Lauren Winner : July 2008 Archives

Catherine Roskam, Suffragan Bishop from New York, spoke at Lambeth about domestic violence: she rightly noted that domestic violence appears in all religious communities...she then went on to say that likely there were domestic abusers among the hundreds of male bishops gathered at Lambeth:

"We have 700 men here.

"Do you think any of them beat their wives? Chances are they do. The most devout Christians beat their wives.

"Culturally, many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife. In that regard, it makes the conversation quite difficult."

Hmmmm.

On the one hand: three cheers to Bishop Catherine for discussing domestic violence. Thrity-plus years after feminist critics began insisting loudly that we address the problem of domestiv abuse and sexual assualt within religious communities, the topic is still too often brushed under the rug.

On the other hand: accusing her fellow bishops of commiting domestic violence, when she presumably does not have any specific knowledge thereof, seems at best incendiary and in poor taste, and at worst, laden with assumptions about brutality that must "naturally" arise in certain parts of the world. As Riazat Butt at The Guardian put it, "What bishops should be more concerned about is her insinuation that a non-white culture leads to domestic violence and that white, western culture is too civilised and too advanced to allow such atrocities to occur."

According to this report, Sir Jonathan Sacks, British chief rabbi, spoke at Lambeth earlier this week about the need to find unity within difference:

The Anglican Communion has held together quite different strands of Christian theology and practice better than any other religion I know, certainly than any other Western religion I know....Covenant is predicated on difference...Between God and humanity-that is the covenant of ultimate difference.

It is striking that this is one of the most robustly theological comments on Lambeth and the current crisis in the Anglican Communion to have been reported on. One of the many wonderful things about the Archbishop of Canterbury is his insistence on speaking and thinking theologically, but many other commentators, on both "sides" of the issue, have not followed suit. Thank-you, Rabbi Sacks, for interjecting this decidedly theological note into the discussion...

The Windsor Continuation Group has released a document calling for, according to Ruth Gledhill, a "new Pastoral Forum is to be set up to bring rebel provinces into line in the Anglican Communion." The full report will be popping up on blogosphere soon; one place to look for it will be the Anglicans United site, which promises to have it posted by 2 pm. Among other things, the document is expected to clarify the moratorium (e.g., on the ordination of non-celibate gay clergy) called for by the Windsor Report.

More soon...

One of the questions that casts a long shadow over Anglican and Episcopalian decision-making about issues such as the ordination of women and the blessing of same-sex unions is how movement on these issues will affect Anglican churches' relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. That relationship has been, to say the least, strained since, oh, 1529, but the Anglican Church and the Roman Church have much in common, and the two churches have engaged in fruitful ecumenical conversations, most especially through the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. Robinson's consecration was a "speed bump" for this dialogue.

Rome has been commenting on Anglican doings a lot this month. According to British news reports, Pope Benedict, to his everlasting credit, said that he did not want C of E priests who were upset about the female bishops vote in York to just leap into the Tiber.

Today, Cardinal Ivan Dias of Bombay, Catholic delegate to Lambeth, has chastised the progressive wing of the Anglican church. It struck me as interesting that, according to the Guardian, Cardinal Dias cast his critique at least partly in the language of "relevance":

Dias told bishops the battle to bring Christ to the world must be placed in the "wider context of spiritual combat" with Satan. "If this context is ignored in favour of a myopic world-vision, Christ's salvation will be conveniently dismissed as irrelevant.

Relevance, of course, is invoked by people on both sides of the sexuality debates, and it has been invoked in ecclesial debates for a long time: in the 1970s, when the Episcopal Church was in the process of revising the prayerbook, proponents of revision worried that the old prayer book was no longer relevant; in 1928, the previous prayer book revision, prayers for the sick and dying, for the social order, and for doctors and nurses were added to the prayer book, in an effort to make the prayers more relevant to a nation that had just experienced World War. The list goes on... It's curious: I'm not sure that "relevance" is a Christian virtue.

By the way, for an interesting piece on the Windsor Report's implications for Catholic-Anglican dialogue, see this article from the Anglican Theological Review by Kevin Flynn.

Things are heating up at Lambeth:

A Sudanese bishop is calling for Bishop Robinson's resignation: "God is not making a mistake creating Adam and Eve," he said. "He would have created two Adams if he wanted."

And the bishop of Fort Worth, is calling for "Those Bishops who stand in solidarity with Gene Robinson [to] withdraw themselves from further participation in the Lambeth Conference."

Meanwhile, Victoria Mathews mentioned that maybe one day the Archbishop of Canterbury will be female...Mathews's prediction is being reported on, but it's not exactly breaking news because a) it's speculative and b) it's not surprising, given the recent vote at York.

In this context, perhaps a prayer for the church is in order. Here is the collect for church conventions from the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty and everliving God, source of all wisdom and understanding, be present with those who take counsel in Canterbury for the renewal and mission of your Church. Teach us in all things to seek first your honor and glory. Guide us to perceive what is right, and grant us both the courage to pursue it and the grace to accomplish it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I got an email today: "Why exactly does anyone beyond America's handful of Episcopalians care about the Lambeth conference?" It's a good question. As a colleague of mine pointed out to me last year, in 2006, the American Baptist...

The bishops' spouses meeting (and, no, Mark Andrew is not there) has gotten some news attention - perhaps because Lambeth itself seems low-key so far. I have often thought that there is little I would rather do less than be...

If you look at the schedule for the Lambeth conference today, the events look pretty tame: Rowan Williams is scheduled to give an address, but other than that there appears to be a lot of worship and a lot of...

I well remember Lambeth 1998, which took place a month or so after I was baptized in a college chapel in Cambridge, England. I had never heard of Lambeth--the palace, or the eponymous once-a-decade gathering of Anglican bishops. In 1998,...