What the Archbishop Really Said

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, gave the presidential address to the General Synod of the Church of England recently, and the press portrayed it as an unequivocal championing of gay rights.  "Archbishop of Canterbury: 'Church Rejecting LGBT People Viewed Like Racism'," was the Huffington Post (UK) headline.  "Welcome Same-Sex Couples or be Damned as Bigots," screamed The Independent in tabloid fashion.  In fact, the speech was much more nuanced.

Archbishop Justin referenced the Piling report, named from a commission chaired by Sir Joseph Piling, which recommended that the Church "warmly welcome and affirm the presence and ministry within the Church of gay and lesbian people, both lay and ordained".  The report had stirred fear among Anglicans, being on one hand the fear of "betrayal of our traditions, the denial of the authority of scripture, to apostasy", and on the other a "fear that our decisions will lead us to the rejection of LGBT people, to irrelevance in a changing society, to behaviour that many see akin to racism."  This, then, is the context of his words -- a recognition of fear on both sides, and acknowledgment of the basis of those fears.

When fear is met with opposing fear a zero sum game results, in which each side questions the other's motives, and "one party's gain necessarily means the other's loss."  The only way out of this impasse is "a massive cultural change," beginning with the Church.  That change will begin when the Church remembers "that people with whom I differ deeply are also deeply loved by Christ."  The radical conclusion to be drawn is that they "must be deeply loved by me, and love means seeking their flourishing."

The Archbishop conceded that "culture change is always threatening," and that such a path to reconciliation will be misunderstood.  "A Church that loves those with whom the majority deeply disagrees is a Church that will be unpleasantly challenging to a world where disagreement is either banned within a given group or removed and expelled." This way is difficult, but "I know it is right that we set such a course and hold to it through thick and thin, with integrity, transparency and honesty."

So Archbishop Justin's speech was not a tidy endorsement of the rights of gays, but as he says "it is certainly an untidy Church" that we belong to.  The Church of England is not yet ready to bless gay marriages or accept openly gay bishops, but the movement toward full inclusion is too far along for these things not to occur eventually.  In the meantime, the archbishop is counseling "gracious reconcilliation" as a way forward toward those goals.