Anglican split goes far deeper than gay dispute

by Tom Heneghan
Reuters
February 09, 2007

PARIS -- It's not all about gays.

The worldwide Anglican Communion is on the brink of schism, with African prelates leading a charge against the U.S.-based Episcopal Church for consecrating a gay bishop. A showdown is shaping up for an Anglican summit next week in Tanzania.

But the split in the 77-million strong Communion runs far deeper than the dispute over Gene Robinson, the gay cleric made bishop in 2003, historian Philip Jenkins thinks.

Liberal Anglicans in rich countries and traditionalists in the Global South read the Bible in such different ways that they could be in quite different churches, he argues in his recent book "The New Faces of Christianity."

"There is an absolutely fundamental division over the nature of authority," Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University in the United States, told Reuters by telephone. Widely varying views are the result.

While liberals base their beliefs on the New Testament's message of love and inclusiveness, he said, Christians in Africa focus more on the Old Testament with its plagues, visions and healings watched over by a stern and demanding God.

"That corresponds more to the world they live in," he said.

So a traditionalist challenge led by Nigeria's Archbishop Peter Akinola would not disappear if the liberals retreated on gay bishops and blessings for same-sex unions, he said: "It's a lot more fundamental than people are arguing."

INTERPRETING LEVITICUS

The primates (leaders) of the Anglican Communion's 38 provinces will meet in Dar Es Salaam on Feb. 14-19 for a summit overshadowed by the divisive issue of homosexuality.

Liberal churches in rich countries have become increasingly open towards homosexuality. In Africa, where the Bible is read much more literally, traditionalists believe the issue was settled when the Book of Leviticus called it "an abomination."

"If you're arguing over homosexuality and quote Leviticus, most western Christians say that's just in the Old Testament and has nothing to do with them," Mr. Jenkins said.

This different reading leads to practices that embarrass many liberals, such as exorcism of demons. Some African churches also refuse to join the majority and allow women priests. In Nigeria, a sometimes violent frontier between Islam and Christianity, Muslim respect for the Koran, male leadership and heterosexual marriage rubs off on Christians.

"Christians do not want to be seen paying less attention to their own scriptures than Muslims devote to the Koran," Mr. Jenkins wrote in his book.

ANGLICANS AT THE SHARP EDGE

More than half the world's Anglicans now live in the Global South and their numbers are rising rapidly. Their influence can only continue to grow, Mr. Jenkins thinks.

"It is only within the last decade that most western Christians have even discovered that this kind of Christianity is even there," he observed.

The Anglican Communion is at the sharp edge of the shift, he said, because it holds its global Lambeth Conferences every 10 years to agree on a consensus on teachings.

"Other mainstream Protestant churches have been extremely nervous watching the Anglican experience, but it's not so pressing because they don't have global conferences," he said.

The split among the Anglicans has gone so far that at least 45 traditionalist parishes in the United States have broken ranks and switched allegiance to African bishops.

Mr. Jenkins did not think this tiny minority could form a rival bloc there but saw a schism looming at the global level.

"In the Anglican Communion, the prospect is quite high that the Episcopal Church is basically kicked out of the Communion or politely asked to leave before 2008, when they have the next Lambeth Conference," he said.

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