Who cares if the Church of England tears itself apart this weekend? Its
million active members in Britain are barely ahead of the Roman Catholics,
from whose church it separated five centuries ago, and the 930,000
practising Muslims. Only 15% of babies are now baptised into the Church of
England and few of them are likely to graduate to church membership.
Schism is the occupational disease of religion. If, through the defection of
ecclesiastical conservatives, West Indians and Africans, there are soon to
be two Anglican churches in place of one, most Britons will just not notice.
But their established church remains a substantial national institution,
custodian of British values even to the many who do not patronise it. When
it suffers an attack of episcopal knife crime, a message goes out that “the
centre cannot hold”.
The cause of the conflict, the gender and sexual orientation of bishops, is as
arcane as the Pelagian heresy. It is sadly ironic that the church should be
headed at this time by an archbishop, Rowan Williams, whose personality
seems more ideally cast for martyrdom than leadership. His saintly pain at
the refusal of the contending parties to hear his lofty platitudes has
become a national agony.
Many find it unbelievable that a movement dedicated to peace, love and
brotherhood should in 2008 find itself debating the ecclesiastical
significance of 1st-century texts on sexual behaviour. No less baffling is
that this has led to what amounts to illegal discrimination in appointments.
African bishops may regard homosexuality as “an abomination”, but that is
not the view of the British parliament. There should be an end to it.
The visible loathing of some Anglicans for gays and women – expressed in terms
that would have them prosecuted in any other walk of life – is indefensible.
The British make much noise opposing the intolerant practices of Muslims and
other imported religions. They seem deaf to the intolerance of members of
their home-grown church. That the conservatives have constant recourse to
biblical texts has no more to do with the case than if Islamic scholars
appealed to the Koran against the Crown Prosecution Service. The law of the
land is the law of the land.
No less astonishing is that the parties are largely warring because the Church
of England remains stuck in an imperial time warp. A global membership of
some 80m – overwhelmingly in the new Commonwealth – is under the leadership
of an archbishop in England, custodian of just a million souls, and a
governing body meeting in Lambeth.
The origins of this dispute thus lie not so much in the biblical understanding
of sexuality but rather in Anglicanism’s inability to handle global
diversity in human behaviour. There is no way African cultures will regard
sex in the same way as Asians or Europeans. Why does the church pretend
otherwise?
This is a relic of the status of the Church of England as the established
church in what was once a far-flung empire. It has struggled to mimic the
diversity of the British Commonwealth, allowing archbishoprics to flourish
and hierarchies to proliferate. But the trappings of doctrinal centralism
remain in place.
The obvious solution to the row over gay and women bishops would be to live
and let live. Let a thousand sexualities bloom under the capacious canopy of
mother church. Do not impose on the cultures of Africa the sexual norms and
gender equalities that have evolved under the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant
aegis. There is no need for this dispute.
The trouble is that the English church failed to make a complete break with
episcopal hierarchy at the time of the Reformation. It may have disliked the
authority of Rome, but it liked that of Canterbury too much to dismantle its
domestic power structure (and wealth). Unlike most reformed denominations,
it kept its bishops. Scratch any controversy that has bedevilled the Church
of England over recent years and you will find a bishop at the bottom of it.
German and Scandinavian Christians have no such agonies.
The promotion of women, the ordination of gays, the fate of the Mappa Mundi,
the affair of the Lincoln dean, you name it, a bishop has been involved.
Last month 300 senior Anglicans met in Jerusalem to found the Global
Anglican Future Conference in defiance of Williams. Every one was a bishop.
The status – and sexuality – of bishops has become central to the dissension
of the Anglo-Catholic wing of Anglicanism. It sees them as part of the
apostolic succession and thus offering an emotional link back to Rome and
the possibility of reunion.
It was just this link that the Scots Presbyterians shrewdly refused to
countenance in the 16th century. It was just this hierarchy to which the
Methodists objected in the 18th century. A modern church, said Wesley,
should “think and let think”.
The iconoclastic Anglican author, Theo Hobson, wondered out loud last week,
“If bishops were no more, would we miss them?” The 650 (out of 880) who have
gathered this weekend at Lambeth are like admirals: the fewer souls in their
charge, the more they multiply.
For the rest of us this would be of no account if the Church of England were
not still in a position to deliver a modest punch. By virtue of its history
and status, the church offers community leadership, however imperfectly, to
a nation whose governments have done everything to exterminate communal
authority. In some places Anglican clergymen are a one-stop shop for
everything from marriage guidance to crime busting.
Even the most ardent atheist must accept that local churches, with their youth
clubs and outreach programmes, are probably the largest unofficial social
work agency in Britain. Their value to the state must run into billions of
pounds, all free at the point of delivery. Priests are often the only
resident professional presence in the grimmest urban areas.
Church buildings, many of them glories of medieval and Victorian architecture,
are also prominent monuments. They are the museums of the people, galleries
of vernacular art and custodians of local history. England’s landscape is
inconceivable without them, yet the public money spent on them is paltry.
This is not just a historical foible. A successful working church is a force
for social cohesion of all faiths and none. As Britain absorbs diverse
immigrant groups, religious allegiances can bring them together or drive
them apart. It is shocking that so little attention is paid to the latter
danger in the rush to establish blatantly divisive faith schools.
The fracturing of the church might seem no more than a bad-tempered
conversation in the privacy of a close. But it is reinforcing the image of
organised religion as a force for intolerance. This can only impede the good
work that churches do on the ground.
Talk of conservatives occupying the church chancel and the radicals the nave,
of services (or entire churches) being segregated between gender-specific
priests and communicants, is a measure of how far this once broad movement
has buried its head in schism.
It is easy to conclude that the best way out would be to split again and allow
each faction to worship in its own way. That should be abhorrent to all who
believe that there is such a thing as community and that an institution
called a church has a duty to supply it with social glue.
simon.jenkins@sunday-times.co.uk
