Hints from a Dissenter

I found myself reading the opinion section in the International Herald Tribune today, and Mr Douthat’s column (regarding the Catholic Church’s recent announcement aimed at proselytising conservative Anglicans) provided me with some concern.

It would be all too easy on my part to take refuge in the notion that we of the Dissenting movements which took the ideals of the Protest closer to heart have less to worry about on these issues, gender equality being central to both our witness and to our interpretation of the messages of the Gospels and the Epistles (we don’t and it’s not, not fully, but that’s another issue). But both the Catholic Church’s tactics and Mr Douthat’s response to them are troubling and problematic. For, while Mr Douthat easily dismisses the ecumenical movement of the latter half of the 20th century as only ‘tenuously’ connected to the Gospel, he fails to produce any kind of Scriptural justification for Benedict’s recent political ploy to grab away from the Anglican Communion those who are uncomfortable with the concept of women in the clergy.

I genuinely do believe that the Roman Church is on the wrong side of history, and more importantly on the wrong side of the Gospel message, in their opposition to greater participation of women in the Church. Women, including Peter’s wife, were among those doing deeds of power in Christ’s name, and were most praised in the Gospel according to Mark for their faithfulness to Jesus and to his message. The schizophrenia of Paul in the Epistles which the churches have accepted as canon is far more troubling, but I believe that Paul was speaking in greater accordance with Jesus’ message when he told the Galatians that ‘there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28). But this is merely one small part of the content of the current debate which is tearing apart the Anglican Communion at the seams – what is at issue now is the current tactic the Church is employing to speed that process.

Mr Douthat makes light of the tragic history the Anglican Communion shares with the Roman Catholic Church, but for those of us who know it, drenched as it is in human blood and ashes and befouled by intrigue and deceit, it adds another dimension completely to the Pope’s unfortunate decision. Such an aggressive political move, aimed at mobilising a disaffected sector of the church motivated more by hate than by love, brings to mind the bloody religious conflicts of the English Protest’s infancy: the legal excesses of Henry VIII and the brutal fanaticism of his eldest daughter Mary, resulting in the martyrdoms at the stake of some three hundred men and women of conscience, clergy and common folk alike, and the dislocation of hundreds more; the shaky coalition of religious moderates under Elizabeth, followed by calls by Pope Gregory XIII for her assassination and the resulting conspiracies (one such involving Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots); the Protestant massacres in France in which tens of thousands were killed (causing greater alarm to the English church and heavier crackdowns on Catholic sympathisers); the religious turmoils within the English nation under the Stuarts following Elizabeth’s death, egged on by both Catholic and Protestant fanatics, resulting in civil war. Though the Pope’s manoeuvre here is far more genteel (by necessity, as Mr Douthat admits) than those of his predecessors, he is coming dangerously close to tapping into the historical mistrust that in some areas has not been completely forgotten (e.g. Northern Ireland).

Worrying also is Mr Douthat’s proposed rationale for the Pope’s actions. He proposes that the Pope is more concerned with presenting a unified ‘front’ (his word, not mine) in a conflict with Islam than with the relations among Christians or with the rightness of allowing women to serve equally. Some hints from an English Dissenter by blood and by conviction: perhaps there is a better way to go about building the Kingdom of Christ. Christ tells us in Scripture that the heirs of the Kingdom are those who clothe the naked, those who feed the hungry, those who comfort the mournful, those who welcome the stranger, those who make peace, those who pray for their persecutors and those who love their enemies. The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury can build all the grand coalitions they so please, it will not avail them either one jot before God if those coalitions are not based on love for those who most need it, and justice and equality for those to whom it continues to be denied – for example, women and homosexuals. And it bears reminding both the liberals and the conservatives on this issue that the Kingdom of Christ is not built from conquest and the sword, nor is it built on the scale of empires and principalities and powers, but everyday, painstakingly, from even the smallest of seeds with enduring faith in the living God.

UPDATE: a needed note of levity.