The argument over homosexuality in the Anglican Church has revealed a crisis of identity and governance that is not easily resolved. It may well be that the Anglican Communion now has to choose between being an international church ultimately guided by a council of bishops or the loose alliance of national churches which it has been hitherto. In many ways the former development makes theological sense, since the church should never be a purely national body. If something more like a conciliar magisterium emerged in the future, this would be a gain out of a dire crisis.It can also be argued that the American Episcopal Church had no right to decide this matter on its own since, while no question of doctrine was involved here, there is an issue of fundamental church order: the bishop in question is involved in a sexual relation outside marriage. While I am in favor of the sacramental recognition of gay relationships (though not of gay marriage, since I think the theological notion of marriage requires both sexual difference and openness to procreation) and believe that clergy and bishops can appropriately be in active gay relationships that are sacramentally recognized, it seems to me that an acceptance of this practice ought properly to await the decision of the entire Anglican Church.
Yet I am not so sure that one can argue this in the present situation, for things are very complicated here in the U.S. Since the Anglican Church throughout the world enjoys complete intercommunion and fundamental doctrinal unity, it seems correct to say that within this communion such a decisive shift in practice should await general consensus. This may be ideally true, yet it did not apply in the case of women's ordination. Here the felt need to show a prophetic witness within individual countries took precedence. One can understand if people feel the same thing about the issue of acceptance of homosexuality. Certainly one should protest if the church is to be coercively threatened by a secular rights-based law that violates its own corporate integrity, as could possible now happen in Europe. Yet on theological and not liberal rights-based grounds, many within the church feel that it has become intolerable to deny that faithful gay partnerships witness to the love of God and the inner life of the Trinity.
Politics moves too fast at times for canonical niceties. In the current desperate world situation, not to support gay clergy and bishops is quite likely to give comfort to the increasingly sinister religious right and the new alliance of fundamentalist Protestantism, and even some quarters of the Roman Catholic Church, with the untrammeled global market economy.
It should be observed here that it is simply not the case that the Third World speaks with one voice on this issue or that African male clergy can be taken as representing the views of all Africans, especially African women -- not to mention African gays. We must not be afraid to say that sometimes the patterns of African male heterosexuality are deeply complicit in structures of patriarchal and indeed capitalist oppression. Frankly, the anti-colonial rhetoric of some African clergy often disguises involvement in new modes of post-colonial domination. Nor can it be right to compete with Islam by echoing that religion's patriarchalism, legalism and scriptural literalism, all of which have been long ago challenged by Christianity. Some of the statements by African primates -- of ignorance that tends, not surprisingly, to make gay people (including gay people in Africa) feel that they are scarcely well enough informed to have any legitimate contribution to make to this debate.
The election of Gene Robinson was premature. There was no proper preceding discussion even within the United States that could have legitimated such a new departure in church practice. However, it has now happened according to a formally correct canonical procedure, and to oppose his consecration once it has occurred is likely to become de facto to support conservative opposition to homosexuality. There is not in reality any foreseeable possibility of reaching a general worldwide Anglican consensus on this issue. In some countries, a sense of theological outrage at the exclusion of gays (including Britain itself) has become so strong that prophetic witness cannot readily be held back.
There are certain junctures in history when commitment on the substantive issue has to take precedence over concern with formal propriety. I suspect that, regrettably, this may be one of them. It is very difficult to fault Rowan Williams's procedure or to see how he could have acted otherwise, and yet it may well be that he now finds himself in an impossible position. (And everyone should, I think, recognize that for the moment he is tragically caught up in a situation where no possible course of action open to him or to the international primates can be considered unambiguously right). For in practical terms his own theological inclinations on this matter are disabled, and the conservative evangelicals have gained ground. This means that within Britain it will be hard to allow a majority Anglican view that would tend to accept practicing gay clergy from prevailing, and this may well alienate many from the church. Anglicanism could become more and more defined by conservative evangelicalism as a result. In any case, it seems that from hence forward a British decision, like an American one, is supposed to wait upon a world decision.
This imposes upon the British archdioceses a very long timetable that is perhaps not realistic in terms of the strength of reeling among many in favor of the recognition of clerical gay relationships. It also means prolongation of a theological nonsense that only made sense as a temporary compromise -- namely the idea, supported by the English hierarchy, that homosexual activity is acceptable for the laity but not for the clergy. This imposed stalemate will be crippling for the mission of the Anglican/Episcopal church within the British Isles. If the British archdioceses are forced by archdioceses overseas into breaking communion with the American church, then this, of course, would worsen such a situation still further.
Ideally, a temporary compromise of separate jurisdictions for the different factions should emerge, as with the issue of women's ordination. But this is probably not going to work, because the conservatives will refuse even to be in communion with those accepting practicing gay bishops or clergy.
