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The Anglican Communion R.I.P.
It was an historical illusion anyway, a cherished and romantic notion practiced in all kinds of theoretical venues. The idea that the lands that once constituted the British Empire would all have a single faith tradition was always little more than a lovely bit of pious propaganda. History has recorded the fact that wherever the arms of British might conquered, the missionaries followed the flag and the people were supposedly converted to the God of the conqueror. This group of independent national churches was called the Anglican Communion. As a child I used to look at the maps on the walls in my Sunday school with some sense of pride. The parts of the world related to the British Empire and thus to the Church of England were all painted pink. It was a mighty host of nations that included the United States because we had once been the colonies of their crown. The fact that we opted out of this empire by military victory was forgiven so the maps revealed us as part of that pink tide that also included Canada, most of the islands in the Caribbean and small pockets of South America. It then swept through the Middle East from Egypt to the Suez Canal and into most of western Asia. It took in huge portions of Africa down to its tip in the Republic of South Africa and containing much of the southern half of that great continent where the nations had strong British ties. In eastern Asia it included all of what is now Pakistan, India, Malaysia and Singapore, then leaping the ocean to claim Australia and New Zealand. It gave the impressive idea that the Church of England baptized their entire empire of nations into one communion. They were Anglicans; I was impressed. The claim was that in most of these nations, the Church of England was the dominant religion. Up until well after World War II, Anglican leaders in England controlled this religious empire by appointing bishops to rule over the religious domain of each nation. All of these appointees happened to be white Englishmen. They were romantic figures serving in these primitive lands, while still wearing their clerical collars and gaiters. They would return home on furlough to extol the virtues of their missionary efforts, to garner financial support and to build a sense of religious noblesse oblige. All of these appointed bishops gave their loyalty to the head of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a loose confederation and the unity of this diverse body was based primarily on an English gentleman’s agreement.
As the British Empire slowly but surely disappeared, beginning in World War II a variety of tactics were employed to keep the religious coalition intact. Independent Dominion status was offered to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Pakistan and India not only split off from the British Empire, but each developed a fierce hostility for the other. Singapore separated from Malaysia. Hong Kong once independent of China went back to its native home. African nations began to declare independence, throwing off their colonial masters and re-introducing ancient tribal loyalties. About eight decades after the Second World War, the process of independence was complete. The only relic remaining of the British Empire was something that was called “the Anglican Communion,” this collection of independent national Anglican churches. Once every ten years, the bishops of this worldwide church would meet together at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury for “consultations.” These meetings, originally held in Lambeth Palace, home of the Archbishop, were thus called “The Lambeth Conferences.” Each independent national church in the Anglican Communion was governed now by its own decision-making processes and its locally elected bishops. The Archbishop of Canterbury was the single unifying symbol. They continued to cling to this sense of oneness with each other until the strains of modernity began to tear them apart. Shall Christian Churches of the Anglican Communion be allowed to practice polygamy, shall national Anglican churches be allowed to choose women to be bishops and priests? Those were both issues voted upon by the bishops of the Lambeth Conference of 1988. Both were decided in the affirmative. Polygamous families could become Christian and remain intact as a family No further wives, however, could be added to the harem until the last of the multiple wives died, but polygamous families could join the Christian Church without dispatching the excess wives; that was the official opinion of the bishops. They also proclaimed that each national church could decide whom it would ordain. Today, women are priests in almost every part of the Anglican Communion. These diverse cultural practices created a strain on the notion of Communion, but at first unity triumphed over disintegration. That was partly the result of competent, flexible leadership on the part of those who were chosen to be Archbishop of Canterbury. When the talent available for that office began to wear thin, the strain on unity grew stronger and stronger.
People need to realize that the Archbishop of Canterbury is actually appointed by the politically elected Prime Minister of the British government. After 1988, this office became the captive of British politics. Three weak archbishops in a row were appointed, the first one by Margaret Thatcher, who was so angered by the opposition of Anglican bishops to her military adventure in the Falkland Islands that she appointed the weakest and most inept bishop she could find. His name was George Carey, a flaming evangelical who actually spoke in tongues. Like most evangelicals, he was also deeply homophobic, quoting the literal Bible to uphold his irrational prejudice. This attitude encouraged third world Anglicans by assuring them that hostility toward homosexual people was not only right, but God-inspired.
In the Lambeth gathering of bishops in 1998 this issue was allowed to be voted on and overwhelmingly homosexuality was condemned as sinful, evil and not acceptable to Christian people. Basically, conservative first world bishops who knew almost nothing about homosexuality united with the third world evangelical, fundamentalist bishops who were convinced that the Bible said everything they needed to know about homosexuality, to put the Anglican Communion on the side of homophobic ignorance. So from 1998 on, as the national churches began more and more to express their cultural convictions, which meant that holding developed and underdeveloped nations in unity became harder and harder to maintain.
Then Rowan Williams was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by the labor Prime Minister Tony Blair. Rowan Williams was a man of significant intellectual ability, having served as the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University prior to his first appointment as a bishop. Rowan, however, lacked one essential ingredient for leadership. He did not know how to stand for anything or how to make a decision that might be an affront to anyone. He interpreted leadership to be “consensus-seeking.” So as tension began to build in this unlikely communion of national churches, western nations like the United States, Canada, Scotland and England began to embrace the modern consensus that homosexuality is a given not a chosen, while the churches of Africa began to support laws in their countries that defined homosexuality as a sin, a crime, sometimes subject to the death penalty. Armed with biblical quotations, these African leaders turned the vice of prejudice and hatred into the virtue of being biblically correct. Williams, torn apart by his own ineptitude, finally resigned.
Prime Minister David Cameron then appointed a fellow Etonian, Justin Welby, to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Justin, also an evangelical, who had none of the diplomatic skill needed to guide a diverse worldwide communion, decided to allow the heads of the member churches of the Anglican Communion to vote to expel the Episcopal Church of the United States from the Anglican Communion’s decision-making processes for three years, as punishment for its openness to the full inclusion of homosexual people. This church of ours had in 2003, elected an openly partnered gay man to be bishop of New Hampshire. Later, it elected an openly partnered lesbian woman to be the suffragan bishop of Los Angeles. When the Supreme Court of the United States made marriage equality real for gay and straight people alike, the Episcopal Church authorized its clergy to perform “gay marriages.” That was the straw that broke the back of unity for the primates of a largely third world gathering, so they decided to expel the Episcopal Church from the communion. Archbishop Welby sputtered meekly: “They had to learn that their actions had consequences.” It must somehow be Christian to be homophobic!
Is there any responsible, scientific authority in the world today that says that sexual orientation is a chosen lifestyle that should be condemned? I know of none! Are modern Christians to ignore new definitions and to continue to endorse as virtuous behavior patterns out of a dated Bible? Are we not aware that we have quoted that Bible in history to discriminate against left-handed people, to oppress women and to enslave and segregate people of color? Would we have expelled Desmond Tutu for leading the fight against a legal Apartheid? When Galileo discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe around which the sun rotated, would Archbishop Welby be ready to punish the churches that tried to embrace this new truth? Where will the purge stop? It is too late to save this situation! I do not want to be identified with Christians who make homosexuality a crime, who deny evolution, who continue to define God as a supernatural being who lives above the sky.
For me, the time has come for the Anglican Communion to go the way of the rest of the British Empire. Ignorance in high places is sufficient reason to ignore high places. From now on, let the Archbishops of Canterbury continue to preside over the funerals of royalty and the marriages of princesses. They serve well in ceremonial roles of irrelevance. I do not want them daring to speak for any part of the Christian Church on any issue of substance.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
Question & Answer
George Kokich of Ottawa, Canada, writes:
Question:
I am an open-minded and lifelong truth seeker and enjoy your thoughtful commentaries on spiritual topics. Given my spiritual journeys to date, I think that one of the most profound spiritual ideas with infinite implications that I have recognized is that the words “God” and “Truth” are synonyms. It appears that most people, however, have not reflected on what the implications include. I would appreciate your thought on this issue.
Answer:
Dear George,
I like your idea with these caveats. The word “God” only points to a reality, the word is not the reality, while the word “truth” refers to something that is always unfolding, is never static and ultimately cannot be captured in the vessel of human words. So while “God” and “truth” may not be synonyms, they clearly are overlapping concepts. I would say the same thing about “God” and “love,” “God” and “being,” and “God” and “ultimate reality.”
Why anyone thinks that God can ever be defined in human words amazes me. Why anyone thinks that the truth of God can be captured in the words of a creed startles me. Why anyone thinks there is such a thing as the “true faith,” the “orthodox position” or the “final truth” in a set of doctrines and dogmas sets my teeth on edge. Such talk has done nothing except turn the concept of God into a human idol.
Look at the words we use to describe God: Infinite, immortal, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. Have you noticed that they are descriptions of human life with all of the human limits removed? Human life is finite, mortal, limited in power, in space and in knowledge. The human concept of God is that of a human being without human limits. Is it not apparent that we cannot define God except in human terms? While that is inevitable when we make excessive claims for our own definitions, when we seek to assert that the Bible is inerrant, the Pope is infallible, the “faith” can be captured in creeds, doctrines and dogmas, we have become idolaters, we have become religious imperialists. At that moment, Christianity begins to die.
So worship and God, the object of worship, always point beyond themselves. God is never an object, not even a being. God is a mystery into which we walk. God is not a noun that we are compelled to define, God is a verb that we seek to live.
So let “truth” be an analogy for the word “God,” but never a synonym.
Thank you for your letter.
John Shelby Spong
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