly on various issues marginal to Christian faith. At the same time, I’m not willing to grant that a determinative authority which can correct what the wider community (both contemporary and, most importantly, from the previous two millenia of the tradition) considers not simply disturbing but actually distorting of the Gospel, is not part of the tradition of the Church.

So…all the Roman biases of your bf coming out in one comment!!! Let me re-emphasize that my initial statement, that I agree wholeheartedly with most of what you say here, was not a mere formality, but hopefully adding another set of concerns to the conversation might help our picture of what the church should look like…

Nate, as usual, your observations resonate. I agree that there a desire for structured authority is a flashpoint in the on-going debate. As a child of Puritans, I am not sure you can call this a Puritan impulse. The Puritan drive, as I see it, was a desire for a consitency of belief, but within an intensely localized experience. Hence, the rise of Congregationalism and some rather fertile seedbeds for the American democratic experiment. The New Hampshire diocese, in insisting on its right to elect Robinson reflects, in my opinion, a more authentic Puritan ethos of church life than what many seem to desire: top down governance.