The Canterbury bait and switch
by Stephen Noll, American Anglican Council.
[…] Archbishop Welby went to Kenya in the aftermath of the contentious presidential election there, met with the re-elected President Uhuru Kenyatta and his opponent Raila Odinga, and preached a sermon in their presence on the importance of reconciliation.
There is a long history of religious leaders seeking to follow Jesus’ blessing of the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9) in the church and wider society. As the head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishops of Canterbury have in the past sought to mediate crises, as in the aftermath of the Rwanda genocide. This is all to the good, and I hope that Archbishop Welby’s mediation may have a positive effect on the tense political climate in Kenya.
My problem is with the reporting of this visit and particularly Welby’s own further comments drawing an analogy between his role in Kenya and his role in the wider Anglican Communion…
…In a follow-up interview, he claimed that his entire ministry is one of reconciliation and then applied that to the divisions within the Anglican Communion over sexuality. “Our challenge” he said, “is to work our way forward, holding on to the truths that are given to us through Jesus and in the Scriptures; and yet never sinking to the level of demonising or hating people because they are homosexual.”
So what precisely are the truths given to us through Jesus and in the Scriptures? At the 1998 Lambeth Conference, 570 bishops stated that “[this Conference] in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage” and that “while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation” (Resolution I.10).
Justin Welby has refused to commend this Resolution and, so I argue, intends to relegate it to the dustbin of history.
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