Graceless Body Broken?
Rowan Williams Struggles to Save the Anglican Communion
by George Conger
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one must have a heart of stone to read of the death of the Episcopal Church without laughing. Homosexual bishops, crooked treasurers, litigious clergy, and conventions pleading for Mumia Abu-Jamal’s freedom offer diverting entertainment for those not found within its pale.
Over the past year, the Episcopal Church has elected a partnered homosexual man as bishop of New Hampshire and normalized homosexuality by allowing dioceses to create liturgies for blessing same-sex unions. The Anglican Church in Canada also has moved homosexuality from the sin to the blessing side of the ledger, voting at its June General Synod meeting to affirm the “integrity and sanctity” of homosexual relations. In response, 22 of the 38 Anglican provinces (the independent national churches) have either broken relations or declared themselves to be in “impaired communion” with portions of the two.
Meetings have been held, a commission formed, protests and anathemas issued, ecumenical relations shattered, and the ultimate decision placed in the hands of the archbishop of Canterbury. It has fallen to Rowan Williams to keep together a divided communion over a problem his predecessor, George Carey, called the “most critical issue facing the Church since the Reformation.”
Though it is tempting to dismiss liberal Anglicans as votaries of the “church of what’s happening now,” the madness of the Anglicans isn’t peculiar to the species. The disease is widespread, for the desire to be “relevant” has passed deep into the marrow of mainline Protestant Churches and portions of the Roman Catholic Church, turning the Apostle Paul’s dictum on its head: “Be ye conformed to this world” (cf. Rom. 12:2).
Fudge Factor
What will Rowan Williams do? How will he respond to the Anglican collapse of intellectual rigor and moral seriousness?
As of the writing of this article, the body tasked with providing options to him and the primates, the Lambeth Commission on Communion, has yet to submit its report. Though merely first among equals among the bishops of the communion—Williams’s ecclesial authority does not extend beyond the Province of Canterbury, which covers the southern half of England—his words will guide the primates in resolving the crisis facing the church.
All signs suggest that Williams will fudge the issue, playing the Dodo to the communion’s Alice, and pronounce, “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”
Though a few high-profile homosexual clerics may find their career prospects foreshortened, no group will be placed outside the church, and no one will be disciplined. Calls currently being made by African, Asian, and South American bishops to “kick out” the apostate American and Canadian bishops will go unheeded. Calls from American and Canadian bishops to discipline overseas bishops for “invading” their dioceses and planting orthodox congregations not subject to their local Episcopal oversight will also go unanswered.
George Conger , a priest of the Episcopal diocese of Central Florida and an honorary canon of St. Matthew?s Cathedral in Dallas, Texas, was accredited to the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil, for The Church of England Newspaper and the Living Church magazine.
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