wfn.org | Anglican struggles over homosexuali

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May 9, 1997
Episcopal News Service
Jim Solheim, Director
212-922-5385
ens@ecunet.org

97-1756
Anglican struggles over homosexuality take to an international stage

by James H. Thrall
        (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."

Carey reiterates traditional view
        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.

Claims of hypocrisy
        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."

The South speaks to the North
        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."

Canadian church re-evaluates position on sexuality
        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."

--James H. Thrall is deputy director of news and information for the
Episcopal Church.