"And so in my warnings, I was pointing to a number of incidents around the communion that could undermine our growing sense of communion - of becoming a global communion. So that's why I pointed to New Westminster in Canada, to incidents in the United States, and Sydney itself"
About this Quote
Carey is doing what senior churchmen often do best: staging a conflict as pastoral concern while quietly drawing the boundary line. The word that does the heavy lifting is "communion" twice over. It is at once spiritual intimacy and an institutional brand name: the Anglican Communion as a fragile, global polity. By saying his "warnings" were about incidents "around the communion", he frames controversy as something orbiting the center rather than emanating from it, a rhetorical move that protects the idea of unity even as he prepares the listener for discipline.
The intent is managerial as much as theological. Carey is naming places - New Westminster, the United States, Sydney - the way a diplomat lists flashpoints. These are not random coordinates; they are shorthand for particular fault lines in late-20th/early-21st-century Anglicanism, especially sexuality, authority, and whether local churches can act ahead of global consensus. New Westminster evokes the Canadian diocese that moved to bless same-sex unions; "incidents in the United States" gestures toward similar debates that later detonated around episcopal elections and doctrine; Sydney signals an Australian evangelical stronghold, uneasy with liberalizing trends but also capable of its own unilateral instincts.
Subtext: unity is not a warm aspiration, it is a discipline. "Growing sense" implies progress that can be reversed; "undermine" casts dissent as sabotage rather than conscience. Carey is also speaking to multiple audiences at once: reassuring global-south conservatives that he sees the threat, nudging liberals to slow down, and warning hardliners in places like Sydney that fracture can come from the right as easily as from the left. The elegance is in the balance: he sounds like a shepherd, but he is mapping the battlefield.
The intent is managerial as much as theological. Carey is naming places - New Westminster, the United States, Sydney - the way a diplomat lists flashpoints. These are not random coordinates; they are shorthand for particular fault lines in late-20th/early-21st-century Anglicanism, especially sexuality, authority, and whether local churches can act ahead of global consensus. New Westminster evokes the Canadian diocese that moved to bless same-sex unions; "incidents in the United States" gestures toward similar debates that later detonated around episcopal elections and doctrine; Sydney signals an Australian evangelical stronghold, uneasy with liberalizing trends but also capable of its own unilateral instincts.
Subtext: unity is not a warm aspiration, it is a discipline. "Growing sense" implies progress that can be reversed; "undermine" casts dissent as sabotage rather than conscience. Carey is also speaking to multiple audiences at once: reassuring global-south conservatives that he sees the threat, nudging liberals to slow down, and warning hardliners in places like Sydney that fracture can come from the right as easily as from the left. The elegance is in the balance: he sounds like a shepherd, but he is mapping the battlefield.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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