My column in the September Eastern Shore Episcopalian was written from Canterbury at the end of the first week of the Lambeth Conference. To that point in the conference the experience of the 750 Anglican bishops gathered from around the world had been mostly enjoyable. Last month I wrote in an upbeat tone of my personal experience thus far.
My personal reflections now are not as lighthearted as a month ago.
The conference addressed some serious problems in the world, advocating for the poor and disenfranchised. In matters of international debt, mission, ecumenical and interfaith relations, euthanasia, urbanization, and youth, we took nearly unanimous stands.
In the area of human sexuality, however, conflict surfaced as rancorous words were spoken. At issue was whether the Conference would affirm things positively to which we all could subscribe or whether we would make negative statements on which there would be sharp division. The committee charged with the responsibility of proposing resolutions in the area of sexuality was a widely varied group, including liberal Bishop Jack Spong of Newark and his conservative counterpart, The Most Rev'd Harry Goodhew of Sydney, Australia. About twenty-five people representing the full range of theological and social conviction comprised the task group.
The committee wrangled, prayed, argued, sought common ground and over a two week period hammered out an honest statement that they all could affirm. >From the outset, conservatives were pleased with the statement as affirming their core convictions about human sexuality, marriage, and chastity.
In its August newsletter, Episcopalians United, a traditionalist American association, proclaimed a front page banner headline: AFRICANS STRENGTHEN SEXUALITY RESOLUTION. The lead paragraph reads, "In perhaps the most crucial vote of a landmark Lambeth Conference, the attending bishops took a conservative resolution on sexuality, made it considerably more conservative, and approved the final resolution by a resounding vote of 526 in favor, 70 against and 45 abstaining." As the resolution first came to us, I fully intended to vote for it. As the "debate" progressed, however, I became increasingly saddened by the politicization of the process and the tone of the argument.
Demanding that an anti-homosexual clause be inserted, a Sudanese bishop likened any homosexual expression to bestiality and pedophilia. He was applauded. Moments later an American bishop referred sympathetically to homosexuals in his diocese; he was hissed and booed. As the debate neared its end I found myself agreeing with Archbishop David Crawley of British Columbia. He spoke against an amendment condemning homosexuality saying, "it depends on which face this conference wants to turn to the world." Referring to the resolution before us, he noted "a document whose face, a little conservative, was a face of love and compassion, is gradually, bit by bit, step by step, turning into a face of judgment and condemnation."
The resolution does say "we commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual people." I take this as an expression of pastoral concern on which I hope we will act in The Diocese of Easton. Yet I was not sure quite what it meant in the context of a resolution and debate that condemned homosexuality. What is the aim of listening when our minds are already made up? How is such listening pastoral? In the end I could not support the resolution as it was amended; I voted with the seventy.
Behind the sexuality debate, however, was a much more significant development. The great Anglican tradition of the Church's teaching being grounded in reason, tradition, and scripture is being supplanted. The dominant voice at Lambeth was of sola scriptura, "scripture alone, espoused most clearly by the hugely growing African and Asian churches.
In the past thirty-five years the number of Anglicans in Africa has grown from 6 million to 26 million. The faith of most of these new Christians has taken shape over against the Islamic fundamentalism of the dominant Moslem culture. The most effective way to enter the religious conversation in Nigeria with a majority Moslem population is to be similarly dogmatic. The worship lead by the Churches of Tanzania and Uganda were more obviously joyful than a typical service on the Eastern Shore. Yet from three weeks of small group conversation my impression is that they are just like the rest of us. In conflicted situations scripture is interpreted more as a book of rules than as the story of God's unfailing love for all sorts and conditions of people. At times I felt that scripture was used more as a cudgel than as a beacon.
At Lambeth there was an implicit taboo against saying anything critical of the African Church. Its phenomenal evangelical success in the face of serious persecution has placed it above reproach. Yet one Nigerian bishop in my group, thirty-five years old, conceded that polygamous marriages do happen after people become Christian. He went on to say that the Church cannot afford to discipline them because they are usually village leaders. The other Nigerian bishop and the Kenyan bishop in the group agreed that such things happen. Having multiple wives was a status symbol in the old tribal culture and is now legal under the laws of the majority Moslem government. Clearly, how the faith gets lived out is culturally influenced. The cultural pressures of Nigeria and Kenya are different from the strains and demands of San Francisco or Philadelphia or Salisbury.
The questions facing the Anglican Communion, however, are not whether to condemn homosexuality or to turn a blind eye to polygamy. Currently at stake in the Church is the nature of authority and how we make decisions together. At Lambeth 98 the newly empowered churches of Africa and Asia flexed their muscles to see if worldwide Anglicanism preferred the old tradition of national autonomy or a newer approach that requires international uniformity.
One of the pleas often repeated at Lambeth was that if the conference does not overtly condemn homosexuality, then we will have "committed evangelical suicide" in Moslem countries. Such argument called for Communion-wide, uniform understanding and practice. The sola scriptura basis for teaching allowed no room for the insights of science nor for cultural diversity.
As it emerged at Lambeth, the agreement of the majority in areas of the role of women and of human sexuality was grounded in a use of isolated texts from scripture without reference to the traditional use in Anglicanism of reason and human experience. Biblical scholarship as I studied it in seminary and ever since had no place in the debates at Lambeth. Our Anglican basis of authority is in the process of being narrowed in ways that are decidedly non-Anglican. For the moment at least, Lambeth has said we want uniformity. How this will play out over time and in issues other than sexuality is yet to be known. For one, I am clear that I like the American tradition of prayerfully trusting God's Spirit to work through our democratic procedures, clumsy and laborious though they can be.
Anglicanism has a rich heritage of intellectual rigor and social inclusivity. This has meant that at times we have had to deal with irritants and gadfly voices. While my own convictions are mostly quite centrist, I do not want to lose that discomforting part of our tradition that comes into our conversations from both the left and the right.
My best hope to grow out of the fractious aspects of the Lambeth Conference is that we will heed the call of the Conference and indeed listen to those whose life experience and understandings are different from our own. We each stand in need of God's healing presence in all our relationships. I invite Diocesan Council, individual congregations and Clericus to consider how we might engage the issue of human sexuality with love and compassion.
The most important and positive thing the gathered bishops did at Lambeth was worship together and study scripture. For as long as we did those things - receiving the sacrament of God's love and listening to the word - we did well. When we drew lines in the sand, separating the righteous from the unrighteous, condemning whole segments of society, we became ugly.
For me, one of the affecting moments of our worship was the Act of Penitence during the liturgy celebrated by the Church of Sri Lanka:
Let us ask God's forgiveness for behavior that rebels against new visions and old dreams; for intolerance of others, our failure to love others as we should; for the lack of active support to preserve our God-given environment, and for waging war against life...
Let us be sorry for sins of thought; for intellectual pride and isolation; for the rejection of truth in its varied revelations, continuing in folly deceiving ourselves; for our impurity in not treating the young as brothers and sisters and the old as fathers and mothers...
Let us repent for sins of speech, anger, and antagonism; for apathy and complacency, for prejudice and partisanship; for unfair judgment and embittered argument; for blocking new ideas with the force of human power and authority....
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.
In Peace and Hope,
+Martin
martin_townsend@ecunet.org
The Diocese of Easton
The Episcopal Church on Maryland's Eastern Shore
"Small Churches are the Leading Edge"
07:02 PM Wed, Sep 02, 1998
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