A non-Anglican approaches this book with a reluctance to intrude on private grief, but the worry is soon dispelled. These Anglicans are not so much grieving as angry. The nearest the collection comes to private grief is in the various detailed discussions of the ‘Windsor Report’, the report of the commission set up in 2003 by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make proposals for a modus vivendi for the Anglican Communion after the fierce disagreements over the election and consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson by the Episcopal Church of the USA and the authorisation by a diocese of the Anglican Church of Canada of a rite of blessing for same-sex unions.
In general the contributors have a low opinion of ‘Windsor’. Marilyn McCord Adams describes how the Windsor Report focuses on giving the fuzzy Anglican communion ‘sharper definition’, through ‘ “instruments of union” (the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting)’ (p.70). McCord Adams accuses Windsor of ‘[promoting] ethics to creedal (sic) status’, and trying to make the Anglican Communion ‘a bulwark against cultural change’.
Charles Helfing describes Windsor’s proposals as ‘Romanizing remedies’. An interesting part of Helfling’s argument is that historically doctrinal definitions followed practice. From this he argues that, ‘for many of the faithful’, the experience of the ministry of women priests ‘settles the question whether a woman can be a priest’ (p.86), and so proposes that the test for the validity of the ministry of a non-celibate gay bishop should be a visit to New Hampshire – not a course likely to appeal to Archbishop Akinola.
The relation between fact and doctrine or supposed revelation is, of course the issue underlying the debate in the book, even if formally it is concerned with the narrower issue of authority in Anglicanism. The two are brought together in the essay by Keith Ward, who makes a comparison between the debate in the early Church on whether Christians were required to keep the Jewish law, including the Sabbath, and the current debate on the status of same-sex relationships. Ward concludes that the Christian position should be that when these relationships reflect ‘loyalty and total commitment’ and their sexual practice expresses and is subordinated to ‘mutual personal love’, they are acceptable and worthy of blessing by the Church (p.26). He admits that to develop this view from the Bible he must point to ‘new knowledge of human gender and sexuality’.
Part IV of the book is entitled ‘Justice for Gays’, and this includes one of the most readable essays in the book, ‘God’s Good News for Gays’, by Philip Kennedy, a Roman Catholic. Kennedy concentrates his fire on those who persist in a ‘pre-modern’ theology, as opposed to a ‘modern’ or ‘liberal’ theology (usefully defined on p.306). Kennedy has a brisk way with fundamentalism: ‘The Bible’s teaching that men who relate sexually with each other ought to be put to death is universally ignored by Christians and Jews today. It does not come from God. Its author was a human being entirely unknown to anyone at present’ (p. 309).
Kennedy’s thesis is simple: ‘Jesus, viewed as God’s Good News for and among suffering human beings, has never been remembered as a denouncer of male-male, or female-female sexual couplings… Difficulties for gay people today do not come from God or Jesus, but from human beings who are repelled by homosexuality for a host of reasons’ (p.301).
Kennedy’s chapter makes plain that the issue underlying this debate, of the sort of authority that can be claimed for texts composed in a remote historical age with a totally different culture from ours, is not one for Anglicans alone. It has not exploded in the Roman Catholic Church (so far) because ‘over the past quarter century Roman Catholics were governed by an autocratic papacy deaf to the findings of modern theology and biblical research’. On the specific question of gay clergy, the Vatican document released in November 2005 attempting to ban gays from ordination may be a sign that this particular pax romana may not last much longer.
Francis McDonagh works on Latin America for the Catholic development agency CAFOD. He has written on Latin America for The Tablet and the National Catholic Reporter, and is preparing a collection of Helder Câmara’s writings to be published by Orbis Books, New York. He is a member of the Roman Catholic Caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.
Francis McDonagh reviews Gays and the Future of Anglicanism edited by Andrew Linzey and Richard Kirker. O Books (Ropley). 2005. £17.99. 440 pages. Pbk. ISBN: 190504738X.