Pass The Earplugs

Last week the Anglican Communion New Service announced the preparation of a study guide on “The Process of Listening to Gay and Lesbian People and Mutual Listening on Human Sexuality” for use by the bishops of the Anglican Communion at the 2008 Lambeth Conference. Mind you, the bishops called for the listening process at their 1998 gathering (Resolution 1.10). It took seven years before the Primates asked the Anglican Consultative Council to appoint a facilitator, and they appointed the Rev. Canon Phil Groves in January 2006. Fourteen months later, just 16 months before the bishops again gather for their decennial meeting at Lambeth, we get the first “call for papers.” I suspect that after years of trouncing the Episcopal Church for consecrating an openly gay bishop and the Anglican Church in Canada for studying objectively the issue blessing same-sex unions, the Primates figure they ought to at least give lip service to the other parts of their 1998 resolution.

Should the Study Guide be completed in time, and I have no doubt that Canon Groves can pull it off, it still represents only the beginning of the Listening Process as laid out nearly nine years ago. If the experience of the Episcopal Church and its “dialogue” of the early 1990’s are any indication, then the Lambeth Listening Process will drag on for years and will never take place in most of the provinces.

Dialogue? How many people remember Resolution A104, titled “Affirm the Church's Teaching on Sexual Expression, Commission Congregational Dialogue, and Direct Bishops to Prepare a Pastoral Teaching” passed by General Convention back in 1991? Before that it was study (1976-A068), education programs (1979-D107), and local dialogue (1988-D120). We were urged to continue the dialogue in 1994 (B101), 1997 (A071), 2000 (C008), and 2003 (A029), when the issue of sexual orientation joined a list of “challenging, contemporary issues.”

Many dioceses never engaged in the dialogue process. In others, the process stalled. In my diocese, for example, the process was shut down during the pilot stage by members of conservative parishes who made the first sessions so intolerable that diocesan consultants saw no way to move the process forward and abandoned it.

The bishops of the Anglican Communion have been putting off the issue for almost as long, beginning with study in 1978 (Resolution 10), and more study in 1988 (Resolution 64). At the Primates’ February 2005 meeting in Dromantine Ireland, they requested that the Anglican Consultative Council to "take positive steps to initiate the listening and study process which has been the subject of resolutions not only at the Lambeth Conference in 1998, but in earlier Conferences as well." (Primates 2005 Communique #17) The Anglican Consultative Council put out a request at their meeting in June 2005 (Resolution 12). The result so far has been the appointment of Canon Groves and reports from 34 of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion (these can be found here).

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s response to all of this? He says that “the churches of the Anglican Communion must be safe places for gay and lesbian people.” (March 28th ACNS Release) Rowan Williams’ statement echoes our General Convention’s “Move to Identify ‘Safe Spaces’ for Lesbians and Gays” in 2000 (A009). Based on a quick review of those reports, it appears that there is a lot of work to be done before our churches are “safe places.”

Given everything I have seen so far, the Lambeth Listening Process will proceed in much the same way as the dialogue process here in the Episcopal Church: We have mandated a listening process and belatedly begun the implementation of that listening process. Praise the Lord and pass the earplugs!

Peace,
Jeffri