Thanks to The Critic for publishing my piece on Schrödinger’s Schism—why Anglicanism’s doom is so often foretold yet never comes to pass. Click through to read the whole article including details on developments in the last few weeks.
But here’s a taster.
“Two common misconceptions about Anglicanism are worth clearing up, because doing so reveals both why it often feels like a battlefield and why it has not entirely fallen apart…
“The first is that the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury isn’t really like that of the Pope. … While the Pope is the head of a single globe-spanning Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion is a loose confederation of 42 entirely self-governing “provinces”, or member Churches.
“Since the 19th century, some Anglicans have proposed some or other means of worldwide Anglican authority, but its member Churches have never been willing to cede their right to rule themselves. That’s why the 1998 vote on homosexuality wasn’t binding and could never have been, and why Anglicans in the USA were free to ignore it in consecrating the gay-and-partnered Gene Robinson in 2003, which hardened the divisions first exposed in 1998 to this day.
“The second misconception, shared by most Western commentators, is that conservative attitudes to homosexuality around the world broadly track conservative attitudes to women’s ministry. But this is, at most, loosely the case. In particular, while Africa can be a darkly homophobic place at times, senior women clergy are fairly common, both among mainline Protestants and in Pentecostal denominations.
[…]
“Even in Uganda, one of Anglicanism’s trio of ultra-conservative provinces along with Rwanda and Nigeria, Primate Stephen Kaziimba was at pains to tell the local press that his objection to Mullally was due to her (lukewarm) support for same-sex relationships. In 2022, Kaziimba publicly expressed his support for women bishops to be consecrated in Uganda. In fact, women were first ordained as priests in the East African nation as early as 1983, eleven years before the Church of England.”
