| Analysis
Gay communion Can the worldwide Anglican church survive the developing schism over whether it should accept the ordination of homosexual clergy? Stephen
Bates 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.
· Stephen Bates is the Guardian's religious affairs correspondent
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