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National Review, Sept 1, 1998 by Anthony Lejeune

WE must preserve the Church of England," a British elder statesman once remarked. "It's our only defense against real religion." Such affectionate cynicism has been under strain during the three weeks of the Lambeth Conference. Every ten years these conferences bring together the bishops of the worldwide Anglican communion, including Episcopalians from America. This year there were 750 bishops from 167 countries; the Archbishop of Canterbury presides, although he claims no juridical authority outside the Church of England itself.

For the first time bishops from the Third World formed a majority. In theory 70 million Anglicans were represented, but the blanket figure is misleading. Of the notional 26 million in Britain barely 1 million regularly go to church: about the same number as go to church in the United States out of a notional 2.5 million Episcopalians. In Nigeria there are 17.5 million Anglicans, most of whom go to church every week: the same is true of Uganda's 8 million. But the Church of England has 114 bishops and the American Episcopal Church 300, while Nigeria has only 61 and Uganda 28.

Secularism, apathy, and moral relativism are the worst enemies British and American bishops normally confront, whereas bishops in the Third World struggle against corruption and rival religions, notably militant Islam, often in circumstances leading to genuine martyrdom. The Bishop of Kaduna in Nigeria reported that, when he was preparing for the conference, "two parishes said they would not support my going because they feared I would be corrupted." They had heard of Western bishops who did not believe in the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection.

"Getting the bishops into line," wrote one newspaper columnist early in the conference, "may be a lot like herding jellyfish." Any definite resolution obliging them to do or refrain from doing anything controversial would be ignored. Much effort therefore went into drafting words which were ambiguous and unconstraining. Much effort also went into spin-doctoring. Bishops were warned on the first day not to speak to journalists (recognizable by their pink badges) unless accompanied by one of the gold-badged "communications officers." A newsletter, called The Lambeth Daily, propagated happy stories. Above all, the chief spin-doctor constantly emphasized that there was "no schism."

The spokesmen had to insist there was no schism because there so plainly is. The noisiest division recently has been about women priests, but this time it was about homosexuality. This dispute became the chief event of the conference, dramatized in the clash between Bishop Spong and the outraged African bishops.

Spong was interviewed for The Church of England Newspaper by its deputy editor, Andrew Carey, who happens to be the Archbishop of Canterbury's son. Africans, said Spong, had "moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity." They had not "faced the intellectual revolution" of the West or the discoveries of Copernicus and Einstein.

The Africans, understandably, were furious. "He is really looking down on us," fumed a Ugandan bishop. "I am portrayed as someone who does not know Scripture or doctrine."

"If they feel patronized, that's too bad," replied Spong. "I'm not going to cease being a twentieth-century person for fear of offending somebody in the Third World."

"Scientific advances," Spong also said, "have given us a new understanding of homosexual people." The Bishop of Enugu in Nigeria, on the other hand, flatly told the General Secretary of the Gay and Lesbian Christian Movement, "You will go to hell." No spin-doctor could spin that sort of disagreement away. An evasive resolution was dropped, and, after a courteous debate, a resolution declaring homosexual practice to be "incompatible with Scripture" was passed by an unexpectedly large majority of 7 to 1. This, announced the gay lobby, was "the unacceptable face of Christianity." The American liberals made it clear they were not going to change their position -- any more than Bishop Spong is going to tell Africans, let alone Afro-Americans, in any other context that they are only just down from the trees.

The press inevitably concentrated on this one issue virtually to the exclusion of anything else; which, from the broadest point of view, was no doubt a distortion. However, the division over homosexuality, like the division over women priests, serves well enough to symbolize the great division between modernists and traditionalists which splits and threatens to destroy the Anglican communion.

The danger can be seen most vividly in Britain, which is now one of the most unreligious nations in the Western world. If the Church of England were to die, would its disappearance matter? I think so. Real religion would survive but something rather beautiful would have been lost to the world. Born of Henry VIII's matrimonial problems, historically anti-Papist (though always careful to call itself "Catholic"), it mutated into something unique. It was a moderate religion, with very little either of zealotry or mysticism. The images crowd in -- Trollopean prelates, hunting parsons, pale young curates preaching at evensong in a country church; my uncle back from South Africa, where he'd been a "railway missionary"; the rural dean who taught me "Scripture" at school: "good merciful men" (in the words of my college prayer), who addressed God politely as one English gentleman to another. America never had an institution quite like it. Nor, I fear, has England now. -- ANTHONY LEJEUNE