What is in Kelvin's Head?

Apologies have consequences too

15/04/2016

The world seems to be full of bishops apologising to LGBT people.

However, there seems to be a curious absence in the world of LGBT people freely accepting those apologies and being thus able to take their place as full members of the churches.

In the last week we’ve had the latest document on family life to come from the Vatican and it is very clear that there’s a change in tone from the current pope and it is hard not to welcome that. However, it is also equally clear that there’s little change in substance.

Much the same applies in the Anglican world.

Earlier this year, we had the most profound words from the Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of the Primates’ Meeting in Canterbury. However, we must begin to ask whether they were empty words or words that mean something.

After the Primates’ Meeting he was reported to have said that it was a “constant source of deep sadness that people are persecuted for their sexuality”. This was widely reported at the time as an apology to LGBT people. This was at the meeting at which the Primates decided to take action that would punish the US based Episcopal Church for treating LGBT people as, well, ordinary people. Such action was somehow too much for some members of the Anglican Communion and the Archbishop was left trying to explain that the action against the US Church was not a set of sanctions but rather a set of consequences. Oh, “all actions have consequences”, the Archbishop reminded us again and again.

The trouble for the Archbishop is that apologies have consequences too. Actual apologies that is. Apologies that don’t mark a new start, that don’t demonstrate a turning around, that don’t exhibit that metanoia experience that we all know is the gospel in action, are indicative of rather cheap grace and don’t amount very much to being apologies that should be taken seriously.

Justin Welby has his work cut out as Archbishop of Canterbury and he has my sympathies and sometimes even my prayers. However, his work won’t make any coherent sense if he goes around making insipid apologies to gay communities whilst all the while being the public face of a body which is engaged in persecuting LGBT people in its actions. The sanctions/consequences/actions against the US church were symbolic of the real persecutions that LGBT people face daily, particularly those LGBT people who live in parts of the world where we have most to fear. And the trouble is, in the church we believe rather strongly that symbols matter rather a lot.

I’m not sure what the opposite of grace is, nor what the opposite of a sacrament is. Perhaps we need to coin a word. The “consequences” that that Archbishop had the misfortune to be explaining to the world’s press after the Primates’ Meeting seem to me to the the outward sign of an inward and yet curiously visible spiritual cruelty.

You don’t get to be a front for that kind of speech and also be taken seriously when making apologies to the very people who are on the blunt end of the actions.

The trouble for bishops making apologies is that real apologies have consequences too. Real apologies mean turning things round; doing things differently; starting anew. And the fact that we’ve not seen that yet indicates that we shouldn’t take the apologies of the Archbishop of Canterbury as meaning anything other than that he’d rather people didn’t think he was beastly.

But beastly is as beastly does.

This week some of the pernicious “consequences” of the Primates’ Meeting have been worked out in the context of the rather more healthily constituted body the Anglican Consultative Council which is meeting in Lusaka at the moment. And all the while the threat remains that other churches in the communion which dare to be nice to those poor unfortunate homosexualists might also be consequenced themselves.

The Anglican Consultative Council is supposed to be a body in which the voices of lay people and clergy who are not bishops is heard internationally. It seems rather a pity then that they’ve just elected not only a bishop to chair it for the next six years but one of the Primates themselves.

How long will it be before we realise that we’ve got a bigger problem with the Episcopate in the Anglican Communion than we have with LGBT people who just want to get on with the rather extraordinary calling of just being an ordinary follower of Jesus.

Only this week I heard of yet another person unwilling to join the Anglican Communion because it is known for being at best ambivalent about the way it treats LGBT people. These disputes are costing us members and we should not take seriously mission initiatives which come from those who are making mission in Western countries almost impossible.

And still the absurdities of the situation grow. This week one of the churches which the Church of England (and my own church for that matter) is in full communion with decided to open marriage to same-sex couples. The Church of Norway joins the Church of Sweden in doing this joyfully and thus welcoming gay and lesbian people fully into its life of faith. This passed with almost no comment in the Anglican world. Are gay Norwegians really not as spiritually wicked to those of an anti-gay persuasion than gay people from Little England? Are gay Lutherans just not worth a schism? If not, why not? Do we think that these Lutherans, upon whom we’ve expended rather a lot of ecumenical agape in recent years, just can’t help themselves? Why are gay Anglicans in the US the target and not gay Lutherans in Norway? I have to confess I just don’t get it. Does one church have better lesbians that the other. Or more wicked ones?

And it leaves people like the Archbishop of Canterbury exposed. He may have a gift at the moment of keeping many (though clearly not everyone) in the Anglican world talking to one another and that’s not to be sniffed at. However, there is a danger that whilst the talking goes on, the church becomes so internally incoherent that it risks looking spectacularly foolish in public.

And that is not what being a fool for Christ is all about.

41 responses to “The Columba Declaration”

Edward Andrews

11/02/2016

As Anglicans get down to the important issue of the niceties of Theology, lets get into the broad brush situation.
The relationships between the Churches of the Celtic tradition and the Southern tradition have been fraught since the 7th Century (Whitby). Part of the whole question surrounding the war of Independence (and before with King David was teh independence of the Scottish Church.
The irony is that the present attempt is to bring the Churches of the united Kingdom together may well blow back on them. While the Kirk today doesn’t mean much in Scotland the most secular part of the UK I’m not convinsed that playing footise over Bishops is going to impress the older members – the ones who voted No.
The fact is that the Scottish Episcopal Church has the Anglican franchise in Scotland. It is an authentic Scottish Church (especially if you ignore the instances when it has gone to England for Episcopal ordination.) and to negotiate over its head about something so sensitive it at the best discourteous.
Those of the reformed tradition don’t get wound up by the antics of a few Episcopalians. We seek whatever degree of true unity is available to us, but do not see the need for uniformity. I spent some very pleasant years as a guest of the Scottish Episcopal Church when the climate of the Kirk became unattractive to me, and am grateful for the table fellowship which I received.
The site of two big boys presuming to set things up is not pleasing. For the information of those who want to get up tight about the real presence, that is what the reformed tradition believes, we are Calvinists not followers of Zwingli. I am not going to seek to discuss which Greer philosopher we get our understanding of existence from.

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Father David

12/02/2016

Father Ron: let us not forget that the great Arthur Michael Ramsey was born an ecumenical baby. His maternal Grandfather was Vicar of Horbling in Lincolnshire and his paternal Grandfather was a Congregationalist Minister. His Anglican Grandfather baptised him and when in adult years he visited Horbling parish church he was deeply moved when standing by the font – the place where this great man of God began his Christian pilgrim journey. However, as a child he worshipped with his family at the Congregationalist church in Cambridge. To the great benefit of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion – the kind of High Jinks that took place next door at Little St. Mary’s proved to be an attractive magnet and so the pull of Anglo-Catholicism brought to us a spiritual giant and a contender (in company with William Temple) for the title of the greatest Archbishop of Canterbury of the 20th century and a man who yearned and longed for Christian Unity.
Edward Andrews: Even as we all long and hope for the unity of all Christians your words are wise when you point to unity not uniformity.

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Keith Barber

12/02/2016

Cynic I may be, but my first response is to ask what is the hidden agenda. For I’m pretty certain there will be one, whether it’s about trying to create an ecclesiastical bulwark against disintegration of the UK or get ++Welby an ally or two in the aftermath of the huge and hostile reaction to the Anglican Primates’ decision to punish TEC (sorry Kelvin) for its moves towards inclusion of LGBT people.

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1. Jeremy Bates
  
  13/02/2016
  
  Or perhaps it’s like the Easter-calendar announcement–a convenient way of changing the subject, at Synod and elsewhere.
  
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Father Ron Smith

12/02/2016

Whatever the motivation for this ‘secret’ accord with the Church of Scotland; simple courtesy would require that the Church of England promoters consult with their Episcopally governed equivalent in Scotia.

Another point is this; do the Presbyerians realise that they may have signed up to the catholic premise of recognition of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion? Are they happy with that?

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1. Edward Andrews
  
  12/02/2016
  
  Well actually the Presbyterians believe “Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.” You will see the word real is there. Don’t know what the 39 articles say you believe.
  Those of us who are big on the real presence use the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian understanding of reality.
  
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  1. Father Ron Smith
    
    12/02/2016
    
    Not believers, then, in con-substantiation? Freely translated as bread and wine ‘together with’ the Body and Blood of Christ? Note, not the more literal trans-substantiation, which would nean the disappearance of the bread and wine. (although as some of my more scientific friends would say, this is a tautology.
    
    What all must agree on, though, is that some members of the Church of England, and many of its constituent partner Churches of the Anglican Communion, do have a problem with the ‘Real Presence’ – a reality that, for me, and I suspect most Anglican Catholics, means that the substance of the bread and wine consecrated at the Eucharist is truly “The Body and Blood of Christ” in accordance with the dominical instruction: “This IS my Body, my Blood” (Not, you will notice, “this REPRESENTS my Body, my Blood”). ‘A Sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’ – this saying sums it all up pretty well, I think
    
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    1. Kelvin
      
      12/02/2016
      
      I think it is time to draw the discussion about the real presence to a close on this comment thread. It is hardly the main point and I’ve never ever known a comment thread about transubstantiation to be constructive.
      
      Comments on the Columba Declaration welcome. Comments trying to explain what transubstantiation *really* means – not so much.
      
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      1. Edward Andrews
        
        12/02/2016
        
        Thank you Kelvin. As I see it the C of E has come poaching in your preserves. This is wrong and unhelpful. If there were going to be Anglican/Presbyterian dialogue the SEC should be the lead player. I have my own problems with the declaration as a Member of the Church of Scotland who seeks an end to the United Kingdom. However as a Catholic Christian I am in solidarity with my SEC brothers and sisters who have been left out of the loop. Both the Cof E synod and the Kirk’ General Assembly should reject the document, but I don’t suppose that they will.
Augur Pearce

16/02/2016

A contribution to the ‘establishment’ discussion: In my book the terms ‘establish’ and ‘Church of England’ both have more than one meaning. ‘Establish’, for example, can mean ‘set up, bring into existence’ (sense E1), or it can mean ‘endow, privilege’ (sense E2).

Most people who use it of the C of E use it in sense E2, and they understand the C of E (in what I might call sense C3) as an association with its own rules, distinct from the English nation but privileged by law in various ways (with some concomitant obligations).

In fact I think this describes the C of S position fairly well, but is quite wrong as regards the C of E. The C of E (I contend) is not distinct from the kingdom of England, it is that kingdom ‘wearing its spiritual hat’ (sense C1). England, as church, has various spiritual responsibilities to discharge, and in order to do so, it establishes (=creates; sense E1), by its law, a complex of specialist institutions, offices, rules, and assets which itself becomes known derivatively as the C of E (sense C2).

One clear example of how the C of E (in sense C1) and the C of S have been differently understood from very early times is found in comparing Richard Hooker’s well-known words ‘There is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any man a member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England…’ with the Church Act 1567, declaring those ‘quha outher gainsayis the word of the Evangell ressavit and apprevit as the heidis of the Confessioun of Faith professit in Parliament of befoir in the yeir of God 1560 … or that refusis the participatioun of the haly sacramentis as thay ar now ministrat, to be na memberis of the said Kirk within this realme now presently professit’.

The Church of England, in short, is simply England; the Church of Scotland is a privileged sectional group.

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1. Seph
  
  17/02/2016
  
  If this be so, it strikes me as uncomfortably caesaropapist. This may be one of the things that makes me uncomfortable when I am down south and find myself in a C of E church.
  
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