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'After Lambeth' Conference Begins Church of England's Sexuality Dialogue

Episcopal News Service. February 19, 1999 [99-004]

Susan Erdey, Editor and Writer at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

(ENS) An all-day "After Lambeth" conference organized by Britain's Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) drew representatives from three-quarters of the Church of England's dioceses -- including 12 bishops -- to the University of Derby campus in Derby, England, on February 6. Some 270 people attended the conference from the Church of England, the Church in Wales, and the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Conference organizers said they planned the event to begin the dialogue called for in the Lambeth Conference resolution on sexuality, in which Anglican bishops pledged to "listen to the experience of homosexual persons." The resolution also declared that homosexual activity is "incompatible with Scripture." And it advised against ordaining open homosexuals or blessing their unions.

The event began with a panel of three English bishops -- Michael Bourke of Wolverhampton, Peter Selby of Worcester, and Anthony Priddis of Warwick -- reflecting on their experiences at Lambeth. None was in the conference's sexuality subsection of bishops who shared early discussions on the resolution.

Priddis began by explaining the complex dynamics of the legislative process, which he said "raises the question of the advisability of passing resolutions" during Lambeth Conferences. Selby expressed concern that the work of the international debt subsection, of which he was a member, may have been deliberately "swept out of attention" by Western conservatives pushing the sexuality issue. "There was a profound atmosphere of the sinister hanging over this event," he noted, repeating a statement he made after Lambeth comparing it to the Nazi Party rallies at Nuremberg. Bourke recalled that even the Bible study on the morning of the sexuality plenary seemed to deny the existence of an identity based on sexual orientation -- a denial "we don't apply in any other area" of human life, including race and gender.

Fragment of pain

Keynote speaker Richard Holloway, Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, a long-time supporter of lesbian and gay issues in the Anglican Communion. Holloway began by recalling "fragments of remembered pain" from Lambeth, including what he called the "evangelical tragedy" of an encounter between some University of Kent students and anti-gay demonstrators outside one of the residence halls. "Their encounter with Christianity shamed Jesus and scandalized them," Holloway said, by wrapping "blind prejudice and ugly hatred in the name of Jesus."

But, he added, the sexuality resolution was also a reflection of what he called "necessary compromises" with the revolutionary message of Jesus needed to insure the survival of the church as an institution. "People are better at guarding the process than the vision it serves," said Holloway. He called for forgiveness on all sides of the controversy, and an acknowledgement that "we are more likely to be clear about others' compromises than our own."

Holloway was quoted in the British press as lambasting the traditionalist bishops, largely from Africa and Asia, who had outvoted the liberals at Lambeth, saying that many "seemed to treat the Bible like an infallible law book that needed no interpretation and allowed no variation in approach...It was interpreted by them as though it had been personally written by God and sent by registered mail."

Later, Jan Nunley, rector of a church in Providence, Rhode Island, who served as press liaison for the women bishops at Lambeth, drew a comparison between the rise of fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s and trends in the Anglican Communion in the 1990s.

"While the geographic center of Anglicanism may have shifted to the Global South, the nerve center of Anglican traditionalism is in the American South," Nunley said. "If there are no direct connections between Anglican traditionalists and Baptist fundamentalists -- and I have no proof that there are -- it certainly seems that these Anglicans are good students of the history which has unfolded in their own ecclesial back yard."

Bishops Holloway and Selby joined Nunley and members of the LGCM Anglican Forum in a panel discussion to field questions from the audience. To a query about how to avoid demonizing those opposed to lesbians and gays in the Church, Nunley answered with a quote from Episcopalian Gail Godwin's novel Father Melancholy's Daughter: "Remember that each one is 'also a child of God', no matter how trying we may find them to be," she said. "They are afraid. But God has not given Christians a spirit of fear."

The Rev. Richard Kirker, LGCM general secretary, reported that some English seminarians were apparently encouraged not to attend the conference, a fact which "distressed" Selby.

The presence of bishops at the gathering marked a first for lesbians and gays in the Church of England. Dioceses represented included Bath & Wells; Birmingham; Blackburn; Bradford; Bristol; Carlisle; Chelmsford; Chester; Chichester; Coventry; Derby; Durham; Gloucester; Guildford; Hereford; Leicester; Lichfield; Lincoln; Liverpool; London; Manchester; Oxford; Portsmouth; Ripon; Rochester; Salisbury; Sheffield; Southwark; Southwell; Wakefield; Worcester; and York.

Although the church's leadership says it has no plans to depart from its present policy, which bars practicing homosexuals from becoming priests, a British newspaper reported, traditionalists fear that pressure is fast growing for change. Philip Hacking, chairman of the evangelical group Reform, was quoted as saying, "There is no doubt that some bishops -- led by the likes of Richard Holloway -- would like to overturn what the majority of Anglicans believe.

"Bishops who seek to undermine the Bible's teaching -- as endorsed by the overwhelming majority of Anglican bishops worldwide -- are bringing a crisis on the Church of England."

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