Anglican Struggles over Homosexuality Take to an International Stage
Episcopal News Service. May 9, 1997 [97-1756]
(ENS) In a controversy played out in official statements and surveys, public demonstrations and strident news articles, the struggles of the Anglican Communion over homosexuality have taken on a distinctly international cast in recent weeks.
Serving as a lightning rod in the burgeoning turmoil are statements by Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey affirming traditional church teachings on marriage that have drawn equally strong calls for wider acceptance of homosexuality within the Church of England.
The spate of pronouncements in England follows on the heels of criticism from Anglican churches meeting in Southeast Asia of liberal positions on homosexuality taken "in some provinces in the North," but also more accommodating statements expressing greater acceptance of homosexuality by churches in South Africa, Brazil and Canada.
In perhaps one of the more moderate statements, the bishops of the Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa publicly apologized for the church's role "over the centuries" for "rejecting many people because of their sexual orientation, but also rejected all forms of promiscuity.
"The church's position is that sex is for life-long marriage with a person of the opposite sex for companionship, sexual fulfillment and procreation. The reality is that divorce and remarriage, polygamy, same-sex unions, single-parent families, and persons living together outside marriage do exist," the bishops wrote at their March synod. "As a church, we have to find loving, pastoral and creative ways of dealing with all these situations."
In several recent news articles, and in a series of programs on British television called "Archbishop," Carey has reasserted an understanding that celibacy or marriage between a man and a woman are the only two lifestyles accepted by the church.
"Practicing homosexuality is not to be condoned in the priesthood," he said in the final installment of the television programs. "We don't recognize same-sex marriages."
During an earlier sabbatical visit at Virginia Theological Seminary in the United States, Carey stressed that the "church should resist any diminishing of the fundamental 'sacramentum' of marriage." Carey made the comments in a sermon given after the seminary announced that it would accept cohabitating homosexual or heterosexual students if their bishops approved.
In the most dramatic response to Carey's television appearances, activists from the English homosexual rights group Outrage! disrupted an international conference hosted by Carey at Lambeth Palace, his official residence in London. After scaling the palace walls, 10 members of the group, including its leader, Peter Tatchell, waved placards and confronted Carey, demanding that he change his views. The group departed after about 10 minutes when Carey ordered them to leave.
Members of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement within the Church of England meanwhile turned to a survey to gain ammunition in the struggle. In a letter sent to about 1,000 supporters, the group has asked gay and lesbian clergy to sign a confidential statement reporting whether they have been ordained or employed by bishops who knew that they were not celibate.
Many bishops who signed a statement that they did not accept gay relationships among clergy have hired or ordained non-celibate homosexuals, the group claims. "It is crucial that the hypocrisy behind this position is exposed, and that the bishops stop victimizing in public the clergy whom in private they have professed to support," wrote the Rev. Richard Kirker, the group's general secretary.
A lecture on "Homosexuality and Christian ethics -- a new way forward together," by Bishop John Baker, the former bishop of Salisbury, added further fuel to the fire. Speaking at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church in London, Baker said that he now feels "obliged to dissent" from the 1991 Issues in Human Sexuality report that reinforced the celibacy rule for gay clergy. Baker chaired the committee that developed the report.
"I cannot see that married heterosexual clergy have a right to deny their homosexual brothers and sisters the potential spiritual blessing of a sexual relationship when they themselves enjoy that blessing," Baker said. "A public Christian act should not be refused, if desired, because to do so would be to fall back into the old condemnation of such relationships on principle," he said.
Baker also suggested the possibility of homosexual divorce. "If you begin by marking something publicly, do you not have to have some public maker if, sadly, it ends?" he asked. Carey called Baker's conclusions "a very significant departure from the church's current mind and discipline," but said that his lecture "deserves to be read with respect and care as a contribution to the continuing debate."
A shot across the bow from the Second Anglican Encounter in the South, meeting in Kuala Lumpur in February, taking northern provinces to task for moral laxness, has found supporters both in Asia and the United States.
A final position paper from the conference stated that "Holy Scriptures are clear in teaching that all sexual promiscuity is sin. We are convinced that this includes homosexual practices between men or women, as well as heterosexual relationships outside marriage."
Endorsements came almost immediately from the standing committee of the Province of South East Asia, and from the Episcopal Synod of America, an association of individuals and churches concerned about what they perceive to be liberal trends in the Episcopal Church.
In a letter to Archbishop Moses Tay of Singapore, primate of the Province of South East Asia, six bishops associated with the ESA said they "affirm the Kuala Lumpur statement and celebrate our continued communion with the Province of South East Asia and like-minded provinces."
Meanwhile, a pastoral letter signed by seven diocesan bishops and the primate of the Anglican Episcopal Church in Brazil in April called on Anglicans to receive people of any sexual orientation with love. Looking ahead to the 1988 Lambeth Conference, where sexuality is expected to be a major topic, the bishops noted that the question of homosexuality was far from resolved within the Anglican Communion, and said that they therefore could not assume definitive positions about the ordination of homosexuals or marriages between people of the same sex.
"Studies about the factors which contribute to different understandings regarding homosexuals continue," the letter states. "As bishops we recommend dialogue, prudence and pastoral concern for people with a homosexual orientation in the faith community."
Also in April, following a survey of its members, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada promised to revise its current guidelines against the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals or the blessing of same-sex unions. While retaining the original intention of the guidelines, the new wording would be expressed "in a wider context of theological understanding and pastoral sensitivity."
In the survey, two-thirds of the bishops had favored some change of current guidelines. Nineteen bishops said that they believed the church should apologize to the gay and lesbian community for insensitivity and hostility originating in the church, and 23 said that the church should be "more accepting and affirming of models of family other than the nuclear family."
In a harbinger of the current international squabbles, Archbishop Michael Peers of Canada criticized Church of England bishops a year ago for taking a "colonial" attitude toward the church in the United States after the bishop of Rochester called on the American church to uphold traditional teachings.
Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester had attacked the church in the U.S. after an ecclesiastical court cleared Bishop Walter Righter, retired bishop of Iowa, of charges that he committed heresy by ordaining a non-celibate homosexual.
The phenomenon of people in English palaces issuing warnings to other people across the Atlantic about positions they must hold, as well as about the consequences of failure to do so, sound like the madness of King George III," Peers wrote in response."
And as one sign of growing frustrating between provinces of the church, Bishop Maurice Sinclair of Argentina, presiding bishop of the Province of the Southern Cone, called on the primates at their recent meeting in Jerusalem to establish a "doctrinal guide" to curb the destabilization of the Anglican Communion over sexuality issues.
He said that it was time to make it clear that provinces should "be accountable to each other and free neither to innovate foolishly nor to stagnate lazily without the possibility of intervention from the wider Communion." Efforts to curb what he called "provincial congregationalism" would be in the hands of a restructured Anglican Consultative Council and a stronger "executive" role for the archbishop of Canterbury.
"Authority in the Anglican Communion would continue to be a distributed authority but it would gain the necessary coherence," Sinclair argued. "We clearly cannot afford to be merely a loose federation or a separating family."