RELIGION : Women Priests vs. Church Unity : Anglican Communion Must Debate Issue at 12th Lambeth Conference

CANTERBURY, England —  A world gathering of Anglican bishops on Friday confronted the question of the role of women in the church hierarchy, an issue that threatens to split the world’s second largest Christian community.

“Deep divisions exist between provinces and within provinces,” admitted the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, spiritual head of the Anglican Communion’s 70 million members.

“Moreover, although our communion has not been broken, it has been impaired.”

The Episcopal Church of the United States, one of the 28 geographically based provinces that make up world Anglicanism, is among the most aggressive in pushing for an expanded role for women, both as ordained priests and as bishops.

Nearly 1,000 Attend

Runcie’s comments came at the opening of a plenary session of the 12th Lambeth Conference, a once-in-a-decade gathering of the Anglican Communion’s 525 bishops. More than any other meeting, the conference symbolizes both the unity of Anglicanism and its English origins.

The session, held at a university sports hall here, was attended by nearly 1,000 people, including most of the bishops.

A series of carefully reasoned 15-minute addresses defining formal positions on the sensitive issue of ordaining women as priests and consecrating them as bishops launched the debate. The arguments also reflected the gulf within the communion.

“The ministry of women in our midst has been, is, and will be life-giving,” declared Michael Peers, the Primate of Canada, a country whose Anglican church has 205 ordained women priests.

Bishop Counters

Countered the Church of England’s Bishop of London Graham Leonard: “I cannot accept that the ordination of women to the priesthood is what has been described as a ‘legitimate’ development.”

Bishops in seven provinces--New Zealand, Hong Kong, Brazil, Kenya and Uganda, in addition to the United States and Canada--have already ordained women priests, and the U.S. Episcopal Church may elevate a woman to the position of bishop as early as this fall.

While the ordination of women priests has shaken the communion’s much-cherished unity, the prospect of a woman bishop could destroy it completely, some observers say. Since the communion has no single central authority, it is the family of bishops that serves as a basis for the Anglican Communion’s unity.

Consequently, the rejection of a woman bishop would most likely spell the end of the Anglican Communion as it now exists.

‘Serious Division’

“We are facing the most serious division since the break with Rome,” said Bishop Brian Masters of the Church of England.

The ominous implications of the debate on women have led some, including Runcie, to seek to shift the focus more to the question of unity. It has also sparked a debate on the origins of church authority.

Decisions taken by the conference possess a certain moral authority, but are not binding on the independent provinces.

Following Friday’s formal presentations, smaller groups of bishops at the 3-week long conference will work to develop a series of resolutions on the role of women. These will be presented for a formal debate before the full conference on Aug. 1 and will eventually be voted upon.

‘Desire for Unity’

While some bishops feared that they may be attending a final Lambeth Conference, others rejected such a pessimistic projections.

“There is a powerful desire for unity, . . .” said Peers. “The key is how to pull together, yet still maintain our diversity.”

That diversity was illustrated by the growing number of Third World participants at the conference and the fact that for the first time, simultaneous translators have been required for some bishops to follow the proceedings.

In many ways, the divisions within the communion are reminiscent of the political attitudes that once dominated relations between Britain and its former colonies. Among reform-minded American, New Zealand and Canadian bishops, there is a sense of resentment at what they see as a stuffy Church of England hierarchy, with an inflated sense of its own importance and too mired in its traditions to welcome badly needed change.

Move Seen as Shallow

Conversely, some Church of England bishops perceive the move to elevate women as a shallow, North American-led development, rooted more in sociology than theology.

Last Monday, Leonard launched an unprecedented personal attack on the American Episcopal Bishop of Newark, N.J., John Spong.

In a signed article published by the national British tabloid Daily Mail, Leonard claimed that Spong had presided over homosexual marriages and rejected the Scriptures. Leonard added that Spong was a “prominent symbol of the trend which I believe is leading the church astray.”

In interviews outside the plenary session, bishops aired their opinions with similar frankness.

Accused of Blackmail

In an interview, Spong accused what he termed “conservative elements” of trying to blackmail the conference by threatening to leave the communion over the issue of the role of women.

He predicted that the Episcopal Church of the United States could consecrate its first woman bishop this fall and that no decision by the conference could derail that process.

“We’re on the right side of history and the rest will catch up,” he said.

Spong brushed aside the arguments of many in the Anglican hierarchy, including Runcie, that preserving the communion’s unity was of paramount importance and that therefore, compromise is vital.

‘Not a Primary Virtue’

“Unity is not a primary virtue--truth is,” Spong said. “I’m not interested in being a member of an all-male club masquerading as a church. I don’t want to be a part of anything that excludes 50% of its members.”

In contrast Masters, bishop of the rural London diocese of Edmonton, dismissed the efforts of U.S. Episcopalians to place women at the higher levels of the church hierarchy as “a cultural American phenomenon.”

“It’s a cultural condition, feminism writ large,” Masters said. “It will widen the already existing fact of an impaired communion.”

The debate about the ordination of women has dominated the conference as few other issues ever have in the past.

Message to Pope

In addition to threatening the community’s own unity, the issue of the role of women carries serious implications for the 20-year-old dialogue of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, seeking a reconciliation with Catholic Church of Rome.

In a written message to the conference, Pope John Paul II, spoke of his desire to achieve a Christian unity, but expressed his anxiety, “lest new obstacles arise”.

Eastern Orthodox Church representatives expressed similar concerns.

Archbishop John Zizioulas, the Orthodox co-chairman of the Orthodox-Anglican International Commission, noted his church’s opposition to sentiments within the Anglican Communion for ordaining women and has spoken about the implications of such a move on both Anglican and Christian unity.

‘Voice My Concern’

“It is not for me, an orthodox, to say to the Anglican Church how to do this (maintain unity),” he said. “I can only make a plea and voice my concern.”

In his keynote address to the conference Monday, Runcie carefully avoided the theological arguments for and against the ordination of women, casting the issue instead as one of unity.

“Let me put it in starkly simple terms: Do we really want unity within the Anglican Communion?” he asked the assembled bishops. “Is our worldwide family of Christians worth bonding together? Do we want the Anglican Communion. If we do, what are we going to do about it?”

In many ways, Runcie’s speech reflected his personal view on the subject--in favor theologically of an expanded role for women, but in fact, opposed to the idea on the grounds that such a development could have devastating consequences for church unity.

Runcie Rebuffed

However, Runcie was rebuffed earlier this month by the Church of England’s own synod, which voted 299 to 216 to prepare reform that would permit women to become priests.

The Church of England, long viewed as the mother of the Anglican Communion, now has 800 women deaconesses, but unlike the American Episcopal Church, has no women priests.

The complexity of ratifying the synod vote, which includes revisions by other church bodies in addition to the approval of the British Parliament, is expected to take several years.

In the most powerful speech of Friday’s plenary, a black American woman priest, Nan Arrington Peete, formerly with the Los Angeles diocese, addressed the conference, relating her own experience as what she called “the incarnation of what . . . other speakers have been talking about.”

She spoke of how she had been accepted by those in her parishes and likened the arguments against women priests and bishops to those used by segregation advocates in the 1950s.

Quoting from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, she said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

She won a standing ovation for her performance, but in a reflection of the divisions among these present, only about half the audience stood.