The Guardian sums up last week’s emergency Primate meeting of the Anglican Communion as “heading for schism.”
Maybe, but in the discussion, two arguments have been brought up which have, I think, no role in this debate.
The first, on the side of the There Should Be No Schism crowd, says that most of the provinces (i.e., the various national churches that make up the AC) will back down because, well, the Episcopal Church is the richest of them all, and provides them with lots of financial support. This isn’t being framed as any sort of threat from ECUSA’s side, but as realpolitik from the other provinces’ side.
If this is as great a moral crisis as it is being made out to be, then I would hope that money would not enter into it. “What shall it profit it a church if it gets all sorts of donations, but sacrificeth its very soul?” (The same can and should be said regarding threats by conservative congregations and dioceses within ECUSA to withhold money from the national church.) If someone offered to give $20 million to the Church of Nigeria in exchange for, oh, let’s say their preaching that God approves of stoning adulterers, I would hope it would be turned down.
The converse side of this, argued by many conservative primates, is that the acceptance of homosexuality, which is culturally unpopular in much of the Third World, makes it more difficult for AC churches to proselytize in those nations, particularly where there are fundamentalist Islamic movements around.
Well, boo-hoo. Jesus didn’t seem to let local social mores get in the way of his ministry; anything but. He did all sorts of things that offended much of the general citizenry (not to mention the authorities), not with the intent to do so, so much as because his core message — forgiveness, redemption, God’s love — cut across custom and convention. It’s fair to say that scandal in the church hurts evangelizing efforts, but it’s unfair to say that something which scandalizes is itself immoral, or that folks in the Church of Nigeria should not say or do anything that might offend American Christians or potential converts in the US.
Money, and popularity, are not what religion should be about. I would hope that everyone involved in this controversy would agree with that.
(via Blinne)
As best as I can tell the Global South:
1. Will not sell out their principles for money. It is the conservatives in the West that seem to be worried about this. They think the Global South is like themselves where they are concerned about losing church property over principle.
2. Really believe in their positions but are concerned about guilt by association.
In Africa, you find principled individuals on both sides of this issue. I think those of us in the West can stand to learn a lot from them.