Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/cambridge-university-press-publishing-update-following-technical-disruption
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2010
This paper discusses the development of the Anglican Communion’s ‘crisis’ regarding the place of gay and lesbian persons within the tradition. It presents a social and theological contextualization of this crisis within the Episcopal Church, USA, in the second half of the twentieth century. It argues that the origins of the Anglican Communion’s crisis regarding gay and lesbian persons within the Communion are best understood in continuity with the broader North American evangelical movement of the second half of the twentieth century. The implications of this contextualized study serve to critique an understanding of the current crisis, which juxtaposes a decrepit, liberal ‘North’ with a vibrant, ‘orthodox’ ‘Global South’.
Jason Bruner is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary. He would like to acknowledge Ian Douglas, Ph.D., and Margaret Guider, O.S.F., Th.D., for their generous contributions and guidance in the researching of this article.
2. I will use ‘ECUSA’ in this essay to refer to the Episcopal Church in the United States, since the scope of the essay does not extend to 2006, when it was renamed The Episcopal Church.Google Scholar
3. The Episcopal Church Annual 1967 (New York: Morehouse-Barlow Company, 1967), p. 21; The Episcopal Church Annual 1981 (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow Company, 1981), p. 19.Google Scholar
4. Soper, J. Christopher, Evangelical Christianity in the United States and Great Britain: Religious Beliefs, Political Choices (Hong Kong: The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Soper, Evangelical Christianity in the United States and Great Britain, p. 36.Google Scholar
6. Booty, John, The Episcopal Church in Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1988), p. 79; Dennis J. Bennett, Nine O’Clock in the Morning (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1970).Google Scholar
7. Prichard, Richard W., A History of the Episcopal Church (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1999), p. 265.Google Scholar
8. Wells, David, ‘On Being Evangelical’, in Mark A. Noll, David Bebbington and George A. Rawlyk (eds.), Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 389–410 (396).Google Scholar
9. Wells, ‘On Being Evangelical’, p. 396; Beckwith, R.T., ‘Keele, Nottingham, and the Future’, in D. N. Samuel (ed.), The Evangelical Succession (Cambridge: James Clark, 1979), pp. 101–110 (106).Google Scholar
10. Bebbington, David, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman, Inc., 1989), pp. 204–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11. Bebbington, David, ‘Evangelicalism in its Settings’, in Mark A. Noll, David Bebbington and George A. Rawlyk (eds.), Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 365–388. (372).Google Scholar
12. Williamson, Wayne B., Growth and Decline in the Episcopal Church (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1979), pp. 141, 142.Google Scholar
13. Faber, Dorothy A., ‘An Open Letter to the Bishops and Priests in the Anglican Church in North America’, The Christian Challenge 17.7 (1978), p. 15.Google Scholar
14. Booty, The Episcopal Church in Crisis, p. 93. J. Christopher Soper offers the statistic that by 1960 evangelical missions groups provided approximately 65 per cent of the total number of foreign missionaries, while by the early 1990s they provided roughly 90 per cent. Soper, Evangelical Christianity in the United States and Great Britain, p. 104.Google Scholar
15. Jenkins, Willis, ‘Episcopalians, Homosexuality and World Mission’, Anglican Theological Review 86.2 (2004), pp. 293–316.Google Scholar
16. Hooper, Emmanuel, ‘The Theology of Trans-Atlantic Evangelicalism and Its Impact on The East African Revival’, Evangelical Review of Theology 31.1 (2007), pp. 71–89 (75–77).Google Scholar
17. Hooper, ‘The Theology of Trans-Atlantic Evangelicalism and Its Impact on The East African Revival’, p. 78.Google Scholar
18. Stanley, Brian, ‘The East African Revival: African Initiative within a European Tradition’, Churchman 91.2 (1977), pp. 6–20 (13).Google Scholar
19. Jenkins, ‘Episcopalians, Homosexuality and World Mission’, p. 294.Google Scholar
20. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, p. 284.Google Scholar
21. Hassett, Miranda K., Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their Allies are Reshaping Anglicanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 36.Google Scholar
22. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, p. 268; Grenz, Stanley J., Welcoming but Not Affirming (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Know Press, 1998), p. 2.Google Scholar
23. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, p. 269.Google Scholar
24. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, p. 292; Shiftlet, Dave, Exodus: Why Christians are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity (New York: Penguin Group, 2005), p. 29.Google Scholar
25. Shiftlet, Exodus, p. 30.Google Scholar
26. Krumm, John M., Letters from Lambeth (Cincinnati, OH: Forward Movement Publications, 1988), p. 4.Google Scholar
27. Krumm, Letters from Lambeth, p. 4.Google Scholar
28. Krumm, Letters from Lambeth, p. 6.Google Scholar
29. Krumm, Letters from Lambeth, p. 98.Google Scholar
30. http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1988/1988-43.cfm (accessed 15 March 2008).Google Scholar
31. Kimball, Cook, ‘The Revival of the Episcopal Church: 1961–1999’, Episcopal Evangelical Journal 1.11 (1999), pp. 7–11 (7).Google Scholar
32. Samuel, VinaySugden, Christopher, Lambeth: A View from the Two Thirds World (London: SPCK, 1989), p. 124.Google Scholar
33. Theological Resource Team of the Global Anglican Future Conference, The Way, The Truth, and The Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future. (London: Latimer Trust, 2008), pp. 33, 34. This booklet provides less of a chronological development of the conflict as it details the theological and biblical principles at stake and for which certain conservative factions are willing to fight to uphold. It is a better source for describing the theological issues at stake in the present conflict than it is for ascertaining a historically-nuanced perspective of the progression of the events and activity through which the conflict developed.Google Scholar
34. Samuel and Sugden, Lambeth, p. 121.Google Scholar
35. Krumm, Letters from Lambeth, pp. 55, 56.Google Scholar
36. Samuel and Sugden, Lambeth, p. 133. See also Resolution 120 from Lambeth Conference 1958: http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1958/1958-120.cfm, and Resolution 23 from Lambeth Conference 1968: http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1968/1968-23.cfm.Google Scholar
37. Gitari, David, ‘The Church and Polygamy’, Transformation 1.1 (1984), pp. 3–10. See also David Gitari, ‘Rethinking Polygamy: Jesus Spoke Against Divorce, not Polygamy’, The Other Side 24.3 (1988), pp. 42, 43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
38. Krumm, Letters from Lambeth, p. 91.Google Scholar
39. Samuel and Sugden, Lambeth, p. 126.Google Scholar
40. http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1988/1988-34.cfm (accessed 15 March 2008).Google Scholar
41. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, pp. 289, 290.Google Scholar
42. http://www.ekk.org/ (accessed 15 March 2008).Google Scholar
43. Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, p. 291.Google Scholar
44. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, pp. 51, 52.Google Scholar
45. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 58.Google Scholar
47. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 60.Google Scholar
48. ‘The Dallas Statement’, Transformation 15.1 (1998), pp. 30–32.Google Scholar
49. Douglas, Ian, ‘Lambeth 1998 and the “New Colonialism” ’, The Witness 81.5 (1998), pp. 8–12 (11).Google Scholar
50. Douglas, ‘Lambeth 1998 and the “New Colonialism” ‘, p. 11.Google Scholar
51. Jim Naughton, ‘Following the Money’, http://www.edow.org/follow/(accessed 20 February 2008).Google Scholar
52. Naughton, ‘Following the Money’, p. 4.Google Scholar
53. Naughton, ‘Following the Money’, p. 2.Google Scholar
54. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 210.Google Scholar
55. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 237.Google Scholar
56. http://www.lambethconference.org/1998/news/lc042.cfm (accessed 15 January 2008).Google Scholar
57. http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1998/1998-1-10.cfm (accessed 20 January 2008).Google Scholar
58. http://www.lambethconference.org/1998/news/lc073.cfm (accessed 20 January 2008).Google Scholar
59. http://www.lambethconference.org/resolutions/1998/1998-1-10.cfm (accessed 20 January 2008).Google Scholar
60. http://www.lambethconference.org/1998/news/lc098.cfm (accessed 20 January 2008).Google Scholar
61. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, pp. 113, 114.Google Scholar
62. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 114.Google Scholar
63. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 126.Google Scholar
64. Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
65. For the sake of consistency, I use the term ‘dissidents’ in this essay to describe those within the ECUSA who were dissatisfied with the trend of the denomination’s leadership toward more liberal ecclesiastical policies, specifically with regard to the role of gay and lesbian persons within the ECUSA. I understand that many within this movement would not necessarily apply this term to themselves but may prefer to speak in terms of ‘authentic provinces’ and the formation of non-geographic dioceses. I use the term ‘dissident’ in this essay without any sense of value judgment upon the actions taken or beliefs held by persons within such groups. I employ it only in the sense that they disagreed with the prevailing actions taken by the ECUSA’s leadership in the later decades of the twentieth century.Google Scholar
66. Jenkins, The Next Christendom, p. 5.Google Scholar
67. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 3.Google Scholar
68. http://www.acn-us.org/about/ (accessed 20 January 2008).Google Scholar
69. http://www.theamia.org/experience/rec-reading (accessed 15 January 2008).Google Scholar
71. The Way, The Truth, and The Life, p. 33.Google Scholar
72. Jenkins, The Next Christendom, p. 14.Google Scholar
73. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, p. 175.Google Scholar
74. Jenkins, The Next Christendom, p. 204.Google Scholar
