What a depressing spectacle it is to watch the Church of England sinking into meme warfare with itself. On Sunday came the news that conservative evangelicals representing half the world’s Anglicans were (in effect) breaking away from the main churches in the US and Canada to set up a new network called the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA). Apparently they’re here to rescue us all from “militant secularism and pluralism”.
Then, today, the news that more than 1,300 clergy (including 11 serving bishops) had written to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to say that they’ll defect from the Church of England if women bishops are consecrated. “We will inevitably be asking whether we can, in conscience, continue to minister as bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England which has been our home [if women bishops are allowed]”, the letter says.
Now, I’m not going to get stuck into the rights and wrongs of gay bishops, female bishops, red bishops, blue bishops or any other kind of bishops in this post. Too much verbiage has already been expended on the issue, and in any case it’s not as if anyone actively involved in these debates hasn’t already made up their mind.
No, what annoys me is that the clergy involved in these quite fantastically acrimonious disputes are supposed to represent moral leadership. An example to the rest of us. At a point when meme warfare between rival values system is holding the world back from moving forward on any number of fronts, the Church – if it stands for anything – ought to be showing that unity in diversity is a realistic possibility; that dialogue can lead to consensus; that even the most apparently profound and fundamental differences can still be bridged. Fat chance, apparently.
Interesting fact: the word religion comes from the Latin religare, meaning ‘to unite or bind together’. Not that you’d be able to tell from watching this bunch of clowns.
