Lambeth Squawk: "The Bible tells us no", The

Among the readers of this distinguished journal, I strongly suspect, only the tiniest percentage is Anglican. Well, meet a member of that exiguous percentage: me. As an Episcopalian, I belong to a worldwide communionto give it a fancy name-that embraces an estimated 70 million members, centered in English-speaking or British-influenced countries.

An admission of this kind is enough, almost, to prompt someone eavesdropping in the next room to fumble for the telephone: "Hello, 911? Got a crazy here. Says he's an Episcopalian. Better send somebody to get him. Wouldn't want anybody here to get hurt."

Are we not a wild and wacko bunch, we Anglicans, with our taste for bad publicity: bishops who boldly declare the old morality specious and outdated, or who write books saying the Scriptures just won't cut it in this modern world; priests who perform gay (current sense of the word) weddings and incorporate clowns, dancers, and elephants into their services; a church weak in Gospel outreach, which nevertheless talks as though the whole country awaited its latest Nice Thought on . . . whatever.

What is the relevance, in other words, of our bunch to the aims and purposes of a journal committed to the defense of human life? I raise this rhetorical question as I prepare to address the matter of the 13th Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, held last July and August in historic Canterbury.

Did we, at this seemingly interminable three-week meeting, so much as take up the question of human life? (I was at Lambeth for a time, as a reporter; thus I make bold to say "we.") We did, a little bit. Abortion, a matter most Anglicans tend to sidestep delicately, never hove into view-or if it did, in some obscure speech by some equally obscure Lord Bishop, no one subsequently mentioned the fact.

The topic of euthanasia did come up in one general session. The bishops, hearteningly, treated it as a serious topic meriting serious interest. They passed a resolution declaring euthanasia incompatible with Christianity. This condemnation, they said, did not extend to the point troubling many conscientious Christians-"excessive medical treatment and intervention."

The bishops declared that "withholding, withdrawing, declining, or terminating" the aforesaid "may be consonant with Christian faith." "May"-a good, circumspect Anglican word; like "consonant," come to think of it. On this critical matter, in any event, world Anglicanism came down far to the right of the State of Oregon. That must be accounted a matter of some consequence and astonishment.

There was more to Lambeth than this, though, from a human life perspective; and what there was, was more encouraging, frankly, than could have been foretold. A short prolegomenon, if you please.

Human life questions are, at bottom, who's-in-charge-here questions. If God is in charge-really in charge, I mean-questions concerning the value of life receive one kind of answer, a highly deferential one. If on the other hand, individual humans generally make the call, quite a different viewpoint emerges: a Dr. Kevorkian, Betty Friedan kind of viewpoint. Thus it matters profoundly what men and women think of God, and of His authority.

The authority-of-God question is one that used to set many Anglicans coughing politely behind their hands. The Reformation-era Articles of Religion, and the Book of Common Prayer, made small enough room for human presumption. A typical collect from the prayer book is this one, for the Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity: "Keep, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy: and, because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation . . ." From the old Catechism came this answer to a question concerning the Christian's duty toward God: "My duty towards God is to believe in him, to fear him, and to love him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength. . " Little room in all this for the entry of Pride!

So what happened? Modernity happened to Anglicanism, as it happened to virtually all other Christian bodies: the vaunting of human purposes, the explainings-away of biblical passages that seemed (but no more than seemed, if you looked closer!) to constrict human behavior in un-modern ways. Anglicanism, without a Pope or College of Cardinals, with an Archbishop of Canterbury empowered only as spiritual symbol and "pastor to the pastors," lacked defenses against the onslaught.

Anglicans adapted generously to the modern way of thinking. New insights about human liberty and intellectual exploration barged into the church. The prayer book was tamed and watered down. Anglican sheep derived from Anglican shepherds the assurance that we were engaged in a long-necessary updating of a church increasingly irrelevant to its age. By the onset of the eighties, there might have been things no Anglican could believe, and still remain Anglican, but what these things were nobody could say with exactitude.

Earlier this year, Bishop John S. Spong of Newark, N.J., published a book that faulted or derided every major Christian doctrine, including the Virgin Birth and the Ascension of Christ. He asserted that science had overthrown most or all of the old suppositions about God, starting with the "three-story universe" of Heaven, earth, and Hell. According to his book title, Christianity had to "change or die." Cries of outrage from the orthodox remnant resounded loudly, but the objectors knew they had no recourse beyond denunciation. Today's Episcopal Church was not going to discipline or demote any Episcopalian, unless perhaps for "homophobia" or owning tobacco shares.

Thus the Episcopal Church, Anglicanism's American offshoot. Significantly there is far more to modern Anglicanism than the Episcopalian Church, or for that matter the equivalent bodies in England, Scotland, Canada, South Africa, and so on. The largest Anglican component in the late 20th century is in what was called the Third World, back when the first two worlds comprised the United States and the Soviet empire: In Asia and Africa, Anglicanism enjoys a vitality that the poor wattled, liver-spotted Episcopal Church-down in membership to 2.4 million from 3.6 million in the mid'60s-has no early prospect of recovering.

In Asia and Africa, conversions are the order of the day. New parishes spring up with regularity; dioceses, to keep up with growth in demand, divide, then sub-divide. Not all liberals are charmed by this development. In a pre-Lambeth interview, Bishop Jack Spong looked down his episcopal nose at Africans, imputing to them a superstitious ignorance of scientific developments in the West. Didn't they know, poor fellows, we no longer live in a "three-story" universe?

Such a swipe, coming from a conservative, would have earned the perpetrator a tar-and-feather party at best. Liberal Westerners tut-tutted over Spong's tactlessness but placed never a protesting phone call to Jesse Jackson.

The new Christians (not to mention the old ones) of Africa and Asia were insulted, to be sure, but managed to turn the other cheek. What were Spong's scientific speculations, themselves a little musty, against the historic faith of the church? Three-story universe? Who's counting? And why the "scientific" quibbling? Is it that the Bible-the same blessed book brought by the Europeans, so full of Good News-has become untrustworthy? The church's moral traditions no longer deserve the old-time respect? The Christians of the south are at a loss to understand how their northern brethren can accord the wisdom of the world the same stature, more or less, that they accord the pronouncements of the Lord God Almighty.

Plenty of northern Anglicans wonder, too. It is merely that, outnumbered and outvoted ecclesiastically by proponents of the new dispensation, they have drawn deeper and deeper into themselves. What they have lacked are allies. At the 13th Lambeth Conference, allies they found. The northern traditionalists and the joyful southerners joined together at Lambeth to stand the Anglican Communion on its head. It may never swagger again in the same self-sufficient, thank-you-my-good-man way.

The Episcopal Church itself, reporting on the event through its news service, acknowledged that "When the conference adjourned after three weeks, it was clear that the center of gravity of Anglicanism had shifted to the church in the developing world-and that the bishops, especially those from Africa and Asia, had some sobering messages for their brothers and sisters on controversial issues such as human sexuality."

What did happen, exactly? Exactly what "revisionist" bishops (as Episcopal "conservatives" sometimes call "liberals") had successfully suppressed in the recent past: the forcible assertion, by southern bishops, of the church's historic beliefs both as to theology and morality.

Prior to Lambeth, the media had predicted that sex, especially homosexuality, would command more attention than any other issue. This proved true. With white bishops focused increasingly on giving sanction to homosexuality and gay rights, black and brown bishops focused on reasserting the scriptural standard-heterosexual monogamy. Pleas were entered in behalf of homosexuals seeking ordination to the priesthood or the blessing, by the church, of their same-sex unions. Insistently the Asians and Africans countered: Scripture doesn't allow such arrangements. Not: you shouldn't do such things. Rather: you can't, and that's all there is to it.

At a preliminary meeting on gay rights, the Asians and Africans showed their hand in a fashion that terrified the other side. An English gay-rights group had been invited by the conference sponsors to present its viewpoints. The southerners were aghast. There was but one viewpoint, so far as Christians were concerned; homosexuality was its polar opposite. A vote was taken, and the gay righters were disinvited from their missionary endeavor.

On another occasion, an African bishop got directly in the face of an ordained gay-rights activist. "Repent, repent!" cried the bishop, laying his hand on the man's shoulder. The man's vast bewilderment was written on his face. No English or American bishop had ever talked to him thus! What was going on here?

Subsequently a resolution wrestling with the question of homosexuality, and its alleged propriety in a Christian context, bubbled up from the same sub-group that had barred the door to the gay-rights group. The Asians and Africans looked over the resolution, wrinkled their noses. Too mild, too inclusive. The resolution was duly strengthened. Then it passed-526 to 70, with 45 abstentions. And-what was more-with the Archbishop of Canterbury urging a yea vote.

The resolution endorses as the Christian viewpoint "faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union," with abstinence enjoined upon "those who are not called to marriage." The bishops said they reject homosexual practice as "incompatible with Scripture" but recognize "all baptized, believing, and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation," as "full members of the Body of Christ."

The Episcopal Church would throw such a resolution directly out the window (though a significant minority of U.S. bishops voted enthusiastically for it). Lambeth forthrightly called the Anglican Communion's attention to what Christians of all sorts are supposed to stand for in the sexual realm.

Proponents of gay rights were flabbergasted. The head of the Scottish church pitched what is widely known as a conniption fit, from which he had barely recovered when he, and others, began broadcasting their view that the Africans' votes had been bought by unnamed rich Americans. The smell of "fascism" was in the air, the bishop asserted. Various liberal bishops returned to the United States pointing out informatively to their distracted flocks that Lambeth resolutions are after all just that-resolutions-lacking authority; and that this one might just happen to get lost in the shuffle back home.

A resolution of any kind, endorsing what Scripture says is right and Christian, would have attracted hardly any notice a few decades ago. However, in the Episcopal Church, as in much of Western Anglicanism, gay rights is what people talk about the most. This made the issue the issue at Lambeth. The "revisionists," for all their appeals to the non-binding character of the statement, were duly rocked. If they could not carry the day on this one, on which one could they?

On one small but relatively important one, as it turned out. American traditionalists who hope for the creation of a separate Anglican province in North America-one whose members can say of Jack Spong, "Oh, we've got nothing to do with him; that's the other bunch"-failed to prevent passage of a resolution on diocesan boundaries. The resolution frowns on a plan cherished by traditionalists-to send their own bishops into liberal territory, never asking permission, in the name of the Gospel.

With Asian and African help, the conservatives won another key vote, nonetheless: a resolution disapproving of coercion against diocesan bishops-just four are left in the Episcopal Church-who bar ordained women from ministry. The church's General Convention made a great show in 1997 of ordering dissenters on women's ordination to get with the program or get out. Athwart this effort now lies the Lambeth resolution.

The precise form that Anglican ecclesiology may assume in the 21st century is of less interest to this journal's non-Anglican readers than some account of what Lambeth may mean for the defense of life. Here is that account. As I said at the beginning, the life question is an authority question: Who's in charge here? Who makes the decisions?

Why, God does, life-affirmers are wont to say. The ultimate decisions anyway. The decisions to conceive or not, to end an "excessive" treatmentthese decisions human beings may implement but only with a glance heavenward (pardon me, Bishop Spong) for direction. A society as attentive to its Christianity as to the stock market or the J. Peterman catalog would never think of countenancing abortion or "assisted suicide." The decline of Christian orthodoxy is wholly responsible for the light regard in which life, the creation of God the Holy Spirit, is held.

To take orthodoxy seriously, and the scriptures that informed the historic understanding of God, is to take life seriously. The two persuasions are inseparable. Thus, anything that weakens orthodoxy weakens commitment to life; anything that strengthens orthodoxy undermines selfishness and laxity in the exercise of God's gifts to humanity.

The 13th Lambeth Conference has strengthened orthodox religious belief and commitment; it has strengthened, by that token, solicitude for life. The euthanasia resolution is the tip, if a bracing one, of the iceberg. The gay rights resolution, in its way, strengthens understanding of God as the ultimate and only rightful arbiter of human affairs, human destinies. Underlying the push for gay rights is the same apprehension of the human condition that underlies the push for abortion: the apprehension that "It's my life!" If so, of course, I can live it any way I like. Or not live it at all. It depends.

According to historic Christianity, dependence is on God, and on Him alone. A God who can create beings out of dust, ribs, and the like is seemingly entitled to specify, through his Prophets and Apostles, the arrangements He likes best for the living of life. If not, why did He start this whole business? The arrangement He has commended consistently, and to which the Church has acquiesced faithfully, is heterosexual marriage.

On this prescription, much of the Church has developed weak knees since the 1970s. The official rationale, when one is offered (Bishop Spong has offered it many times), is that the more we learn, the more we know. In our post-Copernican universe we know things that ignorant past generations never suspected. One of those things is the total, unequivocal suitability of the homosexual and lesbian relationship. Except that the pre-Copernicans who dominated the 13th Lambeth Conference seemed not to know this at all. God had not told them! Was it possible he was talking only to Bishop Spong and his friends? Possible, but not likely.

So two things in this respect come out of Lambeth. First, the powerful affirmation that God the Holy Spirit remains as connected as ever to the original plan for life: one man, one woman, one lifetime; the family as incubator and nurturer of life; life, virtuous life, as an act of praise to God, a form of worship, directed upwardly instead of inwardly, with duty and joy as the motives rather than gratification; life, last of all, as a glorious and wonderful gift, to be cherished and protected, not discarded. The Evangelicals like to say, "God didn't make trash." This would seem, under the circumstances, a direct and forceful way of putting it.

The second thing that comes out of Lambeth is a new sense of the oneness of created life-a particular kind of oneness we don't often notice in modern society. It is oneness that spans racial boundaries and borders in the name of a far higher good than racial "purity" or pride. That good is service to God.

Growing up in the segregated South, I never thought to see black and white Christians embracing. At Lambeth they did just that. The embraces were hearty and sincere. The Lord of life had not precisely wiped away the divisions of race; rather, he had rendered those divisions silly and embarrassing. What mattered less than the flesh was the spirit. This was abundant.

The Lambeth alliance between black, brown, and white Christians-all of similar if not identical viewpoint, theologically speaking-was no marriage of convenience. The participants, if my eyes do not deceive me, recognize in each other natural friends and collaborators. Friends stay in touch, make common cause when called on to do so. The theological disarray of late 20th century Anglicanism produced an alliance that might not have been forged otherwise but that, to the allies, is infinitely sweet. If Anglicanism can be spared from its present instinct to dismantle so much that once made it attractive, the whites, browns, and blacks will save it together, in tandem.

There is much excited talk-I have heard it both here and at Lambethabout the reconversion of Europe and America. . . by Africa and Asia. I did not hear this talk from Africans; I heard it from Americans-wishful, wistful talk that may prove more than idle chatter before all is said and done. One independent Anglican parish in Arkansas-where so much seems to happen these days!-has lately placed itself under the spiritual oversight of a bishop from Rwanda, in Central Africa. A prominent American Episcopal churchplanter has placed himself, and his gifts, under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Singapore. More of this sort of thing is to come, sooner probably rather than later.

This is for a logical reason. Front and center, among Anglicans, the Who'sin-Charge question has moved. Firmly in charge, according to American traditionalists, the bishops of Asia and Africa, and the orthodox remnant throughout Anglicanism, is God Himself. In charge of the Church Catholic. In charge of all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small. The rightful Owner comes home. There will be no evicting Him now.

William Murchison, our contributing editor, is a nationally-syndicated columnist at the Dallas Morning News and a popular speaker on a wide range of current religious and cultural issues. He also edits the Episcopal magazine, Foundations, and it was in this capacity that Mr. Murchison attended the 13th Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops in Canterbury, England last summer.

Copyright Human Life Foundation, Incorporated Fall 1998
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