I thought some of our readers might be interested in Spong's comments on the report of the Anglican Commission set up in response to the potential split over the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson.

Allan

International Anglicanism's Flirtation with Ignorance!

The commission set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to determine how the Anglican Communion can maintain its unity while recognizing wide diversity of opinion about homosexuality has, with great fanfare, released its report. It is long, convoluted and about what one would expect from a frightened leadership that thinks that the problem is one of maintaining unity rather than seeking to discern the truth. Those who called for this study do not appear to understand that a church unified in ignorant devotion to its continuing homophobia is hardly a church worthy of much attention by anyone. This report is, therefore, nothing more than a pathetic ecclesiastical attempt at damage control. It will fail in its stated purpose today. It will, I fear, be nothing but an enormous source of embarrassment in the future.

The deficiency in this report begins in its inability to distinguish between the problem and the symptoms. The crisis confronting our church was not caused either by the ordination of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, to be the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, or by the authorization in the Anglican Church of Canada of blessings for same sex unions. The real damage needing to be addressed was the blatant prejudice and hostility toward homosexual persons that occurred at the Lambeth Conference of the world's Anglican Bishops in 1998. This once every 10 years event, convened at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was overwhelmed by a homophobic combination of first world Anglican evangelicals with third world Bible quoting Anglican fundamentalists, both being orchestrated by the inept leadership of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey. That particular alliance possessed more zeal than wisdom. The ensuing debate at that gathering reached a level of rudeness that I have never witnessed before in church circles. It was punctuated by hisses and catcalls made when those, who opposed the prejudice present in that gathering, tried to speak. George Carey violated every protocol. He sat on the stage in full view of his supporters gleefully leading the vote with his raised hand, as the amendments grew more and more severe. He then went to a microphone to say how pleased he was "that scripture had been upheld" in the vote, only to be reminded that the vote had not yet been taken! This was the first time in the three of these conferences I attended where bishops were actively lobbied in an effort fueled with American dollars, primarily from Texas. The progressive voices of the Church were so battered by their conservative opponents that for all practical purposes they withdrew from the fight. This conference ripped apart a report, adopted with much struggle and compromise in its own section assigned to deal with issues of homosexuality. That section had worked out a tenuous consensus with which no one was satisfied, but all sides were on board, only to see its work gutted in the plenary sessions by a series of hostile amendments until the final resolution was overtly hostile, mean-spirited and deeply divisive. It was a Conference in which none of the persons who had both the office and the ability to offer effective leadership said a word. That included the primates of the United States, Frank Griswold and of Canada, Michael Peers, as well as the leading Welsh bishop, Rowan Williams, who even then was being talked about as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. He chose to play it safe not putting the capital he had been building in his quest for Anglicanism's top post at risk. That should have been a tip off to those who supported him, as to what sort of Archbishop he would be.

When the voice of one of these recognized leaders might have made a difference all were strangely silent. Others like the Archbishop of Capetown, Njongokullu Ndungane and the Primus of Scotland, Richard Holloway tried to fill that vacuum, but were shouted down. Finally, it was a Conference in which the majority of the world's Anglican bishops spoke about the Bible in a way that indicated an unawareness of the biblical scholarship that has emerged in Germany, the U.K. and the United States over the last 200 years.

Archbishop Carey, in a perfect example of the 'Peter Principle,' sought to impose his narrow evangelical worldview on the whole Communion, not seeming to recognize that this international church is made up of wide cultural diversity. Some branches of the Anglican Communion, for example, live in cultures where women occupy top positions in law, politics, business and education; while other branches of this worldwide communion live in nations that practice polygamy and female circumcision and where education is not provided for female children. No church anywhere can survive an attempted imposition of cultural uniformity on so wide a gap. Attitudes toward homosexuality run a similar gamut. In the United States gay males from both political parties are elected to the Congress and serve as ambassadors. In parts of Africa and Southeast Asia an openly homosexual person runs the risk of being murdered.

At an earlier at Lambeth Conference in 1988 the issue of women bishops threatened to tear this Communion apart, but the skillful leadership of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, steered the bishops through these choppy seas with a grace that was transforming. Runcie, who did not himself support the ordination of women, nonetheless lived in a very large world and knew how to use the power of his office to help the Communion live creatively inside the inevitable tensions of an idea that could not be stopped.

George Carey had an opportunity to emulate that example, but his narrow evangelical mind wanted a vote to affirm his own negativity about homosexuality. He got it, but that vote was a hollow victory and its bigotry made our present divisions inevitable. He did not understand that rising consciousness can never be deterred by majority vote. Furthermore he wanted every province of the Communion to agree not to pursue any steps aimed at including homosexual people in the full life of the church until a worldwide consensus had formed and all provinces could move together. It was a familiar delaying tactic and an impossible demand. Anglicanism's most backward dioceses, whether in Sydney or Chad, can never bind the consensus on this subject now growing in Western countries. Only one who imagines that he possesses the truth of God, could have thought that a proper tactic. That is the fatal evangelical flaw.

This Commission decided mistakenly that they were dealing with an issue of disunity when they were in fact dealing with the evil of prejudice. That was clear when their solution was to invite those churches that have banished their homophobic prejudices to consider apologizing to those parts of the church that were offended by their inclusiveness. That would be like asking those nations that have thrown off the evil of segregation to apologize for hurting the consciences of the segregationists. It was an inconceivable request. Whenever growth occurs there is always conflict and dislocation. The world would still be practicing slavery, child labor and second class status for women had not a new consciousness confronted our prejudices in a movement that always destroys the unity of the old consensus.

In an effort to appear evenhanded, this report also sought to speak a critical word to those Third World bishops now seeking to destabilize Anglican Church life in countries open to gay and lesbian people. This was also a meaningless gesture since the very nature of the Anglican Communion affirms the independence of each national body. This means that this Commission has no power to order anything, and because of this no one will pay much attention to it anyway.

Finally this Commission in an attempt to force this Communion into a sense of unity, called upon the 38 national branches of the Anglican Communion to sign a covenant expressing their support for something called, 'current Anglican teaching.' That remarkable request was surely designed to bring gales of laughter to anyone familiar with Anglican history! In a Church that has never recognized an infallible pope or an inerrant Bible, where is current Anglican teaching enshrined? Is it in the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference that has no authority and in which only bishops vote? Would those Anglicans who have engaged critical biblical scholarship be asked to subscribe to the pre-modern mindset of some third world countries that oppose evolution, interpret the Virgin Birth as literal biology or view the Resurrection as a physical resuscitation? Would we destroy the tradition of the great Anglican scholars of the past and try to place 21st century minds once again into the pre-modern straitjacket of the 39 Articles of Religion that formed the Elizabethan Settlement? Would we institute an Anglican version of the Inquisition in order to restrain our scholars? Would we want to become a Church that no longer produced Ian Ramsey, William Temple, John Elbridge Hines, James Pike or John A.T. Robinson? These ideas are too ludicrous to contemplate. Robin Eames, the Anglican Primate of Ireland who chaired this Commission, knows these facts better than most. Yet this idea was included which means this report was never intended to be more than a public confession that its purpose was not to address the crisis but to use rhetoric as a smokescreen to soothe hurt feelings. As such the report is a dishonest effort to achieve cheap unity by sacrificing reality and truth.

The Anglican Communion had a relatively minor crisis as it watched a new consciousness about homosexuality struggling to be born in the face of ancient ignorance and prejudice. This Commission and the leadership that requested its formation has turned this minor crisis into a full scale disaster that if heeded will move Anglicanism toward the literal mindedness that now threatens not just Christianity, but religious systems all over the world. Death comes in many forms. The inability to embrace new reality is one of them.

- John Shelby Spong