In a recent editorial, The Jerry Garcia of Canterbury, Mark Tooley discusses the portrayal of Rowan Williams, the embattled Archbishop of Canterbury, in an Atlantic Monthly essay written by Paul Elie. Tooley finds Elie’s enthusiasm about the Archbishop’s struggle to keep the Anglican Communion together dismaying. Tooley points out that Williams’ efforts to bring homosexuals into the Anglican Church without losing conservative Episcopalians have been mainly ineffectual and contradictory. Elie writes in glowing terms about how Williams must suppress his “pro-gay conscience” in order to keep conservative Americans and Africans from leaving, even going so far as to refuse to seat Gary Robinson, the gay Episcopalian bishop, at the last global meeting of bishops.
What I find most interesting about Tooley’s article is his insistence that Rowan Williams, by trying to balance pro-gay and anti-gay factions of the Anglican Communion, has actually misunderstood the main point of the battle. In numbers, most of the Anglican church is no longer American or British, but African and South Asian. Tooley asserts that liberal, mainly white Anglicans do not make up the majority of the church anymore, and therefore Williams, instead of merely trying to keep the two parts together, should actively engage with the dioceses in America that have split off as well as with the African and Asian members of the denomination. I agree that while issues like homosexuality are clearly important, leaders in non-Western countries have other, more pressing concerns. These would include the conflicts with Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV-Aids epidemic and global inequalities.
I think this has relevance for other denominations of Christianity, too, as well as for outside observers. Obviously, majorities are not always right. But a small group of mainly white Americans and other Westerners should not continue to assume that they have the absolute right to decide which direction the church is heading. In this case, the conservative non-Western majority might be better placed to comment and to lead in areas where the church is growing. This could be the only solution for holding the Anglican Communion together.
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I agree with Hannah that it is important to keep in mind all members of a particular group when making decisions that affect everyone. However, Hannah seems to suggest that it would be better for leaders to focus on issues that have more relevance on the lives of the majority of the members. While this is true, I think it may be idealistic to assume that if the focus is shifted to other issues that the debate over homosexuality (or other controversial issues) will vanish. When the other issues take forefront, homosexuality will have to be left at some sort of resolution because if you ignore it, then proponents have won and if you ban it then opponents have won. Thus, even when trying to move onto issues that affect that greater population, a heated debate such as homosexuality will not easily go away to allow for increased focus on other things.
I agree that it might be idealistic to assume that the issue of homosexuality will just go away if we don't talk about it. However, I do think that the Anglican Communion should focus more on real-world issues like poverty, hunger, disease, and war, that affect the majority of their members, and not focus so much on issues that, to be blunt, are only a big deal in places where everyone's lives are pretty good. We, in the developed world, have the luxury to talk about issues like homosexuality because we aren't thinking about how we can stay alive for another day.
The schism within the Anglican Communion can be seen, I think, as a response to what conservatives see as a worrisome general trend towards liberalization, and getting away from biblical ideals, with homosexuality simply being the most prominent example of that. If a huge segment of the church is worried that the church is losing all the ideals that attracted people to it in the first place, I don't find it surprising that people would leave. When a church loses touch with the majority of its followers because it is listening to a small vocal group, I think that church is doomed to fall apart unless it can do something fast.
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