Cozying up with the world

It’s that time of year again when the Anglican General Synod makes further moves toward dissolving the difference between Christianity and the acceptable tastes of the surrounding world. This, of course, is always to the detriment of the former. For the Church of England, this is nothing new. Writing for The Spectator, Theo Hobson points out that the church has in practice denied its theology of sex for many years now. That simply indicates how deep the problem is. But rather than take steps to check the problem, the C of E seems set to move to regularize it.

The issues of the moment involve giving more formal status to “Prayers of Love and Faith” that are already in use in some churches for the blessing of same-sex couples and plotting a way forward for the recognition of civil marriage. The prayers themselves are on the whole masterpieces of studied ambiguity, more significant for what they suggest but do not spell out. And once a church finds a way to bless those who are in a situation or a relationship that is destructive of the body here and the soul hereafter, the game is really over.

The account provided on the Church of England’s website indicates that the discussion was infused with the usual pious jargon. The archbishop of Canterbury captures the sentiment nicely: “I cannot imagine the Church of England without any particular group within it, and without her reaching effectively to anyone outside it through inclusion and justice, lived in holy imitation of Christ.”

A church without boundaries is, of course, no church at all. So the statement about “any particular group” surely needs qualification. If that means including those who, for example, deny the significance of biology for either distinguishing male from female or for appropriate sexual interactions, then the archbishop is really claiming that he cannot imagine the church as a place where the human body is taken seriously. That is quite remarkable. Of course, while that is a legitimate conclusion from his statement, it seems more likely that the archbishop is just deploying the kind of rhetoric that resonates with the wider world.

A second claim—“That the church flourishes as one is indispensable to the gospel in this land”—seems equally specious. Now, it is certainly arguable that Protestants do not take the visible unity of the church seriously, defaulting too quickly to talk about “spiritual unity” that never seems to have practical, institutional implications. But when the price for unity is a basic rejection of any agreed anthropology, then the gospel is annihilated. And that transformation or downgrade of anthropology is what fundamental concessions on the nature of sex and sexuality require.

Approaching the issue from another angle, one might say that the problem with much teaching on sex in the church’s past has been focused on do’s and don’ts. Those are legitimate subjects for discussion, but they need to be set against the background of broader anthropological questions. What are men and women for? What is sex for? What is the teleological significance of the body, especially in terms of its sexual dimension? It seems that one major driving factor in the Anglican discussion has been that of how the Church can help people feel happy about themselves and comfortable with the lives they have chosen. Again, those are legitimate issues but hardly the most important. What it means to be human is the foundational question to be addressed before consideration of any of the therapeutic demands of the day.

It is not surprising to see talk of strong conscience clauses to protect those dissenters who will still wish to uphold the Christian position on sex and sexuality. Not surprising—it’s a standard tactic—but not reassuring either. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Church history over the last century will know that “conscience clauses” rarely last beyond that moment when the revisionists gain a decisive hold on power. Any traditionalist who is reassured by talk of such protections should give me a call as soon as possible—I can give them an excellent deal on the sale of the Brooklyn Bridge.