Cantuar's Red Herrings

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has issued his first more full reflection on the outcome of The Episcopal Church's General Convention and the potential future of the Anglican Communion.

He writes in one paragraph: ". . .the debate in the Anglican Communion is not essentially a debate about the human rights of homosexual people."

That got me wondering:

Then why have the Bishops of the Church of Canada condemned the actions of the Anglican Church of Nigeria's supporting a secular crack-down on the rights of homosexuals? And that's just for starters. Old news, it seems to me. . .The fuss, after all, really broke when the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada approved the blessing of same-sex unions, and Gene Robinson was consecrated a bishop in this country. We can argue about what other issues brought this to a head, but the fact that Bishop of New Hampshire's consecration became the flash point cannot be set aside so easily.

It seems the counter-argument goes that no, the real issue is how we "unilaterally" went about the election and consecration of +Gene Robinson, just as New Westminster "unilaterally" went about sanctioning the blessing of same-sex unions. We have heard this from those opposed to both from the beginning, but I think this is a red herring designed to appeal to our sentimental notions of unity. Behind this red herring is a serious intention to keep homosexuals in committed relationships out of ordained ministry, if not the Church altogether.

Arguments over how we deal, process-wise, with our unity deflect from the reality that this is indeed, fundamentally, a human rights issue. To put it in the language of the Church, it's a Gospel issue.

I suppose we could argue that being a bishop isn't a human right. True enough. But is essential eligibility to the episcopate a human right? In other words, can a child born gay or straight, male or female, and later baptized and confirmed and called as an adult to Holy Orders be, in principle, eligible for the episcopal office?

These sacramental questions beg the deeper issues at the heart of the "secular" human rights debate:

Is homosexuality naturally occurring and not pathological (in "church" language, is it God-given?)

Are homosexuals, regardless of how the broader culture views their sexual orientation and conduct, people or not?

Should homosexuals, in whatever cultural context, have full access, their sexuality notwithstanding, to the privileges of their vocational life, ordained or lay?

Are homosexuals permitted by the community to enjoy, as do heterosexuals, the support, solace, and "mutual joy" of a life-long commitment with another adult of the same sex?

The Archbishop of Canterbury's reflection seems to me to imply, somehow, these "human rights" concerns are, to some degree, beyond the scope of the Church. Or that they don't form the heart of the matter. Or, at very least, that they are trumped by the desire for catholicity, or unity.

To me, they are not. At a profound level, every human rights concern is a deeply theological issue: it is about how we honor the image of God in another person. If we are failing to recognize the image of God in any person by shutting them out of the sacramental life of the church a priori, we remain complicit in the fact that our catholicity, our unity, remains fallen, suffering from some degree of falsehood as it excludes one group of God's children from the Table of Jesus Christ.

In the Gospel we are called to proclaim, Jesus mixed with the outcasts of his day and honored their dignity: tax collectors, women, children, Samaritans, prostitutes, and thieves. They were welcomed into the community. Some became apostles. Some were privileged to witness the resurrection before the apostles. Jesus' view of unity, it seems to me, is never divorced from prophetic action: an open, and sometimes dangerously willful transformation of the broken human community into the Reign of God.

While in the same reflection, Rowan Williams echoes the Windsor Report by waxing eloquent about the inclusion of women clergy in the life of the Anglican Communion, he neglects what I have heard: that women bishops are often passively ignored, if not actively shunned by some of the bishops at Lambeth. And, of course, there really is no getting over the simple fact that women are not eligible for Holy Orders in numerous provinces of the Communion. . .something he seems to shrug off. . .the current controversy in the Church of England seems to have tied his hands.

At any rate, this is another red herring in the current argument. Women's ordination is far from a done deal in the Anglican Communion. It's possible that +Katharine Jefferts Schori's election marks only the beginning of re-opening a now generations-old struggle in the Church over this question. I think a good Communion-wide airing of the place of women in Holy Orders again wouldn't be unhealthy. But I worry that the Archbishop of Canterbury, if what he writes about women's ordination genuinely reflects his perspective, is in for a rude shock.

And, of course, there is the reality that had we waited for the Communion or even our own Province to reach a common mind on the ordination of women, they still would not be ordained at all in the Episcopal Church.

Here's what I think about unity and the consecration of openly gay and lesbian bishops:

In the grand scheme of things, the legal oppression of homosexuals in Nigeria, sanctioned by the Anglican Church there is, seen through the eyes of the Gospel I read, a far more egregious threat to the unity of the Anglican Communion than the ordination of one gay bishop in North America, however untimely it may seem to our brothers and sisters around the world. The situation in Nigeria is a threat because, by dismissing fundamental human rights, it undermines the full catholicity we are being called to by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I think it outrageous that the Archbishop of Canterbury is willing to publicly gloss over this situation while he and the Primates hold a spiritual gun to the heads of The Episcopal Church over the consecration of +Gene Robinson.

Likewise, holding any Province back from consecrating openly gay or lesbian bishops in the name of unity is ultimately self-contradictory, short-circuiting the Church's often reluctant, but absolutely essential journey towards the reign of God envisioned in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I may be a "religious liberal," but I also put a strong emphasis on Scriptural authority, on our tradition, and on unity. The actions of General Convention, 2006, tried to purchase unity with a Faustian compromise. The spooky question remains:

Into what kind of unity did we just try to buy ourselves?