Anglican Crisis

As someone studying to be a priest in the Anglican Church, I've been very silent about the furor in the Anglican Communion. I've mostly wanted to stay out of it for personal reasons--I'm still pretty sore after having gone through Roman Catholic seminary during the sexual abuse crisis--and because I wasn't sure which way things were headed and constant focus on the matter was bringing me down. I didn't find it healthy for my spiritual life.

But this last week there has been a major shift and I need to work through my thoughts and emotions on this subject.

For those not familiar, I can't (and you wouldn't want me to) go into a whole background on the thing. My readers from integral world are not in large measure Christian much less Anglican, which is a distinct denomination within Christianity.

If interested, there are some very good blogs. Here, here, here, and this one from the so-called traditionalist side.

But a little background is necessary. The Anglican Communion is a Communion of National Churches--The US Episcopal Church, The Church of England, The Anglican Church of Nigeria, The Church of Canada. The Anglican Communion grew out of the Church of England and the English Reformation (Henry VIII, Elizabeth I) and the attempt to create a National Reformed Catholicism. In some ways a middle or third way between Roman Papal Catholicism and more Calvinist-Puritan forms of Protestantism.

The Anglicans worked out a system of maintaining both bishops (like Catholics) and synods (like Presbyterians, Reformed Churches). The US Church is called Episcopalian precisely for this reason--they have bishops (episkope in Greek) and are Protestant, i.e. not Roman Catholic.

With the expansion of the British Empire, clergy followed and Anglican branches were set up in British colonies. Since de-colonialization there has been a move to independence in church matters--hence there is the Anglican Church of Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Kenya with African bishops not missionary English-Scottish-Irish bishops in these countries.

So after the Anglican Church grew out of the British Isles in the mid-19th century the Anglican Communion was created. All these national churches (currently I think there are 38) chose to be in communion with each other. But each national church is in charge of its own affairs. Unlike Roman Catholicism where the Pope and Vatican enforce rules upon the diocese worldwide.

The manner of keeping common order and communion in Anglicanism is through common worship. The word orthodoxy literally means right worship or praise not right doctrine. Hence Anglicanism is known for its theological wideness but everyone prays from the Common Book of Prayer. Emphasis on Common.

So for example with bishops and synods, the US Episcopal Church has three houses--House of Bishops, made up of all American Bishops; house of clergy, representatives of priests and deacons; and house of laity, representatives of the laity.

For any motion to pass it must pass through all three bodies at once every 3 year meeting called the General Convention (or General Synod in Canada). Somewhat like the US federal system, each house can veto the other. If one of the three bodies does not pass a measure, the measure fails. Must have all 3 houses vote for a measure. It is democratic, if you like, within each house simple majority for most issues, 2/3 majority for extremely important ones.

Now the US and Canadian churches with strong traditions of democracy and liberal government have strong lay and clerical synodical traditions. Missionary churches in sub-Saharan Africa with tribal identities where the bishop is seen more as a chief do not. So bishops there tend to have serious control/power.

The Anglican Communion was nearly rent in the 60s/70s over the issue of women's ordination. So when these issues emerge the question is always who is to decide when national churches argue with each other--unlike Roman Catholicism there is no higher court of authority.

There is the Archbishop of Cantebury who symbolically represents the unity of the Communion. But he is more like the Captain of a soccer squad than the CEO. He is not the Pope and he has no power to force any national church to do anything. There is also the Lambeth Conference--Lambeth is the Cantebury palace, again notice the pull towards wanting to be a Pope--which meets every 10 years.

It was decided after some serious wrangling and near splitting that national churches could decide either to ordain women or not and that both were acceptable and churches would accept each other. Many of the Churches in the Anglican Communion to this day still do not ordain women. Even in the US Episcopal Church which does ordain women, some local dioceses do not.

In 1998 the Lambeth Conference, which is only made of bishops---i.e. only 1/3 of the whole body--came up with a report on the topic of homosexuality. It was an advisory report that passed but with nothing approaching unanimity. It stated that homosexual acts were incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It also however urged the creation of a listening process (very Anglican) to listen to the experience and spiritual reflections of gays and lesbians within the communion. It also stated that the church must provide spiritual care for people and to work to protect the rights of individuals in free societies (i.e. stop gay discrimination).

Again notice that is was a recommendation of the House of Bishops as provisional in 1998. Now those with an agenda against what they perceived to be the falling away from true Christianity by a liberal agenda in the Church took this as the "standard" of teaching of the Communion. Which clearly historically and numerically it was not. It was a recommendation by a majority though not 100% of the House of Bishops. Those bishops constituting but 1 of 3 legs of the authority.

And it existed on an international basis, not the local national churches as with women's ordination for example. As long as it was that--a recommendation--it was fine. It needed to be examined, listened to, but was one of a number of outlets for reflection on the matter.

The notion of Lambeth being the standard of the communion took hold in the conservative wings of the Communion.

In 2003 the Episcopal Church (USA) ratified at General Convention the election of Gene Robinson to be bishop of New Hampshire. Robinson is an openly gay, in a committed relationships, divorced man. Robinson had been elected in the proper course by the local synod in New Hampshire, (clergy and laity). There is a myth propagated by opponents of the election that a liberal cabal with an agenda manipulated the scene to get him elected. This is not true. People knew who he was, he had been in that diocese for a long time, they simply felt he was the right person for the position.

[There is also the matter of same-sex blessings in the Canadian Church, but I'm going to leave that out for the moment].

This election caused a firestorm of controversy. And occurred just as the new Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was barely settled in. Williams himself is a theological liberal and as a professor had written it seems in favor of homosexual inclusion in the Anglican Church. But his role as Archbishop is a different one--at least as he sees it.

At the point of Robinson's consecration, member churches of the Communion separated. Not formally but in the sense that they would not take eucharist with one another at meetings of the head of the national churches.

The US Church after 2004 (and the Canadians) put a self-imposed hudna-like moratorium on blessings and ordinations of gays & lesbians. This came as a result of requests from the House of Bishops (worldwide) in the Windsor Report. In the meantime local churches in the US who were angry by the ordination of Robinson threatened to leave. Although there is absolutely no rule by which they can do this. To complicate the matters African bishops, particularly from Nigeria and Rwanda, created missionary churches within the US. Ostensibly to reach out to Nigerian, Rwandan, African immigrant populations in the US, but it became a insurgent church. They wanted to create an alternate Anglican Church in the US, hoping the Episcopal Church would get booted out by the Communion, making them the official Church in the US.

At the same time other US dioceses wanted the Archbishop of Canterbury--not African bishops--to take them on and appoint a vicar to oversee their grievance against the national church and its leadership.

Then in 2006 at the next General Convention the Americans elected the first woman head (primate) in Anglican history. Remember a great number of the other national churches, specifically the ones that tend not to favor homosexuality, do not accept women as priests, live in patriarchal societies where women do not hold typically public office, much less are bishops, heads of national churches.

Since then some US churches, notably in Virginia have seceded and the church property is in litigation. Not good.

The Archbishop of Canterbury proposed a Covenant, which has no juridical basis in the canons of the Church, to restore communion. The Covenant presumably would create a two-tier level of membership, those who want to stand by Lambeth 98 and those who don't. The churches who do not (US and Canada) would have non-voting seats in the International House of Bishops (Anglican Consultative Council).

But notice the problem with all this--all of these recommendations come from bishops.

Now this week, the US church has been given an ultimatum by the other Primates (heads of national churches) that by Sept.30th they must clarify their position on authorization of same sex blessings and ordinations. The communique from Dar es Salaam Tanzania is found here.

The consequences of not obeying the demands are not spelled out, which is unfortunate. That is bad law and bad theology in my opinion. The US Church technically can not achieve this, though a meeting of US bishops is set for March. The General Convention of all three houses does not meet until 2009, after the deadline of the next Lambeth Conference 2008. All three houses: bishops, laity, and clergy, would have to vote on this measure.

The Canadian Church is not mentioned at all which is very mysterious. All of the blame is laid at the foot of the Episcopal Church, which is not true. The move towards episcopal dominance started at Lambeth 1998 took the Communion down a road it should not have gone. If I wanted to be Roman Catholic, I would have stayed Roman Catholic. They are much better at being papal and imperial than these wannabe African and British clowns.

My own opinion, if I had been a voting member, would have been for Gene Robinson to voluntarily step down and not accept the ordination after the anger arose. But having said that, once the rules were followed, I think the Communion should have moved more in the direction of our tradition--with divorce, women's ordination, etc.--to find a way for member churches to have different opinions and live in communion.

The difference it is argued with homosexuality as opposed to women's ordination is that women's ordination is not a matter of doctrine and is not condemned in the Bible. The argument has always been about this really, not gays and lesbians--how do we understand the authority of the Bible and who has the authority/power to make those decisions? I'm sad that gays and lesbians have been dragged into this and are the match that ignited this pre-set to explode tinder.

This latest communique is a sad expression for me of Christianity. Or rather un-Christian. The Covenant is not necessarily in all ways a bad idea, but its imposition by bishops is without the vote of the clergy and laity. Again Roman Catholicism already exists for that. In the meantime, it has been assumed that the US is the source of all the crisis (read the conservative blog and see how giddy they are at this latest communique for proof) and that the fly-over bishops creating church guerrilla campaigns is only out of their deep charitable love and care for the poor ones. They certainly love those people and have care for them and also want a pound of flesh for the others. The rhetoric is brutal.

As one sad piece, the Archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola, the head of the anti-American alliance, is proposing legislation to make homosexual acts punishable by five years in prison in Nigeria. How's that for also being against discrimination from Lambeth 98? His American supporters have said that he is actually (get this) a hero for homosexuals because sharia Islamic law in Northern Nigeria promotes public execution of homosexuality. Five years apparently is a great humanitarian deed as opposed to death.

Rowan Williams has sacrificed his own principles for the role it seems to me. He is just trying to buy time to get the Covenant in place. But all the momentum suggests he is being outflanked on his right by Akinola who wants them cut out. To be fair, Williams got the language in the latest communique put in at the last minute that the US Church had in good faith responded to Windsor Report but it was still unclear. Akinola was not happy with that. But Williams has not taken one iota of account of laity and clergy--other than the floods of nasty letters he gets (funneled to him by his staff who are holdovers from the regime of the previous Archbishop who supported the African bishops) against the American Church. They are funded by right-wing American political interests--including a few rather extreme characters who do advocate for public execution of homosexuals in America!

At stake as Williams sees it I'm sure is that the Churches in Africa are growing while England and US are shrinking. Also no one as LBJ said wants to be remembered as the guy who lost Vietnam. No one wants to be remembered as the guy who was Archbishop when the Church split. But it may come to that.

I don't know what the American church will do. This was my fear with Robinson accepting the ordination, that it would bring this issue to light and cause steps back for gays and lesbians in the church. On the other hand, at some point it has to be pushed above ground. Like with women, like with civil rights/apartheid/slavery, etc. I don't know that there ever is a good time to do it.

The American church on the whole, though not without exceptions, does not accept the Windsor Report as the standard teaching. For better or worse I just don't see it. To me at the last General Convention the Americans went as far as they could without giving up their basic intuition/belief in being a church called to do this (plenty of self-righteousness no doubt but also plenty of honest sincerity in my view as well). It's far too easy to just write it off as liberal agendas and so forth. Both sides are human beings. Both sides have had failings, which is why I do not accept the latest communique which puts all of the cause of brokenness at one participants doorstep, which is a way to shame and guilt and create fear, to have power over. This is not the message of Jesus Christ, who said we must serve and not seek to lord power over each other like the heathens. Like going to godless secular courts to handle church affairs for example.

In a later post I'll deal more specifically with the theology pro/con concerning homosexuality. Where there is no way God makes a way so goes the saying. That is my hope. Humanly with all these machinations I can not see or feel such hope. But as Paul said, Christian hope is "hope against hope", hope against optimism or hope in human sinful beings.