THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA 

AND IDENTITY

2nd. Edition (2 March)

The identity crisis in the Anglican Church in North America gets curiouser by the day. On Feb. 25, 2021, I posted the item below showing some of the problem in the ACNA on how to address the issue of homosexuality. Since then, more details have come to light and warrant a second look at what is going on with the ACNA.

Here is a chronology of what we know now:

---In January of 2020 the bishops of the ACNA commissioned a statement on sexuality "after we heard reports of varied application among ACNA leaders regarding the use of language about sexual identity..."

---January 19, 2021. College of Bishops issued "Sexuality and Identity: A Pastoral Statement from the College of Bishops." It declared homosexuality as a disordered condition but one that was changeable (rather than innate). It held that "Gay Christian" should not be used, but "Christians who experience same-sex attraction" should be. However, in the end, it seemed to leave the issue to local discretion: "Upholding our commitment to subsidiarity, we defer to diocesan bishops to discern these matters within their own diocesan communities and ministries." In other words, the statement tried to have it both ways, to condemn homosexuality yet leave the practical treatment up to the local dioceses. 

---Undated, but soon afterwards, Todd Hunter, bishop of one of the dioceses of ACNA put into effect the "subsidiarity" provision and issued his own statement to the clergy. He declared right off: "The College of Bishops does not speak with the authority of a magisterium." He went on with a much more benign and caring view of homosexuals in the church. He did not describe homosexuality as sin, a disorder, or a choice.

---February 22, 2021. Nineteen clergy and laity published "Dear Gay Anglicans," following in the vein of Bishop Hunter's letter to the clergy. It struck a positive attitude towards homosexuals blasting "conversion therapies" which are based on the false notion that homosexuality is a learned, and not inborn, quality. Moreover, the letter said it should be the homosexuals themselves that should discern "the best ways to testify faithfully to God's goodness..." This was a slap at what Hunter had called "the authority of the magisterium." One of the signatories of the letter was the dean of the Anglican cathedral in Charleston. The equatorial African Anglican primates apparently exploded and immediately bombarded Foley Beach, the archbishop of the ACNA with demands for retribution. At 1:15 a.m. the next day he issued a sharp retort to Hunter and the Nineteen.

---February 23, 2021. Beach posted a letter calling the "Dear Gay Anglicans" letter an "in your face" affront to the ACNA bishops. He insinuated, rather oddly, that the signatories did not know what they were signing: "A number of clergy signed onto this not really realizing the 'in your face' attitude of some of the authors." (So, they could not read?) He demanded an explanatory email from the clergy who signed the Gay Anglicans letter. Beach also insisted the College of Bishops were not going to change their stand (so much for the "commitment to subsidiarity"). He was obviously reacting to tremendous pressure from certain African archbishops.

---February 26, 2021. Henry Ndukuba, archbishop and primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria issued a blistering denunciation and an apparent threat to the ACNA and Beach personally. ("The deadly 'virus' of homosexuality has infiltrated ACNA.") Find the letter here . This is a must-read for anyone interested in what is going on in the ACNA. The archbishop demanded in no uncertain terms that ACNA both strongly condemn homosexuality and punish those within who were gay-friendly. This is a remarkable and highly revelatory document. Apparently it explains Beach's night of the 22/23rd.

---February 27, 2021. Press Release from ACNA , "ACNA Repudiates Claims that it has Changed its Teachings on Human Sexuality." Reeling from Ndukuba's ferocious attack, ACNA authorities played the blame game, putting it all on "a lay person." Actually the ball started rolling with a bishop. ACNA backed up hard and insisted it never meant to alter its hard line against homosexuality. As they say, this was meant for an audience of one. How that one took it, we do not know. This is where we are now.

A few points will help us understand what is going on here. The cultures of the equatorial African countries are strongly against homosexuality. These also happen to be places where the Anglican Church is strong and growing well. Nigeria has the largest Anglican membership outside of England with some 18m members. It is second only in size to the RC Church with 20m. About half of Nigeria, the northern half, is Muslim. Both Catholicism and Islam strongly condemn homosexuality. In fact, in Sharia law, which is in northern Nigeria, homosexual activities are punishable by death. In all of Nigeria, they are felonies with up to 14 years imprisonment. Even cross dressing is a felony. The point is that Anglicanism is vying earnestly against both Catholicism and Islam for new converts in a country where homophobia is deeply embedded. 

Since the 1990's, the equatorial Anglican primates have been pushing the Anglican Communion to take a decidedly negative stand on homosexuality. After the Episcopal Church made an openly gay man a bishop, they went on to form GAFCON as a bastion of anti-homosexuality in the Anglican world. It was GAFCON that created the Anglican Church in North America as Ndukuba said clearly in his letter. GAFCON set up ACNA as an anti-homosexual rights alternative to the Episcopal Church. Obviously, the forces that created ACNA are in no mood for any kind of fiddling around at the edges of the issue. In no uncertain terms, they expect ACNA to reflect the sexual attitudes of GAFCON. They certainly do not want any such notion as the local dioceses deciding on their own how they will treat homosexuals. Hence, the primate of Nigeria's withering denunciation and Beach's backtracking.

What happens next is anyone's guess. There is obviously a lot of feeling among ACNA clergy and laity that homosexuals deserve kinder treatment. The recent poll in the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina even showed that nearly half the laity were fine with putting "non-celibate" homosexuals in positions of church leadership. 

There are really two issues at hand, authority and social reform. GAFCON and the ACNA College of Bishops are playing the authority card hoping this will squelch any movement loosening the instituted homophobia in ACNA. Perhaps it will. This will depend on how much the ordinary people in ACNA want to care for their fellow Christians who are gay. Will they stand up for human rights or kowtow to the big hats? We shall see.

(One further note---the Anglican Ink website has the best collection of documents on this brouhaha.)

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Posting of Feb. 25, 2021:

The Anglican Church in North America was established in 2010 by disaffected Episcopalians and GAFCON explicitly to keep open homosexuals and women from equality and inclusion in the church. They declared homosexual activity to be sin and women to be inferior to men. They said homosexuality was a disorder and women could not hold positions of authority, e.g. bishops.

Now it turns out that this raison d'être was not as strong as first thought. As for women in the clergy, three of the five secessionist groups leaving the Episcopal Church refused to ordain females to the priesthood. One of them, Ft. Worth, went on to declare broken communion with dioceses in ACNA that did ordain women to the priesthood. This fracture in ACNA has not been resolved.

Now comes the surprise that the biggest brouhaha in ACNA is over, of all things, the issue of homosexuality, the driving motive for ACNA in the first place. Apparently, there is a brewing fight between the ACNA bishops and the lower clergy and laity over just how the church should treat homosexuality. Obviously, the issue was not as simple and clear-cut as the founders of ACNA thought.

Perhaps sensing rumblings of discontent on ACNA's original negative interface with homosexuality, the bishops of ACNA issued a formal statement, "Sexuality and Identity: A Pastoral Statement from the College of Bishops," last January.  Find it here . This was an attempt to bolster the original mission of ACNA---denial of equality and inclusion of homosexuals in the church. It called homosexual activity sin and homosexuality itself a disorder. In the end, the bishops declared that was no such thing as a "gay Christian" and the church must refer to such people as "Christians who experience same-sex attraction." This was a scarcely veiled attempt to deny the innate nature of homosexuality. Its clear aim was to reiterate the primary impetus of the decade-old ACNA. 

The bishops' hard-fisted encyclical did not land well with a certain number of the faithful in ACNA. On 22 February, a group of clergy and other professionals issued their own open latter, "Dear Gay Anglicans." Find it here . It was notable for what it included and what it did not include. Right off the bat, it declared the term "Gay Anglican" as appropriate, a direct contradiction of the bishops' insistence on terminology. This letter had a much more positive attitude toward gays. It made a major point of condemning "conversion therapies." It did not call homosexuality a disorder. It did not insist on celibacy of gays. In fact, it encouraged homosexuals to find "the best ways to testify faithfully to God's goodness in that part of their story." Interesting to note that the first of the nineteen signatures on this letter was the Very Rev. Peet Dickinson, dean of the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul, Charleston. 

The crux of the whole matter is whether homosexuality is inborn or learned. The bulk of scholarly work tends to the former. If it is inborn, as the "Dear Gay Anglicans" letter implies, then it is a God-given quality. All human beings are made in the image of God. If homosexuality is inborn, it is a divine gift and integral part of one's personhood. To deny it would be to deny the divine creation. This is why the demand for homosexual celibacy makes no sense. It assumes homosexuality is a disorder that must be denied and suppressed. This leads to denial of humanity and to self-loathing among gays. So, what the people of ACNA are really wrestling with is whether homosexuality is inborn or learned. Hence, the conflicting letters of late.

But wait, this is not the end of the story. As it turns out, the head of ACNA immediately flared at the upstart nineteen and their "Gay Anglicans" letter. The very next day, 23 February he fired off a hot letter of this own reading the Riot Act to the nineteen. Find Archbishop Foley Beach's letter here . He called the "Gay Anglicans" letter an "in your face" affront to the bishops. He went on to call the nineteen on the carpet:

if you are one of the clergy who signed on to this, I expect you to send me an email explaining why you signed a letter...

Then, Foley went on to assure everyone the bishops were adamant about their stand on homosexuality: The bishops are not going to back down on our conclusions. So much for conversations and dialogue about the issue. With the bishops, there is nothing to discuss.

Foley's retort confirms the essential nature of the ACNA. It is a church explicitly created to keep homosexuals and women from equality and inclusion. Any bending away from that commitment would undercut the whole reason for this new denomination. This is why Foley and the other bishops are fighting hard to hold the line on the issue of homosexuality. If they accept homosexuals as "gay Christians" they would be recognizing the innate nature of same-sex attraction. If they accept that, the next step is to accept homosexuals as equal children of God worthy of all the rights, dignities, and honors as all the other children of God.

Actually, I find all this a bit surprising given the history of the ACNA. I would have thought the issue of homosexuality had been put to rest permanently. It obviously remains unresolved in ACNA. One can only wonder at the causes of this unexpected brouhaha. Why, and why now? One wonders if it might have to do with the relentless decline of all of the schismatic entities. All five of the groups that left the Episcopal Church have suffered serious declines in membership and, therefore, income. Besides, America as a society is moving ever more to the extension of human rights to all people. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage which now causes hardly a ripple of concern in the larger culture. Times are changing. In America as a whole, homosexuality is no longer seen as the disorder and sin it once seemed to be. Perhaps the priests and laity of the ACNA sense that they too need to see homosexuality differently. If so, this is movement in the right direction and more power to them.