Rowan: a word from the Sudan

I was immensely struck by Ruth Gledhill’s refreshingly self-aware account of a conversation today with a Sudanese Bishop here at Lambeth:

I met a bishop from Sudan. The Sudanese caught the attention of the world early on in the conference with their statement that Gene Robinson should resign.

“What are you planning to do now?” I asked the good bishop, meaning what cunning strategy did they have devised to make things go their way at Lambeth.

He looked at me thoughtfully.

“Now, we are planning to get on a train and go to London and go shopping with our eyes.”

I was not to be deterred.

“How has the Archbishop of Canterbury done here? What do you think of him?”

His eyes lit up.

“The Archbishop of Canterbury is like a saint. We are so impressed. We have never known anyone quite like him. He has had all these important people here, the Coptic archbishop, the Orthodox, the Chief Rabbi, all these Cardinals. Every time he puts them on the podium and lifts them up above himself. It is as if he is saying, listen to these people before you listen to me. Oh he is such a leader. He is a true Christian. He is so humble. His witness has been so powerful. That is the message we are taking back to Sudan.”

I have to say I have been moved, almost to tears at times, by stories from the Sudan in Indaba and elsewhere. Here are people whose faithfulness is tested every day by official and unofficial persecution, war, poverty, injustice and hardship. They have also been very clear that they value the Communion, and do not want to break it up. They have also absolutely clear in standing up for what they see as Biblical standards against Western interpretations. How those principles can be put together is something we have to work out; and how to offer the good bishop and his colleagues real solidarity.

I should also say that this bishop’s words about Rowan were echoed by a conversation I had last night with some of the stewards who have been looking after us, and had been similarly struck.

Lambeth: Rabbit in the Hat?

Some people, understandably, look to Lambeth for a magic blueprint. I don’t see this happening:

1. There’s a process for Covenant and another for Windsor follow-up. Both are out for consultation. If Lambeth gazumps those processes, we really will be in a fix. We need to stick to the paths to which we’ve committed.
   
2. Lambeth 1:10, much discussed is not gong to be revisited because it does represent something cebtral to where the vast majority of Anglicans in the world actually are. Some will like this and some won’t but that’s the fact.
   
3. If we produce a toolbox for people to rebuild communion, the law of unintended consequences means it will be used in various ways. Nice Bishops will use the tools to fix the shed. Some touchline lobby groups will use the hammer to smash the windows, and go round poking their enemies in the eye with the screwdriver. These people have already worked merry hell in the communion, by strring up contention, sowing mistrust, and whipping people into their own foreign powergames. Best develop toolboxes slowly and deliberately, not here over the next day or so.

So what is emerging? I’ve spent the morning in a fantastc indaba, freindly, respectful, clearly focussed on the hard stuff, but good humoured. It’s illegal to discriminate against gay people in Los Angeles. It’s illegal not to in places homosexuality is a capital offence. Whatever we say, there are villages in Sub-Saharan Africa where the one generator runs a satelite TV set which will instantly beam the results, chewed about by Western Media, into the homes of the people. Local bishops then have to pick up the consequences, sometimes in the face of violent persecution.

Brian MacLaren challenged us to try and work the issues before us missionally, rather than as problems in machine age dogmatics. A lot of talk so far has been essentially about how the ship is running, rather than where the ship is going.

1. We are the bridgehead of a renewed humanity in Christ, organs of the Body of Christ. Maximus the Confessor speaks of the Church as an enfleshing of Christ in the world. But how?
   
2. African voices here tell me that God’s word is addressed to people through the Sciptures as they are where they are. Therefore, to quote the late Max Warren, “It takes a whole world to know Christ.”
3. Our priority, thus, has to be Christ, whom we have to value and represent more than the cultural wrappings with which we received him. Vincent Donovan’s percetion, as an RC missionary among the Masai in the 1960’s, was that it is futile and non-incarnational to start from the centralised dogmatic end. Rather faith had to be built among people from the other end, with great cultural sensitivity. That’s how Jesus worked; from street level up, not Jerusalem down. We need to work as Jesus worked.
4. How? One great controversy of the 1860’s at Lambeth I was polygamy on the mission field. It took until 1978 for the Lambeth conference to express trust in missionary dioceses to call this one correctly in their own circumstances. Today’s communications and the speed of cultural change among us do not give us 100 years to develop trust among us around our own cultural mandates as we enflesh the Incarnation. We could, of course, simply split. That is the way of the world. Or we can challenge that way of the world, by distinguishing first from second order clearly, and choosing to walk together, different as we are.
   

Wisdom of the Solomons...

... voice of the martyrs? Still searching for the pick of original voices to inform our thinking, I came across an engaging and interesting contribtion by Terry Brown, Bishop of Malaita, Province of Melanesia, to the Hearing on Lambeth Reflections Draft, yesterday. This province has seen martyrs this century, seven Melanesian brothers killed by a sectarian warlord in 2003. This province has a consistent and honourable record of Christian witness and maryrdom, going back to Bishop Patteson. +Terry says:

I was confirmed in The Episcopal Church, by a black bishop of Massachusetts. I was made deacon and ordained a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, in the diocese of Fredericton, a Loyalist diocese, by a bishop whose ancestors ran away from the American Revolution because they distrusted liberalism, political and otherwise.

I was consecrated a bishop in the Church of the Province of Melanesia, a global south diocese, where all the Millennium Development Goals score about 3 out of 10, even though we are great dancers.

And to make matters worse, my own sexuality is "dodgy". I live in and am a part of all four worlds -- The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Church of Melanesia and the pained world of gay and lesbian laity, deacons, priests and bishops.

Yet I am a bishop of a diocese that is full of life and has had much growth. In my last 12 years as bishop, I have confirmed 10,000 candidates. The diocese is deeply involved in evangelism, education, medical work, liturgy and peace and reconciliation.

My life as a bishop in all four worlds is possible only because of my faith in Jesus Christ. I had a conversion experience in which I felt deeply loved by God. That, the Eucharist, the life of Christian friendship and community, and Scripture, have sustained me through thick and thin.

From my perspective, do I have any suggestions for the text of the final Reflection?

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.” There are many other competing kingdoms, do not bow to them.

As much as is in you, try to maintain communion and friendship with all, whether inside or outside the church, however deep the disagreement.

Reject the Puritan option. We are Anglicans, not Puritans.

Exercise restraint and urge others to do so, whether locally or globally. Not everything has to be said or written about.

Be very careful in using typologies to classify people, theologies and churches. We are all the children of God, redeemed, with all of creation, by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If you have not done so, accept all the gay and lesbian people in your midst, in all their complexity, pain and celebration.

Finally, let the conversations (even debate) continue. Television has finally come to the Solomon Islands, so we now have the privilege of seeing BBC interview both Gene Robinson and Greg Venables. In our case, I do not think the church will thereby collapse. But in other situations, that may not be the case, and the endless talking to the media of both may be destructive. That is my final suggestion -- remember that whatever you say publicly in this wired age, will go to every corner of the world. Honesty and prudence are both Christian virtues. We need to learn to balance them.

Thank you.

How Anglicans use the Bible

I have not met anyone here of whom it would be true to say simply that they do not believe in the Authority of Scripture. How we believe in what kind of authority are other questions. Here are some indications of the ways a group of us form five continents, in Indaba, saw our distinctively Anglican use of the Bible. How are we, as Anglicans, “formed by Scrpture?”

• The Word of God is a person, not a text. In Islam, for example, the Qu’ran is a privileged untransalteable text. For Christians Scrupture has authority as it is interprteed and applied, not as a simple absolute. We are very resistant to idolatry; idolatry of the book, idolatry of reason, idolatry of tradition. All three are resources for the Spirit, not totems or weapons against other children of God. We need to interpret the Scriptures through the icon of Christ.
  
• We take the text very seriously in itself, in all of its subtlety, richness, occasional divergence and uncertainty. We begin with what it means in its own terms and historical context. So we establish the Sctipture we transmit and guard, distinguishing it carefully from our response. For example, in the Early Church women were to wear hats and be submissive so as to win their husbands for Christ. How would a woman in any of our various contemporary cultures behave so as to reflect Christ to her spouse and wn them? Absolutizing wearing hats in itself is a superficial and inadequately contextualized response to this text.
  
• We then go on to take an honest view of our real world circumstances. Scripture speaks directly to each person, as who they are and where they are. Therefore we need to be aware of our own cultural spectacles as we read, before we try and inculturate any meaning we believe we can derive from the text. The Holy Spirit inspires a process of recognition and sympathetic resonance, by which Christ speaks to us where we are, and as the people we are.
  
• Our Church community and communion that hold us accountable to the Scriptures, as this process is prayerfully pursued in fellowship. If you want to know what we believe, and how the Scriptures form us, worship with us.
  
• There has tendency in the post-enlightenment West to erect Reason into an absolute, or even idol. Even Conservative Anglicans sometimes mine the scriptures for soundbites or notions, then extract them from their context and absolutize them in a way that can even compromise basic principles of Christian discipleship. Sometimes (as in prosperity theology) one element is isolated against others in a distorting way. It is the whole counsel of God we must seek, distinguishing clearly between the use of our mind as a tool for discernment, into which God can speak, and any tendency to engage in merely rationalist discourse, Conservative or Liberal.
  

Rowan Williams: rabbit in the hat?

Much interesting discussion this morning about Rowan’s address last night. He laid out exactly what the position is, in terms of our people see each other from both sides of the divide. All I’d want to add is that the vast majority of people here are on neither side of a divide, but somewhere in between. Both in capturing the content of the various positions, and in his method, he seemed to have caught matters exactly correctly.

Under the surface I also took his method as a good one to copy, where you only speak of others using terms they would use of themselves, putting yourself in their position. This makes a refreshing change from some of the hostile suspicion and namecalling that has taken place, which is in itself unworthy of the people concerned.

Our group this morning felt we needed to begin with reality. We can all fixate on “if only’s” — if only the US bishops hadn’t proceeded, if only Lambeth 1998 hadn’t been so mismanaged and poorly led, if only the Nigerians had come. All this is fantasy. The Chief Rabbi’s holy pragmatism was a better starting point. Rowan is inviting us to be more humble, to listen, to repent, to enlarge our hearts. This means dying to our fantasy rallying points and hostile preconceptions, so that we attain a state of reality, responding to the call to life of the Lord who called Lazarus to life. If, on the other hand, we just cant let go of that stuff, then we stay in the tomb. The life of Anglicanism does not depend on the institutional wellbeing of Anglican structures, which will plainly have to morph, bend and perhaps even break. It’s a simple spiritual choice, really.

To think of Rowan as some master-technicial whose job is to develop some bolt-on solution, like perpetual motion or nuclear fusion, is a cop-out. What he can do is

1. to put us back in touch with the healing resources of Scripture and core Christian tradition
2. cast honest and godly visions,
3. bring home to people the realities of what they are really saying,
4. model the processes he commends,
5. scope the realities of this passing world for us, but also those of a world which will never end.

All these things he is dong trasparently honestly and effectively. Those who seem to prefer authoritarianism, sour puritans or fantasy Romanists, don’t know what a big opportunity we’re being given to get real, and so to see God revealed (as in Galatians text at the beginning of the retreat) in us...

Bruised hands rock the cradle

Rape and violence against women are not topics for polite conversation, but they are realisites of life all over the world. It’s especially shameful if the Church becomes part of the problem rather than the solution. Yesterday saw a challenging morning in the big top, sharing with spouses a Bible Study on II Samuel 13, the story of Tamar. Introducing the session, Jane Williams reminded us of the basic principle that “Violence done within the Body of Christ is violence done to the Body of Christ.” A performance by Riding Lights about Jesus’ dealings with women had two bishops near me blinking back tears. This was a straightforward, African Bible Study, lasting most of the morning, with men and women studying separately to provide safe space in which both could discern meaning from their gendered experience.

Leading an open Bible Study for 1200 people from 130 nations is not easy. There were inevitable clunkinesses about flow and content. Some points of view, especially from Portugueses speakers, were trenchant. It wasn’t to the taste of all bishops. Stewards reported that over 100 had slid off within an hour — all men! So this was raw, challenging stuff, but all the more worthwhile for that.

Only a dozen or so of the 1200 people there had ever heard II Samuel 13 read on a Sunday. It’s a powerful warning about the way a family can be ruined by civil war arising from politicking behind the scenes à la Jonadab. It tells of a brave and resourceful victim of rape, who refuses to stay silent. The passage unlocked fierce responses to issues of gender and power in the world church. We were reminded of violence by some women against men, too, but the heart of the problem was the other way round. One passionate North Indian contributor told of human trafficking and the abuse of women.

“There are serious issues we are not talking about that matter far more than homosexuality.”

This comment was followed by a spontaneous ovation from the floor, lasting almost half a minute. Another male contributor suggested

“talking about homosexuality may be a way of avoiding the greater problem of heterosexual males behaving badly.”

It was instructive to explore this Scripture, and various responses and to do some rigorous self-examination of the way the Church can become abusive in its handling of institutional and personal power. The voice of Tamar stands witness within our Scriptures of a need for self scrutiny. These things were written for our learning.

I also want to record that the blunt African way of prising open texts directly and drawing them alongside personal stories, which some English colleagues seem to find so basic and uncongenial, has actually been one of the great spiritual discoveries of this Lambeth for me.

Wisdom, truth and hope

An extraordinary evening with the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks. His talk was warm and passionate, spiced with rabbinic wisdom and storytelling. He explained two kinds of covenant in the Hebrew Scriptures — Noah’s covenant of Fate sealed by the rainbow, and Moses and Abraham’s covenants of Faith, looking forward. From these we learn the sanctity of life, the integrity of all creation, and the value of Diversity in the rainbow’s split light. These provide foundations for friendship and common witness to the world, healing 1,000 bitter years of anti-Semitism in England up to the holocaust. If we were not particular we could not make a covenant, and if we were all the same, we would have nothing to say when we got into one.

A moving testmony came after the talk, when Sir Jonathan was asked about divisions in the Anglican Communion. This is what he said:

Every faith, being particular, has cracks and schisms. But the Anglican Church has held radically different people together more graciously and successfully over many hundred years than any other Western religion I know. I view it with wonder, awe, and admiration. Your ability to hold together in a world driving people apart is your gift to a landscape of hope.

He told us something about his education in Church of England schools, echoing what we find all the time in ours — that faith speaks to faith:

I was a Jew in a Christian school. Never once did I hear an anti-semitic remark or incident. Because the teachers knew about their faith, they could understand how I cared about mine. That is what the Church of England gave me, growing up.

Food for thought as we turn to business later this week...

Man from the South

Spent the afternoon at the Windsor Report continuation hearing — the steamiest two hours this side of the Mississippi. By sheer coincidence one statement really got me thinking, from the Bishop of Mississippi, Duncan Gray. I commend it for a bit of thoughtful attention, as a slightly different take on TEC’s ups and downs:

A bit of personal history: I have been nurtured and shaped within the Evangelical tradition of my Church. Most importantly, this means that the ultimate authority of the Holy Scripture and the necessity of an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus as the way to the Father are foundational and non-negotiable components of my faith.

Within my own province, I voted not to consent to the election of Gene Robinson, for reasons both theological and ecclesiological. I have followed to the letter and the spirit of the Windsor Report — before there was a Windsor Report.

For my faithfulness to this communion I have been rewarded by regular incursions into our diocese by primates and bishops who have no apparent regard for either my theology or ecclesiology.

I have made some peace with this reality, preferring to think of the irregularly ordained as Methodists — and some of my best friends are Methodists!
What I cannot make peace with is the portrayal of my sister and brother bishops in the Episcopal Church, who disagree with me, as bearers of a false gospel. That portrayal does violence to the imperfect, but faithful, grace-filled, and often costly way, in which they live out their love of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yes, I am in serious disagreement with many of them on the very critical sacramental and ethical issues about which the Communion is in deep conflict. Are we sometimes, at best, insensitive to the wider context in which we do ministry, and at worst, deeply embedded in American arrogance — Absolutely! And for that insensitivity and arrogance we have begged the Communion's forgiveness on several occasions. “But do I see the Church in them?” as the most serious question at the last hearing asked. As God is my witness, I do. Despite my profound disagreements I continue to pray “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” We continue to reaffirm our creedal faith together. We continue to gather round the Lord’s table together, bringing the brokenness and imperfectness of our lives into the healing embrace of our Lord who sends us out together to the poor, the weak and the hopeless. And, in the midst of our internal conflicts, they show me Jesus.

There are dozens of bishops like me in the Episcopal Church. We are not a one, or even two dimensional Church. We are a multitude of diverse theological, ecclesiological and sacramental perspectives — and the vast majority of us have figured out a way to stay together.

How is this possible? I think it begins with the gift from Saint Paul, who taught us the great limitations of even our most insightful thought. We do, every one of us, “see through a glass, darkly.” And none of us can say to the other, “I have no need of you.”

One day, Saint Paul says, we will see face to face, the glory that we now only glimpse. But in the meantime, as each of us struggles to be faithful, may each of us, the Episcopal Church and the wider communion, find the courage, and the humility, to say to one another, “I need you — for my salvation and for the salvation of the world.”

Fishing, guided by Narcissus...

...a fruitless activity, because all the lad can see down there is himself. I haven’t seen a paper all week, but finding myself in Darwin on Saturday, I thought I'd get a look at a Church of England Newspaper. I opened straight up to the middle. On the right, an intelligent article by Douglas Alexander, secretary of state for development, about reducing poverty. It told the government story, of course, but it was basically well informed and gave background to last Thursday.

The other side of the page was Ruth Gledhill’s, expressing frustration about the way the media are being handled. She couldn't get into an indaba group about the media. But hang on there aren’t any indaba groups about the media. And to think there could be reveals a complete misunderstanding of what an indaba group is. I tried the sweeping statement that “Indaba isn’t working” out on a table of people who have actually been in such groups for a week, and all 16 strongly disagreed, although they had differing views about how it was working. Groups that felt they wanted to press on were using the liberty in the process to do so. Some bishops, inevitably, are better listeners than others. We are all anxious to get a substantial result. The views of the senior bishop she quoted are very different from those of most younger bishops. Perhaps she hasn’t spoken to any of those.

Perhaps the view from Fleet Street is rather self-absorbed. Riazat Butt had a forty year old scoop, that the architect who designed the University of Kent had also designed prisons. Her point being that if this were taking place in a campus designed by an architect who had never designed a prison, er, this would be taking place in a campus designed by an architect who had never designed a prison. And... ? The fact this hides, apart from the way university staff have gone out of their way to be welcoming, friendly and efficient, is that the campus is a public space — the whole thing is open anyway, apart from the Big Top with all the gizmos in that had to be fenced to be insurable.

I turned to the Guardian blog to see if I’d missed something, there to find a hilarious piece built around the fact that bishops were stuffing themselves at breakfast with £1·95 waffles (waffles, geddit?) in the canteen. Hang on, I thought. Bishops’ food is all free, and in the place we eat they don’t have any waffles. What on earth this is suposed to have to do with anything that matters beats me, but the premise of the whole story is simply wrong.

Back to the Church of England Newspaper where I learn on page 23 “blogging bishops are causing the organizers most nightmares.” Now that one’s easy to check out. I collar a few organizers and ask them whether any blogging bishop has caused any organizer they know any anxiety whatsoever. They can’t think of any. It’s flattering, though, to be told the Bishop who has taken best to blogging is the Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Smith. Alan Smith?*

I don’t know if people are being paid to produce this stuff, but to someone who is part of this event, it all seems rather trivial and factually off piste. Many reported facts are misunderstood or less than half true. Some are just plain wrong. It’s a comlex and subtle event, and the journaists understanding of what is going on here is, to put it kindly, rather limited. The value of generalisations built on their limited grasp of what is going on is questionable. If anyone really wants to know what’s been going on in indaba groups, my advice is to click round a few blogs from people who have actually been to one, or at least know what they are.

Catching up this evening with some acidic press comment about bible study groups and their materials, I cannot echo them. I am in a fantastic group, largely African and African led. Compared to conventional Western studies, I’ve found ours direct and easy, with our different cultures, contexts and educational backgrounds, to be personal about. There’s not much opportunity to show off academic notions about the text, but that’s not what this is about anyway. My advice to anyone who doesn’t like the material is to go back to the text.

So my general impression from a trip to the media centre is that, sadly, you get more reliable information from people on the inside than from journos trying to be clever about information they don’t really understand, without the time, perhaps, to check their facts. Sadly, because I rather like the people concened and usually enjoy their stuff, this all rather bears out the Flat Earth News hypothesis.

Alan Smith is my highly esteemed colleague the Bishop of Shrewsbury. Me, I’m Alan Wilson (another bog standard name, I’m afraid). Time was, checking names was something journos learnt how to do on day 1 at the Snodsbury Chronicle, when they covered their first flower show. Flat earth hacks can’t be bothered, or aren’t up to it, apparently.

Anglican Communion Meltdown — Official

According to Ruth Gledhill of the Times, the Anglican Communion was “melting down” a few Wednesdays ago. Unfortunately by the time my theology day at Lambeth was over it had, er, melted back up again, and it was all there. Yesterday I managed to be present for a more official meltdown. In 27 degree heat (unusual round here) Lambeth Conference bishops were lined up in close proximity. Bishop Kirk Smith of Arizona has captured the furious singing of Amazing Grace that preceded the spontaneous ovation we all gave Rowan to show how much we all dislike him.

It was hot work, and I await the official results with interest...

Ain’t necessarily so...

I have noticed during the course of the last couple of days some small factual nuggets that have raised eyebrows around the campus. We all make assumptions about others, sometimes hostile or uncomprehending. These can be reinforced by ignorance of others’ real lives and circumstances. So next time you hear apparently irrational ill of a brother or sister, ask yourself whether there could be some simple fact you’ve missed.

It ain’t necessarily so,
No it ain’t necessarily so,
Assumptions you’re liable
To make ain’t reliable,
You gotta check out what facts show...

Here are six eyebrow raisers for starters:

1. The UK Bishops did not support the Iraq war as part of the government. A paper was prepared by the then bishop of Coventry and others pointing out the shortcomings of the Iraq war in terms of just war theory, but Mr Blair ignored it and went ahead anyway.
   After 4 days: Incontestably true
   
   
2. The Bishop of London and other Englsh bishops are unable, legally, to dismiss a priest summarily. The so-called “Parson’s freehold” has, since the middle ages, conferred strong legal protection on English incumbents.
   After 4 days: Incontestably true
   
   
3. Reports of gay friendly statements in the West have caused persecution against Christian Churches including real violence, especially in the Muslim majority countries.
   After 4 days: Incontestably true
   
   
4. TEC Bishops are servants of a constitutional process, and unable to take actions or lay down faith or morals independently of it. Don’t even think of it...
   After 4 days: Incontestably true
   
   
5. A leading UK parliamentary campaigner for gay rights is actually a Muslim.
   After 4 days: Incontestably true
   
   
6. Henry VIII never got divorced. In order to get divorced he would have had to get into a time machine and drive 130 years into the future to visit the Puritans, who invented divorce in the UK as a replacement for decrees of nullity (the old pre-reformation system) which is what Henry used. Full details of why Puritans invented modern divorce may be found in John Milton’s essay On a Christian Man’s Liberty of 1654.
   After 4 days: Incontestably true, except H8 was H8 not (as in Saturday’s typo H7)
   

Any more out there? Eyebrow raisers are simple matters of fact that colour assumptions...

Saturday’s mini-crop:

1. The Episcopal Church’s General Convention has not authorized blessings of same sex couples (as suggested by the Windsor Report para 136)
   After 4 days: Highly contested, and I don’t know enough about TEC procedures to call it. I think it seems to me as an outsider that GC noted the existence of but did not authorise these. All a matter of words, you may say... ?
   
2. Homosexual practice is punishable by death in Sudan, and parts of Northern Nigeria.
   After 4 days: Incontestably true — acknowledging that Sharia drives this in Nigeria, putting particular pressures on the Church to work out how islamified it believes its own approach should be, in the light of its Christian convictions
   

Sunday’s one:

1. in the first six months of gay marriages being legal in Canada a total of, er, 1 Canadian couple (as opposed to Americans up from the US) got a licence for one. My eyebrows are still bouncing around under the ceiling from this one. If anyone can corroborate or give a better figure, I would be grateful
   After 7 days: Nah. Alison has come to the rescue (and retrieved my eyebrows from the ceiling at the same time) with these figures from http://www.samesexmarriage.ca/legal/toronto_marriage_stats.htm (October 3, 2003)
   On October 1, the Legislative Department of the City of Toronto provided the law firm McGowan Elliott & Kim with a brief update on marriage licence statistics.
   The total number of licences issued to same-sex couples between Jun 10, 2003 and September 30, 2003: 757
   The total number of licences issued to same-sex couples where both partners were from the United States: 247
   From other countries: 18
   From other provinces: 49
   From Ontario (other than Toronto): 54
   On this basis I think I can confidently rule that the real figure for six months (these are only 3) would be in the 6-800 range.
   Therefore, DONG! this one’s an urban myth. The number of Toronto residents in gay marriages is small, but not spectacularly so. Thanks Alison, for your legwork on this topic.
   

Indaba — Sorted. Respect Due.

Since logging my last entry at coffee time, my indaba has met and, almost eerily, exactly these concerns have been raised, shared and actioned! A comment was made that our indaba group was feeling like a study group, and our (smaller) study group like a deep and genuine indaba!

We have responded by giving ourselves permission to consider broader concerns around the set guidelines, and also tying our Bible Study groups into our indaba. We will try starting with input from Bible Study group leaders, to which we can feel free to divert serious attention.

That way, we free ourslves up a bit for some of the harder conversations we have been having partially, but need to have more fully, so that we can leave here stronger. We also allow Scripture to shape and fill our deliberations more consciously and fully — an excellent idea, say I.

This indaba is now working on a meta as well as content level. That was quick! I’m slightly surprised, rather refreshed and greatly encouraged.

Indaba — a luta continua!

Checking back on Ruth Gledhill’s Times blog, and faced with a provincial meeting, and a self-select Canon Law meeting which I'm looking forward to as a member of the Ecclesiastical Law Society, I think Ruth’s put her finger on the real challenge just now:

So it appears, you can take indaba out of Africa, but you can't take good old democratic infighting out of the West. It's business as usual at Lambeth, and one way or another, these 650 bishops are determined to have a vote and make it count.

For those facilitating groups, the struggle is how to free up the process to be all it could be. I notice in some groups there’s a bubbling up feeling we can make more of the process if we trust its inherent wisdom, rather than micromanaging it. As well as Ruth’s challenging and perceptive comment from the outside, I overheard something else at coffee time today, that made me think the change in gear among us that’s happening and needs to bear fruit.

Indaba means setting your own agenda, but taking real responsibility for it as well.

A principle that deserves serious notice and development?

Demonic Buddhist Chant: Really?

All sorts of trenchant reaction has followed the news that the Bishop of Colombo’s sermon at the Eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral on Sunday concluded with a Buddhist Chant which one commentator described as “demonic.” Another ruled, quick as a flash,

The inclusion of this chant is unconscionable. The orthodox who are there should immediately vacate.

Among more reflective comments on this disturbing story, Bishop Robert Duncan said the inclusion of the chant was “very, very troubling” since it was an “invocation of something other than the God we know... to have a Buddhist chant at an Anglican sermon does not reflect the God we believe in.”

I strongly endorse Cardinal Dias’ rejection of syncretism in an Indian context. My Sinhala is not what it could be. The gospel says that if you have an issue with a brother you owe it to yourself and to your God talk it through calmly and directly with them first. Today I was able to discuss this chant with Bishop de Chickera. Much Sri Lankan culture is essentially of Buddhist origin, he explained. What did the words mean? I asked. Four verses:

I take refuge in God the Father
I take refuge in God the Son
I take refuge in God the Holy Spirit
I take refuge in the One Triune God.

I am surprised that the Bishop of Pittsburgh finds this a deeply troubling invocation of a God he does not know. I am sorry if it does not reflect the God he believes in. I rejoice to know, and better still, to be known through and through by this God, and to believe in him. Over fifty years he has been my creator, saviour, and sanctifier, and I know no other.

When we rush to judgment of others we do not know, like or understand, especially on the internet, especially on the basis of rumour, it is easy to make complete fools of ourselves.

The Kingdom as Hawaiian Luau

Lambeth is a vibrant microcosm. I don’t believe I have ever spent so much concentrated quality time with so many people from such varied cultures at once. Western as I am, I just want to get down to work. The vast majority here, culturally, understand the wisdom of taking time to develop basic trust and understanding about others in their own terms. Without this cultural interface what follows is doomed. The US has an issue over human sexuality, then exports it to Africa, to be morphed onto completely different anthropologies with almost zero ambiguity about the subject. When you analyse what people think they are talking about, they are often at complete cross purposes. It’s amazing they achieve anything really.

The traditional way of talking across the communion, involves the English and Americans doing their thing, with an occasional surprise mugging organised by UK or US dissidents. Indaba has to be better than that. There’s a real challenge about how the indaba process can work for us. It probably needs to evolve into a less timed, micro-project based mode.

Western societies are amazingly impersonal, superficial, hurried, materialistic. They also exhibit a very low capacity for people to relate to one another, with their high rates of family breakdown, crime, depression and anomie. Lambeth is a marvellous opportunity to learn from people of different cultures more about how relationally rich societies tick. Faith binds us together, and gives us a key to unlock our differences and fundamental unity in relation to reality bigger than ourselves.

Earlier today, someone told me about Hawaiian virtues of which I had not heard:

Pono — You may not agree, but you need to be in a right relationship with people. This is partly acknowledging a higher accountability than your feelings, interests and perceptions. The UK norm is to prize agreement in an organisation above relationship.
Mana — Holiness, recognised in people and creation. This sounds rather like the Quaker discipline of “looking for what is of Christ in the other person.” Our Western approach treats the earth like a thing, and flattens or rationalises any sense of wonder and reverence for people and things.
Malama — Unselfishness, or, more positively, care for the other person. We seem by comparison selfish and narcissistic. Old people often feel dumped, selfishness is turned into a virtue, and care is often bureacratised.

There could be a sermon in this sometime. Imagine a world where people worked to understand each other in their own terms. For now I just want to log it as one of the learnng concepts for me from this rather extraordinary learning time.