The publication of Rabble-rouser for Peace, a new biography of Archbishop Desmond Tutu has generated a flurry of news coverage. The Associated Press via the San Jose Mercury News reports that Tutu wrote to former Archbishop of Canterbuy George Carey in 1998 expressing “shame” over a Lambeth Conference resolution proclaiming that homosexual acts were incompatible with Scripture.
The story also says that Tutu was “deeply saddened at the furor caused by the appointment of openly gay V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
“‘He found it little short of outrageous that church leaders should be obsessed with issues of sexuality in the face of the challenges of AIDS and global poverty,’ wrote [the book’s author John] Allen.”
This story, particularly the “shame” section occasioned a press statement from Tutu’s successor Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, which you can read by clicking on the keep reading button at the end of this entry. Ndungane, if I am not mistaken, is currently at a meeting of Anglican primates from Africa, Asia and Argentina, and this news cannot have broken at a good time for him.
He says, in part: “As a past leader of the church in Southern Africa, Archbishop Tutu will have an appreciation of how difficult it is to try to hold together people of different opinions in the complex and diverse world we live in today. As Anglicans we continue to value the rich diversity of our people and to strive towards unity. In the church in Southern Africa we condemn homophobia and preach a message of open and loving support for our gay and lesbian members. We are committed to continuing to listen to their views and to empathise with their experience of being homosexual.”
Finally, Steven Bates, of the Guardian, writing on the paper’s blogs, picks up on the revelation that Tutu was sounded out at one point about becoming Archibshop of Canterbury when Carey was chosen. Steven says this news “is likely to cause liberal members of the Church of England to sob quietly into their cocoa.”
“How different the Anglican Communion might have been with Tutu at the helm,” he writes. “The biography makes clear that Tutu does not share the visceral antipathy towards gays exhibited by his fellow African bishops further north in the Dark Continent. It is this that is currently tearing the worldwide Anglican communion apart.
I must first point out that Archbishop Tutu’s remark that he was ‘ashamed to be an Anglican’ as quoted in a newspaper headline this morning was – according to John Allen’s biography – from a private communication with Archbishop George Carey over one particular issue at a particular time in Anglican Church history.
Since I became Archbishop we have moved on from that point and, certainly in the Anglican Church in Southern Africa the debate on homosexuality has been increasingly opened in a way that it never was before.
Archbishop Tutu is aware that the Anglican Church worldwide stood by him during the difficult apartheid years and I feel sure that his remark in no way reflected on his feelings for the church as a whole.
As a past leader of the church in Southern Africa, Archbishop Tutu will have an appreciation of how difficult it is to try to hold together people of different opinions in the complex and diverse world we live in today. As Anglicans we continue to value the rich diversity of our people and to strive towards unity. In the church in Southern Africa we condemn homophobia and preach a message of open and loving support for our gay and lesbian members. We are committed to continuing to listen to their views and to empathise with their experience of being homosexual.
Archbishop Tutu himself felt (as is pointed out in this biography) that we should not be obsessed with the issues of sexuality in the face of the challenges of global poverty and disease. I would join my voice with his in this belief and appeal for Anglicans and others to focus more on what is central to our faith and on life and death priorities.