Is this the way forward? (updated)

Like the Anglican world as a whole, our Canadian Anglican Church is divided on the subject of homosexuality. We have a minority who feel very strongly that any move at all toward blessing gay marriages or same-gender unions is tantamount to apostasy and grounds for leaving our Church (some have already done so, so the group that's left is smaller than it used to be). A larger minority on the other side thinks that we should move ahead with what they call 'full inclusion': full acceptance of gay marriage and ordination of partnered (or married) gay and lesbian people.

And I suspect that there are a lot of people, like me, who find ourselves in the middle. Some of us are gay or lesbian or have gay or lesbian people in our families. Some of us have deep and valued friendships with people with whom we disagree on this issue. Many of us feel that for a church like ours, which accepts diversity of viewpoints on such issues as war and peace (in the Anglican Church we have pacifists and military chaplains!), to divide over sex would be a tragedy. We want to reach out with the love of Christ to all people, but we want to be faithful to our understanding of scripture as well. We want to recognise the enormous contribution that gay and lesbian Christians make to our church, but we also want to recognise the contribution of conservative evangelicals and traditional Anglo-Catholics. We want to be faithful to the Canadian context in which we do mission, but we don't necessarily think that means we have to automatically change our minds about issues every time Canadian society changes its mind.

We have tried to deal with this issue before in the old, adversarial way. I have been a delegate to our General Synod (in 1995 and 1998) and have witnessed the limitations of the Roberts' Rules of Order approach. Someone proposes a motion, it is debated, a vote is taken, someone loses and someone wins. What does that mean for the ones who lose? Many of them feel strongly about what sort of community their church ought to be. Too often, our attitude is 'Well, you lost - if you can't live with it, go find another church'. I confess that I have said this myself, in my more conservative days. I've said, 'There's already a church in Canada that does gay marriages; why don't these people just go and join the United Church and leave us in peace?'

Well, this time our General Synod tried something different. In a gradual process of conversation in small groups, Synod decided to listen to the diversity of opinion in the Church and allow any motion or pastoral statement to come from the floor. And the result, I believe, was remarkable. While some felt it went too far and others felt it did not go far enough, the motion that came out of this process was supported by a large majority of synod delegates. One witness spoke of seeing an amazing sight: the most liberal voices in the church joining together with the most conservative voices, speaking in favour of this motion. The Anglican Journal report on the motion and the conversation around it is here; another report is here, and the motion is here (follow the link to the statement itself).

People on the extremes are predictably annoyed. Mad Priest thinks we're walking all over gay and lesbian Christians to get peace in the Church (although, strangely, the leading voice of gay and lesbian Christians in the Church, Chris Ambidge of Integrity Canada, is positively glowing about what Synod did). But the comments on the report on the Anglican Essentials blog shows that the conservatives are also mad and think their delegates have sold them out.

What happened? Well, I wasn't there, so of course I don't know, but I'm guessing that as people of different opinions talked together in their groups over the past week, they built relationships with each other and recognised each other as people who were faithfully trying to follow Christ. I think they got past the stereotypes like 'liberal', 'conservative', 'revisionist', 'reasserter', 'apostate', 'Nazi' etc. and discovered that they wanted to stay together. And so they decided to take a slow and messy road.

What exactly does their statement say? Some think it says nothing and commits the Church to nothing. I disagree.

• It says that they had made a real effort to listen to each other's perspectives with openness and transparency, and that they found this dialogue to be positive and helpful and want it to continue.
• It says that they were not prepared at this time to make a legislative decision.
• It says that they recognise diverse pastoral practices as individual dioceses 'respond to their missional contexts'. In other words, we accept that 'local option' is happening and will continue to happen - i.e., individual dioceses are deciding for themselves about whether to proceed with the blessing of same sex unions. Some will do that, because they feel that this is a faithful way to respond to the situation in which they find themselves. Some will come to a different conclusion. And they recognise that 'these different approaches raise difficulties and challenges'. In every diocese there will be some who disagree with the majority decision. 'There can be no imposition of a decision or action, but rather we are challenged to live together sharing in the mission of Christ entrusted to us, accepting that different local contexts call at times for different local discernment, decision and action.'
• It says that there is a deep sadness at synod that at this time we are not of one mind on this issue. We would like to be together and be able to move together, one way or the other. But the reality is that we are not, and we have to accept that.
• It recognises that there is a price to pay for this. An inability to make a decisive move as a united national church is hurtful to people who desperately want their church to recognise the legitimacy of their relationships. But synod recognises the hurt on the other side, too. 'For some, even this statement represents a risk. For some the statement does not go nearly far enough.'

What do I think is happening? I think that we are moving, very slowly, away from the question 'What should we do as a national Church?' (because we recognise that there is no answer to that question that doesn't leave some people out) and toward the question 'Is a diversity of practice around same-sex blessings and/or marriages an acceptable compromise that will allow us to keep walking in partnership with people we love in this Church of ours? And if it is, what might it look like in practice?' At the moment we don't have an answer to that question, but I think we need to start looking for one.

We Canadian Anglicans are often criticised in the Anglican Communion because we're so obsessed with process that we never get anything done. Politeness, some feel, is our true religion. Well, maybe so, but this has not been a very polite week in the Anglican Communion. Early in the week the General Secretary of the Anglican Communion sent letters to the Episcopal Church (based in the USA) kicking its members off some of our international committees because TEC has thumbed its nose at the Communion as a whole and gone ahead with the ordination of partnered gay and lesbian bishops. The response to this from the American Church has, understandably, been outrage. Conservatives and liberals routinely anathematise each other, in the name of Christ, around the Anglican world.

This week, we Canadian Anglicans did something different; we managed to find some common ground that both liberals and conservatives could cheer for. Is that really something that the less polite parts of the Anglican world should dismiss as insignificant? Rather, might it not be a gift that we Canadians can offer to the Anglican Communion?

Perhaps; perhaps not. I would like to think so, but maybe I'm just being a typical dithering Canadian who loves to sit on the fence. One thing I do know, though; tonight I am very, very proud of our Synod delegates, and they have made me proud to be a Canadian Anglican.

(Update: Neale Adams has a useful and sober summary of the whole synod here).