The Globalisation of Anglicanism Is Rather Like the Globalisation of Many Other Things

by Peter Selby

Praying as I do that Gene Robinson will be richly blessed in his episcopal ministry in New Hampshire, and rejoicing with all who find themselves affirmed by his consecration, I have found it hard -- nearly impossible -- to dare to raise what seems to me a rather difficult thought that comes to me

about it. What brings the thought to mind is not the election and consecration themselves, not even the debate about gay sexuality, but some of the rhetoric I have read about the event from various American friends and writers.

The problem for me is that much of the language used to doubt the purpose of "waiting" for the Anglican Communion to assent to the election of an openly gay man as a bishop sounds not that different from the language used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq without waiting for the UN Security Council.

The problem for me is that much of the language used to doubt the purpose of "waiting" for the Anglican Communion to assent to the election of an openly gay man as a bishop sounds not that different from the language used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq without waiting for the UN Security Council. There is a searing irony in that resemblance, of course, in that I imagine that most of the people who supported Bishop Gene's election were pretty opposed to the Bush line in Iraq, and still are.

So what has happened, and what are we to make of the international dimensions of this dispute? It is not too hard to understand that churches which have known for two hundred years what was right to teach -- and they have been taught what to teach by white western missionaries -- resent suddenly being told, in the era of the long-sought independence, that it is time to change their teaching, at the behest of the successors of the same missionaries. And, when those missionaries are now in such global dominance of both military might and commercial muscle, we can understand the desire to rebel, to think matters through for themselves, to refuse to surrender to what looks like another theological fashion. And since the old-style missionaries have their successors in the religious right still saying what the old-style missionaries used to teach, we should not wonder that they are determined to stick with what they know. Nor is it surprising that the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, which knows first-hand what it is like when white missionaries with guns and money run their country, takes a different, and on this issue liberal, view.

So it isn't good to hear advocates of the liberal cause -- with whom I am delighted to be associated on so much -- sounding in their rhetoric like Condoleezza Rice. Of course the invasion of Iraq and the consecration of Gene Robinson are not the same issues -- that's why it's disturbing when I hear speakers talking about the Anglican Communion in the same kind of language as the Administration's spokespeople speak of the UN. And the ironies get odder still. I read one piece which suggested that the complaint that ECUSA had acted unilaterally came ill from inside a Communion which had its beginning in the "unilateral" action of King Henry VIII. The credentials of our church as church rely precisely on its NOT having been founded by Henry VIII, and in any case, having learned to admire the Constitution of the USA, I find it quite hard to accept Americans taking their cue from any English monarch, and especially that one!

The wealthy export the products of their thinking as much as of their factories -- good and bad alike -- and find themselves astonished at the ambivalence that is felt about both in the poorest countries of the world.

There is no extricating ourselves from the fact that this controversy, like all others, will have the characteristics of globalisation as it appears all over the place: the western wealthy dominate the poor of sub-Saharan Africa. The wealthy export the products of their thinking as much as of their factories -- good and bad alike -- and find themselves astonished at the ambivalence that is felt about both in the poorest countries of the world. On the one hand, those nations want a state-of-the-art civilisation, and accept, perhaps too readily that western civilisation is state-of-the-art; on the other hand they wish to assert their right to think and decide for themselves, and to have as much influence in the developing culture of our globalised world as we have.

And sometimes they will be right to accept and sometimes right to reject -- and we shall demonstrate our dominance by telling them which is right and which is wrong.  And we shall sometimes rejoice in their independence of thought when they decide against our governments (and our churches) in ways we would like; and sometimes we shall reject the same independence of thought when it leads to "wrong" decisions. The effect of the economic dislocation of the world is bound to be like that.  We shall not want to accord the poor of the earth a veto over some of our decisions (New Hampshire) and over others we shall loudly protest that they should have one (Iraq).

Which leads me to my final, only slightly flippant question: so far as I know the Diocese of New Hampshire is among the most aware of the power of international and domestic debt, because Bishop Doug Theuner had the wisdom to give all the clergy copies of my book Grace and Mortgage. Surely there can't be a connection here?

The Rt. Rev. Peter Selby is Bishop of Worcester in the Church of England. His regular column on A Globe of Witnesses is Money & Power. Bishop Peter's office may be contacted by email at ncurrie@cofe-worcester.org.uk