Lambeth

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Global South Anglican leaders try to push past LGBTQ wars and into future (Part II)

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Global South Anglican leaders try to push past LGBTQ wars and into future (Part II)

Want to know how to cause a church split?

The deepest fault lines -- sex, money and pride -- have been obvious for centuries, said Archbishop Kanishka Raffel of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Australia.

"We use nationality or age or gender or wealth or clothing or accent or profession or politics -- to show off and communicate who we are and what sort of person we will or will not engage with," said Raffel, who was born in London, of Sri Lankan descent, and raised Buddhist.

"God's people are frail and very human. We bear the marks of weakness and humiliation. We can be loveless, faithless, tolerant of the intolerable and wretchedly self-satisfied. … God is angry about the abuse of people that comes through sexual immorality, greed and hateful, deceitful and cruel speech. We are not surprised."

For decades, he acknowledged, the 42 churches in the Anglican Communion have been rocked by divisions over biblical authority and colonial-era ecclesiastical structures -- with LGBTQ disputes grabbing headlines.

During the recent Global Anglican Future Conference, held in Kigali, Rwanda, Raffel was one of several bishops -- 315 attended, from 52 nations -- who stressed that traditionalists now need to look forward. It's time to focus on life in their rapidly growing churches, while dedicating less time and energy to clashes with declining churches in England, America, Canada and elsewhere.

This will, Raffel stressed, require looking in the mirror.

"We have been engaged in decades long conversation about sexual immorality. But we have often focused on one form of sexual sin, to the neglect of sexual sins which perhaps are more common among us and just as displeasing to God," he said. "How many women ... have shed rivers of tears over the way their sexuality has been misused by others? I suppose it would be millions. There is a self-serving blind spot of which we must repent, a log in our own eyes with which we are yet to deal. Lord, have mercy."

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Was this news? Global South Anglicans try to cut some Canterbury ties (Part I)

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Was this news? Global South Anglicans try to cut some Canterbury ties (Part I)

After a half-century of decline, the U.S. Episcopal Church has 1.5 million members, and its average weekly attendance was just above 500,000 before COVID-19 and 300,000 afterwards.

After decades of explosive growth, the Anglican Church of Nigeria claims about 18 million members (others say 8 million), and the Center for Global Christianity near Boston estimates it has 22 million active participants in worship.

Caught in the middle of these two trends is the Most Reverend Justin Welby, by Divine Providence the 105th Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and the "first among equals" among bishops in the 42 churches in the Anglican Communion. While his own flock claims 26 million baptized members, about 600,000 attend weekly services.

Now, Global South church leaders -- representing about 75% of Anglicans who frequent pews -- have decided that it's time to start cutting ties between the "Canterbury Communion" and the rest of the Anglican Communion.

“We have no confidence that the Archbishop of Canterbury nor the other Instruments of Communion led by him … are able to provide a godly way forward that will be acceptable to those who are committed to the truthfulness, clarity, sufficiency and authority of Scripture," warned the Global Anglican Future Conference, which met April 17-21 in Kigali, Rwanda. GAFCON IV drew 1,302 delegates from 52 nations, including 315 bishops.

Meeting together, leaders of GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches said they "can no longer recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Instrument of Communion, the 'first among equals' of the Primates. The Church of England has chosen to impair her relationship with the orthodox provinces in the Communion."

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Some Anglican Communion fights are beginning to look like Black vs. White issues

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Some Anglican Communion fights are beginning to look like Black vs. White issues

There was nothing unusual about Nigerian Archbishop Henry Ndukuba leading the 2021 dedication rites for Holy Trinity Cathedral Church, which was packed with Nigerian Anglicans and a dozen or so bishops.

But this historic service was held in Houston and the cathedral is not part of the Diocese of Texas or the U.S. Episcopal Church. Some clergy at this Church of Nigeria North American Mission event were recognized as Anglicans by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Some were not.

This puzzle became more complicated recently during Lambeth 2022, which Nigeria boycotted, along with the churches of Uganda and Rwanda. Other Global South bishops, during Lambeth standoffs with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby over the status of doctrines on marriage and sex, declined to receive Holy Communion with openly gay and lesbian bishops.

"There is a profound asymmetric quality to the Anglican Communion, where the voice of the bulk of its membership is either absent or muted," said the Rev. David Goodhew of St. Barnabas Church in Middlesborough, England. He is the author of a series of articles about African Anglicanism for Covenant, the weblog of The Living Church, an independent Anglican publication founded in 1878.

"If one adds up the number of bishops who didn't share Holy Communion at Lambeth … that is a very large number," he said. "I have been startled by the number of descriptions that said this Lambeth was a success. I don't know how one makes that claim when it would appear the bulk of the Anglican Communion's bishops couldn't come together to receive Communion. That looks like a disaster."

Bottom line: Global South Anglicans are experiencing a "volcano of growth" and remain "at loggerheads" with the shrinking churches of the United Kingdom, North America and other western nations. While most Global South bishops serve growing flocks -- roughly 75% of active worshipers in the 77-million-member Anglican Communion -- many western bishops lead what Goodhew called "micro-dioceses" with under 1,000 active members or "mini-dioceses" with fewer than 5,000.

The Church of Nigeria, meanwhile, claims 17 million members and the Center for Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, near Boston, estimates active participants at 22 million. The other churches skipping Lambeth 2022 were Uganda, with 10 million members, and Rwanda, with 1 million members.

The Church of England remains Anglicanism's power hub. It has 26 million members, but 2019 weekly attendance was about 679,000 -- before the COVID-19 crisis.

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Painful Lambeth 2022 reality: Anglican bishops cannot 'walk together' to their altars

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Painful Lambeth 2022 reality: Anglican bishops cannot 'walk together' to their altars

While Canterbury is urging Anglicans to keep "walking together," the 2022 Lambeth Conference demonstrated that many of the Anglican Communion's bishops can no longer even receive the Eucharist together.

Doctrinal conflicts over biblical authority and sexuality have raged for decades, with growing churches in the Global South clashing with the shrinking, but wealthy, churches in England, America and other Western regions. During this 12-day conference, which ended Sunday (August 8), conservatives from Africa, Asia and elsewhere declined to receive Holy Communion with openly gay and lesbian bishops. Several provinces -- including the massive Church of Nigeria -- boycotted Lambeth 2022 altogether.

"For the large majority of the Anglican Communion the traditional understanding of marriage is something that is understood, accepted, and without question, not only by bishops but their entire church," said Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, in a mid-conference address. "To question this teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries would make the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack."

Bishops in the Anglican minority, he added, "have not arrived lightly at their ideas. … They are not careless about Scripture. They do not reject Christ. But they have come to a different view on sexuality after long prayer, deep study and reflection on understandings of human nature. For them, to question this different teaching is unthinkable."

Throughout Lambeth 2022, the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches -- representing about 75% of Anglican church attendance -- pushed to reaffirm a 1998 Lambeth resolution that "homosexual practice" is "incompatible with Scripture," while also urging Anglicans to "oppose homophobia." It stressed centuries of doctrine that "sexuality is intended by God to find its rightful and full expression between a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage, established by God in creation, and affirmed by our Lord Jesus Christ." That earlier resolution passed with 526 votes in favor, 70 opposed and 45 abstentions.

Writing to Lambeth participants, Welby said the "validity" of that resolution "is not in doubt" and that the "whole resolution is still in existence."

However, the archbishop did not allow a vote on the issue and he said he would not, as requested by Anglican primates in the past, discipline the unorthodox. Welby's team consistently tried to focus attention on "restorative justice," Christian unity and global warming -- such as a photo-op with bishops planting a tree at Lambeth Palace.

Anglican beat goes on

The career of Bishop Catherine Roskam of the Diocese of New York has been built on her skills as a cross-cultural ambassador for the modern Episcopal Church.

She led the International Concerns Committee of her denomination's executive council, helped create her diocese's Global Women's Fund and has worked as a consultant on issues of cultural sensitivity. In some circles, she is known as the bishop who dared to rap during a "Hip Hop Mass" a few years ago in the Bronx.

"My sistas and brothas, all my homies and peeps, stay up -- keep your head up, holla back and go forth and tell it like it is," proclaimed the bishop, in her benediction.

Thus, the diminutive, white-haired assistant bishop was an unlikely figure to inspire bold, angry headlines during the recent Lambeth Conference of bishops from the global Anglican Communion. This 20-day gathering had been carefully planned by the archbishop of Canterbury and his staff to focus on prayer, Bible study and small-group sessions called "Indabas" -- a Zulu term for tribal meetings -- in private settings that did not include journalists.

It was especially important not to inflame already painful disputes between Third World traditionalists and liberals in the United States, Canada, England and elsewhere.

Then, during planned discussions of domestic violence, Roskam spoke out on an unlikely topic -- bishops who beat their wives.

"We have 700 men here. Do you think any of them beat their wives? Chances are they do," argued Roskam, in The Lambeth Witness, a daily newsletter for gay-rights supporters in the 77-million-member Anglican Communion. "The most devout Christians beat their wives. ... Many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife. In that regard, it makes conversation quite difficult."

The key, she added, is that, "Violence against women, and violence against children for that matter, is violence against the defenseless. With women, it goes hand-in-hand with misogyny."

The New York bishop's accusations rocked the conference, which was already tense due to the absence of about 280 conservative bishops -- many from Nigeria and Uganda -- who declined to attend due to the presence of U.S. leaders who backed the 2003 consecration of the openly gay and noncelibate Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Only 617 Anglican bishops pre-registered and some of those failed to attend, according to a report in The Living Church magazine. Thus, nearly a quarter of the bishops in attendance came from the small, but wealthy, U.S. Episcopal Church.

The most damaging part of Roskam's pronouncement was her tone of moral and cultural superiority, noted commentator Riazat Butt. It was easy for bishops from the Global South to read between the lines and find painful traces of colonialism.

"What bishops should be ... concerned about is her insinuation that a non-white culture leads to domestic violence and that white, western culture is too civilized and too advanced to allow such atrocities to occur," argued Butt, in The Guardian. "Roskam fails to recognize that domestic violence affects people regardless of their class, ethnicity, religion, gender or geography."

The whole episode brought back memories of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, when a rising tide of African and Asian votes helped produce a pivotal resolution -- the vote was 526 in favor, with 70 opposed and 45 abstentions -- stating that sex outside of marriage, including gay sex, is "incompatible with scripture."

The Anglican primate of Scotland said that particular resolution left him feeling "lynched" and was the result of Third World bishops trying to "Islamify Christianity, making it more severe, Protestant and legalistic." One outspoken American bishop complained that many Africans have "moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity."

Now, a decade later, a female bishop from a liberal diocese in America provided new evidence that these kinds of cultural stereotypes are hard to bury.

This kind of guilt-by-association game is not going to ease tensions in the Anglican Communion, noted Archbishop of York John Sentamu.

"I have never beaten my wife, although I can't talk about other people," Sentamu told the London Times. "There is a danger of stereotyping people because of the culture they come from and assuming they must surely be doing it. ... I hope Bishop Catherine has got figures and numbers and people. Because if not, she is in danger of causing an unnecessary rumpus."