Ruth Gledhill reports, both in The Times and on her blog, on some letters written by Archbishop Rowan Williams in which he compares gay sex with marriage. I must say I wonder why these letters have suddenly come to light – has their recipient, who has left the Anglican church, just now, in the wake of Lambeth, decided to spill the beans? There is also a leader in The Times on this subject, and comment from Mary Ann Sieghart.
In one of the letters, whose text Ruth posts, Archbishop Rowan signs off as follows:
My prayers for you, and my request for prayers for an averagely muddled bishop!
From Archbishop Rowan
Well, I can only agree with him that he is “averagely muddled” in his thinking, maybe not on every issue but clearly on this one. To be fair, I can agree with what he writes in the second letter, from 2001. The following is in fact rather similar to what I have written here:
When I said that I wasn’t campaigning for a new morality, I meant, among other things, that if the Church ever said that homosexual behaviour wasn’t automatically sinful, the same rules of faithfulness and commitment would have to apply as to heterosexual union. Whether that would best be expressed in something like a ceremony of commitment, I don’t know; I am wary of anything that looks like heterosexual marriage being licensed, because marriage has other dimensions to do with children and society.
In other words, homosexual practice, if allowed at all, should be restricted to lifelong faithful unions. Presumably this would imply that homosexual clergy who were not faithful in this way would be subject to the same sanctions as married heterosexual clergy who have adulterous affairs. This means that these lifelong unions, at least among clergy, would have to be declared openly, although I understand Rowan’s reservations about anything like “civil partnerships”. Of course this status, formally entered into at what some have made into “a ceremony of commitment”, didn’t exist in 2001, at least here in the UK.
But where I think Rowan’s thinking is indeed muddled is in his earlier, 2000, letter. Here he writes how he came to agree with the position
that the scriptural prohibitions were addressed to heterosexuals looking for sexual variety in their experience; but that the Bible does not address the matter of appropriate behaviour for those who are, for whatever reason, homosexual by instinct of nature … I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.
The problem with this argument is that there is simply no proper exegetical basis for it. In a series of posts Doug Chaplin has conveniently summarised the relevant biblical material. Whatever one makes of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and 1 Timothy 1:8-11, these passages list descriptions of people, not of acts which are not characteristic of them. Just as someone who is normally sober but gets drunk once is not a “drunkard”, someone who is usually faithfully and heterosexually monogamous but occasionally does something different “for sexual variety” is not an arsenokoites, whatever this word might mean. Similarly Romans 1:27 refers to men who “abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another” (TNIV); these are men who have rejected heterosexuality, not ones who are usually heterosexual but looking for “sexual variety”.
I can understand how much the Archbishop wants to find some biblical support for the position which his cultural background is pushing him to accept. After all, my background is rather similar. At Cambridge I studied and worshipped with his wife in the college and chapel of which he later became Dean. Unfortunately there is simply nothing in the Bible, nor in church tradition as he admits, to support his contention that a committed homosexual relationship “might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage”. Sadly he has muddled the teachings of the Bible with the presuppositions of society.
It is interesting that Rowan, writing in 2000, mentioned charging interest and contraception as two things which the church used to consider wrong and now accepts, and suggests that homosexual practice may be a similar issue. But, as his correspondent Dr Pitt points out, the rightness of lending at interest and of contraception is by no means indisputable. David Lang of Complegalitarian has today written openly and movingly about how he and his wife prayerfully came to the decision that contraception is wrong for them. And John Richardson, the Ugley Vicar, questions the whole system of charging interest and notes that Rowan himself is also now questioning it. So here we hardly have two shining bright examples of the church moving in a morally right direction.
Mary Ann Sieghart writes in The Times:
If only more members of the Anglican Communion displayed as much humility as Rowan Williams, who signs himself endearingly in one of these letters as “an averagely muddled bishop”. And if only Dr Williams could display just a little less humility in his job of leading the Church, the current stand-off in the Communion might have more chance of being resolved.
Indeed! I may not agree with Mary Ann on the direction the Communion should take, but if it is to survive it needs to be led in some direction.
Peter, you may find Mike Higton’s series on +RW’s views worth a look (as yet unfinished). His blog is http://www.goringe.net/theology/
I have really appreciated Doug’s post on this topic. As you know, I left the church Dr. Packer attends just before that church joined the diocese of the Southern Cone. I have friends of both sides.
I am thinking about blogging about this soon but this is my reasoning for leaving the church, in more or less chronological order.
1. The Anglican church of Canada has ordained women since 1976. The pastors, all of them coming to Canada after 76, were against the ordination of women on taking up a position in that church and wanted not to be under any female leadership in the diocese at large. They accepted a position in the church without notifying either the congregation or the bishop of the diocese that they were already against the ordination of women on taking up the post.
2. The clergy agreed privately that the statement of concern against the TNIV was wrong and not based on truth. However, Dr. Packer was never asked by the clergy to remove his signature from the statement. In my limited view, I believe that statement and its substatements are slanderous. The clergy have decided to buy the ESV (no surprise) and now preach publicly that the ESV presents the gospel more clearly than any gender accurate Bible. Gender is now a gospel issue. The clergy have met with Dr. Ware to strengthen the teaching of the submission of women especially to the young people entering marriage.
3. While the parting of ways is openly about same sex blessing in the diocese, only a very few parishes 10% have actually offered same sex blessing. There is no pressure for this in any church.
4. I do not believe that marriage is a sacrament. There is nothing at all about the church blessing that makes sex in marriage holy, and sex outside of marriage not holy. There is a huge variety of human opinions on what makes sex ethical.
– blessed in church
– heterosexual
– no birth control
– not forced
– not anal or oral sex
– not during menstruation
– not violent
– not coerced
– not taking place in an authority relationship
There is a strong opinion in secular society today that sexual relations between a student and a professor, patient and doctor, or church member and pastor, etc. are not ethical because sex should not take place in a relationship where one person has authority over the other.
I left the church I was in because I wanted to get away from the notion that it is okay to slander other people, it is okay to take a position in a church where you know you disagree with the leadership and the congregation, it is okay to have sex in an authority relationship as long as it is called “marriage.”
So, now I attend a church where same sex blessing is accepted at least in theory. I have not heard the matter discussed yet.
Doug, thanks for the link. Mike’s series certainly reveals a lot about Rowan’s thinking. I look forward to what he has to say about “the question of biblical moorings for RW’s argument”.
Sue, thanks for your explanation of your position. I too would not be happy in the church you left. I’m not sure I would be happy in your new church either, but that would depend on various factors I don’t know – although I would have even more trouble respecting Bishop Michael Ingham than I would with my own diocesan bishop.
I don’t want to defend Bishop Ingham, for a variety of reasons, any more than Dr. Packer and the other clergy. However, there really isn’t a third option. I will attempt to attend a church where there are no big names in the future.
I’m not quite sure when evangelical Anglicans started thinking it was so important to be in theological agreement with their bishops. When the evangelical revival in the Church of England took place in the eighteenth century, half of the bishops were probably deists, and plenty of them were political time-servers who spent most of their year in London. Didn’t seem to bother Newton, Simeon, Venn and the rest – they just got on with preaching the gospel in their own churches.
Lord Tebbit has also picked up the word “muddled” as a description of Archbishop Rowan.
Tim, I take your point. If I thought it was important to agree with my bishop I would have left the Church of England decades ago. The real problem comes when bishops obstruct the preaching of the gospel. So, should we just ignore the bishops, forget Lambeth, and pretend that our churches are independent? Maybe. But the bishops will let us get away with that only within limits which are not always acceptable.
Peter, great to see the blog still going strong. As always an interesting post.
Sue, your fourth point is particularly interesting. (I don’t have enough background on your other points to comment, I suppose.) The more I talk to pastors, the more I hear laments about the pagan quality of wedding ceremonies and the overall feeling by pastors that they are just another prop for the bride and groom.
Makes me wonder if churches should get out of the wedding business altogether – or else insist on a few things and step on some toes in the process.
John, it’s good to hear from you again. I miss your blog which disappeared so suddenly, but I guess you were too busy as a new pastor.
Interesting point about the church getting out of the weddings business. I guess your reasons are not the same as those of the Bishop of California! In comments on that post I and others made some suggestions about what the church should do about weddings e.g. marry only Christians, or treat weddings as evangelism opportunities.
Thank you for the kind words, Peter. It was a rash decision that I regret.
But, it is good to be back.
On marriage, I believe my inclination is tending toward some of the comments on your other post. If we are going to have a wedding in a church, it should be a Christian service.
I’m not sure where a wedding crosses a line from a proper celebration to a grotesque orgy of excess, but I know I’ve seen some that fall well over that line. Just recently, I saw a special of TV about a wedding cake – just a cake – in Las Vegas that cost something like $200,000. Just the cake!
It would be tough to participate in that wedding service without turning the homily to a discussion on stewardship of God’s resources.