Giles Frasier says in The Independent on Sunday that Archbishop Rowan Williams has been too compliant in the face of the Church’s conservatives and homophobes. The time has come to confront the extremists who would fight the battles of 17th century in the 21st.
The parish church was to be a place where, under God, the English would find an oddly workable unity.
Two things have undermined this vision: the British Empire and the internet. In the days of the Empire, missionaries from the English church made faith our most successful export. Global Christianity mushroomed in the 20th century, with Anglicanism leading the way. There are now 77 million Anglicans. But what did not get exported was the very idea of Anglicanism as a peace treaty. Transplanted into different soil, Anglicanism grew hotter and more ideological, re-exposing deep theological fissures between believers that the C of E had agreed to set aside for the greater good. With the growth in communications technology, these differences could no longer be hidden.
Liberals were horrified to discover that some Anglicans were little more than fundamentalists in vestments; conservatives were horrified to discover that some Anglicans had gone native with secular humanism. Gay sex started it all. And the more the headlines rolled in, the more the cracks widened.
In fact, the fight over homosexuality exposed a darker side to the English reticence to confront difference head-on. We all knew there were loads of gay vicars; we all knew there were many gay bishops too – but it was a form of knowledge communicated in nods, winks and church code. But the spirit of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kept many of them stuck in the church closet. It took an American bishop first to be open about having a partner of the same sex. Gene Robinson’s crime was his honesty. Likewise, the idea that the gay ‘marriage’ that recently took place in St Bartholomew’s church was a first is simply not the case. There have been hundreds of such weddings. It’s just that they have been – and what a very English word this is – discreet.
But all that is over. The conservatives have decided that they can exploit the deep homophobia of many African Christians in order to stage a coup for the soul of the church. Suddenly, we are once again fighting the unresolved battles of the Reformation, with narrow-minded puritans seeking to impose their joyless and claustrophobic world-view on the rest of the church. The newly formed Federation of Confessing Anglicans (Foca) is seeking bridgeheads in wealthy evangelical parishes and the English ecclesiological peace treaty lies in tatters. All eyes now turn to Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Is there anything he can do about these Focas?
Read Giles Frasier: Enough is enough. The extremists must be confronted