In a comment on this post which repeats my inconsequential Tweets so that posterity will remember them. asks: Why are you Tweeting when Rowan Atkinson Rowan Williams is addressing the “gays in the clergy” issue???? We want your views. What is referring to is the remark by His Grace the Most Rev’d and Rt. Hon. Rowan Douglas Williams, PC, by the Grace of God Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Metropolitan of the Province of Canterbury and Primate of All England that he has no problem with gay bishops as long as they remain celibate.
This is not news. From the beginning of this controversy (at least in England) with the appointment of Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading in the diocese of Oxford, it has been clear that in the opinion of all except for the most rabid of Evangelicals celibate gay men (in England) or lesbians (in other more enlightened parts of the world) may be consecrated bishops in the local Anglican churches. But the Archbishop says that his major objection to non-celibate lesbian or gay clergy is that it is divisive in the Anglican Communion because of theological objections in some provinces thereof.
Now, the first difficulty with this is that, for example, the ordination of woman deacons and priests is not allowed in all provinces of the Anglican Communion (South East Asia, for example) or in all areas of all provinces (the diocese of Sydney in the Anglican Church of Australia does not ordain women as priests, only as deacons, while the rest of that province not only ordains women as deacons and priests, but consecrates them as bishops).
If Rowan were to be consistent, he would have to hold that the ordination of women should not have gone ahead until there was a consensus in all provinces that woman’s ordination was permissible. He does not so hold, and points to a resolution of the Lambeth Conference that such ordinations are permissible under “local option”. Well, the Anglican Communion is a collection of autonomous provinces, only one of which (the Church of England by law Established) answers to the Archbishop of Canterbury. If local option is good enough for permitting woman’s ordination, it should be good enough for the ordination and consecration of lesbians and gay men.
The second difficulty is that the Archbishop threw Dr. John to the Evangelical wolves when objections were raised to his becoming a bishop. Dr. John avers (and we have no evidence to the contrary) that he has been in a celibate relationship for many years, and I believe he is telling the truth. Thus while on the one hand the Archbishop is saying that celibate gay men may be consecrated as bishops, and on the other he persuaded Dr. John to withdraw his acceptance of appointment because of the noisy Evangelicals in the Church of England who were against it. Dr. John is now Dean of St. Albans, and was in the running for Bishop of Southwark until the Archbishop (who presided over the committee that recommends appointments of Bishops to the Prime Minister) reportedly vetoed his inclusion on the list.
What the Archbishop is showing is a tendency to throw away his theological opinions when he senses that they are a threat to the unity of the Anglican Communion or of the Church of England. This results in a great case of cognitive dissonance—he has previously expressed in his writings and teaching the opinion that he sees no theological objections to the full inclusion of lesbians and gay men in the life of the Church. When one believes one thing and does another, this creates a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety in a person. Thus the next bit of my post, some of which is copied from a post I made to another venue.
I saw a news item this weekend that stated that the Archbishop of Canterbury will not serve until he is obliged to retire (age 70 in the Church of England).
This is good news for the C of E and the Anglican Communion. What worries me is that the Archbishop (now 60) will retire at or before his 65th birthday. That would mean that his successor is chosen by the current Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron.
I have discovered that, reversing the decision of Gordon Brown to only require one name for episcopal appointments, Cameron has gone back to the historic tradition of requiring two names from the Appointments Committee, from which Cameron will pick one to send to the Queen for appointment. There are rumours (which I am discounting, but which may be true) that the two names that Southwark sent to the Prime Minister have been sent back, one for being too liberal, one for not fitting the profile of the Diocese. I do not think that this could have happened without it being announced, as the Appointments Committee would have to reconvene to send two more names (as happened when Tony Blair, crypto-Roman PM at the time, sent back the two names for Liverpool early in his premiership). However, it is still a possibility.
The trick to getting the Prime Minister to appoint the man you want to become Bishop when you must submit two names is to submit the name of your preferred candidate first, and submitting second the name of someone so obviously unsuitable for the post that the Prime Minister will inevitably pick the one you prefer. However, this has boomeranged in the past. In 1990, when Archbishop Runcie retired and two names were submitted to be his successor, there was one candidate whose name was submitted first (there are rumours around of who that might have been), and a second name so obviously unsuitable that Margaret Thatcher would not appoint him. The second name was that of the relatively new Bishop of Bath and Wells, one George Carey. He retired as Archbishop of Canterbury in the early part of the 21st Century and is now in the House of Lords as the Rt Rev’d and Rt. Hon. Lord Carey of Clifton. PC, DD.
The successor to Rowan Williams should be someone who is a consensus-builder, has a truly Anglican view of the Communion, and does not think of himself (or, perhaps by then, herself) as an Anglican Pope. Cameron is unlikely to look with favour on such a candidate.
By consensus-builder I do not mean someone who tries to find the lowest-common denominator among the Provinces and settle on that. By consensus-builder I mean someone who is able to forcefully lead, with persuasive arguments, robust debate, and vigourous advocacy of a consistent theological worldview. Williams was thought (by some) to be that person. Instead, he is a very poor communicator, inclined to overlong and overcomplex replies to relatively simple questions as well as a misguided view of what the Archbishop’s position in the Anglican Communion should be (he is not some Anglican “pope”) and a terribly misguided view of what the Anglican Communion is (it is not a unified worldwide church, like the Roman Catholic Church, but a federation of autonomous provinces who look to the Church of England or the Scottish Episcopal Church as their “mother” churches but who, on the whole, manage their own affairs in their own provinces).
By the time Williams retires I believe that the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Church in Wales, and perhaps the churches of Australia and New Zealand will be out of the orbit of the Archbishop of Canterbury. But the wrong person chosen as Archbishop will have a devastating effect on the Church of England. In 5 years the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, will be 66 and thus probably too old to take it. The current Bench of Bishops is conspicuously thin on the ground of good diocesan bishops. If Nick Baines (Suffragan Bishop of Croydon in the Diocese of Southwark) has gotten a diocese and settled in by then, he would make a good candidate. But we need to be very wary of a new ABC. After all, we have suffered since 1990 with two very unsuitable Archbishops and a third one in a row would mean misgovernment of the Church for at least 30 years.
A humourous postscript: A Welsh politician has upbraided Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales, for stating in an interview that if he is with Rowan Williams and wants to say something in private, they switch to speaking Welsh. The politico says that this reinforces the stereotype of non-Welsh people entering a pub in northern Wales and hearing everyone switch to speaking Welsh as soon as they see that strangers have entered. That was exactly my experience the one time I went to north Wales, so perhaps it’s more than a stereotype.
