Time to come out of the liberal closet on gay clergy, Archbishop

If Rowan Williams continues to claim moral superiority to politicians, he must be honest on this issue

 

By George Walden

 

The crisis in the Church of England over homosexuality is a personal one for the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. Whether you are a supporter or not, a Christian or a non-believer, it is increasingly clear - as the threat of schism over homosexuality and women priests intensifies - that the leader of the Established Church is in a false position. Dr Rowan Williams portrays himself as radically inclined, yet on homosexuality he has aligned himself with a conservative cause.

This false position arises because there is every reason to believe that he is going against his conscience, and that, on homosexuals in the Church, he is a closet liberal.

The oblique way that he addresses the subject suggests that he finds it as difficult as many others to see how the Church can continue to discriminate against practising homosexuals in an age in which scientific knowledge tells us that sexuality is rarely a question of choice. Sacred texts can be disputed, but all that matters is what the Bible would have said had it been known that homosexuality is largely genetic. How Christian can it be to deny men and women a sexuality that is, in Christian terms, God-given?

Why does the Archbishop not say out loud what we all suspect that he believes? His views on everything from Israel to Afghanistan via a third runway at Heathrow airport are as forthright as they are predictable. To listen to the Archbishop, the infamy of US imperialism is unparalleled in human history, yet on gays in the Church he marches, if not shoulder to shoulder, in perilous proximity to the American Right. Besides seeking to avoid schism he perhaps fears that an openly liberal stance could damage the CofE's image even among the modern-minded, and that the pews would be emptier than ever. However rational these fears, they are based on calculation, not conviction.

Dr Williams has form on moral evasion. His failure to condemn the Sudanese Government over Darfur during his visit to Khartoum in 2006 is one example. The man who never hesitates to pass judgment abroad on the policies of his Government and its closest ally was sparing of the feelings of the perpetrators of genocide, presumably to avoid irritating Muslim opinion at home.

Seen alongside his Sharia moment, and his counterfeit conservatism on homosexuality, in a man of such ostentatious virtue, not to say spiritual pride, it is all a little ignoble.

Obviously the Anglican Church is in a tricky position on gays. At home it faces internal opposition, abroad it is rocked this way and that by events over which it has no control. But so are politicians, and one might feel sympathy for the Archbishop if he showed more charity towards those in public life who face similar problems. Instead even believers can smile in a most unchristian manner as they watch him twist in the wind.

If he were an avowed pragmatist with a disinclination to moralise, that would be another matter. His stated priority would be to hold the Church together, his actions would be true to himself, and bad faith would not be an issue. But with Dr Williams it is.

Where is the conscience of a man who habitually denounces the Philistine politician for expediency and lack of moral leadership while himself pretending to be someone he is not, for political reasons?

“The more politics looks like a form of management rather than an engine of positive and morally desirable change,” he intoned a year ago, “the more energy it loses.” As Dr Williams seeks to resist change that he almost certainly believes in, his Church presents a pretty good spectacle of energy-leaching entropy itself. “Hurtful,” I hear tender-minded clerics mutter, but I have seen genuinely honourable government ministers bear far more vicious criticism, much of it underserved, without complaint. If the Church wants to play at politics it will have to get used to the rough and tumble.

The Archbishop is apparently writing a book on Dostoevsky, no doubt about grand spiritual dilemmas. But he should also reflect on the decidedly unspiritual hero of Notes from Underground, whose opening line announces the mass man of the future: “I'm a sick man, I'm an angry man, I'm not a pleasant man. I think there is something wrong with my liver.” This is what the Archbishop is ultimately up against - narky folk whose instincts tend to be the opposite of liberal on sex or anything else. If he finds them impossible to deal with, he might be better off in academia.

I write as an authority on neither the Church nor homosexuality, but as a not conspicuously successful former politician, who nevertheless retains respect for ministers who have to reconcile their convictions with reality to get things done. For their pains, they are indiscriminately mocked and excoriated, not only on the Today programme but from the pulpit, by the Fourth and the First Estate, led by a man whose ethical superiority is increasingly less apparent.

The ethical course for an archbishop who is a tireless critic of politicians can only be to stand up for what we must assume he believes - the full enfranchisement of homosexuals in the Church. Since that would appear impracticable, his alternative is to do what ministers are frequently enjoined to do, which is to explain his position, and resign.