HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE ANGLICAN CHURCH: LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES MAY BOTH BE WRONG

When a secular newspaper like The (Melbourne) Age publishes news, letters and opinion pieces most days for two months about a socio-religious matter, something important is going on.

Take yesterday, for example: Bishop John Shelby Spong tells Barney Zwartz ‘Homosexuality is like being left-handed – it’s not something you choose. You don’t persecute people because they’re black. or because they’re gay.’ And on the same day, Archbishop Peter Jensen, in his presidential address to the synod of the diocese of Sydney, is reported to have said ‘Homosexuality [joins] the list of “other gross public sins” of lying and greed. Certainly the problem is not homosexuality as such; it is the disregard for the scriptural teaching on chastity. The reality of the Anglican Communion has been put to the severest test this year over the blessing of same-sex unions and the endorsement of unrepentant homosexual ministry.’

The issue of homosexuality and the Church is as big as – and probably more complex than – any controversy faced by Christians in 2000 years – including the doctrine of Christ’s two natures, the Protestant Reformation, race/slavery, ecumenism and the role of women.

Today and tomorrow, in London, 37 Anglican Primates meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury (acronymed in the UK as ‘the ABC’), Dr. Rowan Williams, will need Solomonic wisdom to sort this one out. A ‘strictly confidential’ three-page memo ‘Notes towards a Handling Strategy on Gay Issues’ has been leaked to The Daily Telegraph. Author Jeremy Harris – a former BBC journalist and now the ABC’s secretary for public affairs – outlines how the Church could manipulate the media on this issue: ‘In addition to attempting to manage the gay issue strategically, there is at least the challenge . . . of displacing it at least partially from public and media attention.’ What planet does he live on?

The trigger for the ‘crisis meeting’ was the furore over the appointment of Dr Jeffrey John, a homosexual, as Bishop of Reading. After threats of schism and parishes withholding money, Dr John was persuaded to stand down. Bishop Wallace Benn, president of the powerful Church of England Evangelical Council, said that if firm action was not taken, the worldwide Church would come apart, slowly or quickly. (Liberals point out that the Communion survived similarly apocalyptic rhetoric over the ordination of women). Bishop Benn said he still hoped Bishop-elect Gene Robinson, Anglicanism’s first openly active homosexual bishop, whose appointment was confirmed by the American Episcopal Church last month, would step down before his consecration in New Hampshire in November.

So ‘the ABC’ is between a rock and a hard place, partly because of his known sympathy for the gay cause. A month ago he disarmed a specially-convened conference of 2000 Church of England evangelicals by quoting Psalm 71: ‘I am become as it were a monster unto many.’ Every generation, he said, must ‘listen to God’ anew. The Archbishop of Canterbury has little more than moral authority, though he can expel a province by declaring that he is no longer ‘in communion’ with it. Or he could create a parallel non-geographical jurisdiction for conservatives, into which individual parishes or dioceses could opt. Or ‘flying bishops’ might minister to conservative parishes, as they do for those opposed to women priests.

In my role as a counsellor-of-clergy I have spoken to about 18 Australian Anglican diocesan conferences. Anglicans are sometimes caricatured as ‘Tories at prayer’, an interesting stereotype. They pride themselves (mostly) on their inclusiveness. They are nothing if not polite. (A 1997 survey of Victorian Baptist Churches found that 34% of them ‘would not welcome a homosexual person at the [church] door’. That wouldn’t happen in any Anglican parish I’ve visited).

To complicate matters for the faithful, who are leaving mainline churches in record numbers, Western countries seem to be moving inexorably towards legitimizing gay marriages. Belgium, Holland and two Canadian provinces do it already.

Why is this issue so divisive? Well, the ‘s-e-x’ part of the word is one reason. But there’s a deeper issue. Liberals (like Bishop Jack Spong and Dr. Muriel Porter) accuse conservatives of inhabiting ‘simplicity this side of complexity’. Conservatives (like Sydney’s Archbishop Peter Jensen) believe liberals wallow uncertainly in ‘complexity the other side of simplicity’.

Spong’s audiences are primarily a theologically literate laity – and also many thoughtful non-Christians. He translates the work of contemporary academics into everyday language quite brilliantly. As for leading the effort to bring gays and lesbians into the church’s full sacramental life, he says ‘I think that’s a battle that’s won. even though it doesn’t feel like it all the time.’ In the 1994 ‘Koinonia Statement’ (often cited as a litmus test by evangelicals) Spong – and 88 other bishops – asserted that he would recognize monogamous homosexual relationships and ordain gays and lesbians who are ‘wholesome examples.’

Does Spong believe the creeds? Yes, but he says he interprets them through a post-modern lens. And he believes African (conservative) Christians ‘have moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity. They’ve yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we’ve had to face in the developing world; that is just not on their radar screen.’

Liberals, like Spong, believe homosexuality is not an intrinsically disordered condition (‘against nature’); the Bible has nothing to say about homosexuality as an orientation; homosexual relationships are OK if they’re intended to be life-long and characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection, respect and love.

Conservatives affirm the Church’s traditional understanding of human sexuality: Holy Scripture nowhere condones homosexual practice; a few passages of Hebrew Scripture and of letters of Paul explicitly forbid homosexual acts; marriage – the joining together of a man and a woman – is the only appropriate setting for genital sexual intimacy; the norm for singleness, as for marriage, is chastity; for ‘singles’ that means abstinence.

Christian liberals and conservatives are united in proscribing some expressions of sexuality: promiscuity, prostitution, incest, pornography, pedophilia, predatory sexual behaviour, and sadomasochism (all of which may be heterosexual and homosexual), adultery, acts of abusive violence, rape, and female circumcision.

Is there a way forward? It will not be easy. Certainly, the current either/or dualism will have to give way to a via media (‘simplicity the other side of complexity’), as was done with the slavery issue. Anglicans are better than other churches at this process. Conservatives and liberals will need to talk much more with each other about how the three ‘canons of authority’ – Scripture, reason and tradition – relate to one another. Conservatives complain that liberals are more at home asking questions than providing answers (and today’s rationality may be tomorrow’s nonsense). Conservatives remind us that authentic Christianity is about truth, not just opinions. Sin is more than alienation from oneself and others: it’s rebellion against God. In ethics our aim is not simply to do what is good but what is right. And although we should encourage scholars to study the Bible ‘critically’ we must never forget that (a) our stance is primarily to be ‘under’ rather than ‘over’ the Word, and (b) we do not have a mandate to destroy the faith of the less theologically-literate.

But liberals make the point that heterosexual conservatives who do little more than mandate chastity for homosexuals who did not choose that orientation are not reflecting the love of Christ to those persons.

Conservatives have to face some uncomfortable facts at this point: (1) Of their three broad categories of sexual ‘sin’ only two are generally policed – homosexual activity, and heterosexual adultery. But a clear majority of church members getting married for the first time aren’t virgins (however you define that!). Why aren’t they ‘disciplined’ more? (My guess: because they’re our children! This phenomenon has been termed ‘the ostrich position’). (2) Every Christian denomination has homosexuals among their clergy: until recently we had a ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. (3) My Uniting Church friends tell me there are UC presbyteries who have knowingly ordained openly gay or lesbian ministers, and these clergy have been called by congregations in full knowledge of what they were doing.

In the meantime it would be unwise to settle these matters legislatively. We must acknowledge and live with discomfort of our disagreements for a time. Many argue that heresy is better than schism. Heresies die out, but schisms last for centuries and centuries.

There’s an interesting story in John chapter 8. The religious police brought an adulterous woman to Jesus. He said ‘I do not condemn you’ (an astonishing statement at that time, which perplexed many early Church fathers) before he said ‘Go and sin no more.’ You’ll meet conservatives who only remember the last injunction, and liberals who know only those earlier loving words. A plague on both their houses! In our quest to follow Jesus we should put the two together – in his order.

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Rev. Dr. Rowland Croucher is a Melbourne counsellor and writer.

October 14, 2003.

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