The Short Version
- The Anglican Communion is in a mess
- The Archbishop of Canterbury is in Mexico and he has preached a sermon
- It isn’t really a very helpful sermon and is quite offensive
The Long Version
This week the Archbishop of Canterbury (I think we can stop calling him the new Archbishop of Canterbury now) has been preaching in Mexico. He preached a sermon earlier this week which was aimed at the troubles of the Anglican Communion. Though its conclusion is that we must all “walk in the light” which is pretty untroublesome, he has used language to get there which stigmatises fellow Anglicans and which I don’t really think is helpful at all.
The troublesome bit is this, where he speaks of the Anglican Communion in this way:
Like a drunk man walking near the edge of a cliff, we trip and totter and slip and wander, ever nearer to the edge of the precipice.
It is a dangerous place, a narrow path we walk as Anglicans at present. On one side is the steep fall into an absence of any core beliefs, a chasm where we lose touch with God, and thus we rely only on ourselves and our own message. On the other side there is a vast fall into a ravine of intolerance and cruel exclusion. It is for those who claim all truth, and exclude any who question. When we fall into this place, we lose touch with human beings and create a small church, or rather many small churches – divided, ineffective in serving the poor, the hungry and the suffering, incapable of living with each other, and incomprehensible to those outside the church.
It isn’t really helpful to characterize the troubles of the Communion as being “sides” in any case and neither of these images is remotely helpful.
The basic trouble in the Communion is that some of us think that gay people should be treated like anyone else and have our reasons for doing so. Others think that is wrong and have their own reasons for taking that view. The latter sometimes think that they alone believe a view consonant with the bible.
It is deeply unhelpful of the Archbishop to use language which appears to suggest that the risk that those who wish to affirm gay people present is one of a lack or loss of core beliefs. That just isn’t true and is a nasty slur against fellow Anglicans. The US and Canadian churches are not places where God is absent and if the Archbishop needs to find that out, he needs to go there and meet them, something that his predecessor seemed to find impossible to do.
People will read the sermon in the US and Canadian churches and take immediate offence. (I find it offensive here in Scotland, but there it will appear to be a judgement on their national churches). Those who wish to affirm the place of LGBT people do so because of their core beliefs as Christians and as Anglicans, not because of any lack of belief or loss of God.
Does the Archbishop of Canterbury not have anyone on staff from the US or Canada or someone who knows those churches who could look at this kind of stuff and say, “hang on a minute, Father, that might not go down too well?”
I suspect also that those who do not wish to affirm the place of LGBT people in the church may well say that intolerance is something that they experience from those who do. Neither “side” has the monopoly on that trait.
The other uncomfortable notion in this sermon is that it looks as though the Archbishop is painting a scene where there are these two squabbling factions and the bishops tentatively walk a narrow path of balance and moderation between them. Innocently tripping along the cliff edge, fearful of being dragged down one side or the other. (Do cliffs normally have two sides anyway?)
That is not my experience. Bishops are part of our problems. Indeed, the Episcopate is the place where a very great deal of these problems occur in the communion.
Here in Scotland, it sometimes seems as though the Bishops think they should present themselves as only possible “honest” brokers amidst naughty disagreement amongst others. It isn’t true and we all know it isn’t true. Our bishops are not of one mind yet appear entirely unable to model their diversity in a healthy way. What might help would be if they could come out and say, “Well we don’t agree about this but we still respect one another and work together and that is the answer to the Communion’s problems – Anglicans of different views are part of one organic whole, we need one another and are getting on with it”. That would be honest, helpful modelling of how to manage conflict. Instead of which we get a corrosive, conservative silence which is damaging the church and relations within it.
The basic question that bishops need to answer is a simple one and it is this:
Do gay people in their loving relationships have the potential to experience love that can be described as sacramental?
All else will follow from the answer to that question.
The Archbishop of Canterbury needs to be asked that question again and again and again. He seems to think gay relationships are something to be admired – describing some couples as living relationships of “stunning quality”. But does he think they can be godly?
Bishops (and yes, Archbishops) failing to answer basic questions about the godly potential of gay lives is at the core of the problem the Anglican Communion has. That’s true here in Scotland and appears to be true for the Archbishop in Mexico on his travels.
We all deserve answers to those questions.
From outside your Communion (in an English dissenting church) I have to say that I think Welby is a Very Good Thing and your response to what he said is (to borrow your term) unhelpful. He nowhere mentions the specific issue of attitudes to gay relationships (although I agree that we all know that this is a key symptom of the divisions in not only your but in other denominations). Neither does he anywhere claim the special status and role for bishops that you put into his mouth (although I have no reason to doubt they behave as you describe in both England and Scotland).
The unhelpful aspects of your response (from where I sit) are
1) refusing to take seriously what is actually said and instead ascribing positions not taken (the identification of being in favour of the affirmation of gay relationships with lack of core beliefs is not there, it has to be read in, and my feeling is that it was not intended – a feeling that has as much or as little basis as yours that it was)
2) the insistence that attitudes to gay people and relationships must always be front and centre – given how polarised and polarising this now is it is a recipe for the hardening of party lines and for division to the point of separation
I’m not an Anglican but I agree with the ABC that your Communion has a particular vocation of bridge building (as does mine as a united denomination). Others have calls to build bridges across different gaps or to do other things altogether but your intentional broadness (the via media) is definitive of what you are and do on behalf of the Church catholic and Welby is right about that.
He is right, too, to think that some of those who are engaged in the current “debates” inside and beyond your Communion run the risk of abandoning core beliefs (and these are NOT anything to do with sexuality) while others run the risk of defining these so that almost nobody could agree with agree with them.
Patience is a key Christian virtue and sometimes what it requires of us is that we listen to what people say, even when they’re not saying what we would like them to, either in agreement with us or in a disagreement that we find easy to dismiss and that leaves our own positions untouched.
Thanks for your response Nick.
I don’t see how any Anglican could read the Archbishop’s words and not think he was talking about the divisions regarding sexuality. The fact that he doesn’t mention it doesn’t mean that the sermon is about anything else.
Anglicans generally have in recent decades managed to live together reasonably peaceably with hugely different views about all manner of issues of faith except one.
This sermon is about that issue and our responses to it.
Looking at the sermon again, I think it is very much about the place of bishops in relation to this conflict and particularly trying to falsely posit the episcopate as being outside these divisions.
The archbishop says clearly:
I’m glad that he recognising that it doesn’t work. My comments above are an attempt to illuminate some of the reasons why.
What this has to do with Archbishops’s wives is something of a mystery to me. However, following these comments, the views of bishops partners should not be regarded as off limits by any of us.
To read it as “divisions regarding sexuality” is already to take sides. Those who disagree with you (on this issue) will say that what is really at stake is “the authority of Scripture” or of the “tradition”. They may be wrong (I think they’re as wrong as you are about what the real issues are) but that’s what they say and I believe that’s what they think.
I read Welby’s intervention as deliberately bracketing what the “real issues” are and trying to come up with a formulation that does justice to all. You may think he’s failed in this but I believe he has made an honest attempt to mediate.
I think he is demonising people who are good Anglicans. Indeed, he is suggesting that folk whom I believe to be good Anglicans are in fact not good Anglicans. Perhaps not even good Christians.
And we’ve had enough of that in the past.
Only that the Authority of Scripture and Tradition are only ever evoked to that Communion breaking extent when the issue under discussion is homosexuality.
Marriage after divorce, which is also an issue of Authority of Scripture, has not broken the AC, nor have women priests.
We all know that this has absolutely nothing to do with Authority of Scripture – or the concept would be evoked much more often.
In the English women bishop’s debate, which is causing a serious internal schism, many many arguments are used by those who oppose the change. Authority of Scripture is not one of them. The expression is simply not used in any other context.
So what’s your diagnosis of those who disagree with you? Are they lying? Are they deluded?
I have certainly heard people use the Scriptural argument in relation to women’s ministry (again I think they’re wrong) and also heard people invoke the authority of tradition in regard to sexuality. (My experience here though isn’t of anglicanism since I’m not an anglican so maybe things are different in your world.)
Insofar as Welby is demonising anybody it looks to me as if he’s targeting both sides (but I don’t think he is demonising, more warning).
I think those who disagree with me on LGBT issues simply disagree with me on those issues.
I don’t think they are lying or that they are deluded. I’ve generally had harsher words for those who offer me support in private which doesn’t show up in public rather than those who disagree with me, with whom, generally, I find I have friendly relationships.
Once upon a time, I might well have agreed with those believing this to be all about how we read the bible. However, the Evangelicals who are now espousing the cause of same-sex marriage do rather give the lie to that interpretation. There is considerable diversity of view on the bible amongst those who are in favour of treating LGBT people equally. That’s a change and one worth noting.
Nick, what I meant is that the argument that those who are in favour of gay equality are denying the Authority of Scripture is exclusively reserved for the gay debate.
People make lots of scriptural arguments against women’s ordination but they do not charge the proponents with denying the Authority of Scripture.
That sledgehammer is only used in the lgbt discussion.
I have to disagree with you Erika,
Woman’s ordination in Canada did result in about a dozen Parishes leaving the Anglican Church of Canada. And the reasons given by those who were opposed to it were entirely based upon Holy Scripture, such as 1 Timothy 3.
I maintain my view that the ordination of women has caused all kinds of disagreements some very bitter in some churches of the Anglican Communion but at no stage has it resulted in much conflict within the structures of the Anglican Communion itself.
Nick,
the only topic that has been “tearing at the fabric of the Anglican Communion” to use a very tired but often repeated phrase, is homosexuality.
There has not been any public debate, far less disagreement, about the Trinity, about the Incarnation, Resurrection etc., in short, about all those things that are core beliefs.
It stretches credibility if we are to assume that the Archbishop meant that different thoughts about Transubstantiation have brought the Communion to breaking point.
But I agree – he did not mention homosexuality. It’s the big elephant in the room that all the bishops traipse around. Which is precisely what Kelvin said. This is the only topic that has exercised the Communion in the last decade. It is the one that has brought about GAFCON and all the other new acronymic splinters who call themselves true Anglicans.
And unless we address it constructively and in a more grown up way than we have to date we will still be tearing ourselves apart during the next decade.
“Sit, be still, and listen,
because you’re drunk
and we’re at
the edge of the roof.”
Not sure if the ABC meant to allude to Rumi but perhaps it might have been more helpful if he followed that advice on behalf of the Anglican Communion.
He should sit down, be still [like a Quaker] and simply listen.
He might then find that the still small voice that reveals to him the gay relationships of “striking quality” in his own experience need now to be publicly affirmed as holy.
Not sure what the word “holy” means when divorced from loving relationships of striking quality?
I think the ABC was really on a ridgewalk – the Aonach Eagach above Glencoe springs to mind. I get the impression that the bishops of the SEC at the moment are so busy assuming that all the rest of us are novice mountaineers that they won’t actually let us out onto the hills any more – regardless of the fact that some of us have been quite high already.
See the dangers of metaphor? You can get so carried away …
I think you have it there, Chris.
Kelvin, the paragraph you quote is appalling. Two sides, either or, if you don’t walk the very narrow ridge following in the footsteps the the archbishop, then the cliff is on one side and the ravine on the other. And his “we”, as though Anglicans are all of the same mind or ever were. Erika, is correct. None of the core beliefs of Anglicanism are the source of the disagreements within the communion. He certainly appears to me to hint that the churches that have decided in favor of inclusion and equality for LGTB persons are in danger of falling into the “chasm where we lose touch with God, and thus we rely only on ourselves and our own message.” The archbishop might try building at least a small footbridge to connect with the churches in Canada and the US.
Thanks Mimi – I know it is appalling and I know exactly how some of those reading it in the US will feel – “same old, same old”.
This is a sermon that speaks of not only of bad judgement but also bad advice.
I had so hoped we might have left the era of appalling diplomacy behind when we got an ABC who has substantial experience in working in the commercial sector. How quickly church politics seems to obscure everything else.
Why is there such division right here about what Justin “really said” or “really meant”? That’s what I mean by archbishopspeak We heard it for 10 years, and now we’re hearing it again. Why can’t we have forthrightness in speech?
You might call me in denial, but I don’t quite see the offensive language as some may see it. I see a lot of hope in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermon.
It’s not a matter of giving someone the “most favourable construction” when interpreting their public discourse. I don’t think the Archbishop of Canterbury (hereinafter referred to the “ABC”) targeted any particular group, but the Anglican Communion as a whole. One can be smug and say, “Aha! That’s for you!” Another might say, “Ouch! That’s so offensive!” and play the victim. I can see the rebuke that others might see, but I can also see some honest evaluation – truth that has the power to set us free if we heed its wisdom.
So the question begs to be asked: What exactly is the Anglican Communion drunk on? Is the Anglican Communion drunk on the wine of the world, forgetting its mission and call to be a reconciling force in world? Or has the Anglican Communion found some new wine in the undercroft and some hard liquor in the abbey cellarium that both pack a good punch?
I think it just might be the latter. The American Episcopal priest, the Revd Robert Farrar Capon wrote on pp 114-115 of Between Noon and Three:
“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace – of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel – after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps – suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started… Grace has to be drunk straight [=neat]: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed into enter into the case.”
The ABC said in his sermon, “It is a dangerous place, a narrow path we walk as Anglicans at present.” YES! Rightly so! The ABC answered what another American Episcopal priest, the Revd Stephanie Spellers, preached at last year’s General Convention:
“The prayer to be like Benedict will shatter our well-drawn boundaries, it breaks our hearts, it grows our capacity to love and to fail, and sends us humble as beggars into the arms of Jesus and the arms of the stranger. It is a dangerous prayer. Pray it anyway. And then watch out. God might just give you what you prayed for.”
It’s a wonderfully dangerous place that we are in, to hold a variety of opinions and yet find ourselves bound together by grace and love. We are drunk with grace – full of grace – and it can only send us staggering into the breach to share as partners in Christ’s mission as priestly intercessors in the gap. Not to worry, Christ has filled the gap already by his life, death, and resurrection – any bridgebuilding we do is but a continuation of his work.
Saint Paul writes: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9 NRSV)
Anyone falls into that gap will find themselves held by the power of the incarnate Christ working in a grace-filled Communion of love and prayer. We can never lose hope that all will gathered by the Spirit into that one bread and one cup, as grains of wheat and grapes are gathered on the Lord’s table as one. In the gap, outside the gap, beyond the gap, before the gap, on the bridge – we belong to the Lord. We are held by love wherever we go. In life, in death, and in life beyond death, we are not alone.
We are broken and poured out for the life of the word, but we all share in one Body and one Cup.
Somehow I’m thinking now of Panis Angelicus:
The angelic bread
becomes the bread of men;
The heavenly bread
ends all prefigurations:
What wonder!
The Lord is eaten
by a poor and humble servant.
The “poor” can be anyone – gay, straight, female, male, non-White, White, Anglophone, Francophone, Allophone, even the rich – everyone.
But here’s the catch, and I don’t think the ABC meant to be insulting about it: We were once poor. We now richly feast on Christ. Be so full of grace that you do not forget to share that grace with others. When we forget to do that, we fall. When we exclude others or lose sight of God’s love for us (and others), we fall. But even if one falls, such a person is still held by love. And we will do everything we can to get that person out – to raise that person’s dignity that all may know the power of Christ’s love.
I think that’s what the ABC really said about Romans 14:7-12 and Psalm 139:1-10: As we are held by this love wherever we go and despite what we do, why bother fighting with our sisters and brothers? We can only move forward on a united front as we follow Jesus together.
So the question the ABC asks of us is simply this: Honey darling, WHAT chutzpah are you drinkin’?!
Mind the gap. And don’t be afraid to step into the gap, in Christ’s name, to pull somebody out. Amen.
*starts singing the hymn All My Hope On God Is Founded*
In the long run, today’s debate over human sexuality is a sideshow. It’ll seem as much of an odd discussion, tied to a particular place and time, as the late-tenth-century frenzy over Christ’s imminent return seems today.
The Sydney project to renegotiate the terms of the Eucharist / Holy Communion, however, is of far greater centrality to Christian faith and worship, and receives very little coverage. Personal relationships trumping the Eucharist is a sad state of affairs.
As an Australian priest serving for a short period in the Episcopal Church I am interested in how TEC is coping. I suggest that it seems to me that they are moving on, certainly not all roses and light. Would that the Australian Church would have some courage in this regard.
I certainly agree with you that the Bishops think they are the solution and are possibly the fontanel of the problem. I think that was/is the problem with the Covenant Proposal. An Episcopal/bureaucratic solution which will ultimately solve nothing.
In the meantime my time in my little American backwater has this little insight. The priest in the neighbouring parish is gay and has a partner. (I asked him if he was married…and he said Yes…but in this State we can’t be!)
That parish is plainly one of the liveliest in the region. A Priest (and dare I say his spouse) who love their people…and the church thrives.
Funny, I think I have heard this bit of sermon before. There weren’t any cliffs, but there were definitely ‘sides’ and a ‘middle’ and the people in the middle were the good guys.
Not surprising that ++Justin would talk about the danger of extremes
I have read the whole sermon and I can’t see that it refers necessarily to the issue of sexuality, although you can certainly read it into the text.
I am also an Australian priest and have enjoyed my times in worship in Episcopal churches in the US, as well as with Nigerians – both places of joy and christian faith.
One of my greatest joys in being Anglican. has been our respect for each other, respect for diversity. This seems to be destroyed now. A great sadness.