This article is in the General Convention issue of both The Witness and RUACH, the journal of the Episcopal Women's Caucus. Thanks to the author for permission to publish it here as well. --L.
In the early 1970s, feminist theologist Mary Daly offered the simple but radical observation that "If God is male, then the male is God." Daly's insight, stated in her 1974 book "Beyond God the Father," offers a useful analytical tool for understanding the dynamic driving much of the current rhetoric in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as we approach this first post-Lambeth General Convention.
If Philadelphia was made noisy by conservatives whose mantra/threat was "Just wait until Lambeth," Denver will be noisy with conservatives wielding the club of Lambeth resolutions on the ordination of women and human sexuality. And just as the bishops at Lambeth consistently forgot that they are not the whole of the Church, so too will many bishops at Denver once again forget that they are only one small part of the church, and an increasingly fragmented and thus ineffectual part, at that.
In his Witness article "Authority After Colonialism," Ian Douglas very clearly outlined two of the forces limiting "our living into the possibilities of a multi-cultural plural community in Christ." The first, he explained, is "the ongoing legacy of colonialism."
He explained that "the second major force hindering those historically privileged in Anglicanism (who he names as straight, white, male, Western clerics) from embracing a radically different world and church is the philosophical and theological confines of modernity." By "modern," he means the last 500 years, the Age of Enlightenment.
"Anglicanism, up until very recently," he writes, "has thus rested on the philosophical and theological constructs of Enlightenment thought that values either/or propositions, binary constructs and dualistic thinking." He maintains that the majority of Anglicans today are able to, indeed, cannot avoid having to live in multiple realities - the Western Enlightenment construct and the construct of their daily realities. He also rightly points out that marginalized people in the West also live in multiple realities, their own and that of the dominant culture. In fact, the only people in the Anglican Communion who don't have to live in multiple realities are the aforementioned straight white male Western clerics. They have had the privilege of living as if their reality is the only one.
Given this, why did so many straight white male conservative Western clerics - who theoretically stand to lose the most in the brave new multicultured world -- make alliances with those clerics who apparently stand to gain the most?
It is because they recognized in one another a core belief upon which to build a new power base, centered not in race, not even in a shared interpretation of Scripture, but rather in their shared maleness - "because God is male, the male is God."
It is a measure of the growing arrogance based in their idea of Divine Maleness that we heard no one repudiating Rwandan Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini's widely circulated and astonishing statement after the primates' meeting in Oporto, Portugal that "the primates are like God the Father." Mary Daly wrote that "the symbol of the Father God, spawned in the human imagination and sustained as plausible by patriarchy, has in turn rendered service to this type of society by making the mechanisms for the oppression of women appear right and fitting. If God in `his' heaven is a father ruling `his' people, then it is in the `nature' of things and according to divine plan and the order of the universe that society be male-dominated.
"Within this context a mystification of roles takes place: the husband dominating his wife represents God `himself.' The images and values of a given society have been projected into the realm of dogmas and "Articles of Faith," and these in turn justify the social structures which have given rise to them and which sustain their plausibility."
Once Daly spoke this truth out loud, the theological world began to slowly split apart, causing serious fractures in the edifice of Divine Maleness. Over the last thirty years, feminist and womanist theological critiques have entered the mainstream to such an extent that the pope felt compelled to announce that conversation about the ordination of women is to cease, Southern Baptists found it necessary to decree that Baptist wives should "submit graciously" to their husbands, and male Anglican bishops from the west discovered a new - and historically unAnglican -- affinity for "the authority of Scripture" as well as suddenly discovering an urgent need for a more centralized structure of authority for the Anglican Communion.
One symptom of this crumbling of the power of Divine Maleness is the backlash against feminism, played out in increasingly subtle, but nonetheless destructive ways since women began being ordained priests and elected as bishops.
The other, however, is being played out with increasing viciousness. This is a virulent heterosexism. This heterosexism is aimed squarely at homosexual men, those "betrayers" of manhood. While equally threatened and pained by it, in truth lesbians hardly enter the picture here. Their femaleness renders them irrelevant, along with all other women.
For if the symbol of the Father God made the mechanisms for oppressing women appear right and fitting, how much more did it make the mechanisms for oppressing "womanish" men appear right and fitting? While men caught up in the idea of Divine Maleness may discount or even dislike women, they cannot abide men who, in their eyes, act like women. Indeed, they cannot afford to tolerate such men, for they undo everything the idea of Divine Maleness has achieved. Indeed, Daly posits that the idea of Divine Maleness has created the "problem" of homosexuality, for the power of Divine Maleness rests in sex role stereotyping. It is a worldview in which the idea that two people of the same sex can care authentically for one another cannot be allowed to exist. That's why primates wrote in their Oporto Communiqué that it is issues related to homosexuality that "threaten the Communion in a profound way." This means that it does not matter if homosexuals act out genitally. Daly points out that the label alone is the instrument of social control. This is why lesbians and gays see clearly the speciousness of the "hate the sin, love the sinner" kind of cant uttered by so many conservatives.
But sadly, it is not only the "orthodox" or "conservatives" who are a source of this pain or who see the benefits of a more centralized structure of authority for the Anglican Communion. So too do many who name themselves moderates or liberal.
This is because it's one thing to be sympathetic to such issues as international debt relief, anti-racism initiatives, and even "risky" issues such as choice, and quite another to support issues that may demand some sacrificing of privilege.
That's why we see such things as Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold being quoted as saying of the Oporto meeting, "It is troubling that sexuality took a disproportionate amount of time, given the more drastic concerns of poverty, world debt and genocide."
One can deal with poverty, world debt and genocide without giving up one's own privileges as a male. Dealing with issues of gender justice and human sexuality places all that at risk.
So it is no wonder the PB has made it clear he would like to spend no time on issues of sexuality at the "Jubilee" General Convention, and why he has found so many allies among bishops for the idea of not voting on "controversial" issues in Denver.
And he may get what he wants, given the state of the House of Bishops. Prior to the 1991 General Convention in Phoenix, the House of Bishops was organized and had enough bishops of stature to truly provide leadership, while the House of Deputies was largely inexperienced, with fewer people of stature. Since 1991, those roles have been reversed. Today the House of Deputies has numerous experienced people of stature and wisdom while the House of Bishops is fragmented and disorganized. But it takes only one house to keep legislation from passing. No matter how visionary and prophetic the House of Deputies may be willing to be, the House of Bishops can stop anything from happening if it chooses to follow the wishes of the Presiding Bishop. Plus, too many bishops still fail to understand that taking no action is always a victory for the status quo, and always penalizes the marginalized.
So don't expect to hear much about the resolutions passed in Philadelphia mandating that women's ordained ministries be allowed in all dioceses of the church. Don't expect the House of Bishops to hold the few remaining non-conforming bishops accountable. Don't expect legislation on same-sex unions to see the light of day.
The Report of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music is the bellwether, which all good sheep will follow. On the matter of the development of rites for same-sex blessing, clearly one of the issues the PB hopes to avoid, the SCLM came down squarely on the side(s) of local option. If dioceses want to develop such rites, they can. If they don't, they don't have to. Of course, without calling it that, we've done the same thing with the ministries of ordained women ever since the infamous Port St. Lucie statement in 1977, aka "the conscience clause."
This means that those people seeking the ministry of ordained women who happen to live in the Diocese of Fort Worth, and lesbians and gays living in such places as the dioceses of Dallas, Fort Worth, Central Florida, et al are simply out of luck. It's justice by geography, a system of apartheid easily condoned by those unaffected by it.
Yes, we have been invited to "Come to the Mountain" in Denver. Clearly, much of the church leadership is interpreting this invitation not as a chance to act as prophets, but rather as a chance to be safely above the fray - and not so incidentally, also maintain as much of the status quo as possible.
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