Posted on 11/20/2003 11:53:47 AM PST by ahadams2
Sinister Developments in the Communion by George Conger
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. George Carey, sat down with the Church of England Newspaper on Oct 28 during a speaking tour of the United Stated and discussed with us the issues at play in the American Church and in the wider Anglican Communion.
CEN: Gene Robinson has been consecrated bishop of New Hampshire over the protests of the majority of the Anglican Communion. How can we stay together as one Church when we have this divide over something so basic?
GC: I think it very important to make the point that the Anglican Communion is not a Communion with elastic boundaries. We have fixed boundaries. The boundaries are determined for us by Scripture, tradition and reason. That's the classic Richard Hooker formulation. In Hooker's theology, and in classical Anglicanism, Scripture is the determinative foundation stone. It is the yardstick by which everything else is judged. And therefore diversity is determined really by our faithfulness to Holy Scripture.
Let's take the Holy Trinity. Let's supposing that a group of people, maybe excessive charismatics, who say, "The Holy Spirit is the dominant person and we are going to make a change in the Trinity." We would say, "Sorry, but we are bound by the creeds of the Church. You can't do that."
Or we might say, "Instead of a trinity, we are going to consider binatarianism, and we are going to leave out the Holy Spirit." We can't do that as we are fixed by Scripture.
It is the same way with sexuality. We can't start re-inventing the wheel and say that there are actually three sexes now: men, women and homosexuals. We are bound by what Scripture says. I don't think we have any grounds whatsoever to make these changes that we are doing. This is the most critical issue since the reformation. It affects the unity of the Communion.
CEN: I put this question to Gene Robinson. He responded essentially in the same way, with the caveat that his understanding of sexuality in reading the Bible allows him to make the claim that what he shares with his partner is a reflection of the love of God for humanity. Therefore, to term this sin is contrary to his reading of the Bible. Bishop Griswold has also said that we don't have a common understanding of Scripture. How would you respond to Canon Robinson who says I read these same 7 passages of Scripture as you do, but in light of my experience I don't accept the traditional doctrine?
GC: Experience you see is not a fourth way of doing theology. Experience is a very important test, but experience itself can be very poor, it can be a false guide. There are some people, evil people, say pedophiliacs, who cannot trust their experience. I wouldn't want to put homosexuals on the same plain, but the point I am making is that you have to judge experience in light of the other things I mentioned
Furthermore, both the comments made by the people you mentioned have not really been an interpretation of Scripture. It is an abandonment of Scripture. The current argument for practicing homosexuality does not interpret Scripture, but rejects and abandons Scripture. It is easy to do in light of Old Testament texts but is more difficult to do with Romans 1 and other New Testament passages. They cannot be jettisoned because Romans 1 is in part of Paul's argument for original sin. To actually say that is culturally conditioned actually wrecks Paul's theology of human nature, of sinfulness. Romans is his most profound theological work. I think what this must mean is that the argument for practicing homosexuality is not an engagement with Scripture. It doesn't go into the texts which they know actually condemns practicing homosexuality. So they find other ways to interpret it or quietly and conveniently ignore it.
CEN: What is the difference in the argument from experience between Women's Ordination and homosexual practice?
GC: It is in theology. They are not on the same line. One has got to say, it demeans women for an argument for the ordination of women to be an extrapolation for practicing homosexuality. The ordination of women theologically stems from the gifts of the spirit of Pentecost. Women are made in the image and likeness of God. Under the new covenant it is axiomatic that it should be exercised. Unfortunately we do not share this view with the Roman Catholic Church, but eventually we will share that view. So there is a logicality about that which stems from our common baptism in the gifts of the Spirit.
Now to a degree the same argument goes for homosexuality. The homosexual is also loved by God, baptised into Christ and can be ordained. But the line is practicing homosexuality.
There is no way in which you can bend the text. It can go only in one direction, which is directly against this form of sexuality. Orthodox Judaism understands this. It is understood by the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches and mainstream Protestant Churches as well. And that has been the basis of the tradition. There is a difference of interpretation between the arguments for the ordination of women and practicing homosexuality, they are not on the same line at all.
CEN: The progressive response would be that both issues are matters of justice. And if I understand you, theology is the issue …
GC: Not human rights. That's central. If it were a mere question of human rights I would be the first to defend them. I have no wish to be in opposition to the Presiding Bishop or anyone else for that matter. I want to keep the Church's attention on mission. When the chips are down, we are actually talking about theology not human rights. No one is stopping homosexuals from being full members of the Church.
But the Bible is quite clear. There are only two lifestyles that are acceptable: one is marriage and the other is celibacy in singleness. I believe in Christ. Christ offers transformation of the personality and healing. We have in Britain the Freedom Trust, which is an organization led by homosexuals. They believe in celibacy and singleness. That would be my argument.
CEN: The 1998 Lambeth Conference statement on human sexuality contained a clause asking the Church to "listen to the experience of homosexual people". What does listening to the experience of homosexuals mean in a Christian Church context?
GC: We are to pay attention to homosexuals in the Church. Listen to their experience. I don't think listening means agreeing with them. I think it means if I would disagree with somebody I would have to pay attention to how they read certain things so that the argument goes on.
But I would then come back and say, that it was to the very day, August 5, five years later that General Convention elected Gene Robinson. There is something ironic about that, five years before, the Lambeth fathers almost 5-1 put forward a very strong statement. They were very quite happy listening and for the dialogue to continue. But the dialogue was stopped by the American Church on that very issue. And that means the kind of listening that was going on is a bit irrelevant right now.
CEN: Are saying it was stopped by the election of Canon Robinson?
GC: Yes.
CEN: What is to be done when a group decides that it will go forward with a controversial programme, believing it justified by prophetic action? How do you then maintain the unity of the Church family?
GC: No one at the moment knows the answer to that. Those who take the Gene Robinson side say, "Well we want to continue the relationship. We have taken this step but we haven't changed anything. Please stay with us."
But it is all very well for them to say so but the other side will say something profoundly different about the Anglican Communion. We now have accepted, practicing, professing homosexuals even at the level of bishop and things can never be the same again. How this is going to work out is very difficult to see.
I have been saying on my trips [to the United States], stay in the Church, change it from within, because if you leave you have no clergy rights, and you will become just another continuing church. You don't want that. It is others who have made the changes and not the traditionalists. And it is the traditionalists who make up the backbone of the Church. The majority of the people in the American pews would be against the change. I have no way of testing this, but a good survey would tell that.
I think this new development goes against the mood of the Church. We do talk about the development of doctrine, which was Newman's great phrase. But development must always be contiguous with theology and experience. I don't think this is a proper development.
CEN: During the last decades the Anglican Communion has grown rapidly in the Global South but is stagnant in many parts of the developing world. Some would argue the American Church has abandoned traditional teachings and separated itself from the wider Communion. What do you say to those in the United States who say this isn't my Church anymore?
GC: Let me enter into that by saying what has happened is a greater awareness of our Communion: that we are a Communion. That we have a commonality about our life, our liturgy, the way we do theology, our structures. That is the same whether you are an American or a Nigerian. We have resisted in recent decades the language of autonomy. That is a kind of word now creeping back into the debate. We have always been self-governing Provinces, but we have never been autonomous. If we are autonomous provinces, we are not a Communion.
Autonomy by Provinces means we are nothing more than a collection of Churches held together by historical accident. Some have used "autonomy" to justify what is happening. We need to recover what the Virginia Report was talking about theologically that autonomy is not the word we use but inter-dependence. When a problem like this occurs we are breaking the bonds of collegiality and putting tremendous strain on the Communion.
For the time being we must stay together, because we don't know how things are going to come out. We don't know what [the Primates'] commission is going to do. And therefore we don't really want to stampede for the exit doors until we look for other fresh alignments. Fresh alignments may come from within the Communion to hold the fragile bonds together.
I think something more sinister is happening in the Communion. Homosexuality is the mere tip of the iceberg. It is about the Bible. It is the very sharp difference between extreme liberal and traditional ways of using the Bible. Whether you see the Bible as trustworthy for salvation, as a guide for conduct and as a yardstick for all we do and teach in the Church.
CEN: How does the leadership govern a body when it can't even agree upon such things as a physical versus a spiritual resurrection?
GC: I think if you take the issue of resurrection for example, yes you can have diverse interpretations reflected within the Church, but at the end of the day one could say very clearly that the physical resurrection has always been the normal one, the tradition of the Church. The spiritual resurrection has not been anything more than a minority view within it. And so one could always say as a leader, as I did say against David Jenkins [Bishop of Durham], the faith of the Church says "this".
In the case of homosexuality today we are in a situation now where it is increasingly difficult to say that the faith of the Church is "this" when one Province has wrecked that particular faith.
CEN: At the Dallas Conference of the American Anglican Council three weeks ago Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh argued for an affirmation of the 39 Articles of Religion, returning to a definitive creedal set of propositions. Is it necessary in this age to come up with a standard of what defines the faith?
GC: I think that is a very complex issue, a good question, but I don't know. I would like to have listened to what Bob Duncan was saying on this. As I was saying to the clergy this morning here, this is not a time to walk away from one another. It is a time to get more involved with one another. So I would want the conservatives to engage more with their Church; for both sides to dig more deeply into the Scriptures. That is the only way that we can hold the unity of the Church. So that those who propound the homosexual case would understand that the conservatives here are intending to dig in and make a contribution to the church and will do so until a better way emerges. One doesn't know what that is going to be. I have been very worried by hearing a lot of the younger clergy here expressing their attitude that they hate to think of a time coming when they would have to break away from their beloved Church, but they are very distressed. I have entered into their distress, trying to help them by saying that this is still their church, but they are still very worried.
CEN: Today the Canadian House of Bishops meets in Mississauga, Ontario. The main topic will be Bishop Buckle, New Westminster and the proper legal processes. What system do you see that could be put in place to resolve these issues outside of the law courts, or will we become an Anglican Communion of lawyers?
GC: I do honor Terrance Buckle. He has been very brave. He has been quite courageous in his support for the Evangelical and traditional congregations who believe, as I believe, that Bishop Ingham has been quite wrong.
We can't be a Communion governed by lawyers. We have to be governed by the Holy Spirit and by faithfulness to God's word. At that sometimes means that we have to disobey. The conservatives haven't broken the law. They are not the one who have offended. You are back in the days of Galatians 1 where Paul argues about the false Gospel and Galatians 2 where Paul talks to Peter about his identification with the circumcision party. Paul is saying there comes a time when you have to nail your colors to the mast. When you have to identify where you stand. I think those few parishes in the diocese of New Westminster are brave, courageous, faithful to Christ, and I would encourage them to stick in there. They are not the ones who are at fault, theologically.
CEN: As you look back upon your Episcopate what memories from your travels come quickest to mind?
GC: In our time we have seen Apartheid end in South Africa. We met Nelson Mandela in 1993. I was there at his inauguration in Pretoria.
The 1998 Lambeth Conference showed how strong the Anglican Communion is and it is getting stronger in the Third World, in the Global South. That is where things are going to be happening in the days ahead. In 2008, should there be another Lambeth Conference, the Africans, Asians and South Americans will be much stronger next time around. It was a very exciting period for us to be in office.
We have many affectionate memories of many different parts of the world, very affectionate memories of ministries here in the United States; we will go on having a ministry here and with the many friends that we have made.
Yes and no. It's important to understand that we got to where we are now, on his watch. I think George Carey is a fine and Godly man, and I'd trust him to do the right thing a lot more than I do Williams.
And, maybe, the ECUSA held off on it's Robinson apostasy until Carey was gone.
But I cannot help recalling the old saying that "evil triumphs when good men do nothing." This mess might have been avoided years ago, had Carey been more willing to exert his influence as ECUSA loudly defied the Communion by breaking away from the Lambeth '98 Resolution, I.10.
Maybe he -- all too belatedly -- realizes where his earlier efforts at "compromise" and crying, "peace, peace" got the church . . .
Yay!! Another anal-retentive English nut! I don't have to be alone anymore.
So now we all come out of the closet... *\;-)
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