The Archbishop of Canterbury ran up the white flag on gay
marriage this week and almost no one noticed. The Most Rev Justin Welby told the Evangelical Alliance – an umbrella group for born-again Christians – that “we should be really, really repentant” for having supported homophobia in the past.
That call for repentance made the headlines – but it wasn’t the real story.
Damian Thompson writes in The Daily Telegraph – Archbishop Welby also said that he’d voted against gay marriage in the Lords and would do so again: he doesn’t believe that marriage should be redefined by Parliament. That statement also featured prominently in news reports – but, again, it wasn’t the story.
Here’s what really mattered. In the course of his speech, the Archbishop conceded that young members of the Church of England – including many evangelicals – are in favour of gay marriage. It’s a generational thing, inside and outside the Church. As he put it, “the vast majority of people under 35 think not only that what we are saying is incomprehensible but also think that we are plain wrong and wicked and equate it to racism”.
He’s right: they do think that, and for that reason the C of E is, as he said, “deeply and profoundly divided over the way forward on it” – “it” being gay marriage, not just theological attitudes to homosexuality.
But the divisions won’t last. Archbishop Welby – a clearer thinker than his predecessor, though that’s not saying much – recognises that England’s established Church will come round to gay marriage, even if he doesn’t change his own mind. For the time being, older members of the General Synod will block same-sex ceremonies.
But in 10 or 20 years’ time, even born-again churchgoers will be tolerant of homosexuality and therefore unlikely to oppose gay weddings. Dissidents will have long ago defected to Catholicism, other Protestant denominations or breakaway Anglican sects.
In a sense this is good news for the Primate of All England: gay marriage will not ultimately tear apart the Church of England. The bad news, however, is that he’s going to have to give up this “worldwide Anglican Communion” fantasy.
It doesn’t matter how gently the English Church tiptoes towards gay marriage: Anglican Churches in Africa and South America will not allow two men or two women to exchange vows in their churches – not now, and not in 2033.
By that point they will be no more in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury than with the Grand Mufti of Egypt – and the label “Anglican” will have fallen out of use. Already it encompasses fundamentalist bigots in Kampala and spaced-out pantheists in San Francisco; the last Lambeth Conference, in which bishops faced each other in mock-Zulu tribal meetings, was the stuff of high comedy.
Even in England, “Anglicanism” is past its sell-by date: as the contorted Synod debates over women bishops and gay priests reveal, it’s simply an attempt to sanctify pragmatism.
So are we approaching the last rites of the Church of England? Not at all. There is a demand for a Church that follows public opinion rather than leading it; whose magisterium is shaped by good manners rather than canon lawyers. Plus, the cathedrals are lovely.
There are worse things than a religion whose guiding principle is niceness.
Fifty years ago open declarations of homosexuality were in bad taste; now it’s not just bigoted to deny “marriage equality” to gay people, it’s jolly rude.
Yes, there’ll be “unpleasantness” over the next decade, but eventually doctrine will catch up with English manners.
And, in the meantime, there are flowers to be arranged.