The art of disagreeing well

The Archbishop of Canterbury is urging the Church of England to ‘disagree well’ over a range of issues. The trouble is that it is difficult to know what that means in practice.

Disagreeing badly is easy to understand because as Anglicans we’ve done it so often. Right from the very beginning we’ve had Acts of Uniformity imposed on dissenters, and persecutions of Catholics and Puritans. We’ve had political uniformity imposed on the Church of England, and ecclesiastical factionalism and scheming that makes the Barchester Chronicles look tame.

For much of the history of the Church of England ‘disagreeing well’ has largely meant ignoring each other. We’ve proudly boasted of the fact that we’re a broad church with different theological traditions thriving in the same Church. But the simple fact is that for most of the past few hundred years these different traditions have barely even needed to talk to each other.

These theological traditions or parties have coexisted because there’s been enough space for them to have little to do with each other. They’ve had their own theological colleges, their own patronage societies and their own networks of belonging. Bishops don’t visit more than once a year so even that connection to the Church of England has connived at this separate factionalism.

I suspect that Archbishop Justin Welby means something more by ‘disagreeing well’ than simply ignoring each other but I’m intrigued to know what he does mean. It strikes me that this state of ‘disagreeing well’ is the aim of the ‘facilitated conversations’ that are currently being designed to cope with the gay marriage crisis.

In my experience, ‘disagreeing well’ is put more positively as ‘agreeing to differ’. In practice, this means putting aside arguments and not referring at all to the subject of difference in order to avoid an argument. I wish that kind of moratorium were the outcome, but it’s far more likely that facilitated conversations are designed to steer the Church of England towards the acceptance of local option or diversity on these issues.

For one side that would be a victory and for the other a defeat. Under those circumstances, putting as much space between the two parties might be the best sort of disagreement barring outright schism. That will be business as usual for the Church of England.