The
news from the UK is that the convened primates of the Anglican churches
throughout the world have voted to suspend the US Episcopal Church from that
body for three years:
A majority of Anglican primates Jan. 14 asked that the
Episcopal Church, for a period of three years, “no longer represent us on
ecumenical and interfaith bodies, should not be appointed or elected to an
internal standing committee and that while participating in the internal bodies
of the Anglican Communion, they will not take part in decision making on any
issues pertaining to doctrine or polity.”
Photo: Matthew Davies/Episcopal News Service
In short, we American Episcopalians have essentially just
been voted off the Anglican Island.
Just the Latest in a Long History of Abuse
This trial separation was less severe than the permanent
divorce a large minority of Anglican primates (arch or presiding bishop of a
national church) wanted. A vote on a canonically questionable motion for outright
suspension of the American church failed on a 15-20 vote. But the closeness of
the vote clearly demonstrates the animosity toward the American (and to a
lesser extent the Canadian and English) church brewing in many corners of the
worldwide Anglican tradition, predominately among its southern hemisphere
churches.
Of course, this is hardly the first time that our
bishops, clergy and laity have been run over roughshod at Canterbury. At the Lambeth
Council gathering of Anglican bishops in 1998, American
bishops were shouted down from the floor and essentially silenced during the
debates over the final resolutions passed by the conference. Newark Bishop John
Spong was widely castigated for describing such behaviors and the attitudes they
reveal as tribalistic even as an African bishop physically assaulted openly gay
Anglican clergy and sought to cast out their “demons” outside the conference
halls.
Hearings allowing gay and lesbian Anglicans to offer
their testimony to the committee on sexuality were cancelled while self-proclaimed
“healed” gays and lesbians, many who were not Anglican, were provided space and
time to speak. For most Americans present, it was a nuclear nightmare.
The bone of contention with American prelates in 1998 was
two-fold: One, the American church’s proceeding with the ordination of women
clergy and bishops and, two, the steady movement toward insuring first class
citizenship for LBGTQ people in the American church already underway then which
came to culmination last summer in the General Convention’s vote to perform same
sex marriages. Women bishops were particularly poorly treated at the 1998
Lambeth, greeted with demeaning sexist commentary and often not permitted to
speak. The shabby treatment of the American presiding bishop, Katherine
Jefferts-Schori, by these bishops in the past decade, has been an ongoing expression
of this sexist behavior since then.
The slow but steady decision making to end systemic
discrimination against LBGTQ people by the American church has been matched by
the increasing level of vitriol against American Episcopalians in the more
conservative quarters of Anglicanism around the world. In the US a handful of
bishops and parishes left The Episcopal Church (TEC) over the decision to marry
same sex couples following similar minor departures by those opposed to women’s
ordination and prayer book revisions in the past. Last year, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the spiritual (though not juridical) head of the communion,
announced that the 2018 Lambeth Conference would be cancelled in the face of
widespread opposition among African bishops to even meet with American prelates
because of TEC’s stance on LBGTQ issues.
At the same time, the occupants of the primacy of Canterbury
have routinely engaged in politics of avoidance which have largely served to exacerbate
this pattern. The abusive behaviors of bishops at Lambeth 1998 occurred under
the watch of George Carey, himself an evangelical, whose tacit agreement with
the bullying tactics of the gathering’s conservative quarters allowed them to
occur with abandon. Rowan Williams, Carey’s successor, spent the entirety of
his archbishopric desperately trying to keep the fragile communion from coming
apart on his shift, empowering conservatives to make ever greater demands on
the body. Now Justin Welby has called a meeting of the bishops after just saying
he would not convene Lambeth two years from now for fear of schism only to see
the Americans voted off the island.
Whatever other qualities are required of an Archbishop of
Canterbury, integrity in the face of demagoguery and courage in the face of
existential crisis are clearly not among them. The apology
offered by the current Archbishop to LBGTQ persons today may be comforting but
it occurs in the wake of yet another round of institutional gay bashing this very
week.
Photo: Episcopal News Service
Only Certain
Fathers Actually Know Best
Of course, it is hardly unusual to see conservative
religious people confusing
religion with common social prejudices. Whatever else one might want to say about
sexism and homophobia, they always remain common social prejudices in both inception
and in substance. It’s hardly surprising that people with fear and control-driven
constructs of religion would hold prejudices that reflect an abiding fear of
those who are different.
Projecting these prejudices into the mind of G-d
exacerbates the sin of failing to love one’s neighbor as oneself with the
blasphemy of attempting to require G-d to do the same. Writer Anne Lamott hits
the nail on the head regarding attempts to rationalize this disingenuous
misanthropy with her observation “You can
safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God
hates all the same people you do.”
The goal of the conservative bishops over the last two
decades has always been to whip the American and egalitarian Canadian and
English bishops into line. The basic demand was that these churches not proceed
with any plans to lift centuries old discrimination against women and LBGTQ
people, both lay and ordained, until the other bishops agreed to permit them to
do so. Like most conservative thinking, this reflects no small amount of
paternalism:
Father knows best
but only certain fathers.
Mixed in with this paternalism is no small amount of
well-deserved resentment toward the northern hemisphere churches generally and
the American church specifically regarding its own paternalistic tendencies
historically. The majority of Anglican missionaries to the southern hemisphere came
from evangelical quarters of the church whose evangelizing always begins with
the incredibly self-serving presumption “We have what you need.” Indeed, the
recent tying of huge “gifts” of American evangelical money to Anglican support
for homophobic legislation in numerous jurisdictions in Africa has made that
presumption quite literal.
Spiritualties Talking Past One Another
The vote of the bishops also reveals disparate levels of spirituality
in conflict. Religiosity based in believing
is the lowest level of any spirituality. It is dualistic by definition (us v.
them, right v. wrong), tribal in its function (true believers v. the great
unwashed) and highly exclusive in result. Belief-driven spiritualties seek to
nail down the mystery of the divine into manageable tenets of belief and resulting
behavioral regulations. Those who buy into the set of beliefs become the self-appointed
guardians of absolute truth and those who do not must by definition be seen as anathema.
Once we presume that our god holds our understandings, then by definition that
god has no obligation to anyone outside the tribe and neither do the members of
that tribe. This is both the most common expression of religion historically
and its most dangerous.
While mystic spiritualties which focus on Being are the highest level of
spiritual development at which few human beings ever arrive, Belonging-based religion is the middle
level of spirituality. It is less focused on the litmus tests for true
believers and more focused on membership, being a part of something larger than
oneself. In the terms of sociologist Ernst Troeltsch, belonging based religion is
more likely to be expressed in denominational terms than the more sectarian
belief-driven expressions.
In theory, this notion of catholicity in its truest sense
- universality - which writer James Joyce described as “Here comes everybody,”
is the concept which originally under laid the Anglican Communion. Disparate
churches held together by a common history rooted in the British Empire and a common
prayer using variations of a Book of Common Prayer, the communion was designed
to be less a body driven by power - like its counterpart in Rome - than a body
driven by desires for communion, shared prayer and work. Sadly, today’s Anglican
Communion has lost sight of that original vision, its majority invoking the control
issues of a more tribal expression of spirituality, as the statement from the
majority of bishops well reflects.
I have to admit that the Presiding Bishop of TEC has done
a very fine job at adeptly responding to this latest round of abuse from his
fellow prelates. Refusing to bow to the demands that TEC turn back the hands of
time as a condition of first class citizenship, Michael Curry said yesterday:
"Our commitment to be an inclusive church is
not based on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of the culture, but on
our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the
very love of God reaching out to us all. While I understand that many disagree
with us, our decision regarding marriage is based on the belief that the words
of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians are true for the church today: All who
have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is no longer Jew or
Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ."
TEC’s commitment to inclusivity is reflected by the fact
that Curry is an African-American in a predominately white, Anglo tradition and follows the first woman presiding bishop
of any church within the Anglican Communion. His belonging focused church is a
stark contrast to the more sectarian believing focused Anglican churches where
toeing the party line – in this case the relegation to second class citizenship
of women and LBGTQ people - is the litmus test for one’s ongoing place at the
table.
As in many cases where parties of differing developmental
stages encounter one another, there is little real contact between their
divergent patterns of thinking. As theorists from Fowler and Peck to Kohlberg
and Wilber have observed, those operating out of higher stages of understanding
– which both incorporate and transcend those stages they have already passed
through - inevitably understand the thinking of lower stages because they once shared
it. But the reverse is rarely if ever true.
In short, these folks are talking past one another and,
absent some kind of event to destabilize the lower stage thinking enough to prompt
further growth and development, are likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable
future.
Withdrawing from an Abusive Family
To its credit, the leadership of TEC has endured now two
decades of abuse from their supposed brothers in Christ with amazing dignity
and aplomb. I am not sure I could do the same, frankly. To the degree that the
Anglican Communion can be compared to family systems, there is a point where
the abused must claim its own dignity, insist it be respected and, failing
that, respond in whatever manner is necessary to place enough distance between
abused and abuser that the pattern of abuse can be arrested.
I think of a young man I know who came out as a gay man
while in college. Unlike my parents who dealt with my own extended coming out
process much more healthily than I did, his parents, who are fundamentalists,
did not deal with this reality well. “They chose the church over their child,”
the young man often said. His final years of high school were stormy and when
he got a chance to escape to college, he did – all the way out to the west
coast, “As far away as I could get,” in his own words.
His contact with his family is limited these days. He
generally leaves a phone message on holidays and actually talks with his family
members once in a while. He has briefly visited only twice in the last eight years. Otherwise, he has chosen to move
on with his life, marrying his life partner and making the west coast his home.
I doubt there will ever be much more substantial contact with any of his
family. It is a very tragic loss for all the parties involved.
There are a lot of LBGTQ people who know this story only
too well. At some point, they have had to choose between their own dignity – if
not sanity – and their abusive families. And when churches reveal themselves to
be abusers in institutional form, LBGTQ people have often walked away from their once
spiritual homes in sorrow. Respect for their very dignity demands nothing less and under the circumstances, it was the most loving thing they could do.
It is ironic that TEC as a whole now finds itself in the
role that so many of its own women clergy and LBGTQ members have had to endure
historically. Discrimination has become very real for one of America’s ultimate
establishment religious bodies which once was described as “the Republican
Party at prayer.” The question now before it is how it should respond to this
new reality.
I am an ordained clergyman who stands with one foot still
inside the institution
at the very farthest margins of this church, unable to
function as priest in one of the last inveterately homophobic dioceses in TEC.
As such, I think the young man’s example mentioned above offers some direction
for our national church.
While I strongly believe that we always need each other
and that devolving into circled wagons of the like-minded is always potentially
dangerous, for TEC there is a question of how much more mental and spiritual
energy should be poured down this black hole of fear, anger, ignorance and obsession
with control. While admittedly it sounds more than a little cheesy to say this,
the reality is that the Anglican Communion needs the American church much more
than the reverse. TEC resources and personnel have long helped keep the
Communion afloat. What TEC does NOT need is any more holier-than-thou
pronouncements of perhaps well-intentioned prelates whose own constructions of
religion are so brittle that they require the ongoing affirmation of everyone
on board with them to actually continue being able to believe them.
Truth is, there are a lot of people who need the undivided
attention of TEC right here at home and in the Latin American nations where it has
been transplanted. There are a lot of needs for spiritual wisdom in a nation which
has lost its way and currently seems intent on splitting at its seams and disintegrating
into internecine fighting. The opportunities to do justice, love mercy and
walk humbly with G-d have probably never been greater here at home and they cry
out for attention. At the bottom line, TEC has better things to do with its
time, energy and resources than to worry about currying the favor of bible-thumping
petty tyrants.
Sadly, it may be that, like the young man and his family,
TEC will need to find a way to maintain enough distance from its abusive family
that its dignity can be respected and its abuse limited. Indeed, that may prove
the only means it can remain a part of a body whose current state makes a
mockery of its very name, Communion. It
is a sad reality our church faces in the face of the devolution of this once
venerable tradition. But it is a reality we must take seriously and
prayerfully.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando,
Florida
If the
unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it
religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most
things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
For what
does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your G-d? (Micah
6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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