Go in Peace, Church Dividers

We might hardly call Henry VIII of England a role model for the sanctity of marriage, fair means of shedding unwanted wives or as a faithful Christian. He did, however, have a fine eye for legal niceties. When his older brother Arthur died, Henry, only 17 years old, married his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon. That was on June 11, 1509. On June 24, 1509, the two were crowned at Westminster Abbey. This marriage was important to England since Catherine was Spanish and the marriages, Arthur's and Henry's, were seen as insurance against Anglo-Spanish squabbles becoming too severe.

In 1525, Henry got tired of Catherine. Whether this was because she didn't produce a son or because he got a young lady named Anne Boleyn in the family way is immaterial. What did matter is that Henry, after all this time, decided that his marriage should be annulled because Catherine and Arthur had been married, had consummated the marriage (evidently of some importance in such matters) and Henry had thus married within the "prohibited degrees of consanguinity" which is legalese for saying Catherine and he had, in the eyes of church law, committed incest.

The Pope was having no part of that so Henry had the head of his Lord Chancellor Thomas More chopped off, and caused his pliable parliament to make him head of the church. Thus was born the Church of England, which in Canada became known as the Anglican Church of Canada and in the United States the Episcopalian Church.

A rocky beginning one might say.

Deviants of doctrine

When I'm asked what my religion is, I borrow a line from the American wit Will Rogers and say, "I belong to no organized church, I'm an Anglican." This branch of the Mairs became Anglican when my Presbyterian great great grandfather, being one of the first white settlers in New Zealand around 1818, and finding no Presbyterian church, hooked up with an Anglican priest named Henry Williams, with whom he also became a business partner. The two of them brought the first two swarms of honey bees to New Zealand. But I digress.

Time and space don't permit a long discourse on how the new church fared under Catherine's daughter Mary I (otherwise known as "Bloody Mary"). Suffice it to say that the unpleasantness between Church of Englanders and Roman Catholics remains to this day and, indeed, no Catholic can be monarch.

The problems of the Church of England, and of the Anglican Church especially, are now internal and involve doctrine. Specifically, the proper interpretation of the Bible with respect to homosexuals.

The church is no stranger to doctrinal deviation as demonstrated by Hewlett Johnson, called the "Red Dean" because he enthusiastically embraced communism in the early 1930s, an enthusiasm which continued until he died in 1966 and included his support of the USSR when they brutally put down the Hungarian revolution in 1956. Quite apart from looking and acting like an oddball, Johnson caused considerable unrest in the church. Many members saw him as a heretic for supporting godless Soviet Communism. In all events, the church survived if it didn't prosper.

Fast forward to the 1960s and Bishop James Pike of California, a chain smoker and alcoholic and probably a woman chaser. Pike was an early supporter of woman as priests, racial desegregation, and the acceptance of gays as communicants.

He also questioned the Virgin Birth, the doctrine of hell and the Trinity. Four times heresy proceedings were started but in the end the church thought it best to leave things alone. He died a mysterious death in the Israeli desert.

More recently N.T. "Tom" Wright, Bishop of Durham and the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England, has denied the existence of a soul and has denied heaven as most Christians envision it.

Are gays 'sinners'?

The legacy of Johnson, Pike, Wright and others (occasionally eccentric vicars even deny there is a God) is a church famous for its doctrinal looseness while at the same time containing within it very conservative folks who are a whisk away from being Roman Catholics. It survived, barely, the ordination of women priests in many churches in the World Anglican Community and is now self-immolating on the question of gay relationships and gay marriages.

I have little stomach left for the question, "Are homosexuals sinners?" The Ten Commandments make it a sin to covet your neighbour's wife but is silent on homosexuality. Leviticus, the principal biblical injunction against sodomy (not homosexuality per se), also supports selling daughters into slavery. Jesus had nothing to say on the matter, despite the fact that homosexuality was a widespread social custom of Greek and Roman societies of that time.

What I find strange is the response of the Anglican Church to the questions of gay unions even unto marriage. The opponents assume that their church is blessing these unions or at least wants to. The church hasn't the wit to make the obvious rejoinder: Neither the church nor its priests bless anything. They ask God to bless -- a very different thing indeed. From time immemorial Anglican priests have asked God's blessing on warships and all who sail in them, knowing that given any provocation those ships will kill people. In fact, Anglican priests have asked God's blessing on all manner of things including the marriages of divorced people.

This issue goes to the root of Protestantism caused, in part, by priests in the Middle Ages granting forgiveness of sins, called indulgences, for money. I've trawled through my old Book of Common Prayer looking in vain for places where the priest blesses. I have found innumerable places where he asks for God's blessing but none where he purports to usurp God's function. The Anglican Church does not marry gay couples and, I'm told on high authority, has no intention to.

It also goes to the nub of the matter. Anglican priests have the power to ask God to bless but no power to do it in their own name or that of the Church. Because of this, the church is splitting apart and in many cases going to court over parish holdings.

Sin of hypocrisy

I suppose I should be charitable to those who are splitting my church but that's too much to ask. There isn't, I daresay, a single one of them who is without sin -- many of whom, like divorced persons, are ongoing sinners. These defectors are hypocrites. Their sin is OK but the conduct of gays, which if sinful (a big "if") doesn't even rank in the top 10 sins, is cause for a schism.

Make no mistake about it -- this is homophobia in spite of tendentious pleas from the rebels that they simply want the church to return to "traditional" ways. Wavering Anglican though I am, I think I speak for a lot of members in saying that's a load of barnyard droppings and the rebels deserve our thanks for so dramatically lowering the level of hypocrisy in all our parishes.

And, oh yes . . . good riddance.

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  Interview with Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
• God, What Politicians!
  Clinton, Obama, McCain and Huckabee's religious vids on YouTube.
• Christianity Is So Gay
  It is if you read the news, and 2000 years, a certain way.