Anglican brouhaha, masterful rhetoric, and ethical quandaries

I'm not sure to what extent non-Anglicans are following the latest hubbub in the Anglican Communion, but certainly D. and I were both glued to the internet on Monday as news releases and communiqés and recommendations were coming out of the Primates' meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. (Well, D. was glued to the internet; I just checked it regularly. You see the difference in our commitment there.)

If you are interested in the Episcopal Church's crisis du jour, please let me recommend epiScope, the new blog from the Episcopal News Service. The incomparable Rev. Jan Nunley is running the show there, in what has become the hands-down best source for coverage of all things Episcopalian. And epiScope is now a source for the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's statement on the Primates' meeting. If you've followed the news at all and if you're interested in rhetoric, please go read this; it's quite an extraordinary document. I should say that I very much dislike what has come out of the Primates' meeting in Tanzania, and I have such high respect for ++Katharine that I am doing her the honor of assuming she had to hold her nose while she signed the communiqué and recommendations. I disagree with her stance in her statement (I'm a "justice delayed is justice denied" kind of gal), but Hot Damn! it's a great piece of writing.

Anglican politics is a somewhat tense conversational topic in my home, since D. and I differ in our attitudes. I'm mostly of the opinion that the worldwide Anglican Communion can damn well get off our backs and go fuck itself, whereas D. grieves for any rupture among Christians. We see (and, I hope, respect) each other's point, but we disagree nonetheless. And of course it's all rather complicated: Exactly what are the claims of "justice," given how many injustices there are in the world and the difficulty in addressing all of them at once? To what extent should our response to the rest of the Communion be shaped by the fact that the current situation is largely a result of colonialism in which the U.S. and Episcopal Church were certainly deeply implicated? If it seems that ecumenism and justice are in tension, that is no doubt a sign of our human fallibility, but how does that information really help us make decisions?

More specifically, is the best way to work for the full human rights of ALL people to continue charging boldly forward with a policy of inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the Episcopal Church or to bend over backwards to stay in communion (and thus in a relationship in which conversation continues) with churches in countries where gay people are jailed or killed? I honestly don't know, but my gut sense is that denying justice to the people right in front of us in hopes that we can help people further away from us is not going to work; at the same time, I recognize that the injustice faced by gay people in the U.S. does not compare to the death sentences imposed in some other countries, so maybe we should make our decisions based on level of injustice rather than likelihood of effecting change? I honestly don't know. How does one make these decisions?

D. and I have had many conversations about such issues, but more than once they have ended in tears on one or both of our parts. It's a mixed marriage; she's more Anglo-Catholic and I'm more Protestant; our marriage is at times an embodiment of the Anglican via media, which often works but occasionally doesn't. We are, of course, the couple who in our first passionate year together once had a MAJOR fight over the "proper" way to organize a Maundy Thursday watch (in which people stay at the altar, praying through the night, in response to Jesus's request to his disciples to stay awake with him in the garden of Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion, a request they failed to honor). So there's no denying that we're a little weird. And this Anglican Communion stuff has way more repercussions than arguing whether it's okay for parishioners to take an hour's watch during the night or whether each person must stay awake for the whole night (and, in D's parish back in grad school city, actually get *locked* into the chapel, which immediately raises my claustrophobia to toxic levels). So I guess it's hardly surprising that tensions run high about this stuff, even in domestic conversations. Yesterday night we talked about our feelings about the late 18th-/early 19th-century separation between Methodists and Episcopalians; I was fine with it, and D. grieves. Wait, don't you have an opinion on that burning issue? Or are we really that peculiar?

Back to the issues at hand: Being an Americanist, I always think about the varied and complicated arguments among abolitionists about slavery and racial justice as an interesting corollary to the current arguments within the Anglican Communion. Some abolitionists argued that anti-slavery states should separate from ("break communion with," as it were) pro-slavery states, while others argued that it was only through this connection that pro-slavery states could eventually be brought around to justice. Was it right or wrong to buy the freedom of escaped slaves (such as Frederick Douglass), since doing so freed the former slave from constant worry about being caught but also essentially accepted the argument that this person had been property for which the owner should be compensated? Should one support or work against the 15th amendment, which gave African American men the right to vote but denied it to women? What exactly should the role of the Church have been in these political arguments? Honestly, I have no idea how I would have answered these questions at the time, and historical hindsight doesn't help me decide what was the "right thing to have done." Seriously, would I have voted "yes" or "no" on the 15th Amendment? I DON'T KNOW!! This makes me think that I am clearly hopeless as a political analyst; although I clearly suck, it also helps me forgive myself a little bit for not knowing what the right thing to do is now in this miserable situation in which Anglicans find ourselves.

So I was of course interested to see ++Katharine Jefferts Schori use slavery as a parallel in her statement after the Primates' meeting. While in Tanzania, the Primates took a day trip to Zanzibar and confessed again what a muck the Church had made of working against the international slave trade, and ++Katharine points out that "The struggle to end slavery has some parallel with our current controversy, and we can note the less than universal agreement about the moral duty of Christians over a lengthy period." But I'll confess that this parallel does not actually show me a way forward.

Regardless of one's convictions in these questions, however, I think we must all agree that ++Katharine's rhetoric in her statement is just amazing. Hey, maybe our unified, collective appreciation of her way with the words could help us all find common ground! Anyone up for a fifth Instrument of Unity? (This last comment is a totally insider joke for Anglicans, which would be kind of rude to everyone else if I thought that anyone other than the most committed Anglican were still reading at this point.)

Okay, it's time for bed, and for D. and me to snuggle despite our Anglo-Catholic/Protestant differences. Last night our snuggling was impaired by these ideological conflicts, but true love has now triumphed over division; if only I thought that ++Katharine's proposed Lenten "fast" would as surely bring about renewed "snuggling" in the worldwide Communion, but I just don't see the "true love" to accomplish this. And that is a sad thing.

Sigh. A blessed Lent -- fasting and all -- to us, everyone.

Comments

[Tiruncula]

I'm glad you're typing through this and giving me some food for thought. I confess I'm much of your mind about the Communion. The way I see it is this: Nobody can make me into not-an-Anglican, because the formation of my faith is inseparable from its origins in the English Church. On the other hand, I recognize that the men most responsible for my conversion, being dead 1000 and 1300 years respectively, would be appalled by almost everything about the church I joined in their name. That doesn't make my conversion or my communion with them any less real. In other words, schism in the history of the church is a reality that does not impair my faith, or even particularly bother me, but the very real threat of people I love being pushed away from the church I worship in here and now makes me so angry I could spit.

Obviously, I have not come to a nuanced theological perspective on this, nor am I much in a Lenten or even a preliminarily penitential frame of mind. We'll see how today goes.

I agree with you, btw, about the rhetorical virtuosity of ++KJS's statement. I particularly liked the bit about "the needs of the weaker members, and the real possibility that their faith may be injured".

[Another Damned Medievalist]

Well, I think it was nicely written, but really didn't do much. And let's remember, the slave trade is still quite strong, even if it doesn't bear much resemblance to its older self. I honestly don't see any way out of it except schism, myself. The only other solution I can think of is to give equal rights to the GLBT community, but allow individual parishes to designate themselves as "traditional" or some such nonsense and let all the intolerant go and worship in those places. That had pretty much happened here in Dabbaville, from what I understand -- at least before the Big Parish Down The Road decided they wanted an African bishop (and how ironic is that?). But frankly, unless the church makes it a core principle to defend gay rights and administer all sacraments easily, I've got no time for it. (not that I do much, anyway, being the agnostic ex-papist that I am).

Of course, you do realise that a single and chaste priesthood does have its advantages here ... no sex = no sex, gay or otherwise.

[Sfrajett]

OMG what a fantastic post. I loved the tone--especially the hilarity of the Maunday Thursday fight (hilarious in retrospect, of course). I'm with you on the communion thing--I'm not sure I have a lot in common with people whose Christianity rejects women bishops and prohibits the blessing of same-sex unions. On the other hand (and this is where the slavery stuff comes in), there is still dialogue, and people who never would have accepted a woman bishop are swallowing it, however reluctantly, in return for other concessions. The slave states simply broke away, and that was that. No more dialogue. But there were a lot of other issues in that, including states' rights, which maybe is where your colonial argument finds a parallel. We shouldn't really be surprised, as a colonizing culture, that the restrictive terms of the Christianity we sowed has given us a bitter harvest. ANyway, interesting discussion!

[revdrmom]

Great post.

I am heartsick about all this mess. I can't bring myself to read much more, and I am trying to give ++Katharine the benefit of the doubt about signing that damned communique, and even about her own statement because I admire her so much. I am pretty much of the same mind as you about the Anglican Communion and I am ready to "walk apart" if that is what TEC has to do to maintain its integrity.

I think the Primates have managed to paint TEC into a a corner by imposing this impossible deadline. No matter what TEC does it is going to look bad somehow.

I grieve at the brokeness of the church but I have to believe that I am just as much member of the Body of Christ whether I am officially "in communion" with the rest of the Anglican world or not.

I fear that we are idolizing the Anglican Communion a bit if we put unity above all else. And I would be more comfortable with the notion of fasting for a time if that time had an end certain. Because I can't see the larger church coming to consensus about something it can't even bring itself to honestly discuss.

oh, sorry to go on so long....