[Dialogue] Spong's take on the Anglican "crisis"

[KroegerD@aol.com]

December 8, 2004
International Anglicanism's Flirtation with Ignorance! 

The commission set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to 
determine how the Anglican Communion can maintain its unity while recognizing 
wide diversity of opinion about homosexuality has, with great fanfare, released 
its report. It is long, convoluted and about what one would expect from a 
frightened leadership that thinks that the problem is one of maintaining unity 
rather than seeking to discern the truth. Those who called for this study do not 
appear to understand that a church unified in ignorant devotion to its 
continuing homophobia is hardly a church worthy of much attention by anyone. This 
report is, therefore, nothing more than a pathetic ecclesiastical attempt at 
damage control. It will fail in its stated purpose today. It will, I fear, be 
nothing but an enormous source of embarrassment in the future.
The deficiency in this report begins in its inability to distinguish between 
the problem and the symptoms. The crisis confronting our church was not caused 
either by the ordination of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, to 
be the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, or by the authorization in the 
Anglican Church of Canada of blessings for same sex unions. The real damage 
needing to be addressed was the blatant prejudice and hostility toward homosexual 
persons that occurred at the Lambeth Conference of the world's Anglican Bishops 
in 1998. This once every 10 years event, convened at the invitation of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, was overwhelmed by a homophobic combination of first 
world Anglican evangelicals with third world Bible quoting Anglican 
fundamentalists, both being orchestrated by the inept leadership of the then Archbishop of 
Canterbury, George Carey. That particular alliance possessed more zeal than 
wisdom. The ensuing debate at that gathering reached a level of rudeness that I 
have never witnessed before in church circles. It was punctuated by hisses 
and catcalls made when those, who opposed the prejudice present in that 
gathering, tried to speak. George Carey violated every protocal. He sat on the stage 
in full view of his supporters gleefully leading the vote with his raised hand, 
as the amendments grew more and more severe. He then went to a microphone to 
say how pleased he was "that scripture had been upheld" in the vote, only to 
be reminded that the vote had not yet been taken! This was the first time in 
the three of these conferences I attended where bishops were actively lobbied in 
an effort fueled with American dollars, primarily from Texas. The progressive 
voices of the Church were so battered by their conservative opponents that 
for all practical purposes they withdrew from the fight. This conference ripped 
apart a report, adopted with much struggle and compromise in its own section 
assigned to deal with issues of homosexuality. That section had worked out a 
tenuous consensus with which no one was satisfied, but all sides were on board, 
only to see its work gutted in the plenary sessions by a series of hostile 
amendments until the final resolution was overtly hostile, mean-spirited and 
deeply divisive. It was a Conference in which none of the persons who had both the 
office and the ability to offer effective leadership said a word. That 
included the primates of the United States, Frank Griswold and of Canada, Michael 
Peers, as well as the leading Welsh bishop, Rowan Williams, who even then was 
being talked about as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. He chose to play it 
safe not putting the capital he had been building in his quest for Anglicanism's 
top post at risk. That should have been a tip off to those who supported him, 
as to what sort of Archbishop he would be.
When the voice of one of these recognized leaders might have made a 
difference all were strangely silent. Others like the Archbishop of Capetown, 
Njongokullu Ndungane and the Primus of Scotland, Richard Holloway tried to fill that 
vacuum, but were shouted down. Finally, it was a Conference in which the 
majority of the world's Anglican bishops spoke about the Bible in a way that 
indicated an unawareness of the biblical scholarship that has emerged in Germany, the 
U.K. and the United States over the last 200 years.
Archbishop Carey, in a perfect example of the 'Peter Principle,' sought to 
impose his narrow evangelical worldview on the whole Communion, not seeming to 
recognize that this international church is made up of wide cultural diversity. 
Some branches of the Anglican Communion, for example, live in cultures where 
women occupy top positions in law, politics, business and education; while 
other branches of this worldwide communion live in nations that practice polygamy 
and female circumcision and where education is not provided for female 
children. No church anywhere can survive an attempted imposition of cultural 
uniformity on so wide a gap. Attitudes toward homosexuality run a similar gamut. In 
the United States gay males from both political parties are elected to the 
Congress and serve as ambassadors. In parts of Africa and Southeast Asia an openly 
homosexual person runs the risk of being murdered.
At an earlier at Lambeth Conference in 1988 the issue of women bishops 
threatened to tear this Communion apart, but the skillful leadership of the then 
Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, steered the bishops through these choppy 
seas with a grace that was transforming. Runcie, who did not himself support 
the ordination of women, nonetheless lived in a very large world and knew how 
to use the power of his office to help the Communion live creatively inside 
the inevitable tensions of an idea that could not be stopped.
George Carey had an opportunity to emulate that example, but his narrow 
evangelical mind wanted a vote to affirm his own negativity about homosexuality. He 
got it, but that vote was a hollow victory and its bigotry made our present 
divisions inevitable. He did not understand that rising consciousness can never 
be deterred by majority vote. Furthermore he wanted every province of the 
Communion to agree not to pursue any steps aimed at including homosexual people 
in the full life of the church until a worldwide consensus had formed and all 
provinces could move together. It was a familiar delaying tactic and an 
impossible demand. Anglicanism's most backward dioceses, whether in Sydney or Chad, 
can never bind the consensus on this subject now growing in Western countries. 
Only one who imagines that he possesses the truth of God, could have thought 
that a proper tactic. That is the fatal evangelical flaw. 
This Commission decided mistakenly that they were dealing with an issue of 
disunity when they were in fact dealing with the evil of prejudice. That was 
clear when their solution was to invite those churches that have banished their 
homophobic prejudices to consider apologizing to those parts of the church that 
were offended by their inclusiveness. That would be like asking those nations 
that have thrown off the evil of segregation to apologize for hurting the 
consciences of the segregationists. It was an inconceivable request. Whenever 
growth occurs there is always conflict and dislocation. The world would still be 
practicing slavery, child labor and second class status for women had not a 
new consciousness confronted our prejudices in a movement that always destroys 
the unity of the old consensus.
In an effort to appear evenhanded, this report also sought to speak a 
critical word to those Third World bishops now seeking to destabilize Anglican Church 
life in countries open to gay and lesbian people. This was also a meaningless 
gesture since the very nature of the Anglican Communion affirms the 
independence of each national body. This means that this Commission has no power to 
order anything, and because of this no one will pay much attention to it anyway.
Finally this Commission in an attempt to force this Communion into a sense of 
unity, called upon the 38 national branches of the Anglican Communion to sign 
a covenant expressing their support for something called, 'current Anglican 
teaching.' That remarkable request was surely designed to bring gales of 
laughter to anyone familiar with Anglican history! In a Church that has never 
recognized an infallible pope or an inerrant Bible, where is current Anglican 
teaching enshrined? Is it in the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference that has no 
authority and in which only bishops vote? Would those Anglicans who have 
engaged critical biblical scholarship be asked to subscribe to the pre-modern 
mindset of some third world countries that oppose evolution, interpret the Virgin 
Birth as literal biology or view the Resurrection as a physical resuscitation? 
Would we destroy the tradition of the great Anglican scholars of the past and 
try to place 21st century minds once again into the pre-modern straitjacket of 
the 39 Articles of Religion that formed the Elizabethan Settlement? Would we 
institute an Anglican version of the Inquisition in order to restrain our 
scholars? Would we want to become a Church that no longer produced Ian Ramsey, 
William Temple, John Elbridge Hines, James Pike or John A.T. Robinson? These ideas 
are too ludicrous to contemplate. Robin Eames, the Anglican Primate of 
Ireland who chaired this Commission, knows these facts better than most. Yet this 
idea was included which means this report was never intended to be more than a 
public confession that its purpose was not to address the crisis but to use 
rhetoric as a smokescreen to soothe hurt feelings. As such the report is a 
dishonest effort to achieve cheap unity by sacrificing reality and truth.
The Anglican Communion had a relatively minor crisis as it watched a new 
consciousness about homosexuality struggling to be born in the face of ancient 
ignorance and prejudice. This Commission and the leadership that requested its 
formation has turned this minor crisis into a full scale disaster that if heeded 
will move Anglicanism toward the literal mindedness that now threatens not 
just Christianity, but religious systems all over the world. Death comes in many 
forms. The inability to embrace new reality is one of them.
-- John Shelby Spong
Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong
Jyank15 via the Internet writes: 
I have followed your thread from Romans 1:4 the "designation" passage. I had 
missed its importance until you pointed it out in Michigan. Then I read in 
Colossians chapter 1 that Paul says Christ Jesus created everything. What led 
Paul to make this comment in Colossians? At first glance it seems at odds with 
his statement about designation. If this is a further discovery of an ongoing 
revelation then would not that displace the weight of the designation statement? 
Had it been two different writers, this would not bug me so much. 
Dear Bill, 
You raise a good question. There are, however, two things that need to be 
settled before proceeding:
1) Did Paul write Colossians? I would say that among New Testament scholars, 
the Pauline authorship of Colossians is no better than about 50/50, and is 
declining rapidly.
2) I do not think that Paul supported the idea of a preexistent Jesus. The 
Christ concept was preexistent but Jesus only fulfilled that concept. That is a 
crucial distinction that I do not believe was embraced by the early Christian 
from the time the New testament was written to the day in the 4th and 5th 
centuries when creeds were adopted and the doctrinal and dogmatic phases of 
Christianity were put into place.
This pre-existent theme is present in Philippians, which Paul did write. It 
is also present in Hebrews and in the 4th Gospel. The subtle distinction 
between a pre-existent Christ concept, which was used to interpret the Jesus of 
history in developing creedal theology, and the meaning of the human Jesus has 
been badly blurred. The best treatment I have ever read on this question is "The 
Human Face of God" by John A. T. Robinson
I commend that book to you.
-- John Shelby Spong

Dick Kroeger
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