The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a full view of the subject.(November 2019) |
Rowan Williams (born 14 June 1950) is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012, previously having been Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales. His moral theology has had a significant impact on the ongoing debate on Anglican views of homosexuality and has been cited both by opponents and defenders of the gay movement within the Anglican Communion.
"The Body's Grace" is a lecture and essay written by Rowan Williams on the topic of Christian theology and sexuality. It was composed when he was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford in 1989. His writings on the subject were perceived as quite liberal before he became the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is now part of a series of essays collected in the book Theology and Sexuality. [1]
In the conclusion of this address, he asserted:
In a church that accepts the legitimacy of contraception, the absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous biblical texts, or on a problematic and nonscriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures.
The same year as he made the above comments, and as a practical consequence of the views he expressed, Williams founded the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Sexuality (which in 1996 became the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Sexuality [2] ). He was then Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, and this work characterised him amongst liberal Anglicans as a significant figure in the effort to make the Anglican Church's moral stance on homosexuality more accepting.
When he became Archbishop of Canterbury, questions of whether and how Williams would apply his views, specifically with regard to homosexual relationships among the clergy, were put squarely in the spotlight, through the issue of the proposed consecration of a gay priest, Jeffrey John, as Bishop of Reading. Following protest from a number of bishops from various parts of the Anglican Communion, Williams asked John to withdraw his candidacy, but then arranged his appointment as Dean of St Albans, one of the oldest Christian sites in England, in a move that was widely seen as a moderate compromise to maintain the latitudinarian unity of the Anglican Communion.[ citation needed ]
Though acknowledging that he was simplifying the Church's position, Williams said in September 2010 that "There's no problem about a gay person who's a bishop. It's about the fact that there are traditionally, historically, standards that the clergy are expected to observe." Asked what was wrong with a homosexual bishop having a partner, he said: "I think because the scriptural and traditional approach to this doesn't give much ground for being positive about it." [3]
In a 2006 interview with the Dutch newspaper Nederlands Dagblad, Williams discussed the Episcopal Church in the United States of America's increasingly liberal policies regarding homosexuality, saying that "in terms of decision-making the American Church has pushed the boundaries." [4] Williams argued that the Church had to be "welcoming", rather than "inclusive", a distinction he characterised by saying: "I don't believe inclusion is a value in itself. Welcome is. We don't say 'Come in and we ask no questions'. I do believe conversion means conversion of habits, behaviours, ideas, emotions. The boundaries are determined by what it means to be loyal to Jesus Christ." [lower-alpha 1]
However, in a later interview with Time magazine in June 2007, he stated that he had not changed his own mind, although he is now constrained from expressing personal views at variance with the corporate view of the Church. In answer to the question "You yourself once thought it possible that same-sex relationships might be legitimate in God's eyes" he responded: "Yes, I argued that in 1987. I still think that the points I made there and the questions I raised were worth making as part of the ongoing discussion. I'm not recanting. But those were ideas put forward as part of a theological discussion. I'm now in a position where I'm bound to say the teaching of the Church is this, the consensus is this. We have not changed our minds corporately. It's not for me to exploit my position to push a change." [5]
He has indicated support for a pro-life viewpoint; writing that, for himself, "it is impossible to view abortion as anything other than the deliberate termination of a human life." [6] He is a lifetime member of the pro-life group SPUC. [7]
Archbishop Williams stated that he remained opposed to voluntary euthanasia despite seeing his mother's painful months of decline and dementia. [8] He has voiced similar opposition to assisted suicide. [9]
Prior to a planned visit to the Vatican on 21 November 2006, he was interviewed by the Catholic Herald and pressed on the issue of the ordination of women. He was reported as having said, "I don't think it has transformed or renewed the Church of England in spectacular ways. Equally, I don't think that it has corrupted or ruined the Church of England. It has somehow got into the bloodstream and I don't give it a second thought these days."[ citation needed ] He did not discount the possibility that the issue might be revisited. His remarks were interpreted as a revision of his former support for the ordination of women. In a subsequent statement he refuted this view, saying, 'I feel nothing less than full support for the decision the Church made in 1992 and appreciation of the priesthood exercised'.[ citation needed ] There was a certain amount of critical press coverage of his comments in the interview.[ citation needed ]
In contrast to his diminished outspokenness on the acceptability of homosexual relationships as a matter of theology, however, he has continued to affirm the civil and human rights of homosexuals. For example, in his Advent letter for 2007 he said: "... it is part of our Christian and Anglican discipleship to condemn homophobic prejudice and violence, to defend the human rights and civil liberties of homosexual people and to offer them the same pastoral care and loving service that we owe to all in Christ's name." [10]
In "The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today", an address to the Anglican Communion in June 2006, he said: "It is possible – indeed, it is imperative – to give the strongest support to the defence of homosexual people against violence, bigotry and legal disadvantage, to appreciate the role played in the life of the church by people of homosexual orientation, and still to believe that this doesn’t settle the question of whether the Christian Church has the freedom, on the basis of the Bible, and its historic teachings, to bless homosexual partnerships as a clear expression of God’s will." [11]
In 2008, it was reported that Williams had stated in 2000 or 2001 that homosexual relationships could "reflect the love of God" in a manner comparable to heterosexual marriages, and that he believed that passages in the Bible which are often cited in support of the view that homosexuality is a sin, in fact are aimed at heterosexual people seeking variety in their sexual experience, rather than at gay people. [12]
The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Founded in 1867 in London, the communion has more than 85 million members within the Church of England and other autocephalous national and regional churches in full communion. The traditional origins of Anglican doctrine are summarised in the Thirty-nine Articles (1571). The Archbishop of Canterbury in England acts as a focus of unity, recognised as primus inter pares, but does not exercise authority in Anglican provinces outside of the Church of England. Most, but not all, member churches of the communion are the historic national or regional Anglican churches.
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, Williams was the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England.
The Lambeth Conference is a decennial assembly of bishops of the Anglican Communion convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The first such conference took place at Lambeth in 1867.
Vicky Gene Robinson is a former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. Robinson was elected bishop coadjutor in 2003 and succeeded as bishop diocesan in March 2004. Before becoming bishop, he served as Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of New Hampshire.
Since the 1990s, the Anglican Communion has struggled with controversy regarding homosexuality in the church. In 1998, the 13th Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops passed a resolution "rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture". However, this is not legally binding. "Like all Lambeth Conference resolutions, it is not legally binding on all provinces of the Communion, including the Church of England, though it commends an essential and persuasive view of the attitude of the Communion." "Anglican national churches in Brazil, South Africa, South India, New Zealand and Canada have taken steps toward approving and celebrating same-sex relationships amid strong resistance among other national churches within the 80 million-member global body. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has allowed same-sex marriage since 2015, and the Scottish Episcopal Church has allowed same-sex marriage since 2017." "Church of England clergy have appeared to signal support for gay marriage after they rejected a bishops' report which said that only a man and woman could marry in church." The Church of England's 2019 General Synod was set to discuss a diocesan motion "to create a set of formal services and prayers to bless those who have had a same-sex marriage or civil partnership". At General Synod in 2019, the Church of England announced that same-gender couples may remain married and recognised as married after one spouse experiences a gender transition provided that the spouses identified as opposite genders at the time of the marriage.
Peter Jasper Akinola is the former Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria. He is also the former bishop of Abuja and Archbishop of Province III, which covered the northern and central parts of the country. When the division into ecclesiastical provinces was adopted in 2002, he became the first Archbishop of Abuja Province, a position he held until 2010. He is married and a father of six.
George Leonard Carey, Baron Carey of Clifton is a retired Anglican bishop who was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, having previously been the Bishop of Bath and Wells.
Broad church is latitudinarian churchmanship in the Church of England in particular and Anglicanism in general. The term is often used for secular political organisations, meaning that they encompass a broad range of opinion.
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, known until 2006 as the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, is the province of the Anglican Communion in the southern part of Africa. The church has twenty-five dioceses, of which twenty-one are located in South Africa, and one each in Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and Saint Helena. In South Africa, there are between 3 and 4 million Anglicans out of an estimated population of 45 million.
Robert William Duncan is an American Anglican bishop. He was the first primate and archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) from June 2009 to June 2014. In 1997, he was elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. In 2008, a majority of the diocesan convention voted to leave the diocese and the Episcopal Church and, in October 2009, named their new church the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. Duncan served as bishop for the new Anglican diocese until 10 September 2016 upon the installation of his successor, Jim Hobby.
Drexel Wellington Gomez is a Bahamian Anglican bishop.
In 2003, the Lambeth Commission on Communion was appointed by the Anglican Communion to study problems stemming from the consecration of Gene Robinson, the first noncelibate self-identifying gay priest to be ordained as an Anglican bishop, in the Episcopal Church in the United States and the blessing of same-sex unions in the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster. The Commission, chaired by Archbishop Robin Eames, published its findings as the Windsor Report on 18 October 2004. The report recommended a covenant for the Anglican Communion, an idea that did not come to fruition.
Henry Luke Orombi in Pakwach, North Western Uganda, is a Ugandan Anglican bishop. He served as Archbishop of Uganda and Bishop of Kampala from 2004 until his retirement in December 2012, two years earlier than expected. He was succeeded as Archbishop by Stanley Ntagali, who was consecrated in December 2012. Orombi served as Bishop of the Diocese of Kampala, which is the fixed episcopal see of the Archbishop, but unlike many other fixed metropolitical sees, the incumbent is not officially known as "Archbishop of Kampala", but bears the longer compound title "Archbishop of Uganda and Bishop of Kampala".
Michael James Nazir-Ali is a Pakistani-born British Roman Catholic priest and former Anglican prelate who served as the 106th Bishop of Rochester from 1994 to 2009 and, before that, as Bishop of Raiwind in Pakistan. He is currently the director of the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue. In 2021, he was received into the Catholic Church and was ordained as a priest for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on 30 October 2021. He is a dual citizen of Pakistan and Britain.
The Anglican realignment is a movement among some Anglicans to align themselves under new or alternative oversight within or outside the Anglican Communion. This movement is primarily active in parts of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. Two of the major events that contributed to the movement were the 2002 decision of the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada to authorise a rite of blessing for same-sex unions, and the nomination of two openly gay priests in 2003 to become bishops. Jeffrey John, an openly gay priest with a long-time partner, was appointed to be the next Bishop of Reading in the Church of England and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church ratified the election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay non-celibate man, as Bishop of New Hampshire. Jeffrey John ultimately declined the appointment due to pressure.
This article largely discusses presence of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and queer bishops in churches governed under episcopal polities. The existence of LGBTQ bishops in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and other traditions is a matter of historical record, though never, until recently, were LGBTQ clergy and Bishops ordained by any of the main Christian denominations. Homosexual activity was engaged in secretly. When it was made public, official response ranged from suspension of sacramental duties to laicization.
The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is a Christian denomination in the Anglican tradition in the United States and Canada. It also includes ten congregations in Mexico, two mission churches in Guatemala, and a missionary diocese in Cuba. Headquartered in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, the church reported 30 dioceses and 1,037 congregations serving an estimated membership of 134,593 in 2017. In 2020, the denomination reported 972 congregations and 126,760 members. The first archbishop of the ACNA was Robert Duncan, who was succeeded by Foley Beach in 2014.
The Cambridge Accord was an attempt to reach agreement on at least the human rights of homosexual people, notwithstanding controversy within the Anglican Communion about Anglican views of homosexuality.
The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) is a series of conferences of conservative Anglican bishops and leaders, the first of which was held in Jerusalem from 22 to 29 June 2008 to address the growing controversy of the divisions in the Anglican Communion, the rise of secularism, as well as concerns with HIV/AIDS and poverty. As a result of the conference, the Jerusalem Declaration was issued and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans was created. The conference participants also called for the creation of the Anglican Church in North America as an alternative to both the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada, and declared that recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury is not necessary to Anglican identity.
Josiah Atkins Idowu-Fearon is a Nigerian Anglican bishop. Since 2015, he has been Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council. He was previously the Bishop of Kaduna diocese and the Archbishop of the Province of Kaduna in the Church of Nigeria.
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