It was a very easy contrast to make for the media - while World Youth Day 2008 has been acclaimed as a success by the Catholic Church in Australia, Anglicans were tearing themselves to pieces, with the decennial Lambeth Conference reduced to a farce. A large number of quasi-schismatic conservative bishops boycotted, having earlier set up a quasi-church outside the Anglican Communion’s traditional structures at GAFCON in Jerusalem.
What’s all the fuss about? Teh gay.
The situation of “impaired communion” - which incidentally gives Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen and his band of merry men a much bigger global reach and increased power - arose because the Episcopalians in America consecrated an openly gay man with a partner, Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. Robinson himself was conspicuously not invited to Lambeth - but that hasn’t stopped the conservative boycott.
Stephen Bates, the religious affairs correspondent of the Guardian, wrote in his 2004 book A Church At War that homosexuality had been picked as an issue on which a power play for the conservative evangelicals in the Anglican Communion could be mounted in the 1990s, when it became clear that opposition to women clergy wasn’t sufficiently strong to serve as a lever to advance their agenda. Bates continues to characterise the imbroglio as essentially a political power struggle. In A Church At War, he points to research which shows that believers in the UK are far more relaxed about same sex relationships than some of their “leaders”. Interestingly, a study released this week - commissioned by Stonewall from Leeds University academics - reinforces that finding.
The report can be downloaded here.
It’s not greatly surprising to me that a culture war of this nature has far fewer followers than it claims, and that it’s being fought out at great cost to many of the adherents of the church all its belligerents claim to cherish.
It’s a couple of months old now, but the best thing I’ve read on this whole issue is Garrett Keizer’s flawed but wonderfully human and considered article on the debate in the June issue of Harper’s. They’ve had the kindness to put it online. I’m not religious, but my mother’s an on-again off-again Anglican minister, so it all strikes a bit close to home. Anyway, really worth the read.
Thanks, Nick.
I wanted to post the link to the survey for a broader reason than just the intra-religious debate - first to point out that in general public opinion on these issues is now very much more liberal than culture warriors would have us think, and secondly I think it’s worth noting that there is much less appreciable difference in opinion between believers and non-believers on this issue than is commonly thought to be the case in a society with a lot of comparability to ours - particularly among younger people. I think we too often assume the American pattern is likely to be replicated here in Australia but that’s wrong.
Yes Mark, I agree. It seems to be used more as a chip in a broader struggle within the church, a way of whipping up a furore to wedge your internal enemies.
To contextualize Keizer, the paragraph that is probably the crux of his argument - which is about the way the church loses sight of its broader social justice mission amidst the scramble of internecine struggle - also touches on this:
Will read the report with interest, btw.
It’s worth a read, Nick. It builds on quantitative work done in 2006, and it’s a good example of how qualitative research can tease out some of the attitudes and practices in people’s everyday lives and experience that inform the numbers in surveys.
The survey - which found that 84% of religious people disagreed with the proposition that same sex relationships were always morally wrong - can be found here:
[link]
I suspect that attitudes in Australia might be slightly less liberal, but I haven’t gone hunting for any research that’s been done here on the question.
Incidentally, Bates in his 2004 book reports earlier British research which found that younger Anglicans were less likely to be opposed to same-sex relationships than non-Anglicans.
The Australia Institute’s Mapping Homophobia study is now three years old, and the data it’s based on was collected nearly five years ago, so these figures could well be out of date.
The finding was that 35% of Australians think that homosexuality is “immoral.” Interestingly, the opinions of anglicans and catholics followed the general population.
Thanks, woulfe, so that’s consistent with the British research, more or less.
The best thing I have read on this stuff - from a conservative perspective - is Andrew Sullivan’s Virtually Normal. Of course it is unfair to generalise that all gays, or even most gays, are as reactionary as Sullivan in advocating for gay marriage, but it is a very personal, beautifully written and erudite argument.
I’m sorry but facts are not going to stop the nutters.