{"id":1155,"date":"2005-02-25T11:04:04","date_gmt":"2005-02-25T15:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/02\/25\/kicked-out-of-the-anglican-communio"},"modified":"2005-02-25T11:04:04","modified_gmt":"2005-02-25T15:04:04","slug":"kicked-out-of-the-anglican-communion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/02\/25\/kicked-out-of-the-anglican-communion\/","title":{"rendered":"Kicked out of the Anglican Communion?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of the news reports that you can read online right now make it sound as such.  One, from the AP, said,<\/p>\n

Anglican Church Asks U.S., Canada to
\nLeave<\/p>\n

ASSOCIATED PRESS
\nLONDON (AP) –
\nLeaders of the global Anglican
\nCommunion declared Thursday that they want the U.S. Episcopal Church and the
\nAnglican Church of Canada to withdraw from the communion’s councils temporarily,
\nand to explain their attitudes toward gays which have split the
\nchurch.<\/p>\n

The statement was issued by primates a day earlier than planned,
\nfollowing their meetings this week at a Roman Catholic retreat in Northern
\nIreland.<\/p>\n

The U.S. church precipitated the most serious rift in the
\ncommunion’s history when it affirmed the election of V. Gene Robinson, who
\nopenly lives with a male partner, as bishop of New Hampshire. Both churches have
\nbeen criticized by conservatives for sanctioning blessings of gay
\nunions.<\/p>\n

The statement emerged a day earlier than planned from a meeting
\nof church primates in Northern Ireland. It called for the U.S. and Canadian
\nchurches to explain their thinking at a meeting in Nottingham, England in
\nJune.<\/p>\n

“In the meantime, we ask our fellow primates to use their best
\ninfluence to persuade their brothers and sisters to exercise a moratorium on
\npublic rites of blessing for same-sex unions and on the consecration of any
\nbishop living in a sexual relationship outside Christian marriage,” the
\nstatement said.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A non-Anglican friend of mine was understandably pissed about this, as
\nit makes it sound like it’s our (LGBTIQ people) fault for the whole
\nmess.  I responded:<\/p>\n

Well, it’s getting interesting, but not for the reasons that
\nthis article indicates.  <\/p>\n

Let an Anglican explain
\nit.<\/p>\n

That quote was ensconced in a very long
\nstatement discussing how the Anglican Communion can deal with the crisis.  And
\nthe long statement was in some sense a commentary on a dense theological
\ndocument that came out five months ago.  And, on some level, gays are not the
\ncrisis, but the catalyst for a larger crisis for us Anglicans — what does it
\nmean to be an episcopal (bishop-centered) church without being Roman (i.e.,
\nhierarchical and top-down)?  If some churches (like the US and Canadian
\nchurches) go ahead and do something that the rest of the Anglican Churches find
\nwrong, how do we as a larger group of churches address that, without having a
\ncentralized authority (like a pope) to order some people to stop\/start doing
\nsomething they believe to be right and good?<\/p>\n

For
\nthe conservatives, it’s not gays who have split the church, but radical, sinful
\nAmericans and Westerners (because this is very much a North-South,
\ndeveloped-developing world issue).<\/p>\n

The
\noverwhelming majority of American and Canadian bishops support the consecration
\nof LGBT people to the episcopacy and the blessing of same-sex covenantal
\nrelationships.  Best guess numbers indicate that it’s only about five percent of
\nEpiscopalians nationwide who align with the conservative position.  Mostly, it’s
\nseveral very outspoken American bishops, and bishops of the West Indies,
\nNigeria, Kenya, Singapore, and a few other African and Asian nations. 
\nArchbishop Tutu and his successor, Archbishop Ndungane, have endorsed the cause
\nof justice for LGBT people.  And nowhere is it as simple as a
\nliberal-conservative paradigm might indicate, because those are not good labels
\nin this context.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s about the gays, and no,
\nit’s not about the gays.  As Anglicans, we have a tough polity, and if it
\nhadn’t been issues of justice for LGBT issues, it would have been something else
\ndown the road one or two decades from now that would have precipitated this. 
\nThat said, LGBT issues (and the “ick-factor” along with the course of Western
\nhistory for the last 1500 years) and our push for full recognition and inclusion
\nin the Body of Christ have played a significant role in pushing this crisis to
\nwhere it is, and this is partially a fight about our rights.  And those of us in
\nthe church can’t and won’t give up that fight.<\/p>\n

The
\nquote in the article was way decontextualized (as it was a single sentence from
\na document of several pages of text), in that it’s the same continued request to
\nthe American and Canadian churches to slow down — at least for the present —
\nand give everyone some time.  They might have cherry-picked this quote (“We also
\nwish to make it quite clear that in our discussion and assessment of the moral
\nappropriateness of specific human behaviours, we continue unreservedly to be
\ncommitted to the pastoral support and care of homosexual people.  The
\nvictimisation or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be
\nordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us.  We assure homosexual
\npeople that they are children of God, loved and valued by him, and deserving of
\nthe best we can give of pastoral care and friendship.”) or this one (“We as a
\nbody continue to address the situations which have arisen in North America with
\nthe utmost seriousness.  Whilst there remains a very real question about whether
\nthe North American churches are willing to accept the same teaching on matters
\nof sexual morality as is generally accepted elsewhere in the Communion, the
\nunderlying reality of our communion in God the Holy Trinity is obscured, and the
\neffectiveness of our common mission severely hindered.”) Neither makes any real
\nsense out of context.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the head of the
\nEpiscopal Church (USA) has not yet issued a statement in reaction to this (just
\na news bulletin that he’ll issue one soon), but if the past is any
\nindication, he’ll probably throw lots of support behind LGBT people in the
\nchurch and voice his continued support for the consecration of the Bishop of New
\nHampshire.  He himself was the chief consecrator at the Bishop of New
\nHampshire’s ordination and consecration.  <\/p>\n

All
\nright.  Enough said.  Now you know the beginnings of enough to make sense of
\nthat AP wire story.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find myself on the slow and gradual side of unity.  Being an
\nex-evangelical, I still look for dramatic conversion experiences more
\nthan I look for gradual transformations.  As one of BF’s advisors
\nis fond of pointing out, “We’ve only been at this for 2000 years; we’ve
\nhardly begun to figure it out.”  And that’s the operative thing I
\ntell myself much of the time as we work through this — there’s a good
\nchance I will not see this resolved in my earthly life.  It’s not
\nabout any of us particularly, no matter what the cost.  It’s about living
\ntogether in righteousness and love, and accepting those costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the news reports that you can read online right now make it sound as such.  One, from the AP, said, Anglican Church Asks U.S., Canada to Leave ASSOCIATED PRESS LONDON (AP) – Leaders of the global Anglican Communion declared Thursday that they want the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rayleejun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-iD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}