If God's law and commandments are open to postmodernist interpretation, we may as well bin the Bible, writes SUSAN PHILIPS
THE ANGLICAN Communion is an association of churches comprising 80 million members spread around 160 countries. Each regional church has full autonomy and the decennial Lambeth Conference allows for their 800 bishops to tune into "the mind of the Communion" concerning issues of the day. Although described as "a community which celebrates both unity and diversity", recent events have left many wondering if such contrary attributes can remain compatible.
In June, just weeks before Lambeth, 291 Anglican Bishops met in Jerusalem to discuss an emerging rift which centres around interpretation of scripture. GAFCON described itself as a spiritual movement formed to preserve and promote the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Delegates issued a call for all members to return to the biblical orthodoxy they describe as "truly Anglican".
Such a return to scriptural basics was seen as the only way to combat what they termed an emerging false gospel, one which has left traditionalists and bodies in the global south completely out of sink with some churches in more developed countries.
Participants crafted 14 articles setting out their basic biblical beliefs, including one article acknowledging the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman. Furthermore, the conference sought a policy of correction be introduced for those who had disobeyed motion 1.10, passed at Lambeth 1998, and stating that same sex practices were incompatible with scripture. The rift however could have centred on how modernity allows us to interpret any scripture. Instead, the recent ordination of gay North American Bishop Gene Robinson focused the debate on what the Bible has to say about same sex relationships and to what extent reason, ours that is, should supersede biblical absolutes.
Liberals argue that Anglicanism must move with the times and that the view of African and conservative members on this particular issue is only a product of their backward culture. Such rationale conveniently allows them to side step biblical belief in favour of modern societal norms.
If God's law and commandments are open to postmodernist interpretation, we become our own moral judges and we may as well bin the Bible and take the secular road. After all, civil society contains no such moral condemnations. To some, the fact that we no longer observe the Leviticus dietary laws and discard Paul's instructions to women only justifies change.
Yes, it is true that those teachings reflected cultural norms, but it would be intellectually dishonest for any serious student of the Bible to confuse such recommendations with the deep foundational commands on how to live a life pleasing to our Creator.
And if it can be shown that there is a gene which accounts for behaviour contrary to Christian teaching, liberals believe that what is forbidden ceases to be sin, and judgement is therefore averted.
So long as Lambeth provides an ecclesiastic framework wherein biblical truths can be re-interpreted as needed, liberals can remain happily within the club, smug in the assurance that the church can be moved to their enlightened position.
But GAFCOM has defined any such interpretations as false, and far from volunteering to walk themselves, it may well be that it is the liberal revisionists who will find their position untenable. As it is, the Bishops' meeting in Jerusalem represented more than two thirds of the ordinary Anglican members and it is their Bible-believing churches who front up much of the financial giving.
Taking the view that culture usually catches up with liberal thought, Lambeth this year issued no guidelines and took no basic decisions to unify its members. So how will all this play out within the Church of Ireland?
Our Primate Alan Harper has already argued that the study of human biology could underpin the objective reality of homosexuality as a valid orientation.
Yet Bishop Harold Miller points out that the divisions being experienced in the Anglican Communion are not simply to do with sexuality but to do with the attempted reinterpretation of the traditional central tenets of the Christian faith and the liberal desire to jettison many of them altogether.
Co-existence of two such varying view points appears unsustainable, and this autumn's Dublin Synod may reveal the extent to which the debate has reached these shores.
• Susan Philips is a member of the Church of Ireland and is a Synodsman on the Dublin/East Glendalough Synod