ACNS 3490 | AUSTRALIA | 27 JUNE 2003
Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, The Most Revd Peter Carnley AO, on issues of human sexuality
[ACNS source: Anglican Church of Australia] The view that the Anglican Communion is about to fall apart, essentially over differences of opinion about how to care pastorally for gay and lesbian people, is reminiscent of that celebrated comment of Mark Twain when he said that reports of his own death were greatly exaggerated.
What is indisputably true is that there is a Communion-wide debate going on which, without a whit of exaggeration, is extremely lively.
This is certainly what Anglicans should expect right now. The 1998 Lambeth Conference, while cautiously reaffirming received teaching and pastoral norms, encouraged the 38-member churches of the Communion to continue to study what is clearly a complex and difficult matter.
This is exactly what the Anglican Church of Australia is committed to doing. Our last General Synod at Brisbane in 2001 received a Doctrine Commission report entitled Faithfulness in Fellowship and commended it to the dioceses for further reflection. Even the most preliminary look at the chapters of this report relating to the handful of biblical texts that are relevant to the homosexual question will reveal something of the wide diversity of viewpoint about their correct interpretation. Do these ancient texts warn against undisciplined promiscuous behaviour that is declared to be contrary to the divine will because it fractures what should be steadfastly committed personal relationships of love? Or can these texts also determine the wrongness or otherwise of long-term and committed relationships but among people of the same sex?
Given that the concept of a 'homosexually orientated person' is a relatively modern invention of the mid-19th century, can these ancient texts be lifted out of their original cultural context (which assumed an undifferentiated
heterosexuality) so as to be made to apply to the essentially modern question about faithfully committed homosexual people? The answer to that question is not so obvious to some people as it apparently is to some "Sydney Anglicans".
Despite suggestions to the contrary, all of us agree unreservedly about the uniquely normative and authoritative place of the scriptural texts within the Christian tradition. The exact meaning to be read from these texts and whether they can rightly be made to provide a neat pre-packaged answer to our contemporary questions is what is at issue.
Meanwhile, most of us also agree that the pre-emptive action of the Canadian diocese of New Westminster in authorising liturgical texts for the blessing of same-sex unions (which are explicitly said not to be marriages) is unhelpfully well ahead of the play.
Similarly, the election of a priest who is said to be in a same-sex relationship to be the bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire, having formerly been in a heterosexual marriage, expresses the confidence that the clergy and people of that diocese have in him. But the question of whether he is a worthy recipient of episcopal orders now has to be ratified by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the US.
But, because this is not really our question to decide, we might be well advised not to be tempted into empty moralising. Still less should we be tempted to send terse and threatening messages to New Hampshire or to the General Convention or just into the ill-defined ether through the media. Surely it is better to write a private letter, expressing a well-argued and rational viewpoint, rather than gallop into the grandstand of self-righteous indignation.
Likewise, the election in England of a declared celibate person who promises to uphold current church teaching and practice, even while openly and honestly confessing to having had 'a past', is hardly a matter for grown-up people to stomp their feet or wring their hands over.
In this case the question of worthiness is properly left to the Oxford electoral college and the Queen who must ultimately approve such church appointments in the realm of England. Far be it from colonials to question the royal prerogative. We would certainly need very concrete and substantial grounds on which to base an objection, lest we get ourselves into a defamation suit.
Meanwhile, anybody brave enough to claim to know the inner mind of God on the basis of a personal claim to be privy to the only conceivable interpretation of some biblical texts is guilty of self-delusion. Literary texts are rarely as univocal, clear and distinct as we are sometimes led to believe.
Like Hamlet, there is no one reading of them. The debate itself is testimony to the complexities of the interpretative task.
What are most needed right now are honesty and humility, and a willingness to acknowledge the possibility of alternative readings of hotly disputed texts. A civilised and reasoned discussion can be welcomed as a sign of vigorous life.
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