Anglicans face troubles the world around
Increasingly fragile church navigates difficult shoals
DOUG
KOOP
CW Editor
Normally staid Anglicans have been rather fractious of late. In Canada, the church is sparring with the federal government over who should be named in the lawsuits filed by former students of residential schools.
On the broader world scene, squabbles among Anglicans over biblical understandings of sexuality have evolved into territorial disputes involving leaders around the world (CW, Feb22/00).
Late last month the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) released a statement accusing the government of “acting in a shortsighted and counter-productive manner in its approach to residential lawsuits.” Archbishop David Crawley, senior bishop of B.C. and the Yukon, said government lawyers, not native people, are likely to force the church into bankruptcy.
Seven thousand former students of residential schools are suing the federal government, asking compensation for cultural, physical and sexual abuse in the schools. About a quarter of those cases involve the ACC, whose national mission body administered 24 schools under contract to the government.
But in many cases, it is the government–not the native plaintiff–who is suing the church, says Crawley. Of eight cases on the B.C. Supreme Court docket, he observes, the government is the only party litigating against the church. “It is this kind of government action that is most likely to force us to bankruptcy,” he says.
According to Crawley, “the government says it wants us to be part of alternative dispute resolution processes,” but “their lawyers are suing everything in sight–even band councils. They say they want healing, but their actions are dedicated mostly to limiting their own liability through suing others.”
Severely strained
Even as the Canadian church struggles with this dismal legacy of the past, however, the unity of Anglicans worldwide is severely strained. Theologically conservative leaders from developing nations (where the church is growing) have become increasingly vocal and active in their repudiation of liberalism rampant in Western churches (where the church is shrinking).
The tensions were at least temporarily slackened following a meeting of top-ranking church officials from each country. Gathering in Portugal from March 22-29, 38 primates, including Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, emerged with a joint statement that had something to both mollify and chastise each of the factions.
In the aftermath, biblical conservatives were trying to decide whether the primates had issued a warning to the church’s more liberal elements, or if they had “wimped out” by using language temperate almost to the point of ambiguity.
The section on sexuality recognized differing views–the need for a clear stand on homosexuality to promote effective evangelism, and the position that homosexuality should not be identified as the issue on which the church’s integrity depends–but said that these disagreements “do not amount to a complete and definitive rupture of communion.”
Elsewhere, however, the document warned against leaders and dioceses making “clear and public repudiation” of the recent Lambeth Statements on Sexuality (Anglican bishops from around the world voted overwhelmingly in favour of a traditional understanding of sexual ethics in 1998).
Such provocations, they said, “threaten the unity of the communion in a profound way” and “strain the reality of mutual accountability.”
Affirm tradition
Rwandan Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini said the primates’ statement steadfastly upholds the Lambeth sexuality resolution, and expects Anglicans at all levels to respect and obey it. He called it “a wonderful message sent to the Anglican communion but also to all Christians, to keep unity but affirm the apostolic teaching and tradition.”
The direction was not lost on the head of Integrity, an organization of lesbian and gay Episcopalians, who lamented that “nowhere in the communique is it even implied that a positive, affirming stance toward homosexual persons and their loving relationships is also one of the responses made to the gospel by a faithful people.”
But when more than 100 American bishops met at a five-day retreat in early April, they simply agreed to disagree on issues of ordaining homosexual priests and blessing gay marriages. “I cannot imagine any diocese altering its present direction in the light of anything that has happened, either here or in Portugal,” said Frank Griswold, Primate of the American church.
The communique also “noted with deep concern” the January consecrations of two American priests in Singapore to congregations in the U.S. that disagree sharply with the existing liberal local leadership. The statement supported the Archbishop of Canterbury’s refusal to recognize the new bishops, but refrained from condemning the “irregular ordinations” outright.