Who has the worst job in Britain? In the Palace of Westminster they will tell you it is the leader of Her Majesty??s opposition. But there is a close contender in another palace on the other side of the River Thames: Lambeth Palace, home of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
When Rowan Williams was given the job he captured the imagination of the nation. People who normally showed no interest in church affairs perked up and took notice. Here was a man who would drag the ailing church into the 21st century and revitalise it, make it relevant to the lives of ordinary people, imbue it with a passion it had lost over the years. He is a man with a formidable brain, a poet and thinker, a man of deep faith. How could he go wrong? There was just one small problem. The evangelicals did not trust him. He was a liberal in a church where the conservative wing has been steadily growing in strength. He was the enemy. They declared war on him. That was less than a year ago. This weekend it is beginning to look as though they are winning. The church, by the archbishop??s own admission, is facing a crisis. It may very well split. If that happens, some of his own supporters feel he may have only himself to blame. They say it more in sorrow than in anger ?? and with a slight sense of disbelief. This has been a bad summer for the church.
It started to go wrong when Canon Jeffrey John was nominated to be the next Bishop of Reading. He was qualified in every respect ?? except that he is gay. Celibate, but gay nonetheless. The conservatives exploded with righteous wrath. They threatened to bankrupt the church if the consecration went ahead. The liberals sat back and waited for their hero in Lambeth to defend the canon. It did not happen. Instead, John was pressured into withdrawing. Round one to the conservatives.
Then war broke out on another front across the Atlantic. The Anglican church in New Hampshire voted for Canon Gene Robinson to become a bishop.
Not only is he gay, he had left behind a wife and children. Another explosion from the conservative wing and ?? this time ?? a great deal of unease on the liberal wing.
Schism loomed and Williams called all 37 primates from around the world to an emergency meeting in London. He used every ounce of his diplomatic skills to pull off a compromise deal. A commission will be set up to report within 12 months on the ??dangers?? of gay ordinations and same-sex blessings. In the meantime the primates begged New Hampshire to think again. If the consecration of Robinson went ahead, ??the future of the communion itself would be in jeopardy??. They got their answer hours later. The consecration of Robinson would go ahead.
I asked Williams on Friday what would happen if the new Bishop Robinson came to this country. There would, he said, be ??great difficulty in licensing him to perform his functions??. In simple terms, he would be an outsider. The split will have happened. Where it goes from there is anybody??s guess. Does it matter? That depends where you stand. For the lawyers a real split would be the equivalent of Christmas every month of the year. Imagine trying to divide up all that booty. The legal wrangling over property and possessions would last until the second coming and beyond.
For the theologians it would be a nightmare. Who would be excommunicating whom? For the churches in developing countries, which almost all side with the conservatives, it could be disastrous. They get much of their funding from a church that would suddenly be far less rich. But for those of us on the sidelines why should it matter at all? It??s hardly as if this would be the first time the Christian church had split. The apostles were endlessly arguing about who would sit closest to God when they finally got to heaven. Peter and Paul met only three times and each time, so we are told, had a massive row ?? mostly about whether to allow the gentiles into the church.
The Church of England has its divisions, too. John Wesley, an Anglican priest, walked out and opened his first Methodist chapel in 1768. Who would argue that the Methodists in this country have been anything other than a force for good? And anyway, they are coming back home again. They agreed a covenant with the General Synod in July.
Every schoolboy knows that the Anglican church itself came into existence only because of a split between a lecherous and desperate old king and the Pope. Would we prefer to have had the Roman Catholic Church as the established church of this country for the past few centuries? Not me.
The present Pope happens to be celebrating 25 years in the Vatican as I write. There is no doubt that he is a devout Christian of enormous courage, who survived an attempted assassination and fought communism and fascism with all his strength. But his unrelenting damnation of contraception has caused enormous suffering. The educated majority of Catholics may take no notice, but there are millions in some of the poorest countries who go in fear of the priest and do as they are told. They are even poorer because of it.
The Pope??s approach to Aids has been outrageous. He has called for a ban on the use of condoms in fighting the disease in Africa. He says everyone knows that condoms do not help to prevent the transmission of HIV, which is simply not true. ??Everyone?? outside the Vatican knows the opposite.
Two years ago the church funded a campaign against contraception in Uganda. It was in Uganda that Aids began. Anyone who has been to Africa and seen the hideous suffering wrought by the disease ?? especially of children made orphans by it or born with HIV ?? can only wonder at the orders from Rome. They are verging on the wicked.
Organised religions have done many wicked things over the centuries ?? always in the knowledge that they are doing it in God??s name. Colin Slee, dean of Southwark Cathedral, is one of the conservatives?? fiercest opponents. If religion goes wrong, he says, it goes very, very wrong indeed precisely because it is so important. When the inquisitors were practising their torture they had no doubt that they were doing the will of God. They had adopted for themselves the role of God as judge and could no longer see the distinction.
Only a fool would deny that strong, united organised religions can also be a force for good. They have bequeathed us some of our most glorious buildings and works of art. They have provided comfort and succour and a sense of security for millions through the ages.
But in this country, in this age, we are looking elsewhere for our comfort and our succour and even our emotional security. As Frank Furedi, the sociology professor, wrote in this newspaper last month, we are turning to a new cult: a cult of therapy. The number of counselling sessions taking place in Britain during any one month is about 1,231,000. The culture of therapy ?? the notion that we all need emotional help from ??professionals?? ?? has taken hold.
This is all of a piece with the appeal of fundamentalism. It relieves you of the need to think for yourself. I had a friend who persuaded me ?? against my better judgment ?? to go to her church for an evangelical service. On the way her car broke down. I joked that it was clearly God??s will that I should not attend. No, she said, it was the devil??s. She was not joking. She found all her answers in the Bible.
In his heart Williams must know there can ultimately be no deal with people who believe the Bible contains the literal truth, the answer to every question and moral dilemma facing us today. He believes that it provides the essential underpinning but that the world is constantly changing and Christianity must adapt in light of our new knowledge. He does not think that gay men choose to be sinners and could be ??cured?? if only they had the will.
In the end homosexuality may well be the rock on which the unity of the church founders. For Williams, as head of the church, that would be disastrous. For others it could be a new beginning.
