How Rowan reads his Bible

Reuters Report

The spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans has said conservative Christians who cite the Bible to condemn homosexuality are misreading a key passage written by Saint Paul almost 2,000 years ago.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, addressing theology students in Toronto, said an oft-quoted passage in Paul's Epistle to the Romans meant to warn Christians not to be self-righteous when they see others fall into sin.

His comments were an unusually open rebuff to conservative bishops, many of them from Africa, who have been citing the Bible to demand that pro-gay Anglican majorities in the United States and Canada be reined in or forced out of the Communion.

"Many current ways of reading miss the actual direction of the passage," Williams said on Monday, according to a text of his speech posted on the Anglican Church of Canada's Web site.
"Paul is making a primary point not about homosexuality but about the delusions of the supposedly law-abiding."

The worldwide Anglican Communion is near breaking point over homosexuality, with conservative clerics insisting the Bible forbids gay bishops or blessings for same-sex unions. Its U.S. branch, the Episcopal Church, named a gay bishop in 2003.

In fact, Williams also revealed on Tuesday that he had considered cancelling the Anglicans' once-a-decade 2008 Lambeth Conference, which has the potential to become a flashpoint over homosexuality.

"Yes, we've already been considering that and the answer is no," he told the Anglican Church of Canada's Anglican Journal.
"We've been looking at whether the timing is right, but if we wait for the ideal time, we will wait more than just 18 months."

In the passage of Romans that Williams referred to in Monday's speech, Paul said people who forgot God's words fell into sin. "Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion," Paul wrote.

Williams said these lines were "for the majority of modern readers the most important single text in Scripture on the subject of homosexuality." But right after that passage, Paul warns readers not to condemn those who ignore God's word.

"At whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself," wrote Paul, the first-century apostle whose epistles, or letters, to early Christian communities elaborated many Church teachings.

Williams said reinterpreting Paul's epistle as a warning against smug self-righteousness rather than homosexuality would favour neither side over the other in the bitter struggle that threatens to plunge the Anglican Communion into schism.

It would not help pro-gay liberals, he said, because Paul and his readers clearly agreed that homosexuality was "as obviously immoral as idol worship or disobedience to parents."
This reading would also upset anti-gay conservatives, who have been "up to this point happily identifying with Paul's castigation of someone else," and challenge them to ask whether they were right to judge others, he added.

"This does nothing to settle the exegetical questions fiercely debated at the moment," Williams said.

But he said a "strictly theological reading of Scripture" would not allow a Christian to denounce others and not ask whether he or she were also somehow at fault.

Williams warned of the danger of schism.
"The Communion has to face the fact that there is a division in our Church and it's getting deeper and more bitter," he said. "If the Anglican Church divides, everyone will lose."

Liberal View from "The Times"
Church will find a special place for its scapegoats — again
Luis Rodriguez: Credo

The fracturing of the Anglican Communion seems imminent and it appears the American Church and gay people will carry the can. Well, every crisis needs a scapegoat. It is the way of the world . . . and of the Church. Jews, women, minorities and other outsiders have all in their time borne (and sometimes still bear) the brunt of the blame in moments of social or ecclesiastical crisis.

However, while the Episcopal Church, gay and lesbian people, even liberals may be regarded as the singular cause of the present crisis, its real cause is far from singular and far from the present. It is grounded in the debates that would naturally ensue in any field between a group of people who are inheritors of the principles of the Enlightenment, the insights of modern psychology, the discoveries of science, and those who, for the most part, are not.

The divide dates from at least the 19th century, and became only more pronounced with subsequent scientific discoveries and social changes. We can trace it in the lives and work of individuals from Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin and John Robinson, as well as in social movements from abolition to universal suffrage, feminism and the gay and lesbian movement. Darwinism, for example, radically changed humanity’s view of itself in the scheme of creation and, like the Copernican revolution, shifted us from its centre. Modern psychology brought new insight into what it means to be human, and also how complex. Displacing a monolithic understanding of human persons, it demonstrates that variants from the normal are abnormal only in the most technical sense of the word.

Literary and historical criticism of biblical texts challenged traditional meanings of inspiration and approaches to interpretation. The new criticism revealed the very human foibles and agendas that shaped the texts, making traditional ideas of divine transmission less acceptable. On the grounds of integrity and experience, the “liberal” position accepts these insights, claiming that they cannot be ignored, neither should they be demonised. The “conservative” position depends on ignoring or somehow dismissing those same insights. These two positions are irreconcilable.

The decisions of the American Church may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but they are hardly the cause of the crisis. Rather, they are natural outcomes of a movement with a long history. One that has been championed by some of the finest theologians of their day, people such as Charles Gore, William Temple and Michael Ramsey.

But still the mechanism of scapegoating dies hard, and it is so tempting to blame in the hope of finding the Anglican holy grail of unity. That’s how scapegoating works: it demands the demonisation of the other as the price of social cohesion. But were the Episcopal Church to do as some demand; to condemn homosexuality, depose Gene Robinson and do penance for its “transgressions”, would that stem the divide? Were it excluded from the Anglican Communion, would unity be achieved?

Scapegoating never solves the real causes of crises. It only delays their honest confrontation, and if we are honest this is a crisis that the Anglican Communion has been sidestepping for years. What we need now more than unity is honesty.

I have little doubt that history will view the actions of the Episcopal Church as simply one more step in an ongoing movement that started long before them and continued long after them. I have no doubt that Anglicans in the future will consider those actions prophetic, and that the consecration of Gene Robinson will be commemorated alongside that of Samuel Seabury, the ministry of Absalom Jones and the ordination of Florence Li Tim-Oi. All these too were scandalous causes of division in their own day. The truth is that history (and sometimes the Church) ultimately exonerates scapegoats.

Luis Rodriguez is an Anglican priest, counsellor and spiritual director

Traditionalist Opinion on Romans 1.26-27

"It was an age of unparalleled immorality. Society from top to bottom was riddled with unnatural vice. Fourteen out of the first fifteen Roman Emperors were homosexuals. So far from exaggerating the picture Paul drew it with restraint. He was eager to preach the gospel. He was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. The world needed the power that would work salvation, and Paul knew that nowhere else than in Christ did that power exist."