Category Archives: Anglican Churches

The Anglican centre: a gospel of inclusion AND transformation

Posted on by
Reply

My friend Tim Chesterton, an Anglican priest in Canada, has written an excellent (but rather long) post Good News: Inclusion, New Creation, and the Limits to Transformation. This is in part his reaction to the position taken by The Episcopal Church (TEC), which is rapidly leading to a parting of ways from the majority of the Anglican Communion. Tim’s post has already received an episcopal “imprimatur”, in the first comment.

Tim is not afraid to take on the issue of homosexuality, despite it being so controversial. Personally I would want to state more clearly than Tim does that same-sex attraction, at least when not carefully controlled, is not “part of God’s will for his creation”, but “part of the brokenness that evil has caused in the world” – but then perhaps Tim doesn’t want to invite the kind of reaction the Team Rector of my own parish received for what he said about this issue in a sermon, which made it to the front page of our local newspaper.

The implication of what Tim writes is that he cannot go along with the “progressives” in TEC, and in his own Anglican Church of Canada, for whom the gospel is only about unconditional inclusion without a call for transformation. But it also implies that he cannot go along with those who reject the inclusiveness of the gospel, the apparent stance of some of the more conservative Anglicans who have been forced out of the official churches. I would agree with Tim on both these points.

This suggests to me that there is a strong central strand within global Anglicanism which does not want to go along with either of the extremes but is feeling torn apart as the apparently inevitable schism proceeds. It will be interesting to see what happens to this central strand. I would hope and pray that it is able to survive and grow through these difficult times, and perhaps emerge as the surviving core of the Anglican Communion as the extremes on either side go their own ways. But for that to happen this central strand will need some strong leadership. Perhaps the highly respected Bishop N.T. Wright, whose article I quoted a few days ago, can provide this leadership and some kind of focus of unity.

The end of the Anglican Communion as we know it?

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t think Bishop N.T. Wright’s article in The Times today is in the obituaries section. But it might as well be. This is because in effect he is announcing the death of the Anglican Communion, at least in the form I have known it since I was a child. In those days there was a map of the Communion on our church wall, showing the geographical areas of each of the provinces. Probably the second largest of those areas was the USA, represented by The Episcopal Church (TEC – at least that is its name today).

But the step which TEC has just taken has in effect put itself outside that Communion. At least, that is what one of the most senior bishops in the Church of England (who is also one of the world’s top theologians) is now saying. Of course we have long been hearing this from supporters of GAFCON and the newly formalised (in England) Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. But now it is the loyalist bishops who rejected GAFCON last year who are starting to say that enough is enough. Here is how Bishop Wright starts:

In the slow-moving train crash of international Anglicanism, a decision taken in California has finally brought a large coach off the rails altogether. The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States has voted decisively to allow in principle the appointment, to all orders of ministry, of persons in active same-sex relationships. This marks a clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.

Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing. They were telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other “instruments of communion” that they were ignoring their plea for a moratorium on consecrating practising homosexuals as bishops. They were rejecting the two things the Archbishop of Canterbury has named as the pathway to the future — the Windsor Report (2004) and the proposed Covenant (whose aim is to provide a modus operandi for the Anglican Communion). They were formalising the schism they initiated six years ago when they consecrated as bishop a divorced man in an active same-sex relationship, against the Primates’ unanimous statement that this would “tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level”. In Windsor’s language, they have chosen to “walk apart”.

Wright then goes on to write very sensibly about sexual ethics and homosexuality, but that is not my point here.

It is not just the moderate conservative Bishop Wright who is taking this view. As far as I know the Archbishop of Canterbury has not spoken out since TEC’s General Convention decision was finalised. But, as reported by Ruth Gledhill, before the final vote by the House of Bishops of TEC Archbishop Rowan Williams said:

As for General Convention it remains to be seen I think whether the vote of the House of Deputies will be endorsed by the House of Bishops. If the House of Bishops chooses to block then the moratorium remains. I regret the fact that there is not the will to observe the moratorium in such a significant part of the Church in North America but I can’t say more about that as I have no details.

That is, Archbishop Rowan was saying that he regretted the decision by the House of Deputies which was later confirmed by the House of Bishops. From him that is strong language. This is part of Ruth’s commentary:

In fact the vote represents a direct snub to Dr Williams, who in his sermon to the Convention last  Thursday urged an opposite course of action. He said, ‘Of course I am coming here with hopes and anxieties – you know that and I shan’t deny it. Along with many in the Communion, I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that will push us further apart.

So, as Wright writes, “Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing”, deciding to “tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level” and “walk apart”.

In effect, a large part of that world map of the Anglican Communion now has to be recoloured in grey, meaning no Anglican presence there. Or can the gap be filled by the recently formed “Anglican Church in North America”? Wright is unsure:

The question then presses: who, in the US, is now in communion with the great majority of the Anglican world? It would be too hasty to answer, the newly formed “province” of the “Anglican Church in North America”. One can sympathise with some of the motivations of these breakaway Episcopalians. But we should not forget the Episcopalian bishops, who, doggedly loyal to their own Church, and to the expressed mind of the wider Communion, voted against the current resolution. Nor should we forget the many parishes and worshippers who take the same stance. There are many American Episcopalians, inside and outside the present TEC, who are eager to sign the proposed Covenant. That aspiration must be honoured.

Indeed it would be wrong to rush into any decisions. But it seems that in the USA the point has now come where Anglicanism has divided into two separate streams, one liberal and one conservative. The question then is, how much longer can it remain united in the rest of the world, and particularly here in England?

Hear me on the BBC, talking about church attendance statistics

Posted on by
Reply

Sorry this blog has been quiet for a week. I have been enjoying a few days’ break in Italy.

You may have heard me on BBC Radio 4 this afternoon, on the programme More or Less which is about the use and abuse of statistics. I was interviewed last week about church attendance statistics, because the interviewer Paul Vickers had read a post from last year here at Gentle Wisdom, Lies, damned lies and church attendance statistics. And part of the interview was included in the broadcast programme.

You can hear this again on BBC iPlayer, starting at 8:50 minutes, for the next seven days I think and possibly only in the UK. There are two short segments of the interview with me, the first at 11:15. The programme, which is summarised here, will be broadcast again on Sunday 19th April at 8.00 pm. Or you can listen by subscribing to this podcast.

The Church of England upholds the uniqueness of Christ

Posted on by
Reply

After last week’s outbreak of unity, more good news from the Anglican churches. Some of you will think “Of course, this is what any church would do”. Others of you, the more cynical, might be amazed. But, as The Times, in an article by Ruth Gledhill (see also her blog post about the debate), and Thinking Anglicans report, the General Synod of the Church of England has today approved (by 283 votes to 8 with 10 abstentions) a private member’s motion on the uniqueness of Christ in multi-faith Britain.

In fact technically the motion, as printed in full by Thinking Anglicans, does not quite affirm the uniqueness of Christ, but it does “warmly welcome” a long paper by Martin Davie (I haven’t read it!) which concludes, very sensibly,

The Church of England, and Anglicans more generally, have also taken the traditional doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation as their basis for interfaith dialogue, holding that Jesus is the source of salvation for all people everywhere (whether they are yet aware of the fact or not), but also holding that Christians are called to be God’s instruments in bringing people to explicit faith in Christ and to membership of his Church.

So Ruth is justified in how she starts her article in The Times:

Anglicans were effectively mandated today by the Church of England to go out and convert Muslims and other non-Christian believers.

For decades, their fellow Christians have joked about Anglicans that it is unfair to say they believe in nothing. They believe in anything.

But in a move that led one bishop to condemn in anger the “evangelistic rants”, the Church of England yesterday put decades of liberal political correctness behind it.

(I note the confusion between “today” in the first paragraph and “yesterday” in the third, for the same event. Presumably this article is intended for Thursday’s paper, but the online version is dated Wednesday. The BBC is more careful in these matters in avoiding words like “today” and “yesterday” in its online news.)

Meanwhile Ruth, on her blog, notes that Facebook has penetrated further than ever before. She caught a bishop, Pete Broadbent who is well known to my readers here and has in fact been one himself, communicating with the Press apparently from the floor of the Synod during a debate. Now I wouldn’t dream of publishing comments on a Facebook friend’s status without permission from the commenter. Then I suppose if I was really concerned about the privacy of my comments I wouldn’t have any journalists as my friends. But as Dave Walker is my Facebook friend as well as Pete’s and Ruth’s I can confirm that Ruth has accurately quoted the episcopal comment:

Tee hee – surrender – resistance is futile…

Ruth asks:

Is it a scandal that a bishop is using Facebook while ostensibly listening to a serious synod debate on the place of Christ in the world today? Does anyone care?

I don’t! Perhaps the scandal is that I think this important enough even to mention in the same post as the uniqueness of Christ.

By the way, today the Synod also voted, by a clear margin well over the required 2/3 (despite Ruth’s miscalculations), to take the next step in the process towards allowing women bishops.

To conclude: I rejoice that the Church of England has taken such a clear stand on this important issue, reaffirming that salvation is found only in Jesus Christ.

The Church of England's apology to, or for, Darwin

Posted on by
Reply

The Church of England has marked the Darwin bicentenary by launching a new website about the great scientist. (Thanks to Ruth Gledhill for the link.) The front page links to several articles about Darwin. One of them shows how he began his life as a good Anglican. Another charts in his own words his loss of Christian faith:

disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete.

Yet another page shows how despite this he remained an active member of his village church in Downe, Kent.

The most interesting article on this site is Good religion needs good science, by Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs of the Church of England. Brown seems to accept that Darwin’s description of evolution was good science, but is rightly concerned about the philosophcal “Darwinism” which has been built up around it. The whole essay is all worth reading and cannot be summarised briefly, but here is a taster:

It is hard to avoid the thought that the reaction against Darwin was largely based on what we would now call the ‘yuk factor’ (an emotional not an intellectual response) when he proposed a lineage from apes to humans.

But for all that the reaction now seems misjudged, it may just be that Wilberforce and others glimpsed a murky image of how Darwin’s theories might be misappropriated and the harm they could do …

Natural selection, as a way of understanding physical evolutionary processes over thousands of years, makes sense. Translate that into a half-understood notion of ‘the survival of the fittest’ and imagine the processes working on a day-to-day basis, and evolution gets mixed up with a social theory in which the weak perish – the very opposite of the Christian vision in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). This ‘Social Darwinism’, in which the strong flourish and losers go to the wall is, moreover, the complete converse of what Darwin himself believed about human relationships. From this social misapplication of Darwin’s theories has sprung insidious forms of racism and other forms of discrimination which are more horribly potent for having the appearance of scientific “truth” behind them. …

Christians will want to stress, instead, the human capacity for love, for altruism, and for self-sacrifice. There is nothing here which, in principle, contradicts Darwin’s theory. … But the point of natural selection is that it is precisely by being most fully human that we demonstrate our fitness. And being fully human means refusing to abdicate our ability to act selflessly or lovingly and to challenge thin concepts of rationality which equate “being rational” to material self interest. …

The problem for all Christians is discerning where the surrounding culture is really a threat and where it is compatible with our understanding of God. …

Brown ends with these interesting words of apology:

Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.

What to do when Mammon fails

Posted on by
Reply

Ruth Gledhill reports an interesting paper by Andreas Whittam Smith, “former editor of the Independent and now in charge of the Church of England’s £5 billion assets in his role as First Church Estates Commissioner”. The paper was apparently background material for discussions at this church’s General Synod. But Ruth doesn’t give a link to it, just extensive quotations. In her title she summarises his message as

Britain heading for ‘doomsday’

The article helps to explain what is happening during the current world financial crisis. It makes sobering reading, although I suspect, or perhaps just hope, that its message is somewhat exaggerated for effect. But, although Whittam Smith did use the word “doomsday”, Ruth’s title makes it seems even more alarming: this is not really about the end of the world, just about

the dismantling of the ‘great edifice of credit’ built up over 20 years. ‘The recession will continue until this process is over,’ he says …

My main point here is not about Ruth’s post or Whittam Smith’s paper, but about the first comment on the post (at the bottom; see also my reply), in which Chris Gillibrand writes (quoted in part):

And giving account of stewardship in the Gospel According to Saint Luke Chapter 16…. and in the Hansard record of today’s Select Committee meeting. The Gospel commends making friends with Mammon (aka riches) lest we fail, sadly it does not tell us what to do if Mammon fails- except one should remember that Christ redeems (literally repurchases) our sins (or debts as modern versions of the Lord’s Prayer would have it, as well as the Vulgate).

This puzzled me. Had Chris actually read the verse he refers to, Luke 16:9? As I remembered it, it tells us precisely what to do when Mammon, worldly wealth, fails, or at least what we should have done first. Here is the verse in RSV:

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations.

Most modern versions replace “mammon” with “wealth” or something similar, but the meaning is the same.

But I suppose that Chris was reading or remembering the verse in KJV, otherwise known as the Authorised Version:

And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.

Note “ye fail”, where RSV has “it fails”. Indeed nearly every modern English version I can find including at Bible Gateway, going as far back as the English Revised Version (1881) has “it fails” or something with the same meaning. Only NKJV has “you fail”, but with “it fails” as an alternative in a footnote. (The Message completely loses the message of this verse; I ignore the 19th century Young’s Literal Translation, and the “21st Century King James Version” which is simply a revision of KJV.) I note that Chris has also interpreted “friends of” as “friends with”, whereas RSV’s “friends … by means of” is probably more accurate.

There are good reasons why most modern translations have corrected KJV here. The rest of this paragraph is only for those interested in the technicalities: The reading “ye fail” (Greek ἐκλίπητε eklipēte) comes from the mediaeval Byzantine text of the New Testament, as published by Erasmus, and later by Stephanus as the “Textus Receptus”. KJV  and NKJV are based on this text. But scholars now seem unanimous that this is not the original reading. According to Marshall (The New International Greek Testament Commentary, Eerdmans 1978, on this verse) it is found only in “W 33 69 131 pm lat; TR” which means in one 5th century Greek MS and a few later ones, and in the Latin Vulgate also translated in the 5th century. The scholarly text based on the oldest surviving manuscripts, at least one of which (P75, extant in this verse) dates back to the 3rd century, has “it fails” (Greek ἐκλίπῃ eklipē).

In this verse, as properly read, Jesus made it very clear that “unrighteous mammon”, wordly wealth, will fail. Some people have apparently understood this as referring to when individuals die and cannot take their wealth with the (compare Luke 12:20 and 1 Timothy 6:7), and this is perhaps the source of the alternative reading which is, according to Marshall, “the euphemism, ‘when you die’”.

But Jesus’ meaning is surely broader than that. The New English Bible reads “when money is a thing of the past”, and in E.V. Rieu’s Penguin Classics translation “when it comes to an end” refers back to “this dishonest world”. In this parable, as in most of his others, surely Jesus is looking ahead to the end of the world as we know it, when he will come again to judge us all, not on the basis of our wealth. That “doomsday” has not yet come, but perhaps the current financial chaos is a sign that it is on its way. This is not a time for the complacency of 2 Peter 3:4.

So what are we to do? Mammon may be on the way out but it has not completely failed yet. We are still far better off than the people of Zimbabwe, whose savings are now worthless. So we should use whatever we may have left not in a desperate effort to rebuild our financial security, but in the way Jesus teaches, “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon”. That is, we should invest in “treasure in the heavens” by using our wealth to do good, and trusting in God to give us the eternal reward of his kingdom (Luke 12:32-34). Only Jesus can save, but not in a bank!

Just a few verses after the one we have been discussing, in Luke 16:13 (RSV), Jesus issues an even stronger challenge:

No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

(It is sad that many modern versions, even an “essentially literal” one like ESV, lose the link between verses 9, 11 and 13 by using different renderings of the Greek word which RSV has consitently translated “mammon”.)

So, my readers, make your choice: are you serving Mammon, worldly wealth, or are you serving God?

An outbreak of unity?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s a long time since I blogged about the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, which were regular topics here during last year’s GAFCON and Lambeth conferences as well as the C of E debate over women bishops. That is partly because on both these fronts things went quiet for several months.

But no longer. Last week the international issues that have divided the communion came up again at the Primates’ Meeting in Alexandria. Next week the issues in England will be in focus at the General Synod meeting. Ruth Gledhill summarises the current situation in an article in The Times. But things aren’t as interesting as they were last year: talk of schism has faded, and instead we have Ruth’s headline:

Anglicans brace themselves for an outbreak of unity

Good news: not that Bishop John!

Posted on by
Reply

At last I seem to have actually succeeded in cutting down my blogging, to the extent of not posting for more than a week. In fact I have been commenting quite a bit here and elsewhere, and I have been busy with the rest of my life including trying to reconfigure my computer to run at a decent speed. But I don’t want anyone to think I have gone away completely. So here is a post …

Several years ago a certain Jeffrey John was chosen to be a bishop in the Church of England. But there was an outcry because he was in a relationship with another man, although he stated that he was celibate. This was about the time of the initial controversy about the American gay bishop Gene Robinson. Archbishop Rowan Williams intervened and blocked Jeffrey John’s consecration; instead he was appointed Dean of St Albans.

This year there has been a rapid changeover among the six bishops of the Church in Wales, the independent (and disestablished) sister church of the Church of England in Dean John’s native principality. In April this year the Bishop of St Davids was forced to resign because of allegations of an extra-marital affair. In May a new bishop of Swansea and Brecon took up office. Then in June Bishop Crockett of Bangor, according to the BBC “the first bishop in the UK to have been divorced and remarried”, died. As earlier in the year the Church in Wales had decided not to allow women bishops for the moment, and as at least one Welshman, Rowan Williams, is serving as a bishop in England, there was perhaps a shortage of suitable Welsh candidates for the episcopacy, in a diocese where a Welsh speaker was required.

So it is perhaps not surprising that, as Ruth Gledhill reported, one of the names put forward for the new bishop of Bangor was that of Jeffrey John, a Welshman who had already been chosen for an English bishop’s mitre then rejected. In some ways he was a strong candidate. But for the Church in Wales to elect a gay man, albeit a celibate one, as a bishop would have caused serious problems in the Anglican Communion, reopening wounds that have partly healed since the Lambeth Conference. I would imagine that the Archbishop of Wales would have come under strong pressure both from within his own church and from his predecessor in his post, Rowan Williams, to block the appointment. And that is apparently what he did.

Nevertheless rumours were going around last week that John was among the candidates being considered at a “lock-in” at Bangor Cathedral. Some evangelicals were seriously concerned, not just because Jeffrey John is gay but also because he takes a strong anti-evangelical position on some issues. But when the announcement came their concern turned quickly to relief and joy. For it turned out that the man chosen to be the new bishop was not Jeffrey John but Andrew John, Archdeacon of Cardigan. Andy John, a married father of four, seems to be much more one of their own, according to Chris Sugden a member of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Church in Wales He was trained for the ministry at St John’s Nottingham, and was curate in his home town at the “both Evangelical and Charismatic” St Michael’s, Aberystwyth.

So, for once good news in the Anglican Communion for evangelicals and for conservative Christians in general.

An averagely muddled Archbishop

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Primates 'face extinction crisis'

Posted on by
Reply

This is the headline of a new BBC article, headed by a picture looking rather like Rowan Williams keeping his mouth shut, which starts:

A global review of the world’s primates says 48% of species face extinction, an outlook described as “depressing” by conservationists.

“Conservationists”, not “conservatives”? This is the first clue that this article is actually about monkeys and apes, not the archbishops of the Anglican Communion. But at least according to some press pundits the outlook for Primates of the episcopal kind, in the wake of the recently finished Lambeth Conference, is just as depressing.

So what did the allegedly 666 bishops at the conference achieve? And what now are the prospects for the Anglican Communion?

The main output from the conference was a long and rambling document called Lambeth Indaba Reflections. I have not attempted to read all of this. The most controversial part is in Section K, paragraph 145:

The moratoria

145.  The moratoria cover three separate but related issues: ordinations of persons living in a same gender union to the episcopate; the blessing of same-sex unions; cross-border incursions by bishops. There is widespread support for moratoria across the Communion, building on those that are already being honoured. The moratoria can be taken as a sign of the bishops’ affection, trust and goodwill towards the Archbishop of Canterbury and one another. The moratoria will be difficult to uphold, although there is a desire to do so from all quarters. There are questions to be clarified in relation to how long the moratoria are intended to serve. Perhaps the moratoria could be seen as a “season of gracious restraint”. In relation to moratorium 2 (the blessing of same-sex unions) there is a desire to clarify precisely what is proscribed. Many differentiate between authorised public rites, rather than pastoral support. If the Windsor process is to be honoured, all three moratoria must be applied consistently.

John Richardson, who quoted the words “Episcopal ordinations of partnered homosexual people” apparently from an earlier version of this document (or perhaps from the Church Times blog), has misunderstood the first moratorium as referring to ordinations by bishops. The current version has clarified that the moratorium is restricted to ordination or consecration as bishops, of practising homosexuals. This justifies John’s response to my comment that he may have understood the words he quoted:

If it now means ‘ordinations of’ bishops, then the Lambeth 2008 has been an unnoticed disaster for the traditionalists there, as they have now accepted what Lambeth 1998 1.10 said ought not to happen.

Indeed, section H of the Reflections, on Human Sexuality, while referring to Lambeth 1998 Resolution 1.10, mentions only that ordination of homosexual bishops goes against this resolution. The document has nothing to say about ordination of practising homosexuals as priests, which in practice now seems to be considered acceptable.

Actually these three moratoria are nothing new. They go back to the 2004 Windsor Report, paragraph 134:

the Episcopal Church (USA) be invited to effect a moratorium on the election and consent to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate who is living in a same gender union until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges;

paragraph 144:

public Rites of Blessing of same sex unions … Because of the serious repercussions in the Communion, we call for a moratorium on all such public Rites …;

and paragraph 155:

We call upon those bishops who believe it is their conscientious duty to intervene in provinces, dioceses and parishes other than their own … to effect a moratorium on any further interventions.

So will these moratoria now provide a basis for healing the rifts within the Communion? They might just do if they were observed. But for four years the second and third of them have been widely ignored. It seems highly unlikely that the North American churches will now start observing the second one. Indeed Susan Russell of the gay lobby group Integrity has already invoked the Boston Tea Party and said:

It is not going to change anything on the ground in California. We bless same-sex relationships and will continue to do so.

And there is no way that the conservatives are going to abide by the third moratorium if the first two are simply ignored. The best that can be hoped for here is a breathing space, nothing more than a “season of gracious restraint” which will in fact not be accepted graciously by many.

So where does this take the Anglican Communion? Ruth Gledhill quotes George Conger, writing on Sunday:

While a blow up is not expected on the final day of the July 16 to Aug 3 gathering of bishops in Canterbury, the prospects for a united Anglican Communion appear less likely now than at the start of the conference.

Is this journalistic pessimism, or, from the point of view of those looking for stories to report, optimism? Well, there are those who claim to be optimistic, like Tim Chesterton who writes:

I’m cautiously optimistic. I suspect that the extremists on both sides will not heed the call for moratoria and will not sign on to any covenant. But I think the majority will, and if that means that we have a smaller communion, based on humility, prayer, a willingness to admit that each of us ‘sees through a glass darkly’ and a determination to seek the will of God together without automatically dismissing those with whom we disagree – well, so be it.

Well, if even an optimist expects “the extremists on both sides” to leave, what does that mean? If “the extremists” on one side are the North American churches and on the other side are those who boycotted the Lambeth Conference, then, according to statistics from Anglican Mainstream, we are talking about 17.5 million (or 25 million) Anglicans in Nigeria, 9.6 million in Uganda, 2.4 million (or 800,000) in the USA, and 740,000 (or 640,000) in Canada. As the total number of Anglicans is variously reported to be between 50 and 75 million, if these “extremists” are in fact a minority they are only just so. Of course not everyone in each of these provinces is an “extremist”, but there are many other provinces with large numbers of “extremists”, in some cases on both sides, as here in England.

So perhaps the BBC’s estimate of 48% is a good one, that 48% not of Primates but of the Anglican provinces and dioceses they serve “face extinction”. The amazing thing is that a conservationist, I mean a conservative, like Tim Chesterton does not find this outlook “depressing” but is still “cautiously optimistic”.