not too much

On Tuesday, at the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham emissaries of ECUSA and the Canadian Anglican Church will respond to the invitation of the primates to explain "the thinking" behind their decisions and actions in the 'homosexuality controversy'. Stephen Bates comments in the Church of England Newspaper of 17 June:

In truth, it is hard to see what purpose will be served by this charade. Positions on both sides of the gay row are much too deeply entrenched for that and indeed, at its deepest level, the dispute is as much about a political power struggle for control within American Episcopalianism as it is about what the Bible says about homosexuals.

It is clear that the North Americans are no more going to retreat from what they [. . .] perceive to be a more realistic, tolerant and Christian attitude towards gays in the clergy, than that the bishops of the Global South will be struck by a blinding revelation that homosexuality does not have to be the defining, now-or-never, communion-breaking issue for Anglicanism.

[ . . . ] As in any divorce, schism or civil war, it is when the two sides not only stop talking to each other but also cease listening -- a process which implies the possibility of change and even reconciliation -- that breakdown is inevitable. They may not openly admit it, but too many people in Anglicanism just want to bring that on.

Well, the time has come. It is surely evident that the strains of keeping together an international communion, traditionally based on mutual affection and respect for each other's traditions and provincial autonomy, are just too great when stretched across societies of vastly different cultural, social and religious realities, particularly when it is evident that there is no mutual understanding and appreciation left to hold the show together.

I join with others to pray that Bates may be wrong, though I suspect that he could be right. My concern is not so much the separation of the various national churches as possible fragmentation within national churches, especially in the West. The Australian church, for example, is divided. I've mentioned before the comment one Australian theologian made to me that it will take a century to resolve the 'homosexuality' question (just as it took many years to solve some divisive questions in the past.)

Why then can't we just 'cool it' and wait for the Spirit to do the Spirit's work? Bates continues:

[. . .] there is no mutual understanding and appreciation left to hold the show together. And particularly when both sides -- but one side in particular -- is insisting on its own, exclusive, definition of orthodoxy. There is absolutely no sign that this is going to change in the next three years, so should we really wait for the Archbishop of Canterbury to make the invidious choice then of who is, and who is not, acceptable in his sight at the next Lambeth Conference in 2008?

[. . .] [P]erhaps it is time to face up to realities, cut through the hypocrisies, evasions and pieties, and work out a way to move apart with dignity and honour. It won't be a clean-cut break.

[. . .] But it would have the merit that the coercion, the bluster and the politicking could stop and that everyone could start talking about other things, like God, for once.