Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:24:05.091Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Divided We Stand: North American Evangelicals and the Crisis in the Anglican Communion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2010

Jason Bruner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of the Anglican Communion’s ‘crisis’ regarding the place of gay and lesbian persons within the tradition. It presents a social and theological contextualization of this crisis within the Episcopal Church, USA, in the second half of the twentieth century. It argues that the origins of the Anglican Communion’s crisis regarding gay and lesbian persons within the Communion are best understood in continuity with the broader North American evangelical movement of the second half of the twentieth century. The implications of this contextualized study serve to critique an understanding of the current crisis, which juxtaposes a decrepit, liberal ‘North’ with a vibrant, ‘orthodox’ ‘Global South’.

Keywords

Anglican CommunionEpiscopal ChurchevangelicalismGlobal SouthhomosexualityThe Next Christendom
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , May 2010 , pp. 101 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1.

Jason Bruner is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary. He would like to acknowledge Ian Douglas, Ph.D., and Margaret Guider, O.S.F., Th.D., for their generous contributions and guidance in the researching of this article.

References

2. I will use ‘ECUSA’ in this essay to refer to the Episcopal Church in the United States, since the scope of the essay does not extend to 2006, when it was renamed The Episcopal Church.Google Scholar

3. The Episcopal Church Annual 1967 (New York: Morehouse-Barlow Company, 1967), p. 21; The Episcopal Church Annual 1981 (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow Company, 1981), p. 19.Google Scholar

4. Soper, J. Christopher, Evangelical Christianity in the United States and Great Britain: Religious Beliefs, Political Choices (Hong Kong: The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Soper, Evangelical Christianity in the United States and Great Britain, p. 36.Google Scholar

6. Booty, John, The Episcopal Church in Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1988), p. 79; Dennis J. Bennett, Nine O’Clock in the Morning (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1970).Google Scholar

7. Prichard, Richard W., A History of the Episcopal Church (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1999), p. 265.Google Scholar

8. Wells, David, ‘On Being Evangelical’, in Mark A. Noll, David Bebbington and George A. Rawlyk (eds.), Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 389–410 (396).Google Scholar

9. Wells, ‘On Being Evangelical’, p. 396; Beckwith, R.T., ‘Keele, Nottingham, and the Future’, in D. N. Samuel (ed.), The Evangelical Succession (Cambridge: James Clark, 1979), pp. 101–110 (106).Google Scholar

10. Bebbington, David, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman, Inc., 1989), pp. 204–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Bebbington, David, ‘Evangelicalism in its Settings’, in Mark A. Noll, David Bebbington and George A. Rawlyk (eds.), Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 365–388. (372).Google Scholar

12. Williamson, Wayne B., Growth and Decline in the Episcopal Church (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1979), pp. 141, 142.Google Scholar

13. Faber, Dorothy A., ‘An Open Letter to the Bishops and Priests in the Anglican Church in North America’, The Christian Challenge 17.7 (1978), p. 15.Google Scholar

14. Booty, The Episcopal Church in Crisis, p. 93. J. Christopher Soper offers the statistic that by 1960 evangelical missions groups provided approximately 65 per cent of the total number of foreign missionaries, while by the early 1990s they provided roughly 90 per cent. Soper, Evangelical Christianity in the United States and Great Britain, p. 104.Google Scholar

15. Jenkins, Willis, ‘Episcopalians, Homosexuality and World Mission’, Anglican Theological Review 86.2 (2004), pp. 293–316.Google Scholar

16. Hooper, Emmanuel, ‘The Theology of Trans-Atlantic Evangelicalism and Its Impact on The East African Revival’, Evangelical Review of Theology 31.1 (2007), pp. 71–89 (75–77).Google Scholar

17. Hooper, ‘The Theology of Trans-Atlantic Evangelicalism and Its Impact on The East African Revival’, p. 78.Google Scholar

18. Stanley, Brian, ‘The East African Revival: African Initiative within a European Tradition’, Churchman 91.2 (1977), pp. 6–20 (13).Google Scholar

19. Jenkins, ‘Episcopalians, Homosexuality and World Mission’, p. 294.Google Scholar

20. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, p. 284.Google Scholar

21. Hassett, Miranda K., Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their Allies are Reshaping Anglicanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 36.Google Scholar

22. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, p. 268; Grenz, Stanley J., Welcoming but Not Affirming (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Know Press, 1998), p. 2.Google Scholar

23. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, p. 269.Google Scholar

24. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, p. 292; Shiftlet, Dave, Exodus: Why Christians are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity (New York: Penguin Group, 2005), p. 29.Google Scholar

25. Shiftlet, Exodus, p. 30.Google Scholar

26. Krumm, John M., Letters from Lambeth (Cincinnati, OH: Forward Movement Publications, 1988), p. 4.Google Scholar

27. Krumm, Letters from Lambeth, p. 4.Google Scholar

28. Krumm, Letters from Lambeth, p. 6.Google Scholar

29. Krumm, Letters from Lambeth, p. 98.Google Scholar

30. http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1988/1988-43.cfm (accessed 15 March 2008).Google Scholar

31. Kimball, Cook, ‘The Revival of the Episcopal Church: 1961–1999’, Episcopal Evangelical Journal 1.11 (1999), pp. 7–11 (7).Google Scholar

32. Samuel, VinaySugden, Christopher, Lambeth: A View from the Two Thirds World (London: SPCK, 1989), p. 124.Google Scholar

33. Theological Resource Team of the Global Anglican Future Conference, The Way, The Truth, and The Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future. (London: Latimer Trust, 2008), pp. 33, 34. This booklet provides less of a chronological development of the conflict as it details the theological and biblical principles at stake and for which certain conservative factions are willing to fight to uphold. It is a better source for describing the theological issues at stake in the present conflict than it is for ascertaining a historically-nuanced perspective of the progression of the events and activity through which the conflict developed.Google Scholar

34. Samuel and Sugden, Lambeth, p. 121.Google Scholar

35. Krumm, Letters from Lambeth, pp. 55, 56.Google Scholar

36. Samuel and Sugden, Lambeth, p. 133. See also Resolution 120 from Lambeth Conference 1958: http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1958/1958-120.cfm, and Resolution 23 from Lambeth Conference 1968: http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1968/1968-23.cfm.Google Scholar

37. Gitari, David, ‘The Church and Polygamy’, Transformation 1.1 (1984), pp. 3–10. See also David Gitari, ‘Rethinking Polygamy: Jesus Spoke Against Divorce, not Polygamy’, The Other Side 24.3 (1988), pp. 42, 43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. Krumm, Letters from Lambeth, p. 91.Google Scholar

39. Samuel and Sugden, Lambeth, p. 126.Google Scholar

40. http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1988/1988-34.cfm (accessed 15 March 2008).Google Scholar

41. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, pp. 289, 290.Google Scholar

42. http://www.ekk.org/ (accessed 15 March 2008).Google Scholar

43. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, p. 291.Google Scholar

44. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, pp. 51, 52.Google Scholar

45. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 58.Google Scholar

46. http://www.globalsouthanglican.org/index.php/weblog/comments/the_kuala_lumpur_statement_on_human_sexuality_2nd_encounter_in_the_south_10/ (accessed 10 March 2008).Google Scholar

47. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 60.Google Scholar

48. ‘The Dallas Statement’, Transformation 15.1 (1998), pp. 30–32.Google Scholar

49. Douglas, Ian, ‘Lambeth 1998 and the “New Colonialism” ’, The Witness 81.5 (1998), pp. 8–12 (11).Google Scholar

50. Douglas, ‘Lambeth 1998 and the “New Colonialism” ‘, p. 11.Google Scholar

51. Jim Naughton, ‘Following the Money’, http://www.edow.org/follow/(accessed 20 February 2008).Google Scholar

52. Naughton, ‘Following the Money’, p. 4.Google Scholar

53. Naughton, ‘Following the Money’, p. 2.Google Scholar

54. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 210.Google Scholar

55. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 237.Google Scholar

56. http://www.lambethconference.org/1998/news/lc042.cfm (accessed 15 January 2008).Google Scholar

57. http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1998/1998-1-10.cfm (accessed 20 January 2008).Google Scholar

58. http://www.lambethconference.org/1998/news/lc073.cfm (accessed 20 January 2008).Google Scholar

59. http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1998/1998-1-10.cfm (accessed 20 January 2008).Google Scholar

60. http://www.lambethconference.org/1998/news/lc098.cfm (accessed 20 January 2008).Google Scholar

61. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, pp. 113, 114.Google Scholar

62. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 114.Google Scholar

63. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 126.Google Scholar

64. Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65. For the sake of consistency, I use the term ‘dissidents’ in this essay to describe those within the ECUSA who were dissatisfied with the trend of the denomination’s leadership toward more liberal ecclesiastical policies, specifically with regard to the role of gay and lesbian persons within the ECUSA. I understand that many within this movement would not necessarily apply this term to themselves but may prefer to speak in terms of ‘authentic provinces’ and the formation of non-geographic dioceses. I use the term ‘dissident’ in this essay without any sense of value judgment upon the actions taken or beliefs held by persons within such groups. I employ it only in the sense that they disagreed with the prevailing actions taken by the ECUSA’s leadership in the later decades of the twentieth century.Google Scholar

66. Jenkins, The Next Christendom, p. 5.Google Scholar

67. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 3.Google Scholar

68. http://www.acn-us.org/about/ (accessed 20 January 2008).Google Scholar

69. http://www.theamia.org/experience/rec-reading (accessed 15 January 2008).Google Scholar

70. See www.globalsouthanglican.org.Google Scholar

71. The Way, The Truth, and The Life, p. 33.Google Scholar

72. Jenkins, The Next Christendom, p. 14.Google Scholar

73. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 175.Google Scholar

74. Jenkins, The Next Christendom, p. 204.Google Scholar