Speaking at the Lambeth Conference this week Bishop [Michael] Burrows said “at the end of the day the Church of Ireland is enriched not diminished” by the differing views of its bishops on same sex issues. In his own dioceses same sex matters were “not the big issues”, which would include promotion of the gospel, the Aids crisis and ecumenism. He didn’t think the outcome of the conference would greatly influence people and was “always relieved that Lambeth’s role is advisory not binding”. He rejoiced in belonging to “a church which doesn’t regard its instruments as uttering infallibly”.
He felt this particularly about a resolution on human sexuality from the last Lambeth Conference in 1998 which rejected homosexual practice as incompatible with scripture. The resolution also rejected the legitimising or blessing of same-sex unions or the ordination of those involved in same-gender unions.
He believed a covenant would be drafted towards the end of this conference, but that it would be along Lisbon Treaty lines with “different degrees of signing up to it”. He is finding the process of discussion “very cumbersome . . . physically, very tiring.” It was “a well-intentioned attempt by a dysfunctional family to keep talking until we realise we cannot fall out of love with one another”. But there was, he felt, “a danger of going round and round the elephants rather than going over or through them”.
If sexuality is not important they why do they keep pushing it?
This is pretty risible stuff, viewed from the perspective of Church History and the struggles over orthodoxy in the Early Church.
By coincidence, I have lately been rereading two good Anglican historical works: *The Church and the Papacy* by T. G. Jalland (1944) and *The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318-381* by R. P. C. Hanson (1988). What is clear to me is how much Bishop Burrows and those Anglican bishops, either outright theological revisionists or those who react to the struggle over SS with a barely suppressed yawn and can’t wait to get back to Really Important Stuff like the Milennium Development Goals, have so much in common, in general attitude and outlook, with the Arian, Semi-Arian and (forgive the anachronism) “Erastian court prelate” bishops of the Fourth Century who, whatever the thelogical disagreements among them, were agreed that Nicaea had to be rejected because of the dogmatic clarity of its Creed (which risked alienating those of good will who found its dogmatism offputting or its philosophical underpinnings disagreeable). Indeed, Athanasius’ criticism of his opponents that they professed a “worldly Christianity,” both in terms of their insistence upon a Christianity that would be “philosophically respectable” and in respect to their deference to the will of successive Emperors who wished to promote a “broad-bottom” Christianity, strikes just as hard against these liberal western Anglican bishops and their “running dogs” from such venues as Brazil and Mexico, as it does to the bishops of his owen day.
I have to add, though, that while Jalland was an orthodox scholarly Anglo-Catholic, Hanson’s book tends to confirm reports that I heard in the 1980s that in his old age he had turned away from that scholarly high-church Protestant Irish Anglican tradition in which he had been bred up (Hanson was a bishop of the Church of Ireland) towards a much more “liberal” stance. Hanson makes little effort to conceal his dislike of St. Athanasius, nor his regret about how the “dogmatism” of the Homoousians and of the Neo-Arians at both extremes of the controversy from the 350s onwards undermined attempts to come up with a workable compromise that would have reconciled “the middle ground.” Nevertheless, the book is instructive and illuminating to read.
I wouldn’t worry too much about what any CoI bishop says. To be honest their regarded as a little bit of a joke over here (Ireland) except amongst upper middle class (nominal) Catholics and the liberal media. None of them would be from the top drawer theologically speaking (or intellectually for that matter – they’re as bad as the Catholic bishops in that regard)
Those southern bishops are probably skeptical about the free market. Perhaps they’ll learn that religion, also.