The Lead

The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke to the Church of England General Synod today. He tried to set out a way to think about issues facing the church regarding appointment of women as bishops, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender clergy who are married or have civil unions, how much the state can determine the life of religions, and of end of life decisions.

His main theme was that Christians must be more concerned with the sanctification of the neighbor and the stranger than individual freedom. While not denying the hope of those who seek more liberty in the church, he called all to see one another in three dimensions, not just as enemies. The entire speech is here or or here in PDF.

Excerpts below:

In the last few weeks we’ve seen a number of topics coming up in public discussion, all centring on one set of questions – a set of questions which I think reflects painfully accurately some of the problems we face in our church, locally and internationally. The heated debates around the Equality Bill brought this out in one way, some of the renewed flurries of pressure and anxiety about euthanasia and assisted dying in other ways. And as we look forward to our own debates later in the year on women bishops and on the Anglican Covenant, we may see the parallels. And in the middle of all the frustration that many feel about deferring the debate on women bishops, perhaps we can at least ask how we can spend the intervening time constructively, looking again at whether we might learn anything from the way our culture is moving that will help us maintain some level of health or maturity in our church. That is the task I’m going to attempt, with some trepidation, today.
...
The debate over the status and vocational possibilities of LGBT people in the Church is not helped by ignoring the existing facts, which include many regular worshippers of gay or lesbian orientation and many sacrificial and exemplary priests who share this orientation. There are ways of speaking about the question that seem to ignore these human realities or to undervalue them; I have been criticised for doing just this, and I am profoundly sorry for the carelessness that could give such an impression. Equally, there are ways of speaking about the assisted suicide debate that treat its proponents as universally enthusiasts for eugenics and forced euthanasia, and its opponents as heartless sadists, sacrificing ordinary human pity to ideological purity. All the way through this, we need to recover that sense of a balance of liberties and thus a conflict of what may be seen as real goods – something of the tragic recognition that not all goods are compatible in a fallen world And if this is true, our job is not to secure purity but to find ways of deciding such contested issues that do not simply write off the others in the debate as negligible, morally or spiritually unserious or without moral claims.
...
Most hold that the ordination of women as bishops is a good, something that will enhance our faithfulness to Christ and our integrity in mission. But that good is at the moment jeopardised in two ways – by the potential loss of those who in conscience cannot see it as a good, and by the equally conscience-driven concern that there are ways of securing the desired good that will corrupt it or compromise it fatally (and so would rather not see it at all than see it happening under such circumstances). And for both many women in the debate and most if not all traditionalists, there is a strong feeling that the Church overall is not listening to how they are defining for themselves the position they occupy, the standards to which they hold themselves accountable. What they hear is the rest of the Church saying, ‘Of course we want you – but exclusively on our terms, not yours’; which translates in the ears of many as ‘We don’t actually want you at all’.
...
This, you see, is where the Christian understanding of freedom has a distinctive contribution to make to the broader discussion of liberties in society. Christian freedom as St Paul spells it out is always freedom from isolation – from the isolation of sin, separating us from God, and the isolation of competing self-interest that divides us from each other. To be free is to be free for relation; free to contribute what is given to us into the life of the neighbour, for the sake of their formation in Christ’s likeness, with the Holy Spirit carrying that gift from heart to heart and life to life. Fullness of freedom for each of us is in contributing to the sanctification of the neighbour. It is never simply a matter of balancing liberties, but of going to another level of thinking about liberty. And the ‘purity’ of the body of Christ is not to be thought of apart from this work. It is not to put unity above integrity, but to see that unity in this active and sometimes critical sense is how we attain to Christian integrity. The challenges of our local and global Anglican crises have to do with how this shapes our councils and decision-making. It is not a simple plea for the sacrifice of the minority to the majority. But it does mean repeatedly asking how the liberty secured for me or for those like me will actively serve the sanctification of the rest.

Sometimes that may entail restraint – as I believe it does and should in the context of the Communion – though that restraint is empty and even oppressive if it then refuses to engage with those who have accepted restraint for the sake of fellowship. The Covenant specifically encourages and envisages protracted engagement and scrutiny and listening in situations of tension, and that is one of the things that makes it, in my view, worth supporting. If one party accepts restraint, it must be in the hope that they and the rest of the fellowship are then prepared to engage and to look critically at their own assumptions as well as those of the others. For Christians, the ‘balance of liberties’ is not static.
...
And in the Communion? There is an undoubted good in the independence of local provinces, and there is an undoubted good in the fact that some provinces are increasingly patient, compassionate and thankful in respect of the experience and ministry of gay and lesbian people – entirely in accord with what the Lambeth Conferences and Primates’ statements have said. But when the affirmation of that good takes the form of pre-empting the discernment of the wider Anglican (and a lot of the non-Anglican) fellowship, and of acting in ways that negate the general understanding of the limits set by Bible and tradition, there is a conflict with another undoubted good, which is the capacity of the Anglican family to affirm and support one another in diverse contexts. The freedom claimed, for example, by the Episcopal Church to ordain a partnered homosexual bishop is, simply as a matter of fact, something that has a devastating impact on the freedom of, say, the Malaysian Christian to proclaim the faith without being cast as an enemy of public morality and risking both credibility and personal safety. It hardly needs to be added that the freedom that might be claimed by an African Anglican to support anti-gay legislation likewise has a serious impact on the credibility of the gospel in our setting.

Comments (15)

Why is "restraint" always posed as restraint from action rather than as restraint from reaction?

Posted by tobias haller | February 9, 2010 10:34 AM

Righteo, Tobias. Status quo has the favored position even when it is wrong. Wonder how that would work for Martin Luther King.

Posted by John B. Chilton | February 9, 2010 10:38 AM

A concept suggested by the twitter buzz: Can we expect a Dave Walker cartoon with the General Synod wearing 3-D glasses? And watching what?

Posted by John B. Chilton | February 9, 2010 10:53 AM

TEC tried "restraint" for many years. (Remember the "season of fasting"). As with all such attempts to deal with bullies, all it earned was even more closed-mindedness and contempt and refusal cooperate from the extremist, power-crazed "traditionalist" leaders in the Global South (and here at home). As the ABC grudgingly seems to admit, no one on "the other side" ever took such "restraint" as an invitation to seriously enter into dialogue, end the toxic rhetoric against TEC and Canada, or listen to anything that challenged their own narrow-minded pre-conceptions on these issues. Thanks to the grace of God, TEC finally seems over that appeasement phase and is prepared, with respect, to stand by the convictions and the directions that God has been leading us to. The ABC should give thanks for TEC's witness, rather than criticizing. The sad thing is that I think he knows that somewhere in his heart. Would that he were more bold in the ways of justice - when it threatens his own self-interest and church polity!

Posted by John Schwarz | February 9, 2010 11:25 AM

I am reminded of something the ABC said in his recent address at the Trinity Institute economic forum:

"The discussion we have embarked on in this conference is not simply about the theological grounds for a more just social order, though it is at least that; it is also a matter of grasping that ‘well-being’ involves the capacity, in the words that some contemporary philosophers like to use, of bearing one’s own scrutiny – being able to look at yourself without despair or contempt. This is not at all the same as looking at yourself with complacency or self-congratulation. It is to do with developing a discerning self-awareness that is awake to possible corruptions, able to ask questions of all sorts of emotional and self-directed impulses, and capable of developing habits of honest self-examination. It depends not on the confidence of getting or having got things right but on the confidence that it is possible steadily to expose yourself to the truth, whatever your repeated failures to live in and through it. Well-being entails a dimension of hopeful honesty which keeps alive the conviction that learning and change are real in human life and that there can be a story to be told that will hold a life together with some sort of coherence."

His synod address does not offer coherence. It offers compartmentalization. It is not living in the truth and through it. It embraces the status quo whether just or not.

Link to Trinity address here:
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/Rowan_Williams_Trinity_Institute_Lecture.html

With MUCH thanks to Ruth Gledhill for the transcription.

Posted by John B. Chilton | February 9, 2010 11:39 AM

Excellent point, Tobias. "Gracious restraint" should make space for differing views (on both sides) to remain in communion.

Posted by Chris Epting | February 9, 2010 11:42 AM

Okay, Rowan Williams tries again.

I find myself wondering why his latest try is considered newsworthy. Posting his every utterance gives him an importance he doesn't really have - at home or in the United States. We really must stop referring to England all the time. This ingrained habit can be harmful to our mission.

If ordaining a Lesbian suffragan bishop in Los Angeles causes that much suffering in Malaysia, "risking both credibility and personal safety," Malaysian Christians need to do a better job of communicating with their neighbors and authorities. When Ugandan Christians introduce "death to all Gays" legislation at the behest of right-wing Americans, they put the personal safety of American Gay people at risk.

Moral leadership is required, and that's the one thing Rowan Williams can't supply. Instead he offers "a way of thinking about things." I suggest he think about William Wilberforce instead.

Posted by Josh Thomas | February 9, 2010 11:45 AM

Josh- he is news because he is the ABC and what he says carries weight - whether we like it or not. We have to add our voices to his.
I wonder why he never thinks of gay/lesbian/transgender Anglicans and others in Malaysia who actually suffer death not just threats.

Posted by Ann Fontaine | February 9, 2010 12:12 PM

Tobias - good reflections on your blog

Posted by Ann Fontaine | February 9, 2010 12:25 PM

I'm not done reading the speech, but Rowan put me off right in the beginning by referencing the law which would permit assisted suicide in the same breath as the law which would disallow the church from discriminating against LGTB persons. That's a scare tactic. Plus, I see that Rowan once again chooses not to speak or write concisely or with clarity. Many words to say little and obfuscation seem to be his way.

June Butler

Posted by GrandmèreMimi | February 9, 2010 12:34 PM

Dr. King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" should be required reading for all who suggest "restraint." For such usage tends to mean "stop and mind your place" rather than "wait."

Charlie Perrin

Posted by Deacon Charlie | February 9, 2010 12:39 PM

I agree with Tobias, both in his initial comment here and in his own blog referenced by Ann.

I thought there was a lot to like about the ABC's General Synod address...but!...

In times of serious dissension the exercise of restraint may be an important act of Christian love. But the only person I can restrain is myself. It is not "restraint" to throw someone else under the bus, or to require another person to throw someone else under the bus. I am not convinced that +Rowan really understands that.

Posted by Bill Moorhead | February 9, 2010 1:08 PM

Isn't part of the problem that people don't actually live by "the general understanding of the limits set by Bible and tradition." People don't live by generalities, but by specifics. This is true for whatever view you take of this issue: either your personal conviction is that "homosexuality" is prohibited by the Bible, based on your own (one hopes) careful study of scripture and tradition; or you personal conviction goes the other way, again based on your own experience and understanding of text, tradition, etc. To appeal to a "general understanding," especially on this topic, is simply false. In fact, Anglicans mostly did away with "general understandings" when we chose to walk apart from Rome. Rome defines, dogmatizes, and enforces; we do not.

And let me second June Butler's comment--I have thought that +Rowan's reputation as a "brilliant" theologian was overrated since I first read him in seminary (notwithstanding his remarkable, and in hindsight, ironic defense of gay and lesbian relationships in "The Body's Grace"). He is slippery, but not brilliant, in my opinion. He is obfuscatory and obtuse, and I have come to think that he uses these modes on purpose, in order to conceal (rather than reveal) what he's really thinking.

Jason Cox

Posted by JasonC | February 9, 2010 4:15 PM

I suppose I should be happy that he "may" be alienating LGBT persons by his comments, but I also think we need to start some conversation about "Evangelism in conflict" --- inclusion of LGBT persons should not make people in Malaysia hampered in their proclamation of the Gospel in their cultural context. It is a problem when everyone has to agree on a set interpretation of scripture or tradition....sigh

Posted by The Rev. T. Scott Allen | February 9, 2010 6:04 PM

"The freedom claimed, for example, by the Episcopal Church... has a devastating impact on the freedom of, say, the Malaysian Christian to proclaim the faith without... risking both credibility and personal safety."

This is the sole compelling element I found in Williams' talk.

Question: IS IT TRUE? Anyone who has the facts, please respond.

Cheryl A. Mack

Posted by ncmama | February 10, 2010 10:38 AM

Add your comments

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

Reminder: At Episcopal Café, we hope to establish an ethic of transparency by requiring all contributors and commentators to make submissions under their real names. For more details see our Feedback Policy.

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)

CATEGORIES

Organizations