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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2019
Though Anglican theologians, clergy, and laypeople have written and spoken extensively about the current status of the Anglican Communion, the conceptualization and practice of conflict has itself remained largely unexamined. This essay argues for the necessity of a better theology of conflict, one rooted in a Trinitarian account of unity through difference. It shows that Anglicans have tended to think of conflict-as-sin or conflict-as-finitude. The essay commends a semantic shift that develops conflict-as-communion. Conflict is a means of grace that animates the divine life of the Trinity, enables God’s work of salvation in history, and is a natural part of good human sociality. This theology of conflict can allow generative relational practices, some of which are already in use across the Anglican Communion.
Kyle B.T. Lambelet is a postdoctoral fellow at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
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11 The Lambeth Commission on Communion, ‘The Windsor Report’ (London: The Anglican Communion Office, 2004), paras. 22–42.
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36 According to the Virginia Report these are the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council, though these are not as stable and authoritative as some would like. See Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, ‘The Virginia Report’, in Anglican Consultative Council, Rosenthal, James, and Currie, Nicola (eds.), Being Anglican in the Third Millennium: The Official Report of the 10th Meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council: Panama, 1996 (Harrisburg, PA: Published for the Anglican Communion by Morehouse Publishing, 1997 Google Scholar). See also Doe, Norman, ‘The Instruments of Unity and Communion in Global Anglicanism’, in Markham, Ian S., Hawkins, J. Barney IV, Terry, Justyn and Steffensen, Leslie Nuñez (eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Anglican Communion (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013 Google Scholar).
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41 One example that transpired on an elite level but is still positive is represented in the Final Report from the International Anglican Conversations on Human Sexuality called together by Archbishop Cary following the 1998 Lambeth Conference. See http://www.anglican.ca/faith/focus/hs/ssbh/hsr-bishops-1999/
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44 Kwok Pui Lan, ‘From a Colonial Church to a Global Communion’.
45 Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation, p. 49.