wfn.org | Plenary raises challenges of making moral decisions

["Christopher Took" <storm@indigo.ie>]

ACNS LC037 - 23 July 1998

Plenary raises challenges of making moral decisions

By Lisa Barrowclough
Lambeth Conference Communications

The voices of Anglicans speaking out of personal pain quickly
brought the Lambeth Conference plenary on making moral decisions
out of the realm of theory. Two presentations and a video offered
stark stories of very human struggles. 

The session, with its mix of strong illustrations followed by
thoughtful reflection by Bishop Rowan Williams of Monmouth
(Wales), sought to "find a way forward for the leaders of the
Church," said plenary coordinator Bishop Victoria Matthews of
Edmonton (Canada).

A clash of faiths

Mano Rumalshah, Bishop of Peshawar in the Church of Pakistan, the
sessions's first presenter, spoke of deadly dangers that daily
face Christians in regions where Islamic teaching is law. 

Bishop Rumalshah recalled the May 6 death of Roman Catholic
Bishop John Joseph. His last word's were ". . . in protest
against [the Blasphemy Law] and other black laws, and in the name
of my oppressed Christian people, secularism and democracy, I am
taking my life."

The bishop's death generated "acute public debate on the morality
of his action, because in common language, what he did is called
suicide," Bishop Rumalshah said. "But is it possible to think of
Bishop John laying down his life as an act in the same fashion as
that of Jesus? Isn't this also in keeping with the call, 'take up
your cross and follow me?'"

Bishop Rumalshah told of a 15-year-old Christian schoolgirl who
was accused of insulting the holy prophet of Islam in her
classroom. More than 200 local Muslim clerics signed an oath to
kill her. 

"With the consent of her family and, perhaps, even her religious
leaders, she converted to Islam to save her life," he said.

Two of his parishioners in a part of the diocese where Islamic
Law is fully enforced were offered a stark choice - to be
converted to Islam and accepted as a lawful husband and wife, or
to be tried under an adultery ordinance and be liable to capital
punishment. They became Muslims.

"In both these cases, there is a deep sense of guilt and remorse,
and even spiritual strain," Bishop Rumalshah said. "In these
situations of apparent apostasy, what needs to be our moral and
pastoral responsibility?" he asked. At the same time, Christian
converts are legally disinherited of all possessions and
ostracized for the rest of their lives. There are rumors of a
proposal to make both the baptizer and the baptized liable for
prosecution under the draconian Blasphemy Law, which usually
means death.

"Should we be encouraging public baptisms of those converting
from Islam in such a climate? Or do we make 'secret believers' -
a choice I once ridiculed, but now I am struggling to accept," he
said. "As always, what we need are new signposts for our
generation which are applicable in our respective contexts."

Violence as a way of life

Bishop Daniel Zindo of the Diocese of Yambio in the Sudan brought
many in the room to tears with his story of how murderous
violence erupted in his home.

"Here was our son-in-law who rebelled against us and killed my
wife Grace Zindo, our son Yoane Khalifa, and then thirty minutes
later killed himself too!" he said, as gasps echoed in the room.
Minutes before the violence erupted the bishop had left to make a
pastoral call.

Bishop Zindo placed his story in the context of the culture of
violence created by 32 years of civil war, a culture in which a
God of peace can quickly seem irrelevant. 

"Killing human beings . . . has become a game of interest only,"
he said. Personal and social violence are profoundly related.
Violence in a society, "because it rises in the human heart, so
easily finds a way of becoming violence in our own homes."

He asked, "How does one raise children and grandchildren who have
witnessed killing and suicide to believe in a God who seeks
peace, and our Lord who is our peace? How does one proclaim the
good news of God's love to our own families - let alone to a
society - who have experienced first hand a culture of violence?"

Video probes divergent views

In the video, prepared by Trinity Parish, Wall Street in New York
City, actors related the stories of 10 unnamed people who have
confronted difficult personal dilemmas.

 "My ancestors lived here long before the English and French came
to our shores," began the story of a Native Canadian. "We lost
our land and rivers, some say we even lost our souls. . . The 
missionaries said that we must not follow our own spiritual
traditions, but must worship their God. 'The white man brought
the Bible, but we got the church.' Our culture vanished, and we
were left with nothing. The government has apologized and offered
compensation, but for many of us, the question remains, `Who am
I?" 

The narrator asked, "As bishops, can we stand alongside cultures
within our culture?"

A woman said, "My husband and I once served as missionaries in
the Far East. Today we live with a baby girl we adopted from an
orphanage in Beijing. The orphanages in China are filled with
hundreds of thousands of female children. When they become
teenagers, these girls are forced to live on their own as
peasants or prostitutes. My mind is seared by the memory of our
arrival at the orphanage, a groups of girls ages 7 to 10,
smiling, laughing, waving to us from a balcony. Hours later,
departing with a six-month-old cradled in my arms, the same girls
stood by . . .in silence."

The narrator asked, "As bishops, are we able to provide
leadership?" 

A gay man living openly with a partner sings in the choir in his
parish church, but does not feel welcome. He senses that some
parishioners wish he would go away, "that a man who does not
conceal his sexual preference, who might ask a blessing upon our
union, the love we share, does not belong in their church."

But a priest feels called to counsel gay men to resist their
orientation. "'Do not lose heart,' I counseled them. 'Genuine
intimacy between two men - without physical contact - is
possible. Through prayer, you will find the courage and
discipline to share your love, yet be celibate, faithful to one
another and to the church you love.'"

The narrator asked, "As bishops, what message do we want to send
to the gay community?"

Other stories raised the issue of AIDS in the context of an
African culture that calls for the widow of a man who died of
AIDS to marry his brother, who also may be HIV positive, of
euthanasia and assisted suicide. 

Between each of the sets of stories, the video asked, "Will the
Church help show the way forward?"

Making decisions more than a supermarket choice

In an address that prompted rousing applause and a standing
ovation from participants in the plenary hall where he spoke,
Bishop Williams offered a concluding focus on how the church
could make moral decisions.

Bishop Williams reminded his colleagues that making decisions is
not as simple as "being faced with a series of clear
alternatives, as if we were standing in front of the supermarket
shelf." Decisions, instead, are "coloured" by the sort of
decision-maker. "The choice is not made," said Bishop Williams,
"by a will operating in the abstract, but by someone who is used
to thinking and imagining in a certain way."

He referred to the writing of Welsh philosopher Rush Rhees and
British Catholic theologian and moralist Herbert McCabe and
summarized their points by stating "[it is] not that ethics is a
matter of the individual's likes or dislikes, but, on the
contrary, that it is a difficult discovering of something about
yourself, a discovering of what has already shaped the person you
are and is moulding you in this or that direction." For
Christians, he said, this discovery is the recognition of the
person who is shaped by membership in the Church, the Body of
Christ. 

Christians make moral decisions in the same way as other people,
he asserted. "That is to say, they don't automatically have more
information about moral truth," said Williams. "What is different
is the relations in which they are involved, relations that shape
a particular kind of reaction to their environment and each
other." 

These Christian relations also carry with them a certain
standard. How does any proposed style or policy of action
"manifest the selfless holiness of God in Christ, and how can it
serve as a gift that builds up the community called to show that
holiness in its corporate life?"

Recognising different accents

Local Christian communities, however, "gradually and subtly come
to take for granted slightly different things, to speak of God
with a marked local accent," Bishop Williams said. He drew
attention to the difficulties and struggles, which grow out of
encounters "with a different accents." Bishop Williams reminded
his colleagues that these differing accents belong to members of
the same Body - to people whom "we meet at the Lord's Table." 

Bishop Williams challenged the bishops and all members of the
Communion to "listen when someone says 'This is what I see - look
with me'." He reminded his colleagues to look not only at their
own selves and cultures in their decision-making, but also to
remember their commitment to belonging with, listening to, and
learning from Christian strangers - past, present and future. 

"I am not sure what or how I can learn from them," Bishop
Williams shared honestly. "They may frighten me - they do
frighten me - by the difference of their priorities and their
discernment.  (And remember that on both sides lies fear!)  But
because of where we all stand at the Lord's Table, in the Body, I
have to listen to them and to struggle to make recognisable sense
to them."

For a complete text of Bishop Williams Paper see Lambeth
Conference Communications Press Release #35.

For further information, contact:

Lambeth Conference Communications
Canterbury Business School
University of Kent at Canterbury
Telephone: 01227 827348/9
Fax: 01227 828085
Mobile: 0374 800212

http://www.lambethconference.org