Simon Sarmiento's journal

Habgood on Bates

The former Archbishop of York, John Habgood reviewed the Stephen Bates book in the Times Literary Supplement of 3 September. Here is what he said:

The principle of provincial autonomy within the Anglican Communion recognizes the deep cultural differences between national Churches, and reveals a determination to avoid any lingering semblance of colonialism. One of its consequences has been that relationships between provinces have had to depend on trust, friendship and mutual respect, rather than on institutional arrangements and enforceable rules. The Archbishop of. Canterbury has a symbolic role as the focus of unity, but his actual powers are minimal. Given this looseness of structure, the Communion has always been vulnerable to unilateral action, but has hitherto avoided catastrophe by a widespread and generous willingness to value freedom and to enjoy the positive benefits of living with diversity. Not any more. “War” is perhaps too strong a word to describe its present state, but there is certainly a bid to dictate the agenda by those who are utterly convinced that they alone know the mind of God. The result is that attempts to resolve the Communion’s problems by appeal to its traditional values seem likely to fail, because for some dissidents it is precisely the readiness to tolerate differences, which is now the main source of contention.

A Church at War is an impressive piece of journalism, well informed, anecdotal, highly readable, sharp, sometimes unfair, gently mocking where mockery is deserved and, as far as I can judge, mostly accurate. Its author is a Roman Catholic, the religious affairs correspondent for the Guardian, and is married to an Evangelical Anglican. His theme is that the current dispute within Anglicanism, though ostensibly about homosexuality, is best understood as an attempt by conservative Evangelicals to seize power.

Bates adds much illuminating detail to the history of the crisis, from the Church of England Bishops’ 1991 Report Issues in Human Sexuality, to the firm and, as many believe, disastrous anti-homosexual stance taken by the 1998 Lambeth Conference, the subsequent dispute in 2003 over the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in the USA, and Canon Jeffrey John’s forced withdrawal from the offer of a suffragan bishopric in England. Unfortunately, like many others, Bates misses the main point of the 1991 report, namely that in strongly contested matters there must be freedom for individual consciences, but that the Church as an institution must not prematurely commit itself to one side or the other. As a significant background to these developments, he also charts the post-war rise of evangelicalism, and the recent growth of hardline groups which have fastened upon homosexuality as a rallying point for Christians worried by critical attitudes towards biblical authority, and disgusted by what they imagine homosexuality must entail. “What precipitates the split now he writes, “is that a section of conservative Evangelicals, with a militant and exclusivist philosophy and a taste for confrontation, has organised an attempted coup to seize the old church for its own agenda. Theirs is a sectarian, congregationalist church that can tolerate only one sort of Christian and only the authority of those bishops who agree with them. There is no room for dialogue, doubt or debate…” A harsh judgement, maybe, but there is plenty of evidence to show that it is not far from the truth.