Bill Clinton isn’t the only one who’s apologized (or feigned an apology) for sex this summer. Anglican bishops formed their own mea culpa choir at the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England in July and August. Most of their regret was sexrelated.
Every 10 years, Anglican bishops from all over the world gather in Canterbury to discuss matters of importance to the 76-million strong church. Although the conference has no controlling power over the U.S. Episcopal church or the Anglican churches in other nations, it sets a broad direction. This year, the gathering lasted three weeks. Over 750 bishops attended, about 130 of them Americans.
It was a Yankee who precipitated the first round of apologies, even before the conference opened. In an interview in the Church of England Newspaper in July, John Spong, bishop of Newark, portrayed himself as a scientifically minded modern intellectual and dismissed Africans as “fundamentalists” who have “moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity.” Probably the most radical Anglican bishop, Spong not only advocates same-sex marriages and the ordination of homosexuals, but also seeks to jettison basic Christian doctrines such as the divinity and resurrection of Christ. His views put him squarely at odds with the leaders of the dynamic and growing Anglican church in Africa.
The first apology came from retired American bishop Alex Dickson. At a pre-Lambeth spiritual retreat for some 400 bishops and others, Dickson asked the 50-plus Americans to join him in confessing how grieved and ashamed they were to Spong’s insult to African Christians. “He has insulted you. We are ashamed for him, we are ashamed for ourselves,” Dickson said. “We ask your forgiveness, and we assure you he does not speak for us.” The Africans responded by embracing the Americans in individual acts of reconciliation.
Spong himself came under increasing pressure to apologize. In a public debate, a (white) South African bishop accused him of “intellectual racism.” Spong made matters worse by reiterating his remarks. It was his experience in Kenya, he said, that “people who were relatively uneducated” were coming from “animistic religions” into “a very superstitious kind of Christianity.” This brought outrage from the Kenyans. Bishop Eliud Wabukala said his church’s converts to Christianity included thousands of university graduates. “Put my name down,” he told a reporter from the American paper United Voice. “If he wants a scholarly paper, I am happy to challenge him.”
Spong tried again. He had only been attempting to clarify how cultural differences between the developed and developing worlds require that the Gospel be communicated differently. “In the process of saying that,” he explained, “I’ve been heard to insult Africans, for which I am really sorry.”
A second contretemps also flared before the conference. Duncan Buchanan, another (white) South African bishop and the chairman of the conference “subsection” on sexuality, unilaterally invited representatives of outside caucuses of gay and lesbian Anglicans “to tell their stories.” Participants in the sexuality subsection protested Buchanan’s highhandedness and preferential treatment of pro-gay advocates. If any personal testimony were to be heard, they said, it should include that of former gays and celibate gays. After a lengthy debate, the invitation was rescinded by a 2-1 vote. Describing himself as “shell-shocked and traumatized,” Buchanan apologized to his fellow bishops for failing to consult them. (The canceled hearings then took place unofficially — and English bishop Peter Selby seized the occasion to apologize for the cancellation.)
When it finally convened, the Lambeth Conference dealt with a wide range of issues, from international debt to technology to religious persecution. But sex was the most riveting topic, and the most divisive. The media spokesmen for the conference frequently sounded like Clinton White House aides, asking plaintively, “Can’t we put this sex stuff behind us and talk about real issues?”
During the last week of the conference, after prolonged back-room machinations and fervent prayer, the bishops considered a resolution on human sexuality, along with a series of amendments. The majority thought the first draft too weak and voted 2-1 to add the phrase “rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.”
As finally adopted, the resolution “upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage.” It warns against blessing same-sex unions or ordaining those involved in them. It condemns “irrational fear of homosexuals” (amended from “homophobia”), commits to listening to the experience of homosexuals, and assures all “baptized, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation,” that they are “full members of the Body of Christ.” The resolution was adopted by a resounding 526-70, with 45 abstentions. Interestingly, although the presiding bishop of the Episcopal church, Frank Griswold, abstained, a majority of the American bishops voted for the resolution — despite the fact that the U.S. church had foisted this debate on Lambeth in the first place by tolerating, though not officially sanctioning, the ordination of practicing homosexuals in its more liberal dioceses.
Perhaps conscious of the offense Bishop Spong had caused, the American bishops, both conservative and liberal, were unusually quiet during the debates on sexuality. Robert Johnson, bishop of Western North Carolina, told the United Voice, “We realize that the rest of the world thinks this is our issue. We want to enter this in a good spirit and not come on like gang-busters.” Conservative leader John Howe, bishop of Central Florida, explained his silence saying, “I wanted to be sensitive to the charges that the Americans always come to throw their weight around.”
Nevertheless, some American bishops did speak. Catherine Roskam, bishop of New York and one of eight American women bishops at Lambeth, opposed the amendment condemning homosexual practice. A previous speaker from Nigeria had warned that condoning homosexuality would be evangelistic “suicide.” Roskam asserted that in her region, it was “evangelistic suicide” to condemn homosexual practice. Conservatives might have the votes to pass the amendment, she said, but it would be “a Pyrrhic victory, and we will have a divided church.” Bishop Catherine Waynick of Indianapolis also opposed the amendment, saying, “Our call is not to correctness. It is to love.”
The same horror of “correctness” in personal ethics may have motivated Bishop Griswold’s incomprehensible effort to explain the church’s “pluriform [pluralistic?] views.” This innovative wording was met with confusion and derision. One African bishop asked a reporter, perhaps not so innocently, whether it had anything to do with “chloroform.”
Most bishops were unapologetic about the final resolution on sexuality — which the London Times called a “surprisingly and uncharacteristically trenchant dismissal of the liberal position.” But there was no celebration, simply quiet relief. James Stanton, bishop of Dallas, who leads the conservative American Anglican Council, called the resolution “good news for the American church and for our ministry in American society.” He continued, “It is time for those bishops who seek to revise orthodox Christian teaching to submit to the mind of the whole church and the teaching of Scripture.”
Supporters of gays and lesbians were stunned by the vote. Richard Holloway, archbishop of Scotland, said, “I feel gutted, I feel betrayed, but the struggle will go on.” He characterized the archbishop of Canterbury’s speech supporting the resolution as “pathetic.” That created another firestorm, and so Holloway too apologized. He said he had been referring to the archbishop’s speech and its impact, not to the archbishop himself.
As the Lambeth Conference ended, Ronald Haines, bishop of Washington, D.C., made public a “Pastoral Statement to Lesbian and Gay Anglicans” signed by over 100 bishops, half of them Americans. The statement “apologized for any sense of rejection” that gays and lesbians felt because the Lambeth Conference had made it impossible for their voices to be adequately heard. The bishops pledged “to reflect, pray, and work for [homosexuals’] full inclusion in the life of the Church,” while acknowledging that the signers differed on what full inclusion meant.
Several other U.S. bishops were also quick to signal their dissent. Utah’s Carolyn Tanner Irish bemoaned an “undercurrent of fearfulness concerning homosexuality” that overshadowed the discussions at Lambeth. Jerry Winterrowd, bishop of Colorado, claimed his vote for the resolution was strictly pragmatic. “Frankly, the African church needed that vote to take back with them,” he said. “They are under a great deal of pressure politically because the Muslims are watching.”
What Westerners on the right and left are learning is that Anglicanism has been geographically and demographically transformed. Today’s statistically typical Anglican is not drinking tea in an English vicarage. She is a 26-year-old African mother of four. The largest Anglican church is in Nigeria. The Western churches were vastly overrepresented at Lambeth; Stephen Noll of Trinity seminary near Pittsburgh noted that the average American bishop represented up to 10,000 lay men and women, the average Nigerian bishop up to 200,000. Despite the imbalance, the orthodox Anglicanism espoused by Africans, Asians, and South Americans carried the day at Lambeth. The center of Anglicanism is now in the southern hemisphere.
One result is dismay for those who long championed multiculturalism and Third World causes. Picture these liberal American bishops, who came of age in the sixties and once fancied themselves on the progressive edge of every noble cause. The “oppressed” whose plight they so long championed have taken over their church and rejected their liberal legacy. History is passing this generation of clerics by, and they hardly know what’s happened. Perhaps they will yet come to appreciate the orthodox view: that, for all the pomp a group of Anglican bishops can still muster, the church is ultimately guided not by their opinions but by an altogether different sovereign Power.
Diane Knippers is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
