Crisis in the Communion

The Rev. Richard Kirker, an Anglican priest, laughs when he remembers his confrontation with a Nigerian cleric. The leader of the international Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement was attending a gathering in London when the bishop laid his hands on him in an attempt to “cure” his sinful homosexuality. “He was trying to exorcise the demon in me,” Kirker says, chuckling.

He sees nothing funny, though, in the “homophobic” attitudes that threaten to split his church. The long-simmering debate over homosexuality and the clergy erupted into open battle when the American Episcopal Church, part of the global Anglican family, confirmed an openly gay priest, the Rev. Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire, the first such appointment in church history. Liberals welcomed the news as a victory for Christian tolerance over prejudice. But orthodox leaders responded very differently. To them, Robinson’s elevation was an affront to Biblical teachings – and a challenge to their own standing within the church.

The row has resonance far beyond the church’s traditional heartland. Once upon a time, Anglicanism was largely an affair for the English and their Episcopal cousins in America. Over its 450-year history the church could often count on assured ties with the establishment – the queen remains head of the Church of England – and healthy financial support. Today’s church looks very different, however. In much of the northern world, pews are emptying fast. Churchgoing among Anglicans in the United Kingdom has fallen 7.5% over the past 10 years. By some reckonings, the Church of England still ranks as the largest in Anglicanism, but for many, observance stretches little beyond Christmas Day worship. Only the conservative-minded evangelicals – enemies of the gay cause – have managed to lift their numbers.

Instead, it’s Britain’s former colonies, especially in Africa, that now supply most of the church’s strength. Like other African churches, Roman Catholic and Protestant, the Anglicans have seen congregations swell. “It is often said that the typical Anglican is now black, female and under thirty,” says Gregory Cameron of the Anglican Communion in London. Nigeria is a case in point. Over the past 30 years the church has seen its membership there climb sevenfold to about 20 million, nearly ten times the figure for the United States.

That’s no help to the liberal churchmen of North America and the United Kingdom. The African leadership has stuck close to the conventional Bible-based teachings. For most of them, the answer to the question of homosexuality within the church is simple. It’s a resounding no.

The latest controversy is pushing the church toward the very showdown it’s long sought to avoid. Both in England and the United States, church officials have struggled to keep the peace by fudging messy compromises: gay priests in England, for instance, could be gay so long as they abstained from sex. Even in the upper ranks homosexuality has been tacitly condoned. The Right Rev. Thomas Shaw of Massachusetts calls it a climate of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” adding: “Gene Robertson won’t be the first bishop who is gay, just the first who is open about it.”

Conservatives have clearly grown impatient with this sort of equivocation. As they see it, the church has grown far too willing to put consensus above traditional right-and-wrong certainties. What’s needed, they say, is clear guidance from the church’s spiritual leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury. For the moment, that’s unlikely. The newly enthroned archbishop, the Right Rev. Rowan Williams, a former Cambridge theologian, must tread a fine line if he is to maintain unity. Already he is suspect in the traditionalist camp for his supposed pro-gay thinking.

Would failure to agree mean an inevitable rupture? For practical reasons alone this may not be the preferred solution of either side. Take the question of money. If the south has the numbers, the north has the cash. If more traditional southern churches were to break away from their liberal brethren, where would they get the funds to run the organization that only the northerners can provide? Furthermore, if any of the individual churches should split, who’d own the property? Who would a court deem to be the true Anglican with a right to inherit?

(From ‘Newsweek’, abridged)

Vocabulary. Now read the articles carefully, find the following words and word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Make it a particular point to use them in the further discussion of the problem.

Article 1. A pillar of society, the faithful, to run a business on the side, to go astray, a temple, religious tenets, to join the monkhood, a lapse, disillusionment, to fall prey to smth, to instill discipline (within smth), to defrock a monk, a novice, to smb’s chagrin, a council of elders, to be ordained.

Article 2. To confirm smb as (bishop), prejudice, to be an affront to …, to rank as …, conventional teaching(s), a controversy, to deem smb/smth to be …