Issues of Gender and Sexual Orientation Split Christian Churches

One of the issues that threatens to split a number of the Christian churches today, it is the question of whether females can be ordained to function as priests or bishops or pastors or church elders. There are differences in the administrative or leadership structures of the different christian churches and comparisons can be difficult to draw, but a fundamental principle any local christian congregation (church) of any denomination has is local leaders whose function is to teach, lead and guide the congregation based on the policies, principles and beliefs agreed upon by the national or regional or even world-wide church structures. One of the paramount objectives of each christian church is to maintain doctrinal unity, without which the church would disintegrate into splinter groups that might in the end have very little in common.

Another issue that is causing huge strains and stresses on a number of christian churches is the question of homosexuality and whether it is compatible with Biblical teachings. Can sincere Christians live in homosexual (or lesbian) relationships and still be accepted as members of the communion? Even difficult a challenge is the question of gay and lesbian clergy (priests, pastors, bishops) as evidenced by the challenge faced in the Anglican Communion (in the USA, Episcopal Church) through the ordination of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire (USA) in 2003.

The challenges to church orthodoxy is also experienced in the Roman Catholic Church, in spite of the RCC having quite a rigid leadership style (with the Pope as the universal leader considered infallible) as well as definitive doctrine to aid decisive solutions. Indicative of the conflict of views within the Catholic Church itself is the case of Eugene Drewerman, a nationally known Catholic priest and stem critic of some of the Catholic Church's fundamental policies. Many Roman Catholics considered him to be a heretic, but others considered him to be a highly respected theologian who simply wishes to reform the Catholic Church. During 1992, the archbishop of the area, a churchman by the name of Degenhart, decided to take drastic action against Drewerman, forbidding him to teach, preach, or to exercise his duties as a priest. In this situation, Eugene Drewerman became an opponent not only of Archbishop Degenhart and most of the German bishops, but also of the Pope himself. In any case, the archbishop and other bishops erred if they believed that they could end the theological conflict administratively by means of authoritarian threats and prohibitions which were designed to silence Drewerman.
Besides Drewermann, the Catholic Church has also had theological confrontations with and Hans Kung, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, and several prominent American Catholic thinkers.

But the most recent tensions have been evident in the Anglican Communion (called Church of England in the UK or the Episcopal Church in the USA). The Times Magazine correctly expressed the general sentiment in its edition of June 07, 2007, by entitling an article "Anglicanism in Crisis."

1. The Geene Robinson Saga

A schock-wave went around not only to the 80 million or so Anglicans (or Episcopalians) in the world, but throughout the Christian community, when the Episcopal Church (the Anglican body in the USA) made Geene Robinson, a gay man, bishop of New Hampshire. The time after that has been characterised by a series of angry meetings, threats to break away, demands and deadlines from Anglicans worldwide. The man supposed to have been "crisis managing" this whole saga is the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. He is the professional leader of the Church of England and titular head of its global offshoot, the Anglican Communion. The debate about homosexuality seem to have been silenced in the Anglican Communion at the 1998 Lambeth Conference (a conference held once every 10 years) where the conclusion reached was that "homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture." Anglicanism, like many organisations is global and unites varied ethinicities, economic levels and social attitudes in an overarching understanding of faith. But unlike the Roman Catholic church, doctrinal unity is achieved through continual conversation based on mutual respect rather than through authoritarianism. The sharp debate on homosexuality threatens the unity of the faith and is a challenge to a world still characterised by a North - rich with an ethos of individual rights and the poorer South. And as Williams said "the Communion feels very vulnerable, very vulnerable and very fragile." This debate has got people like Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola "infuriated". Akinola has said "God regards homosexuality as the equivalent of humans having sex with various animals." He has also commented that "we don't have to go through Cantebury to get to Jesus." These are signs of a willingness to breakaway from the Communion in order to preserve the purity of the gospel. Akinola even set up his own Anglican body in the USA - the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) flouting rules about "stealing other bishops' sheep." With the Lambeth Conference set for July 2008, there was bound to be a "show-down" and the unity of the Communion was under threat. Akinola had threatened to pull his country's 90+ bishops out of Lambeth , and therefore Williams disinvited Geene Robinson and Martyn Minns (a bishop of Akinola's US Church) from the Lambeth 2008. He was trying to avoid the Conference degenerating into a "Geene Robinson issue."

2. GAFCON - Global Anglican Future Conference

But before Lambeth 2008, a Conference (GAFCON) was held in Jerusalem from 22 to 29 June 2008. GAFCON (http://www.gafcon.org/) was organised by Anglican/Episcopal bishops and leaders who were very worried about the Communion moving away from the bible truth in order to accomodate world pressures on homosexuality for example. The GAFCON organisers see themselves as the last bastion of the truth in the Anglican Communion and if it meant breaking away from the main church, they are willing to risk that.

The conference took place on June 22-29, 2008, in Jerusalem and attended by 1148 lay and clergy delegates, including 291 Anglican Bishops; but the identities of those attending have not been published and may have included bishops and clergy not recognised by the Anglican Communion. The leading participants of GAFCON included Archbishops Peter Akinola of Nigeria , Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, Donald Mtetemela of Tanzania, Peter Jensen of Sydney, Australia and Presiding Bishop Greg Venables of the Southern Cone, Bishops Don Harvey of Canada, Bob Duncan of USA and Martyn Minns of USA, Canon Vinay Samuel of India and Canon Chris Sugden of England. These leaders claim to represent 30 million of the 55 million "active" Anglicans in the worldwide communion. However, this figure assumes the support of all Anglicans in the provinces from which the individual participants have come (although in the Province of Kenya, for example, there has been outspoken criticism of the Church leadership ) and adopts a low estimate of the numbers of Anglicans in the rest of the world. The official figure for Anglicans worldwide is 80 million.
Sessions were held on the topics of secularism, the Anglican Communion, HIV/AIDS and poverty. Delegates also visited sacred sites in and around Jerusalem. At the beginning of the conference a booklet was released by Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria entitled The Way, the Truth and the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future.

The Jerusalem Declaration of GAFCON made it clear that they oppose any attempt to digress from biblical truth (as they see it) as expressed in the slow but sure tendency to accept homosexuality within the Anglican Communion e.g. the ordination of Robinson and the conducting of gay marriages within the Anglican Church. GAFCON is on collision course with the rest of the Anglican/Episcopal Church and it will be seen if the Anglican Communion will survive the collision.

3. Anglicans in Britain vote to allow female Bishops

On July 7, 2008, the Anglican Church in Britain voted to approve the appointment of female bishops. This step appeared to risk a schism in the church that is already severely strained over the issue of gay bishops. The debate went late into the night in York, but in the end the general synod of the Church of England - an assembly that holds authority on matters of church doctrine in Britain voted by a clear majority within each of the synod's three houses - bishops, clergy and laity - to approve the consecration of female bishops in the face of bitter opposition from traditionalists.

The vote comes 16 years after the synod voted (also in a fractious debate) to approve the ordination of women as ministers within the British church.

The move to approve female bishops in Britain follows that taken by Anglicans in the USA, Australia and Canada where women bishops have been appointed for some years.

Opponents of the female bishops argue that Jesus, in choosing only 12 male disciples, intended that men alone should have the responsibility of ministering to his followers.

Before the synod in York, traditionalists had claimed to have the backing of over 1 300 clergy in Britain who were prepared to leave the church rather than accept female bishops.

Church officials have however said, the first female bishops would not be appointed before 2014 because the church needs to draw up a "code of practice" to govern the change.

4. Lambeth Conference 2008

From 16 July to 3 August 2008, the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference took place amid expectations that it would be characterised by fireworks, controversy, dissent and even a split of the Anglican Communion, due to the issues of gay clergy and female bishops.

But the 670 bishops of the Anglican Communion had a 19 day conference characterised by prayer and theological debate, but very little acrimony or schisms.

The church survived the Conference without any harm and the Archbishop of Cantebury Rowan Williams must have had a great sigh of relief.

5. Seventh Day Adventists and Female Pastors/Elders

The Seventh-day Adventist church (http://www.adventist.org/) is not as large as the Anglican Church. It has an official worldwide membership of less than 15 million, but it is challenged by the same issues that face the rest of Christianity. These issues include the question of ordaining females as Pastors or Elders into ministry as well as how to deal with homosexual behaviour in society and even within the church.

But unlike the Anglican Communion, where the different regions of the world church are to a degree autonomous to make decisions (e.g. the Episcopal Church ordained a gay bishop while the Anglican Communion in Nigeria might not allow it) the SDA church considers itself one body and a decision taken are binding for the entire world wide church. This has protected the church from factionalism on these issues, but it has also generated tensions within the body in areas where there is disagreements have arisen between Adventists in different regions of the world differ in their understanding of Scripture.

The Adventist Church is much more conservative compared to many Christian churches and its official position on homosexuality is that, this is an abomination and a sin and goes contrary to Scripture. There is no big debate within the Church (unlike in the Anglican Church) on this matter since there is general consensus.

However the issue of ordaining women as pastors has been a controversial issue within the church for decades now. It was in the 1970s when the Church voted to allow female elders and deacons to be ordained. Elders and deacons are appointed only to serve a specific local church and they are usually lay members. They are only church officers at their specific local church and can not function as elders or deacons at another local Adventist Church unless they are requested to.

In some parts of the world, there are still local churches who don't accept that females can be ordained or serve as elders and in order to resolve this, the local church simply doesn't appoint or vote females into the office of elder.

However the issue of ordaining females as pastors has generated much more controversy over the years and has still not been resolved for the world wide church. It came to a head at the 1995 General Conference Session in Utrecht (Netherlands). This is a once-every-5 years meeting of delegates from all over the world to discuss the business of the world church. At the 1995 Session the North American Adventist church made a proposal that would allow the various regions of the church (13 world divisions) to make independent decisions on ordaining female pastors. These ordained pastors would however only serve in the region they are ordained. This proposal needed to be accepted by the world delegates before it could be implemented. The world delegates however rejected the proposal, arguing that since there is no unity within the church on this issue, allowing each division to "go alone" on this issue would lead to schisms within the church.