GetReligion

Someone in the company of Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, apparently has not grasped a basic principle of sensible media relations: Do not berate a reporter who’s trying to do her job.

Let’s go to the account by Ruth Gledhill of the London Times, writing in The Church of England Newspaper:

He was standing in front of me, looking me in the eye and smiling. In England at least, this is normally taken by journalists as an invitation to proceed.

“Bishop, would you do it again?”

He is not an Archbishop, so the fault was not in the style of address. But clearly I had done something very wrong. In an instant, his minder had translocated from her place by his side to stand right in front of him, glare up at me and state: “You are so rude.”

The “it” in Gledhill’s sentence referred to consecrating Gene Robinson — the first bishop of the Episcopal Church who openly discussed his homosexuality before his election. It seems like a reasonable question, and it’s a fair bet Gledhill anticipated an answer in the affirmative (albeit heavily nuanced).

One reason not to berate a reporter is that you may prompt her to draw her own conclusions, based on her observation of your actions:

But surely even Frank Griswold could see it might not be the best idea in the world to shun a national newspaper journalist in that way. Then again, a primate who is capable of overriding the opinions of large parts of the Global South, not to mention parts of his own province, is clearly not going to give a toss about The Times. We will never know. He was frogmarched from the room before any more questions could be asked.

Now if an Anglican prelate cannot tell his own, diminutive female minder that on this occasion, it might not be a bad idea to answer a question — and we all know that Grizzy has no problem thinking up appropriately slippery answers to even the most direct of interrogations — however is he going to be able to exert any authority he does have to ensure his bishops abide by the moratorium asked for in the Windsor report? My guess, judging from this encounter and from his statements in the preceding debate with Josiah Fearon, is that he is not even going to try.

. . . It is up to you, archbishops, to ask Frank Griswold whether he or his church intend any more consecrations of the kind that the Windor Report has asked for a moratorium on. He may not tell you the answer either. But as you already know, if you don’t ask him, he certainly won’t tell. You at least will not be ticked off, simply for asking the question.

And I have one final word for Frank. If I was rude to you today Frank, which I don’t think I was, I do regret it very much. But I won’t apologise. Is there a difference? Maybe you don’t think there is.

GetReligion.org readers need to know that Douglas LeBlanc has this thing against putting references to his own journalistic endeavors on this blog, especially when that work appears in the pages or cyber-spaces of that great evangelical fortress called Christianity Today.

I have tried to play along with this LeBlancophobia, but I am going to make an exception today. Any journalist who is interested in the current media sexuality wars the Anglican Communion and the Windsor Report needs to read LeBlanc’s interview with the Rt. Rev. N.T. Wright, author of a host of books — popular and academic — including “The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God).” Informed reporters need to do so for precisely the reasons that Doug cites.

N.T. Wright is the rare sort of theologian who attracts respect from both conservatives and liberals. He became Bishop of Durham in 2003, and for the past year has served on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Commission on Communion.

Many Anglican conservatives are in full meltdown mode at the moment and Wright is not one of them. For starters, he does not automatically assume that the central issue in this ecclesiastical civil war is homosexuality. Some very low-church Protestant people are firing away at Anglican traditions on another sacramental issue, arguing that lay people can lead celebrations of Holy Communion. That’s hard to put in a sexy headline in the New York Times, but it is an explosive issue nonetheless. And then there is the postmodern challenge to moral theology itself — pick a doctrine, any doctrine. Wright notes:

What we all have to do is to say about any issue — whether it’s lay celebration [of Communion], whether it’s episcopal intervention, whether it’s homosexual practice — How do we know, and who says which differences make a difference and which differences don’t make a difference? [Presiding Bishop] Frank Griswold and his colleagues make a great song and dance about difference and about accepting difference and respecting difference. That’s almost the only moral category that is left within postmodernity, welcoming the other, which is actually a very difficult moral standard to implement right across the board.

Near the end, Wright steers the interview off in an interesting — and I believe highly newsworthy — direction. What if the current media storms centered on some other issue? What might a truly Communion-shattering theological dispute look like? Here’s Wright again:

The critical thing is there are some differences which would divide the church. For instance, if somebody decided to propose that instead of reading the Bible in church, we should read the Bhagavad-Gita or the Qur’an, most Christians would say this is no longer a church and that’s a difference that we simply cannot live with. But if somebody says I really think we should never put flowers on the altar and somebody else says I think we should always have a bowl of flowers on the altar, most people would say that’s an issue which we must not divide the church about. It’s a local issue, which each church will have to decide for itself. And there’s no point in getting in a lather about it.

Now the question is, all these different issues that we face, which of those two categories do they come into? How do you know? And who says? Until we have prepared to address the question in those terms, the thing will just remain as a shouting match.

And all the people said, “Amen.” Wright knows that he is touching on an issue that burns quietly behind the scenes. Anglicans in the Third World are upset about the fading of traditional Christian sexual norms in the post-Christian West. But bishops from Africa and Asia would be just as upset, if not more so, if they knew about the emerging world of syncretistic prayers and rituals that have influenced the Episcopal Church and other oldline church groups. As a reporter, I have been following this trend for more than a decade.

Wright is right. Sex is not the only Anglican issue out there. But it’s the only issue in the headlines.

Larry Stammer’s report in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times could leave readers with the impression that if reconciliation fails in the Anglican Communion, it is largely the fault of Archbishop Peter J. Akinola of the Church of Nigeria.

Here are three paragraphs at the heart of Stammer’s article:

Despite a plea from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual head of Anglicanism, to avoid a “rush to judgment,” Akinola in a statement released here criticized the report’s call for both sides in the debate to express regrets.

Akinola was particularly upset by the recommendation that conservative bishops, including him and other Africans, stop claiming jurisdiction over conservative American parishes seeking help. In the Diocese of Los Angeles, for example, the Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda agreed to supervise three dissident Southern California parishes.

“Where is the language of rebuke for those who are promoting sexual sins as holy and acceptable behavior?” Akinola asked. “The imbalance is bewildering. It is wrong to use equal language for unequal actions.”

Stammer’s reference to the plea by the Archbishop of Canterbury raises a few related questions:

° Does it apply to the Diocese of Vermont, which has announced that it will continue blessing gay couples unless the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops agrees to honor the Windsor Report’s request for a moratorium on such blessings?

° Does it apply to Bishop Paul Marshall of the Diocese of Bethlehem, Pa., who has raised a valid question about whether the report turns institutional unity into an idol?

° Does it apply to Bishop Carolyn Tanner Irish of the Diocese of Utah, who flatly rejects the report’s conclusion that the Episcopal Church acted without adequate consultation with the broader Anglican Communion?

The report was quick to stress that the Archbishop of Canterbury is not a Pope of Anglicans. Yes, he has asked Anglicans not to rush to judgment about the Windsor Report. Does that mean all Anglicans — or just angry ones from Africa? — need to receive the report in reverent silence? And when should this moratorium on spirited discussion expire?