A Serious Fracture in the Anglican Church

A Serious Fracture in the Anglican Church
▪ 2009
R. Scott Appleby
      In 2003 the American Episcopal Church opened a rift in the worldwide Anglican Communion (Church of England) by consecrating the first openly gay bishop, the Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson. Reflecting the challenges of maintaining unity across the diverse cultural landscapes contained within a global church, the controversy rose to a fever pitch in 2008, prior to the decennial conference of the Anglican bishops, held July 16–August 3 in Canterbury, Eng. The Anglican bishops of Africa, Asia, and South America, whose collective following vastly outnumbered communicants in Great Britain and North America combined, strenuously objected to the consecration, calling it an abomination and an abandonment of doctrine. Prelates and priests from these conservative wings cited Old Testament texts prohibiting sodomy and accused the progressive wing of the church of being “culturally deaf.”

      The rift handed Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion since 2002, the most significant crisis of his tenure. Williams, however, remained silent for the most part, refraining from taking sides. He neither explicitly endorsed nor condemned the appointment of Bishop Robinson, but his calls for restraint by both sides largely went unheeded. In stark contrast, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria and Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda were outspoken critics of what they judged to be the liberal drift of the Anglican Church on matters of sexuality and gender, citing the official “tolerance” of homosexuality, the sanctioning of same-sex marriages (in parts of Canada and the U.S.), and the ordination of women to the clergy. Conservative elements of the church in Great Britain and North America rallied to the support of these dissenting bishops, who called for the establishment of a separate conservative section of the communion with its own governing bishops. Shortly there appeared the early signs of a full-blown schism dividing the Anglican Communion into separate churches.

      The looming possibility of a schism could not be explained by examining religious issues in isolation from their historical, demographic, geographic, and political contexts. For example, the rift reopened historical arguments about the location of governing authority in the communion. Historically, the archbishop of Canterbury, embodying the unity of the church, has exercised supreme doctrinal and organization authority over its various congregations. The controversy over sexuality is thus also a challenge to the traditional seat of Anglican governance and calls into question the viability of the whole Anglican Church as a communion.

      Demographic trends likewise argue in favour of a shift in the location of authority away from Canterbury. Membership in the church has been growing rapidly in Africa, where more than half of all Anglicans worldwide now reside, while membership in the Global North—Britain and North America—has been steadily declining. Hence, Africa and Asia are aware that they represent the future of the church, and their bishops and pastors are increasingly unwilling to obey the “dictates” of the Global North. These self-proclaimed “traditionalists” locate authority for their pronouncements not in a particular episcopal see but rather in a strict reading of scriptural passages. Archbishop Akinola has been especially vocal on this point, and his language has often been incendiary. He has declared that he and his followers “will not abdicate our God-given responsibility and simply acquiesce to destructive modern cultural and political dictates.”

      The conservative insurgency was bedeviled by its own internal fractures, however, which stalled momentum toward a formal schism. A relatively small, hard-line subset of the larger conservative movement issued its formal declaration of a schism. Calling on the U.S. Episcopal Church to repent and rescind Bishop Robinson's ordination, the hard-liners issued a declaration of beliefs, titled “The Way, the Truth and the Life,” which was partly authored by Archbishop Akinola. “We want unity, but not at the cost of relegating Christ to the position of another ‘wise teacher' who can be obeyed or disobeyed,” the statement read. “We earnestly desire the healing of our beloved Communion, but not at the cost of re-writing the Bible to accommodate the latest cultural trend.… This very Communion has already been broken by the actions of the American and Canadian Churches.”

      This declaration of a formal schism failed to be supported, however, by a larger gathering of conservative clerics who, meeting in Jerusalem a month prior to the Lambeth Conference, convened to state their positions formally. The Jerusalem conference, known as GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference), drew back from declaring a formal schism but nevertheless produced some divisive pronouncements, most significantly the establishment of a fellowship of conservative Anglicans within the communion, to be governed by its own separate group of archbishops. GAFCON also repudiated the archbishop of Canterbury's authority to decide who is or is not Anglican. Archbishop Williams condemned the move, asserting that “the new body has no legal standing and challenges Christian teachings of tolerance.”

      The alliance between conservatives in the Global South and conservatives in the Global North is an alliance of convenience. “Traditionalists” in the Global South support a hard-line position on the issue of homosexuality because of specific political circumstances. Unlike conservatives in the Global North, however, they support liberal positions on global warming and multilateral interventions for security and humanitarian causes. In Africa, especially in Nigeria, bishops such as Akinola feel compelled by political necessity to take a hard-line position on issues such as homosexuality. Christian churches in Nigeria compete with Islam for converts and fear being characterized as “soft on homosexuality” in contrast to Islam's uncompromising condemnation. In addition, an intolerant attitude toward homosexuality is a legacy of British colonial law.

      Philip Jenkins, professor of religious studies and history at Pennsylvania State University, notes that the Old Testament, read with exacting devotion to its (presumed) literal meaning, is the sacred text of choice in the Global South. Not least, African and some Asian Christians, struggling to survive in agrarian societies still plagued by drought, disease, famine, and other hardships, find resonance in the biblical accounts of the plight of the Israelites. As these regions are likely to be severely affected by climate changes and global warming, members of the church community in the Global South take more liberal positions on international political issues—but not on social issues. The plagues visited upon the Israelites are remote for most Anglicans of the West, who prefer an allegorical reading of the way the Bible relates to the lives of wealthier Christians. As a consequence, interpretations of scripture by Global North conservatives tend to stand apart from, or even undermine, the hermeneutics, or strategies of interpretation, favoured by conservatives of the Global South. Nonetheless, some parishes in the Global North (in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, for example) and in Australia placed themselves under the authority of bishops in Africa to protest what they view as an excessively progressive home church—thereby violating the “one territory, one church” rule.

      Further evidence of the possibility of a permanent schism arrived with the announcement, in early December 2008, that conservatives alienated from the Episcopal Church were founding their own rival denomination, known as the Anglican Church in North America. In a history-making departure from tradition, the province is to be defined not by geography but by theological orientation. Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, a conservative who led his diocese out of the Episcopal Church in October, was named the archbishop and primate of the North American church, which said that it would have 100,000 members (compared with 2.3 million in the Episcopal Church). The conservatives intend to seek the approval of leaders in the global Anglican Communion for the new province. If they should receive broad approval, their effort could lead to new defections from the Episcopal Church, the American branch of Anglicanism. In short, the bonds of the family of churches in the Anglican Communion have weakened significantly; the conservative faction is powerful and growing in numbers, especially in the Global South; and the dissidents will doubtless be a force in determining the future course of the Anglican Church.

R. Scott Appleby is a Professor of History and John M. Regan, Jr., Director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

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Universalium. 2010.

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