Renewing Communion: A queering of unity and colonialism
The Rev’d Dr. Charlie Bell
Charlie Bell is Official Fellow and College Lecturer in Medicine and Public Theology at Girton College, Cambridge, and a Registrar in Forensic Psychiatry at St George’s and Southwest London NHS Foundation Trust. He is a priest in the Diocese of Southwark, Scholar in Residence at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, Visiting Scholar at Sarum College, and a Research Fellow and Associate Tutor at St Augustine’s College of Theology.
He has published in both medicine and theology, and in the space between the two. His research interests are primarily in the field of theological anthropology, including culpability, responsibility, and determinism. He is also research active in psychiatry, investigating possible biological signatures for psychiatric and personality disorder.
Abstract
The Anglican Communion as a trans-national and interdependent community of Christians is facing potential catastrophe. The Communion remains a creature of colonialism, both in the way it lives out its mission and in its structures. At the heart of the Communion’s breakdown in koinonia has been the ‘possibility’ of same-sex or same-gender love, something made somehow distinct and, as a result, problematised.
This article considers the underlying complex dynamics of colonisation and the ongoing refusal of the Anglican Communion to engage in reflexive practice. The opportunity of redemption through queerness is identified, and the barriers to such a journey of hope in the Communion both engaged with and challenged. Similarly, the appeal to ‘unity’ is confronted and itself disrupted. Finally, the intrinsic relationship between decolonisation and queerness is identified and celebrated as a key to a healthy future for what it means to be Anglican.
Keywords
Colonialism; trans-national religion; Whiteness; decolonisation; ecclesiology
The Anglican Communion, a group of independent but interdependent churches described as a ‘global family of 85 million brothers and sisters’,[1] is in a state of perpetual crisis. The causes and the symptoms of this crisis, or rather of the several crises that have converged into one, are complex, and yet are far too frequently engaged with in a way that conflates – consciously or unconsciously – the key issues at stake or provides a simplistic analysis that ultimately silences minority voices to retain status quo power structures. Here we will tease apart two of the causes of the current impasse in polity and deterioration in relations – that of colonial legacy and ongoing colonial structural violence, and the silencing of queer voices and experience. In so doing, we will explore the gift that a queer theological positionality might offer the church. We will further engage with questions of unity in such an ecclesial body, and the role of discernment in the furthering of the Kingdom of God to which Christian theology and life is oriented.
Two strands of liberation and method, anticolonialism or decolonisation, and queer affirmation (or queerness more generally), have been instrumentalised against one another with increasing frequency and intensity in recent years, as wider cultural norms have shifted but colonial ecclesial structures have not. This continued instrumentalization appears to be an attempt – unconscious or conscious – to maintain patriarchal, cis-heteronormative ideals which, far from aiming to remove Whiteness as a damaged and erroneous consequence of Christendom, retains the fundamental colonisation of the church with different actors.
Whiteness has a long and deeply damaging history in the life of the churches.[2] It is ultimately a socially and politically constructed behaviour – an ideology which is based on beliefs, values, behaviours, habits, and attitudes, that results in the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin colour – ‘a position of power where the power holder defines social categories and reality as master narrator’.[3] Cis-heteronormativity is similar, albeit where one form of hegemonic control is replaced by another. These are not necessarily specifically ‘theological’ terms, yet they have a place in theological anthropology because whenever words are spoken about god rather than God – that is, where God is replaced with a humanly derived, normative understanding of what God should be – those speaking are engaging in idolatry.[i]Similarly, it matters because in theology there remains the temptation to start to define the world as the viewer thinks it should be, rather than engaging with the world as it is – with a resulting loss of any ability to do embodied theology. Whiteness and cis-heteronomativity are, therefore, ultimately restrictive practices – restrictive not only to the theologian’s ability to think and imagine, but restrictive, too, in practical terms. They are – as ideologies of power – ultimately the servants of power, a point returned to below. They are hermeneutical methods – yet methods which ultimately lead the theologian away from the work of theology.
It is important, too, to briefly discuss what queerness is, and what it is not, given the widespread misunderstanding (whether deliberate or accidental) of queerness within much of the church. It not merely a word to describe the experience or theology of LGBTQIA people, and nor is queerness a corpus of theological systematics. Instead, it is an ‘approach’ – a particular situating of the theologian in respect of their doing theology. Patrick Cheng has described it in a helpful and succinct way, and it is his definitions that we will make use of here. Noting that the sources of queer theology are queered forms of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, Cheng suggests three definitions (or strands) of queer theology. The first of these is ‘LGBT [sic] people “talking about God”’, and we might add ‘and talking about the created order and our place within it in the light of this talk about God’. The second is ‘”talking about God” in a self-consciously transgressive manner, especially in terms of challenging societal norms about sexuality and gender’. The third is ‘“talk about God” that challenges and deconstructs the natural [sic] binary categories of sexual and gender identity’.[ii] Queerness is, in other words, a direct challenge to the cis-heteronormativity that has gotten in the way of talking about God, by trying to turn God into a cis-heterosexual man. It is transgressive not because it transgresses God’s will, but because it holds the feet of cis-heterosexual assumptions to the fire.
It – together with, and in synergy with, other liberative theologies and approaches – does not merely allow historically – and currently – oppressed minority groups to speak about God and find their own place within the narrative of creation. Instead, it allows the church to clean a few more specks off the mirror and see itself a little more clearly. It is a friendly bedfellow with these other theologies – in other words, it is theological intersectionality in process and in practice – and it is a theological approach that is inevitably uncomfortable, intrinsically unstable and contingent, and yet in being so reminds us that that is the dangerous path that theology is called to walk along. In many ways, it takes our pursuit of God away from assumption and fixed foundation, and into daring quer(y)ing.
The Anglican Communion as object of queering
It is difficult to give a precise date for when the ‘Anglican Communion’ came into being, although the first Lambeth Conference (a meeting of ‘Anglican’ bishops from across the world) met in 1867. The churches that now form it have primarily been those which emanated from the Church of England (with a few exceptions, amongst them the Scottish Episcopal Church), born in an era of colonial expansion primarily for the service of the white settlers rather than the local communities being colonised. Over time, this picture has shifted, with churches increasingly developing a sense of local identity and drawing from local populations in the provision of bishops and other clergy. However, much of the Communion remains firmly tied – in its culture and in its practice, particularly liturgical practice – to the tradition from which it has come, and in particular the liturgical use, albeit locally adapted, of Cranmer’s 1662 Book of Common Prayer.[iii]
Whilst the Communion is frequently identified as a ‘church’ (singular), this is objectively not the case. Each of the provinces retain their autonomy and will differ, sometimes to a significant degree, in their particular expression of Anglicanism. Amongst the most visible differences is the reception of the ordination of women to the deaconate, priesthood, and episcopate, a matter which has been addressed a number of times by the Lambeth Conference (the ten-yearly meeting of bishops from across the communion) and found not to be a Communion-dividing issue.[iv] Yet in recent years the issue of homosexuality, and specifically the ordination of ‘active’ homosexuals and the blessing of same-sex, same-gender partnerships, has become one which – contrary to the Eames Report’s engagement with the ordination of women – appears to threaten the ‘very fabric of the communion’.[v]
Much debate on this ‘issue’ of homosexuality has, at least ostensibly, focused on the theological underpinnings. There has been an increasingly uncomfortable relationship between theological ‘further work’ and political delay in Anglican synodical processes, in which abstract argument is privileged over the lived experience and ‘right here right now’ of queer Christians. Within the Church of England, there has been a long and drawn-out process of theological discernment, the Living in Love and Faith project,[vi] which has brought sharp disagreements across the breadth of the church into the light, yet whose reception has tended to focus on the political rather than the theological, and on finding space for ‘orthodox’ (anti-queer) dissenters rather than on the lives of LGBTQIA people themselves.[vii]
Positions on homosexuality have, therefore, been found to be a significant marker of identity for political groupings, rather than as necessarily primarily a matter of theological engagement, with the ‘need to do more theology’ being weaponised by groups opposed to change yet with little recognition given by such groups that those with differing theological perspectives may have reached these through deep study of scripture, through the lenses of tradition, reason, and experience. Terms like ‘evangelical’ have become closely and fiercely guarded, and others like ‘orthodox’ have similarly been weaponised in a political fight. In many ways, the Anglican Communion – and the Church of England – now faces a battle for identity and belonging rather than a truly theological debate.
This is not to say that theological perspectives do not underlie what might be considered to be an inevitable consequence of Anglicanism being both a transnational ecclesial community and, in the context of the Church of England, a church legislated for by a democratically elected Synod, yet it is to make clear that identity – or more correctly contested identities – is a clear driver of the current disagreements. Even the word ‘Anglicanism’ is itself contested as a legitimate moniker for the current Communion, having originally described a particular theological stream within the Church of England, and current disagreements have laid bare the reality that whilst ‘Anglican’ may now prove a useful descriptor, that which it describes is neither clear nor agreed.[viii]
The post-, or simply colonial, crisis that looms over Anglicanism has a long history: here we might note that the link between the imperial enterprise and the Church of England’s expansion cannot be overstated. This has not been an entirely uncomplicated process, and whilst it is not entirely fair to suggest that the church was always intellectually and ideologically aligned with the imperial project, it would also be simplistic to suggest that there was anything like a sacred-secular divide in its genesis or the ideology that lay behind the centuries-long support for so-called ‘imperial ideals’. The church’s theological thinkers, including those lauded for their engagement in social justice back in England or elsewhere in the English speaking, Anglican world, infrequently opposed the colonial enterprise, and were very often actively engaged in supporting and promoting imperial ideology at home and abroad.[ix]
The church itself had a complex relationship with the peoples that empire subjugated, and whilst arguments can be made that there was a genuine interest in being – or at least, over time, becoming – a church for the colonised and not merely for the coloniser, it is a simple matter of fact that racist dogma – secular and sacred – and structural violence ensured that power imbalances remained firmly cemented institutionally as well as ideologically. Bishops remained white, male, and – in the main – English, and the nascent Anglican churches remained primarily ‘the Church of England’ in a new place. Whilst some of the Englishness was extracted from the United States’ own development after the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the issues of class, of race, of gender, and so on, remain important and enduring facets of the Episcopal Church’s (the Anglican church in the United States) history and present.
Throughout the Empire, then, the Anglican Church as an extension of the Church of England formed an institutional structure of society, enabling and in some cases strengthening not only racist ideology but its practical application.[x] As the Empire has slowly crumbled, and as there is an increasing recognition – albeit not as widespread a recognition as there might be – in the English cultural milieu and in the wider Global North (to make use of both an unhelpful and a helpful term) that merely hoping to ‘move on’ from the past is as unjust as it is futile, it is interesting that within Anglicanism this conversation remains in its infancy, at least as far as institutions or instruments (to use the ecclesial term) are concerned. Whilst the era of white Englishmen being found to act as Lord Bishop of a colonial see is now (mostly) over,[xi] nonetheless there remains a white man who, as primus inter pares, first amongst equals, holds a particular role amongst the Instruments of Communion, as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Whilst there are other Instruments of Communion, and whilst it is also true, of course, that anyone might be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, in practice there is a vanishingly small chance that this individual would be anything other than a white man, and likely a white English – or at least British, given the appointment of Rowan Williams – man, and specifically a white, English, cis-heterosexual identifying man of a particular social class, life experience, and wider positionality. In recent years, the process of appointing this person has been reordered in a very minimal way, to allow so-called Global South voices into the appointment room, but with the very clear intention that those from the Global South may not have a majority vote and hence ensure that the English voice is given the primacy.[xii]
The current incumbent of this role, Justin Welby, has made much during his primacy of the importance of the communion, but appears unable to recognise – or perhaps to find ways to put into practical application – the fundamental problem with the idea of an English Archbishop being in such a role ex officio. Welby has made an increasing number of global tours in his role as Archbishop, giving the impression of a quasi-papal role to the office – itself entirely without Anglican ecclesiology – and has drawn attention on a number of occasions to the impact of the decision-making of the Church of England on the wider Anglican Communion without showing any public evidence of engagement in the need for structural change when considering wider questions of colonial legacy.[xiii] It is important to recognise that episcopacy is personally held, and the incumbent Archbishop has chosen to define his primacy through increasing the attention paid to the communion, yet without showing evidence of having engaged in the deeper structural issues of justice that need to be addressed. This has had a significant impact on the church at home as well as abroad and will be a key factor in the next Archbishop’s tenure, likely to commence in 2025.
There is a key example of the current failure to recognise the need for decolonisation worth highlighting, in what occurred at the most recent Primates Meeting, which took place in Rome in 2024. Striking, incidentally, from this meeting was an address by Pope Francis,[xiv] which made clearly visible the apparent closer wish for unity with Rome than could be achieved amongst Anglican Primates, several of whom did not attend because of disagreements over homosexuality.[xv] Yet most pertinently for our discussion is the proposal – ultimately rejected – that came from the Anglican Communion Office (and specifically IASCUFO), with the primatial stamp of the Archbishop of Canterbury, that at first sight appeared to be a first step in recognising the colonial nature of the Anglican Communion.
However, the paucity of imagination in the proposals brought to the Primates suggests otherwise. Alongside a call to update the ‘description’ of the nature of the Anglican Communion, with no further detail provided, the Communiqué reported:
The second proposal of the paper imagined the prospect of an elected primate who might serve alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Instruments of Communion as chair of the Primates’ Meeting, and potentially as president of the Anglican Consultative Council. Archbishop Welby chose not to attend the session, the better to encourage a comfortable exchange of views.[xvi]
This proposal belies a fundamental lack of recognition that it is the existence of what is effectively a White Anglican Pope that is the visible and structural centrepiece of enduring colonialism, rather than the problem primarily relating to the chairing of meetings. This appears to be a huge, missed opportunity, and it is to be welcomed, from the perspective of both the Communion and decolonisation, that the proposal was rejected. It is also notable that the proposal did not apparently originate from a process of deep listening to those beyond the current centre and is reminiscent of the process of changing the process for the appointment of the next Archbishop of Canterbury that was pushed through the General Synod of the Church of England as described above. There is a clear, enduring, and urgent need for decolonisation in both practices and structures, and yet an apparent failure to recognise this at the current centre of the Anglican Communion.
It is beyond the scope of this article (and before time) to analyse the impact of the Welby primacy in England but it is important to highlight the increasing centralisation, managerialism, and very particular understanding of episcopal collegiality – which has developed into an episcopal culture of silence and false uniformity – that has characterised the last thirty years of Church of England polity, starting during the primacy of Archbishop George Carey. This has often been theologised into the idea of ‘unity’ – to which we will return below. It was also during Carey’s primacy that the Lambeth Conference of 1998 met and agreed to the non-binding Resolution I:10,[xvii] which has been used by self-professed conservatives to uphold heteronormativity as theological dogma ever since (in its ‘rejecting’ of ‘homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture’, and its inability to ‘advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions’). The uneasy alliance between ‘unity’ and silence over sexuality is, perhaps, most closely seen in the current lack of visible episcopal non-heterosexuality in the House of Bishops of the Church of England, and the gatekeeping debates over marriage which have failed – almost entirely – to engage with wider queering or queer lives.
Much has been said in recent years, most particularly by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, about the importance of maintaining ‘unity’ within the Anglican Communion. There is, of course, much Biblical, historical, and theological worth to such an assertion, and yet it has become increasingly clear that the meaning of ‘unity’ is neither agreed nor is its object clearly identified. Whilst some have increasingly spoken of Anglicanism as a ‘denomination’, it is not at all clear that his has been its historical ecclesiological self-understanding (even if it might aptly serve as a sociological descriptor). The move of the ecclesia anglicana beyond its Establishment nature in England immediately calls into question what ‘being Anglican’ might mean beyond being the Established Church in one particular nation state, and yet the deeper conversations about this shift in identity appear still to be in their infancy.
These questions of identity are closely linked to questions of ecclesiology, the lack of coherence of which has also become increasingly clear in recent years. Whilst there has frequently been reference made to numerical growth in parts of the Anglican Communion and a suggestion that this therefore shifts the centre ground of what passes for Anglican identity,[xviii] it is by no means clear that this is in fact the case. Since the first Lambeth Conference of 1867 – a conference called, indeed, to tackle some issues of colonialism and which was boycotted by the Archbishop of York, amongst others – there has been little evidence of serious engagement with the colonial history and present of the Communion, and hence arguments about the ‘centre’ of the communion and proper Anglicanism need to be seen in this context.
Unity within Anglicanism is an important theological motif.[xix] Yet in recent years ‘unity’ in Anglicanism has no longer been envisioned as something to be revealed – not as something which enables difference and diversity to thrive within a common thread – but rather as a tool of normativity and stasis. The ‘unity’ of contemporary Anglicanism is ultimately political – it has morphed into a tool of silencing, of uniformity, and of lowest-common denominator thinking, which is made all the more worrying and damaging because of its being dressed up in theological clothing. And this ‘unity’ has primarily focused on silencing queer people for the greater good.
This silencing takes both overt and covert forms. Its most obvious form is found in the debating chambers and Synods of the Global North, in which there are attempts to exclude from grace those relationships that don’t fit into the heterosexual paradigm. The Church of England’s belief in heterosexuality and homosexuality as distinct categories remains rock solid – a depressing example is that according to the most recent document on sexuality and gender, Issues in Human Sexuality (issued in 1991), bisexuality involves inevitable non-monogamy.[xx] As described above, debates in the Church of England, and amongst even Anglican or Episcopal churches that have moved in a progressive direction such as the Episcopal Church in the United States, remain firmly fixated on marriage, and marriage as being the ‘proper’ place for sexual intimacy. It is notable that throughout the endless debates in England, there is yet to be an episcopally defined understanding of what this ‘sexual intimacy’ is – a reflection of the often-pitiful engagement of the episcopal bench with theology, let alone sociology, psychology, anthropology, or biology.
Yet there are two subtler erasures which are nonetheless fundamental to understanding the violence of current conception of ‘unity’. The first is that of trans and non-binary people – for years the Church of England simply found pastoral accommodation for trans and non-binary people, without engaging with their lived experiences, theologies, or contributions to ecclesial life. In a strange turn of events, for those who transitioned during or who had transitioned before marriage, the rules-based economy of the church’s canons simply made exceptions – yet this was not a genuine pastoral engagement, but rather a refusal to engage in the consequential questions for sexuality and gender that would follow if a proper process of theological thought had been permitted.[xxi] This has led not to the celebration of trans and non-binary lives but instead to their total erasure – to their being neatly categorised, ideally as heterosexual. As culture wars have invaded the Church of England, trans and non-binary people have become a new target, with a more overt denial of identity – yet this remains an argument about which category people should be placed in, rather than any engagement with the idea of categories themselves.
The second erasure is that of queer people outside the Global North, and this brings us back to questions of colonialism. The absurd lie that queerness, or indeed even homosexuality (as a disputed category), is a creature solely of the Global North continues to hold sway to a worrying degree in ecclesial circles, pushed both by patriarchal forces in the Global South (we might hear here echoes of homosexuality being ‘un-African’, an objectively untrue statement)[xxii] and by self-professed conservatives in the Global North who wish to present this as a fight between the sexually immoral, and hence un-Christian, North and the sexually pure, and hence Christian, South.
It is notable but unsurprising that the vast majority of those pushing this narrative are men, and similarly unsurprising that little attention is paid to the role of the colonial power in instituting and promulgating anti-homosexuality laws as part of a moral code. There remains, of course, the risk in such an analysis of overemphasising the colonial past without paying due attention to the present in relation to anti-homosexual laws, and applying an effectively racist lens that inadvertently disempowers present day Global South leadership. However, it is clear from a number of studies, including Christopher Craig Brittain and Andrew McKinnon’s The Anglican Communion at a Crossroads,[xxiii] and from public pronouncements (for example that of the former Archbishop of Nigeria describing homosexuality as a ‘virus’,[xxiv] or the Easter Day pronouncement by the Archbishop of Uganda that was almost entirely about the evils of homosexuality and almost entirely lacking in any reference to the Resurrection[xxv]) that church leaders (described as ‘representing’ the vast majority of Anglicans, itself a fundamental misreading of episcopacy) – particularly in West and East Africa – not only see anti-homosexuality, let alone anti-queerness, as a fundamental part of Christian doctrine, but also as part of the inheritance of colonial Anglicanism.
In so doing, they make Anglicanism a tool of normativity – a normativity that is reflected in both its homophobia, but also in its failure to effectively challenge the hegemony of Whiteness, replacing one form of colonisation with another, rather than engaging in the practice of decolonisation. As described above, this enduring colonialism has led, in recent years, to increasingly vocal and organised groupings within the ‘Global South’ offering direct challenges to the authority of Canterbury. These groupings, and the relationships between them, are by no means uncomplicated and range from effectively schismatic groups like GAFCON (the Global Anglican Futures Conference) to the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches. There are arguably ‘different colonising’ forces from within (and without) this movement– a determination to replace rather than resist colonialism as an idea and way of being, and hence to grapple for rather than disperse power. In a communion in which White guilt coupled with inaction meets such a recolonising impetus, the task of decolonising remains a distant dream, and the church becomes another tool of social control.
It is here that the disentanglement becomes so complicated. With even moderate pro-gay advocacy by church authorities in the Global North (by which is meant opposition to the death penalty, or imprisonment) seen and described as a form of neo-colonialism, not only is the erasure of queer people compounded, but the argument is presented that any such advocacy is itself a racist enterprise. It is pitiful yet unsurprising that so few bishops in the Global North have challenged this conception, preferring instead to speak of ‘unity’ and hence colluding in what has become a multifaceted process of queer silencing. Thus, we meet queerness (or rather simply homosexuality) being defined, in an unchallenged way, as a tool of colonialism and a church unable or unwilling to challenge this narrative. Global South, and primarily Black, people are thus instrumentalised as a weapon against queer people in debates in the Global North, whilst those who now hold the power in Global South ecclesial communities are given carte blanche to enforce structural violence against queer people in their own communities under a pretence of patriarchally imposed cis-heternormative pseudo-homogeneity.
Which returns our analysis to the structures of the Communion, and specifically the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The retention of a colonial structure in the Communion ultimately prevents there being any fruitful resolution to this impasse, because whilst the conflation of queerness with colonialism is itself challengeable, the ongoing colonial power imbalance between White Archbishop and primarily Black Communion means that this challenge cannot currently be effectively heard without reasonable concerns around colonial guilt – itself then weaponised. This means that the wider conversations about the influence of culture, of heterogeneity of thought and practice globally (and, I would hope, the banishing of terms such as Global South and North), of the diversity of queer experience, and so on, cannot take place. This is ultimately racist itself – with certain Black cultures being effectively seen as too fragile for challenge, yet with the fragility lying not in reality but in the ongoing colonial structures of the communion and in the complicity of church leadership in patriarchal rules of engagement.
This enterprise becomes increasingly problematic when considered in the context of the work of majority Global North organisations that have sought to harness the increasing authority-by-numbers of the Global South in intra-Communion debates. As described above, the presenting issue has been LGBTQIA liberation, with the inaccurate portrait drawn that there is a neat dividing line between Global North and South in their approaches to homosexuality. Organisations such as the Church of England Evangelical Council, the newly formed ‘Alliance’ in the Church of England, and the self-identified ‘Anglican Church of North America’, have frequently indicated in their literature and public statements the importance of unity in the Anglican Communion, which is an allusion to the Global South’s rejection of homosexuality. The Anglican Communion, and in particular the Global South, has therefore increasingly been seen – and used – as an instrument of power and politics in an ecclesial fight of the Global North.
This is emphatically not to suggest that the Global South leaders themselves do not hold any responsibility or authority in their decision making, but rather to make clear how the Anglican Communion has been weaponised in conversations that remain within the Global North, not least in the flow of ideas and money. Interestingly, it is both the Communion and LGBTQIA people that have been instrumentalised and politicised in this internal war of words (although with a significant one-sidedness, perhaps itself highlighting the lack of transnational LGBTQIA solidarity, and the variety of reasons for this, to date), one that is said to be theological but which – as I have said previously – is fought on the battleground of politics, identity, and ideology. ‘Unity’, in this context, becomes a political rather than a theological idea – and hence it becomes possible to legitimately build such an entity on a political position, an opposition to queer liberation. This impacts upon queer people in the Global North, and their supporters, but it also impacts upon queer people in the Global South – not only impacting upon them but silencing and delegitimising them as human persons. It is from this kind of positioning that Anglican Primates can call for the imprisonment or even execution of LGBTQIA people, and do so by asserting that this is an Anglican perspective.
In the first instance, what appears to have happened in the Communion appears to be the replacement of one norm with another – in this case, the norm of Whiteness with the norm of cis-heteronormativity and anti-queerness – and yet it is perhaps not quite this simple. For whilst we do see one form of colonialism replaced with another, yet we still see the original colonialism alive and well. Unsurprisingly, those most clearly negatively affected by this are queer Black people, a key example of anti-intersectionality. In addition, these two forms of colonisation of Anglicanism are in many ways simply different aspects of the same process – one that favours misogynistic purity politics, that necessitates some form of male-centric norm, that requires uniformity, that values rather than gives away power, and that stifles dissent. A process we might agree needs urgent access to queerness – and I would argue, Christianity!
‘Anglican’ has ultimately become primarily a political identity marker dressed in theology, and yet the continued colonial nature of the Communion means that those in the Global North who might wish to challenge this queerphobia will find themselves accused of colonialism. It is, perhaps, from acute awareness of this that the Archbishop of Canterbury (and other English bishops) has been so slow to call out such open discrimination specifically in the matter of sexuality. A combined failure to address matters of colonialism and apply the correct analytical lens to ongoing debates in the Communion means that the current impasse is likely to continue for some time. This is particularly important given the role of politicised anti-colonial homophobia (that is, homophobia on the basis that this is a tool of anti-colonialism and a rejection of the former colonial power) present in a number of secular societies and the existential risk (perceived or real) that moving to a more affirming position might pose to Anglican churches in that context.
The similar geopolitical responses to the publication of the recent Roman Catholic document fiducia supplicans makes clear the importance of the need to apply the correct lens when discussing these issues, and some dynamics common to different communions. Whilst the Global North is frequently seen as ‘capitulating to culture’, there is the need for a serious debate about the role of sociocultural factors in attitudes to sexuality in both Global North and Global South – in the words of Cardinal-designate Timothy Radcliffe OP, ‘inculturation for one person is another person’s rejection of the non-conformist Gospel’.[xxvi]This need to be done in a sensitive way that does not assume cultural superiority on the part of the Global North, yet which also recognises the lack of homogeneity of culture across these arbitrary categorisations and which recognises the need for sociological, philosophical, psychological, ethnographic and anthropological approaches into the factors that lead to particular cultural mores on matters of sexuality (including the role of different religious perspectives). These insights then need to be taken into a process of deep theological learning, in which conversations can take place on the interrelationship between culture and theology, and the place of colonialism within this, which do not merely focus on sexuality, and in which LGBTQIA people are relieved of their role as lightning rod for disagreement.
Embracing queerness
Anglicanism, and the Anglican Communion, are in desperate need of queering, despite the institutional instrumentalization of and structural violence towards queer people – perhaps no coincidence. This queering helps its practitioners meet the real rather than the unreal, by challenging the lazy categorisation that is taken for granted and the idolatry of normativity, that is made prescriptive about God rather than descriptive about humankind. The minute we realise what it is that we are doing that gets in the way of engaging with God rather than god, it becomes much easier to avoid. Queering offers a tool to deconstruct the colonial mindset, yet there remains a great deal of determination in Anglicanism to retain it. Through an intentional refusal to accept colonisation as either inevitable or unbreakable – colonisation in any direction, and however concretely embedded in the life of the church – queering would enable us to take Anglicanism out of the straight jacked into which it has been forced and into the cold light of day, where the real can be sensed.
In other words, the Anglican Communion’s crisis is not one of colonialist queers, but rather one that is grounded in a failure to engage in effective reflexivity. This damages queer people, and Black people, and queer Black people in particular, but it also damages the entire church. It results in a failure of the Anglican Communion and its churches to engage in genuine anti-racist work in Global North Anglicanism or queer liberation worldwide, and in the associated failure in genuine Christological anthropology. It also results in silence where there should be debate, and a focus on the unreal rather than the real. Without urgent attention paid to the reality in which the Anglican Communion exists, there will be no future for Anglican Christianity.
The gift of this method is thus to enable us to find more effective and honest ways of engaging with how different, ever changing, and complex human realities impact on the way God is spoken about, and how that all impacts upon our understanding of what the esse of any particular doctrine is at any particular time in our history. This means that the observer cannot merely wish their assumptions and biases away, but we – all of us, from whatever positionality – need to properly engage with them and ask, insistently and time and time again, in whose image we are attempting to create god.
This, then, has a direct impact on how matters of doctrine are engaged with – how we study them, how we envisage ourselves within the wider conversation, and where theologians see the Holy Spirit moving. In many ways, our conversations about doctrine – its ‘changeless and yet ever new’ nature – is actually a question of pneumatology, a pneumatology that is ultimately grounded in contingency and hospitality. Yet such pneumatological questions cannot be effectively addressed unless theologians and church leaders consider their positionality, and are open to having their limited experience of God and the Gospel being challenged by experience of those who they may not like, may not understand, and yet who are – according to orthodox Christian belief – created in the image and likeness of God in exactly the way that they are. At the moment, such people are often queer, and others can learn much from them not only because of their experience of God but because of their experience of exclusion and marginalisation which the church has played a part in enacting and creating.
Yet Anglican theologians and church leaders frequently remain better at telling queer people that they need to let the Gospel into their lives than accepting the possibility – however much they might struggle to believe it – that the Gospel is already there. In other words, they talk about what a difference the Gospel might make if only they did this or that, rather than gazing and listening, and being open to being disrupted and discomforted. It is not, however, merely about doctrine – it is also about ecclesiology, identity, and belonging. For too long there have been attempts to define a distinct Anglican approach to doctrines in a vacuum, and it has failed. It has failed, of course, because it is ahistorical and is built on the sand of normativity, speaking of god and not God, and thus of unreal persons rather than human persons. Unity cannot be abstracted – and nor can it be separated from our life in koinonia.
All of which ultimately speaks to the process of discernment. It is not possible to truly speak about God without listening to the creatures of God. We cannot, therefore, do theology without seeping ourselves in the real holiness of the created order – which includes our givenness ourselves, and not merely the selves we (attempt to) build for ourselves. Queerness – contra so much that is written and said about so-called gender ideology – is an opportunity to strip back the ideology out of the peculiar construction of Christianity known as Anglicanism. So is anti-Whiteness, and decolonisation, and all other forms of meeting and engaging with the world that resist the human urge to know God better than God knows humankind. It’s hard work, but that’s always been the case when humankind has drummed up the hubris to try to say anything whatsoever about God.
Charlie Bell
Epiphany 2025
[1] Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘The Anglican Communion’, https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/about/anglican-communion[accessed 16th October 2024].
[2] Al Barrett and Jill Marsh, ‘Editorial: Critical white theology: dismantling whiteness’, Practical Theology, vol. 15 (2002) Issue 1-2.
[3] Definition from Portland Community College, ‘What is whiteness?’, https://www.pcc.edu/diversity-councils/cascade/whiteness-history-month/whiteness/ [accessed 16th October 2024], adapted from STAND Framing and Learning Anti-Racism, Understanding Whiteness, Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre.
[i] That is, worship of something other than God.
[ii] Patrick Cheng, Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology (New York: Seabury, 2011), p.xi.
[iii] J Barrington Bates, ‘Expressing what Christians believe: Anglican principles for liturgical revision’, Anglican Theological Review, Vol. 92 (2010), pp.455-480.
[iv] The Lambeth Conference 1998, ‘Section III.4 – Eames Commission’, https://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/document-library/lambeth-conference/1998/section-iii-called-to-be-faithful-in-a-plural-world/section-iii4-eames-commission.aspx [accessed October 16th 2024].
[v] Foley Beach quoted in David Paulsen, ‘Conservative bishops refuse to take Communion with LGBTQ+ bishops, demand ‘sanctions’ for churches that allow for same-sex marriage’, Episcopal News Service, 29th July 2022, and more widely from a statement from the fourth Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON), quoted in Kevin Jones, ‘Anglicans in Africa reject Archbishop of Canterbury for suppoting same-sex union blessings’, National Catholic Register, 24th April 2023.
[vi] The Church of England, ‘Living in Love and Faith’, https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/living-love-and-faith [accessed October 16th 2024].
[vii] Tim Wyatt, ‘LLF road map to ‘rebuilding trust’ set out at General Synod briefing’, Church Times, 9th February 2024
[viii] Explored in some detail in Mark Chapman, Anglican Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), particularly Chapter 1.
[ix] Zachary Guiliano, ‘Tangled roots: the legacy of Christian mastery and anti-racism today’, Practical Theology Vol. 15 (2022) Issue 1-2, pp.50-61.
[x] Further analysis available in Rowan Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire, c.1800-1850, (Oxford: Oxford Academic Books, 2007), Kwok Pui-lan, The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective (New York: Seabury, 2023), and Kristopher Norris, Witnessing Whiteness: Confronting White Supremacy in the American Church (Oxford: OUP, 2020).
[xi] The appointment of a Canon of Westminster, Anthony Ball, to be Bishop of North Africa in the Province of Alexandria is perhaps the exception that proves the rule.
[xii] Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘Global Anglican Communion given voice in choice of future Archbishops of Canterbury’, 12th July 2022, https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/news/news-and-statements/global-anglican-communion-given-voice-choice-future-archbishops-canterbury [accessed 16th October 2024].
[xiii] Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘Archbishop of Canterbury’s Presidential Address at ACC-18’, 12th February 2023, https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/speaking-writing/speeches/archbishop-canterburys-presidential-address-acc-18[accessed 16th October 2024].
[xiv] Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘Anglican Primates enjoy historic meeting with Pope Francis’, 3rd May 2024, https://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/news/anglican-primates-enjoy-historic-meeting-pope-francis [accessed 16th October 2024].
[xv] GAFCON, ‘Communiqué: A Response to the Primates Meeting in Rome’, 6th May 2024, https://www.gafcon.org/communique-updates/a-response-to-the-primates-meeting-in-rome/ [accessed 16th October 2024].
[xvi] Anglican Communion, ‘Primates’ Meeting Communiqué’, 2nd May 2024, https://www.anglicancommunion.org/media/515756/Primates-Meeting-2024-Communique-02052024.pdf [accessed 16th October 2024].
[xvii] Anglican Communion, ‘Section I.10 – Human Sexuality’, https://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/document-library/lambeth-conference/1998/section-i-called-to-full-humanity/section-i10-human-sexuality [accessed 16th October 2024].
[xviii] David Goodhew, ‘Is Anglicanism Growing or Dying? New Data’, Living Church, 22nd February 2022, https://livingchurch.org/covenant/is-anglicanism-growing-or-dying-new-data/ [accessed 16th October 2024].
[xix] For example, see Charlie Bell, Unity: Anglicanism’s Impossible Dream? (London: SCM Press, 2024].
[xx] See Section 5:8, Issues in Human Sexuality, https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/issues-in-human-sexuality.pdf [accessed 16th October 2024].
[xxi] The Church of England, ‘Guidance for welcoming transgender people publishes’, 11th December 2018, https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/issues-in-human-sexuality.pdf [accessed 16th October 2024].
[xxii] For example, Anglican Ink, ‘Homosexuality is un-African says Ghana diocese’, 20th August 2015, https://anglican.ink/2015/08/20/homosexuality-is-un-african-says-ghana-diocese/ [accessed 15th October 2024].
[xxiii] Christopher Brittain and Andrew McKinnon, The Anglican Communion at a Crossroads: The Crises of a Global Church (Philadelphia: Penn State Univ Press, 2018).
[xxiv] Anglican Communion News Service, ‘Archbishop of Canterbury criticises letter by the Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Henry Ndukuba’, 5th March 2021, https://www.anglicannews.org/news/2021/03/archbishop-of-canterbury-criticises-letter-by-the-primate-of-nigeria-archbishop-henry-ndukuba.aspx [accessed 15th October 2024].
[xxv] All Saints Kampala, ‘Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba’s 2023 Easter Message’, https://allsaintskampala.org/news/archbishop-stephen-kaziimba-s-2023-easter-message/ [accessed 16th October 2024].
[xxvi] Timothy Radcliffe OP, ‘Lo spirito del Sinodo e l’ecclesiologia dei cappelli’, L’Osservatore Romano, 12th October 2024, quoted in Catholic Culture, ‘Cardinal-designate Radcliffe links African bishops’ opposition to homosexuality to pressure from evangelicals, Moscow, and Muslims’, 15th October 2024, https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=63634 [accessed 16th October 2024].