More Anglican moral excesses are about to catch a wave

LONDON, ENGLAND - It’s more tragedy than Trollope, but my golly the Church of England has unwittingly become a producer of contemporary folly. The latest episode concerns a controversial gay dean who has threatened to take the Church of England to court after he was blocked from becoming a bishop. There are lots of deans, canons, bishops and such like in the Anglican Communion. In this case, however, the Very Rev. Jeffrey John, dean of St. Albans, just north of London, is quite well-known.         

The reason is that back in 2003 he was forced to step down as bishop of Reading by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, after it became known that he was in a long-term “civil partnership” with another man. The dean claimed that the two gay men were celibate, and everybody knows that a dean always tells the truth. As a friend of the fellow commented at the time, “there were a lot of tears.” Now John has been rejected for the role of bishop of Southwark, a major diocese south of the River Thames, with its cathedral just yards away from where Shakespeare lived and had his plays performed.

Although it’s difficult to prove that it was sexuality alone that disqualified John, he is convinced that this is the case and has consulted lawyers to explore the possibility of litigation under Britain’s 2010 Equality Act. Expert opinion has it that John and his lawyers would win. He has the support of the powerful and less than tolerant liberal establishment in the Church of England, and rumour has it that even the British Prime Minister is a fan.

So it could be that the courts will witness a homosexual clergyman suing his fellow clerics because they have refused to make him a bishop merely because he lives in contradiction of the teachings of Christ, and those of the historic Christian Church. Thomas Cranmer would be rolling in his grave, but then it was Cranmer and his followers who made this situation inevitable. The reformers replaced papal authority with individual will, and individual will is a product and prisoner of its time. While an era is moral and orthodox, the individual Christian conscience is likely to remain the same, but in a time of relativism and sexual excess, without an anchor in the apostolic succession, the will of the individual gives in to all sorts of heresy.

John is a not a bad man, and is in fact intelligent and compassionate. But instead of struggling against his temptations he has been empowered by his own biblical interpretations to justify what was a self-evident sin within universal Christianity until just a few years ago. This is not the end but merely the first stages of a process that will doubtless see all sorts of sexual preferences accepted within liberal Protestant theology. It was as late as 1930 that the Church of England Synod accepted the use of contraceptives, yet within a few years it allowed abortion, and now floats around like some bottle in the ocean, pushed and pulled by whatever wave is strongest.

This isn’t really about homosexuality; and shame on any of us who single out homosexual people for hatred or discrimination. It’s not about gay pride but sinful pride, resting on the idea that what we want, what we feel we need or even what we feel we cannot live without, takes precedence over what God has planned for us. Frankly, I have far more understanding for someone who submits to their homosexuality than for someone who surrenders to their anger or bitterness, and certainly more understanding than for an adulterer, who gives in not to love for someone of the same gender, but to mere lust for another person after they have sworn fidelity to their spouse.

But it’s all part of the same package. Take it to the courts if you like, but it doesn’t matter very much. God’s commands do not change, precisely because they are God’s commands. He’s the judge, even of Anglican deans and English lawyers.