Excommunication?

Father Jake has a good post about recent ponouncements from Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria that he won’t take communion with those who are in favour of treating gay people in the same way as anyone else. It’s terribly sad both to see excommunication being used as a weapon in this debate (as if this was the worst difference that people could have) and to hear Archbishop Rowan Williams apparently giving in to pressure from the conservatives on this issue. Dr Williams’ role as Archbishop of Canterbury, as head of the Anglican Communion, should surely be to ensure that one part of the Communion doesn’t act as though it alone was arbiter of belief.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 2:39pm on 15 March 2005
Category: Faith, Struggling

Howdy,
Why should the Archbishop do it? Who he?

What or who is the arbiter of belief?

Stephen (URL)
5:13pm on 15 March 2005

Not quite clear what you meant here. If you mean, why should Archbishop Akinola have communion with bishops (and other people) who disagree with him, that’s partly because his duty as bishop is to be accepting and partly because excommunication is effectively saying that the other person is not a Christian, which is a wild claim to make over (for example) simply writing a letter in support of a liberal position!

As for who’s the arbiter of belief – the body of the church, surely? My point was that no one wing of the church alone is arbiter, and part of Dr Williams’ role is to stop one wing acting as though it alone was right.

pax et bonum

John () (URL)
5:26pm on 15 March 2005

Whoops! I meant Williams not Akinola. Sorry. Why should he (Williams) ‘ensure’ anything. Where does his authority stem from?

Besides, if he did would he not, de facto, be acting on behalf of the other ‘wing’?

You see where does ultimate authority lie in all this? To hide behind ‘the body of the church’ is inadequate since you implicitly accept that the body is divided. As it is you are simply reduced to politics, without having addressed the question of authority. (Am I repeating myself?) Who or what decides?

Stephen (URL)
5:58pm on 15 March 2005

Because Dr Williams, as Archbishop of Canterbury, is head of the Anglican Communion. That gives him both the right and the responsibility to run that Communion (inasmuch as anyone really “runs” it!).

Ensuring balance means, by definition, that neither wing “wins” – and one of the defining characteristics of anglicanism has always been its breadth and inclusivity. One of the saddest things about this whole debacle has been the loss of that spirit.

Accepting others with different opinions is hard. I can see that, for many, accepting practicing homosexuals as saved Christians is hard. But, then, accepting bigots as brothers and sisters in Christ is hard for the gays, too. And, for the great mass of us in between those extremes, we have somehow to live with both!

As for ultimate authority, I still say “the body of Christ”. This isn’t hiding, and I explicitly accept that the body is divided. That’s sort of the point. There’s no “ultimate authority” short of God. None of us know God fully, and so we must refrain from passing judgement on our brothers and sisters.

It’s one thing for someone to cut themselves off from everyone else, quite another to cast out our brothers and sisters. The former, we can do nothing about; the latter, we should reserve as an absolute last resort. And I cannot see how being gay qualifies as such a last resort.

pax et bonum

[John] () (URL)
7:33pm on 15 March 2005

Thanks for your fulsome response, John. Please allow me to “think out loud” for a moment. I guess I just found your initial post surprising. Akinola would cite scriptural principles as the basis for his actions, believing (rightly, in my view) that they have divine authority. To counter this you wish to invoke the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In turn you assert his authority is derived from “the body”. However, since this is where the authority trail terminates, you have relegated spiritual matters to a matter of internal politics within the organisation. No matter how you (or anyone else) dresses up the issue in spiritual sounding language, it will never be more than making sure you are in the biggest party.

(I hope this does not sound offensive. I’m just trying to work out where you are coming from! :-)

)

Stephen (URL)
11:53pm on 15 March 2005

I would say that Archbishop Akinola would cite scriptural principles, and that so would the other side. It’s not a case of “The Bible against culture”, as some people try to present it, but of two different interpretations of the Bible, both drawing from different traditions and cultures. There is no interpretation of the Bible that is free from cultural influences.

So, we have a Christian organisation that contains two divergent views, both with a reasonable (in their own eyes) claim to a Spirit-inspired scriptural argument. In such a case, the anglican tradition is not to judge but to try and accept both as parts of the Christian family as far as that is possible – anglicanism isn’t defined by a statement of beliefs but by a common heritage. As such, Archbishop Williams has the duty to try and ensure that this happens – not that either party triumphs but that we maintain harmony. In carrying out this task, Dr Williams draws his responsibility from his position as head of the organisation – because the issue is one of internal harmony, not “sound doctrine” (once we have accepted that both can claim some basis).

Finally, even if we accept that Archbishop Akinola’s views on homosexuality are unambiguously correct, we still have the issue of whether his actions towards the people who disagree with him are correct. In particular, condemning a bishop in a different church (the CofE) simply for writing a letter in support of a different position is questionable, at best, for one in Akinola’s (shall we say shaky?) position of moral high ground (see some of his statements on poverty, for example)

No offense taken, BTW – always good to have discussions :-)