An Analysis of Rowan Williams' Second Presidential Address to the
Lambeth Conference
by Briane K. Turley
Special to VirtueOnline
www.virtueonline.org
7/31/2008
Archbishop Rowan Williams' recent pleas for "engagement" among deeply
divided members of the Anglican Communion, while thoughtful and
heart-felt, indicate in fresh ways his inability to grasp the scope of
the problem confronting him. In his favor, Dr Williams has, I believe,
done all that he is personally capable of doing to address the breakup
that now seem inevitable.
By this, I do not mean that more could not have been done to avert
schism. To the contrary, I remain deeply convinced that the breakup of
the Anglican Communion is tragic because it could so easily have been
avoided. Yet given his native theological and anthropological
convictions, the current Archbishop of Canterbury has done all that we
may expect of him.
Dr Williams is unable to accomplish more than he has because, as his
public writings indicate, he personally believes that while the ongoing
innovative actions of the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada
are provocative and ecclesiologically irresponsible, they are not
profane. His convictions in this regard effect two intractable problems.
A man of personal integrity, Williams cannot bring himself to describe
homoeroticism as in any sense perverted or sinful. On the other hand,
his stance makes it equally impossible for him to apprehend why the
great majority of Christendom, including a clear majority within the
Communion, are so deeply scandalized by what is happening in the North
American and British churches.
In 1989, Williams observed, "It is impossible, when we're trying to
reflect on sexuality, not to ask just where the massive cultural and
religious anxiety about same-sex relationships that is so prevalent at
the moment comes from. . . ." (Body's Grace)
Williams seeks some sort of compromise among factions that formed years
ago. But his hopes for any sort of meaningful engagement leading to
unity-perhaps some sort of Hegelian synthesis-are illusory. We Anglicans
are witnessing what happens when groups within our own ranks assume
diametrically opposing positions on what is and what is not sacred, what
may be described as "the holy" and what may be deemed by many as "the
profane."
After years of debate, we whom Dr Williams describes as the "religiously
anxious" began to recognize that many Western Anglicans do not
comprehend how very serious the overturning of sacred things really is.
Only days before Gene Robinson's episcopal election was confirmed in
2003, Virginia Bishop Peter Lee sent a letter to his diocese in which he
described human sexuality as a "peripheral" matter for Christians.
Whether one agrees with what The Episcopal Church has accomplished in
the last five years, any reasonable person must now concede that Lee
could not possibly have been more wrong on this point. The departure of
his largest and most prestigious parishes serve as a constant reminder
that this otherwise decent man made a terrible and tragic
miscalculation. To the best of my knowledge, Lee has never retracted his
teaching.
At both theological and sociological levels, Lee failed to recognize the
religious centrality of his subject. Indeed, for the vast majority of
Christendom, the institution of marriage between a male and a female is
far more than a peripheral, theological nicety but is, to the contrary,
a sacramental concern, and as such it lies at the very core of what it
means to be Christian.
In both the Old and New Testaments, marriage serves as the central
biblical metaphor for God's covenant with humanity. This covenant is
consistently portrayed as a union between beings who are fundamentally
different: God and humanity, man and woman. Consequently, chaste,
heterosexual marriage ascended to the level of "the Holy" a long, long
time ago and is deeply etched into the religious consciousness of
Christians and (other religious groups) throughout the world. As Gerald
R. McDermott has observed, in the minds and hearts of most Christians,
homoeroticism, like pagan religion, joins two beings who are
fundamentally the same-man with man, and man with a god created in the
image of man.
Even at a utilitarian level, it strikes me as unfortunate that Lee and
others who eschew biblical teachings on this subject miscalculated the
backlash of their actions. It is equally unfortunate that at the very
least they had not devoted a little attention to reading social
scientists, reductionist and otherwise. For example, sociologist Emile
Durkheim argued that the function of religion is to help bind society
with a single set of sacred beliefs and values, which reflect a
collective and society-strengthening consciousness. Because they are by
nature "sacred", these areas of sacramental interest are in many
respects more real to Christians than those things logical positivists
discern as "real".
The present Communion crisis results in large measure because Anglican
Communion leaders have forgotten, or perhaps have tried to ignore, the
havoc a sudden overturning of sacred symbols can wreak on societies and
the institutions within those societies. Few who objectively study
religion will deny that the religious tend to respond quickly and
decisively to actions deemed as blasphemous (that is to say, declaring
holy that which the religious perceive to be unholy).
The widespread frustration directed toward Williams and much of the West
demonstrates that the religious sociologists are right. I fail to
understand how a man with Dr Williams' acumen misses this fundamental
principle. It is critical that those of us who believe what has happened
reflects sin continue to convey biblical truth in love. Moreover, we
should be honest with theological innovators about how their actions
affect us and why this is so. Our understanding of what is holy in God's
sight is undergoing an attack.
I am fully convinced that the actions of the last two General
Conventions in the US sent orthodox Anglicans a message not unlike the
one conveyed to the Israelis by early second-century Syrian King
Antiochus Epiphanes when he slaughtered a pig upon their temple altar,
or the message Andres Serrano's infamous "Piss Christ" expressed so
graphically to orthodox Christians and even sympathetic Jews and Muslims
when it first received Federal support several years ago. In some
respects, the activities of innovators are being perceived as something
much worse because the blasphemous actions have come from within the
believers' own camp.
This explains why our current situation is far more vehement than would
be the worldwide reaction to "pressure for a new baptismal formula or
the abandonment of formal reference to the Nicene Creed in a local
church's formulations." While these matters are contentious in their own
right, Williams' attempts to juxtapose them with primary orthodox
concerns (ecumenical and internal) reveals the stratospheric height of
his ivory tower.
For example, the 1979 US Prayerbook clearly mistranslates the Nicene
Creed. And while many of us are aware of the problems this creates, our
protests have hardly caused a ripple on the pond. Most people hold some
thing or things sacred. Certainly Dr Williams does. I sometimes wonder
how Williams would approach an Anglican province that suddenly declared
pederasty holy, an institution that is to be celebrated within that
region's "context," and then installed as bishop a pederast who
cohabitates with a 15-year-old. This may not be a helpful analog as
pederasty, now linked to age of consent laws, is growing increasingly
acceptable in the West and already may not rise to the level of the
profane in the minds of many Anglican leaders in the US, UK, and Canada.
Perhaps polygamy, or committed-bisexual-complex marriage arrangements,
or any number of other possible sexual configurations might. At any
rate, I am relatively certain that there are practices that Dr Williams
and many of the current "moderates" would find so reprehensible within
their church that they would muster a disciplinary response that in our
current crisis they tell us is simply impossible.
For the orthodox, whose epistemes (how we know what we know) can only be
found in scripture and the Apostolic heritage, the sexual innovations of
the Western churches present much more than a difficult challenge; they
rise to the level of blasphemy. Yes, many of us openly confess our
conviction that sex outside of heterosexual marriage is sin.
Consequently, a church that conflates sin with righteousness, purveys
not blessings but damnation and has ceased being a church at all. Its
bishops, we believe, no longer feed their flocks but--in violation of
their pre-1979 vows--"devour them." Western leadership's inability to
grasp why their actions appall so many Christians suggests a total lack
of connection with their flocks and the entire Christian world.
Dr Williams depicts these differences in terms of a "painful current
debate," while the majority of Christians have concluded that the
differences constitute untenable deviations from God's truth. This
explains why Williams' religiously anxious Global South neighbors have
now implemented their own instrument of unity and already moving forward
with, or without, Western Anglicans.
Jesus has sent us out "in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents
and innocent as doves." Remain aware that the West will now step up
efforts to parody and demonize those determined to honor absolute
standards of Christian holiness. Williams' speech points to his own
cultural myth, a simplified narrative that divides 80 million Anglicans
into two camps: the relativist West and those willing to tolerate its
"differences" on the one hand, and an uncompromising Global South on the
other, a camp that ignorantly "cling[s] to one dimension of the truth
revealed."
Subtly couched in this speech, the Archbishop fires an early volley into
those who did not attend Lambeth when he depicts the handful of Global
Southern bishops who attended the conference as saying, "we are here.
We've taken a risk in coming, because many who think like us feel we've
betrayed them just by meeting you. But we value our Communion, we want
to understand you and we want you to understand us." At best, this
straw-man characterization suggests that those who did not attend do not
value the Communion. At worse it indicates that from Williams'
postmodernist perspective, their unyielding perceptions of the holy are
no longer quaint; they are junk.
---Briane K Turley is Rector of Church of the Holy Spirit Anglican in
Tulsa, Oklahoma. He received his Ph.D. in Modern European and American
Religious History from the University of Virginia and was the recipient
of two Fulbright Lectureship Awards during his career as a Professor at
West Virginia University.
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