Gay communion

Can the worldwide Anglican church survive the developing schism over
whether it should accept the ordination of homosexual clergy?

Stephen Bates
Tuesday June 17, 2003
The Guardian

A funny thing is happening within the Anglican communion. It is
threatening to tear itself apart over a handful of people who live in
monogamous, stable, long-term, loving relationships and are sufficiently
religiously observant to want the church to bless them.

Ideal couples, then, for a church desperately seeking support, you might
think. But they are, of course, gay and therefore, in the words of one
Anglican archbishop, an abomination.

While the rest of the world considers weightier matters of life and
death, the church has converted an issue most of the western world now
regards as a private and personal matter into an obsession. Not for the
first time, the church's moral censure leaves it in danger of seeming
irrelevant - even bigoted - to outsiders of the sort it hopes to attract
to its emptying pews.

Many religions have an issue with gays. Cardinal Francis Arinze, seen by
some as likely to become possibly the first black pope, was booed at
Georgetown University in Washington last month for suggesting that
homosexuality, along with other sexual sins such as adultery and
divorce, mocked the family. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who turned
a blind eye to a paedophile priest for years, intervened to prevent a
bishop conducting a private blessing for the director of Cafod, the
international development agency, and his long-term partner.

But it is the Anglican church which is most obsessed with what gays get
up to in the privacy of their bedrooms. Since biblical references to
homosexuality are scattered and, as far as the New Testament is
concerned, solely to be found in the writings of St Paul, one might
think it scarcely of all-consuming importance. If Jesus Christ mentioned
the subject, none of the gospel writers bothered to note it.

The row is, however, as much about power and authority as sex. During
the past 20 years the Anglican communion has attempted to cobble
together a painfully achieved compromise to hold its various wings
together. The current position is that while gay communicants can be in
a relationship, ordained clergy may not - an illogical recipe, on the
face of it, for hypocrisy, deceit and double standards.

In this moral fuzziness, homosexuality has been seized by a group of
evangelicals as an easily explicable issue to enthuse and infuriate
supporters alarmed by liberal trends within the church. It is becoming,
in the words of one commentator, the anti-semitism of evangelicalism.

Despite being the most vibrant section of the Church of England, some
evangelicals fear the church is drifting away from them. They have not
succeeded in energising England for Christ and some take refuge in a
Manichaean struggle for the soul of the church instead.

Their fears were amplified by last year's appointment of Rowan Williams,
known for his liberalism towards gays, to succeed the evangelical George
Carey as Archbishop of Canterbury. Since Williams is an orthodox and
subtle theologian, and an attractive figure to the outside world, his
evangelical opponents have struggled to undermine him.

Like most theologians, Williams believes that the Bible has to be
interpreted. A text written over hundreds of years for hugely different
societies cannot be taken entirely at face value, though for some
evangelical fundamentalists, biblical literalism can take surprising
forms: the English Churchman - a Calvinist, Paisleyite publication -
this week carries a justification of slavery, describing it as "a form
of social security for which many starving people today would be grateful".=


The evangelicals have some grounds for fearing they are on a slippery
slope. The weekend before last, at a service in Concord, New Hampshire,
parishioners of the local diocese of the Episcopalian church - the North
American branch of the Anglican communion - elected an openly gay
bishop, Gene Robinson.

That followed an authorised blessing service the weekend before for a
gay couple in Vancouver. It preceded an outbreak of anguish here over
the appointment of a gay rights campaigner, Canon Jeffrey John, to the
suffragan bishopric of Reading. Several bishops called for John to stand
aside and the church's Evangelical Council, insisting it was not
"homophobic", said the bishop's consecration should not proceed.

Even more alarmingly for church leaders, Peter Akinola - archbishop of
Nigeria and head of the largest single church in the Anglican communion
- has denounced Bishop Robinson's appointment as an abomination.

This is the cost of the Anglican communion seeking to maintain an
increasingly spurious unity among 70 million communicant members from
vastly differing cultures, lifestyles and attitudes.

The church has for generations accommodated differing worship styles and
churchmanship. Diversity has always been seen as a strength and
safeguard against dogmatism. This is now under threat: a problem
compounded by the fact that the third world church has the numbers -
17.5 million in Nigeria alone, a quarter of the entire communion - while
the west has the money.

By and large, Church of England bishops have been conspicuous by their
reticence in leading the debate or backing their archbishop. They are
crossing their fingers that the row can be contained. The fact that the
story has caused barely a ripple in the outside world should be a source
of consolation.

=B7 Stephen Bates is the Guardian's religious affairs correspondent



Guardian Unlimited =A9 Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003


The worldwide Anglican communion consists of 38 self-governing national
churches, spread over 30,000 parishes and 64,000 congregations in 164
countries.

It is estimated that 70 million people claim allegiance to Anglicanism.

Anglican churchgoers in millions

Nigeria 17.5
Uganda 8
Sudan 5
Australia 3.9
India 3.25
Kenya 2.5
USA 2.4
South Africa 2
England 1
Rwanda 1
Canada 0.7

--=20
Il est important d'=EAtre un homme ou une femme en col=E8re; le jour o=F9 n=
ous
quitte la col=E8re, ou le d=E9sir, c'est cuit. - Barbara

http://www.calmeilles.co.uk/