Akinola and Bonhoeffer

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Todd Granger and I duked it out a bit last week about an email posted by Dr. Louie Crew on the House of Bishops listserv. Crew’s email had taken to task some of the African Anglicans who have been trying to push the Episcopal Church around (as well as the Anglican Church of Canada) on the issue of homosexuality. Referring to a recent death sentence imposed on a Nigerian man who admitted to homosexual activity, Crew noted that “It’s so much easier to make noise about the ’sin’ in the Episcopal Church than it is to make noise about the sin of silence by the Churches of Uganda and Nigeria.” Todd thought Crew’s email was an outrage, and said that it “all but accuses” the African churches of complicity.

In the course of our discussion, Todd compared the African Anglicans to the Roman Catholic Church and German Christians who quietly worked behind the scenes to save Jewish lives and oppose the Nazis. I responded that what those WWII Christians did was Christ’s work, but imagine how much more effective it would have been if Pope Pius XII had been willing to court martydom by openly and vocally condemning Hitler’s death machine. And besides, I continued, there’s one crucial difference between Bonhoeffer and Akinola & Co.:

So far as I know, when the Nazis were doing their evil, the European Christians who opposed them didn’t devote their time to publicly lecturing other churches about their supposed problems. …

If Akinola & Co. would do with Shari’a and the LRA as the anti-Nazi European Christians did with the Third Reich, I’d be far more sympathetic to their position, even if they happened to disapprove of what we’re doing here in North America.

But no, they seem to spend their time instead making grandiose statements about how sinful we suposedly are here in North America, and how they won’t walk with anyone who doesn’t toe the proper theological line. That, I will indeed presume to judge — not their actions in dealing with Shari’a and the LRA, but their arrogance in thinking they should spend their time and energy on our alleged problems.

Their proclamations about how we should run our churches and societies would be a lot more credible if they would get their own houses in order first.

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6 responses to “Akinola and Bonhoeffer”

2005-07-17

Todd Granger

D.C., I think that it is actually inaccurate to say that I “compared” the African Anglicans to those Roman Catholics and Confessing Protestants who quietly opposed the Nazi regime in Germany. In order to make such a comparison, I would have to have knowledge that the African Anglicans are doing what the dissenting Christians in Germany were doing. This may in fact be the case – and it is the case, with regards at least to Archbishop Orombi of Uganda and Archbishop Iduwo-Fearon of Nigeria, who have spoken out against the LRA and Shari’a law in northern Nigerian, respectively, but I don’t have any knowledge of instances of such witness beyond these.
The point that I was making was simply that oppressive regimes are not only – or perhaps even best – opposed by standing up and making public proclamations against their policies, adducing the examples of Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Christian movement and those Italian Catholics and French Reformed Protestants who help hide Jews from Nazi functionaries. Your point that an all-out opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and the Confessing Church movement may (I say may) have had greater effect is well-taken, but as you also point out, it is easy for people not in the situation to pontificate about what should be done.
Apropos African “pontifications” about the North American situation: to their way of thinking, this is very much their own situation as well. For the Africans, as I demonstrated in the quotation from Bishop Ochola in my own post, Christianity – and specifically, Anglican Christianity – is global and communal. What is done in the Anglican Churches of North America affects the Anglican Churches of the Global South, in both tangible and intangible ways. Speaking as a conservative (or “reasserting”) Anglican, I am happy that bishops from Africa, South America, and Asia take seriously their apostolic ministry in the whole church and are not merely concerned with a limited ministry in their own dioceses.
As for Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Protestants of 1930s and 1940s Germany, the Theological Declaration of Barmen has incisive things to say about theologies – including liberal protestantism – which look for authority beyond Jesus Christ (specifically, cultural authorities), which was not only a comment on the liberal protestantism in Germany which could not prevent a takeover of the German Churches by Nazi ideology, but also the liberal protestantism of much of the North American mainline.

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2005-07-17

Scotus

>> Apropos African “pontifications” about the North American situation: to their way of thinking, this is very much their own situation as well. For the Africans, as I demonstrated in the quotation from Bishop Ochola in my own post, Christianity – and specifically, Anglican Christianity – is global and communal. What is done in the Anglican Churches of North America affects the Anglican Churches of the Global South, in both tangible and intangible ways. Speaking as a conservative (or “reasserting”) Anglican, I am happy that bishops from Africa, South America, and Asia take seriously their apostolic ministry in the whole church and are not merely concerned with a limited ministry in their own dioceses. << Here's what I don't understand: I have no doubt that, to the African and other 2/3 World Anglican prelates, "Christianity - and specifically, Anglican Christianity - is global and communal." However, it is fair to ask whether this p.o.v. and the conclusions drawn from it actually comport with Anglicanism's traditional historical understanding of itself, at least since the time that the Church of England clearly threw off the authority of the Church and Bishop of Rome. In other words, while the Church of England (before birthing its daughter/sister Anglican churches) always asserted its place within the One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, I'm not aware that the English branch of the Reformation ever concerned itself overly much with attempting to correlate with, let alone control, developments in other corners of the Church Catholic. Thus, for example, one does not see Abp. Cranmer or Abp. Laud lecturing or intervening in the (then newly Lutheran) Church of Sweden, the (then as always Eastern Orthodox) Church of Greece, or the (then as always Roman Catholic) Church of France (or even within the Huguenot faction therein). Comment may have been made, but that seems to have been the extent of it, and the tolerance for diversity in other national churches (i.e., in other component parts of the Church Catholic) clearly extended not just to matters of "Traditions and Ceremonies" (i.e., the areas in which Article XXXIV of the Thirty-Nine Articles clearly acknowledged "local option" for each national church) but also to matters of theology (witness relations especially with other Reformation churches). So if this is the true heritage of how "Anglican Christianity" dealt with the relationships between national churches, why should lack of theological consensus lead now to, say, the (Anglican) Church of Nigeria seeking to impose a global theological unanimity vis-a-vis, say, the Anglican Church of Canada, when the Reformation-era (Catholic and Reformed) Church of England did not seek to impose such global theological unanimity upon the ((Augsburg) Catholic) Church of Sweden, the ((Roman) Catholic) Church of France, or the (Reformed) Church of Geneva) (Admittedly, not all of these churches recognized orders, intercommunion, etc. with the C of E, but I had understood the problem to be raised from *their* side, not from that of the C of E; Roman Catholic sacraments and orders were recognized, and on the other side, the historical record shows -- iirc -- that ordained German Lutheran pastors (i.e., non-episcopally ordained ministers) were translated to London and accepted as C of E ministers without undergoing reordination.) Has anyone done any research/thinking/analysis as to the precedents set and the lessons to be learned from how early (Reformation onward) Anglicanism interacted with sister national churches that did not share its theology but which it nonetheless continued to recognize as valid components of the Church Catholic? It seems to me that there may be something there that can be of use today, to all sides in this debate. NB: I offer this as someone still examining the theological arguments offered by ACCanada and ECUSA, but who is troubled by the invocation of a fictional/aspirational "global" Anglicanism that has never yet truly existed, whether institutionally or theologically, and which seems to seek to forget the distinctive insights and heritage of the English Reformation, not just in terms of the Elizabethan Settlement, but also, as discussed above, in terms of the theological diversity and autonomy of national churches within the Church Catholic -- a diversity and autonomy which the Windsor Report's recommendations would dilute, and the ++Akinola party would demolish. Why should modern Anglican national churches be more out of communion with each other over matters theological than post-Reformation Protestant national churches were? Are the blessing of same-sex unions and the consecration of a non-celibate, partnered homosexual bishop really more profoundly divisive and excommunicatable issues than the disputes over the Real Presence and its nature, Sola Scriptura, apostolic succession, predestination, etc. among various early Protestant flavors within the Church Catholic? Not being a professional historian, I'm open to being corrected on the history, but what I do know of the history suggests that the C of E's early tolerance for differing theologies of other churches (whom it nonetheless continued to consider the rightful expressions of the Church Catholic in their own lands) is completely at odds with the recent attempts to enforce a specific theology homogeneously throughout the Communion, across national church borders.

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2005-07-17

Barry

The early church (up to ~350 A.D.) changed the Western world in profound ways that we can still observe to this day. This church had some things in common with the church today: bishops, priests (presbyters), deacons, the Eucharist. But there were several things that were missing in the early church:
1. One, unified, Orthodox theology
2. Association with the governments
3. An established canon of Scripture aka The Bible
Instead of orthodoxy, the writings recently uncovered suggest that the early church had a larger diversity of theological opinion than we suspected at first. Of course, with respect to governments, the church was underground and secret. (And the root of the word ‘secret’ is related to the word ‘sacred.’) Finally, there were wcattered letters of Paul and quite a few gospels floating around, but most of the tradition was orally transmitted.
The early Christians understood themselves to be WITNESSES rather than exegetes of Scripture. Their very lives were their witness to the world.
Today’s gospel reading is about how the kingdom is like a sower who sowed good seeds, followed by an enemy who sowed weeds. When the people ask if they should pull the weeds, the Son of Man says that they should not; instead they should let the judgement be made during the last days. When the people try to make this judgemen, inevitably good seed is pulled up along with the weeds.
It seems to me that the church is most successful when it acts as an agent to enable people to become faithful witnesses. Similarly, the church always seems to damage itself every time that it tries to usurp God’s role as the Judge of the World. This has happened again and again. When the church put in its creeds that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father AND THE SON, the extra addition of a few words pulled up some of the good seed. (This is, of course, the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity.)
In our own day, I see this being played out over issues like the role of gay people in the church and the possibility of letting women be bishops. Whenever I see folks who seem to worship the Bible instead of the Living God or folks who are overly judgemental (traits I see in both the so-called ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ camps), I cringe. Why can’t we just let go and let God do the judging?
If Scripture, control of the government, and Orthodox theology are so darn important, how was the early church able to change the world without them?

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2005-07-18

Joseph

Re: Barry’s comments above: just curious, but as I re-read that parable, there does not seem to be much confusion over judgement (in the sense of distinguishing the tares from the wheat) but rather the timing of when the separation will occur.

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2005-07-18

Barry

Joseph is right; there is no confusion over the judgement that is inevitable. The trouble begins when we humans start our meddling.
God (not us) will be doing the judging.
The judgement will come according to God’s schedule (not our schedule)
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.

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2005-07-18

David Huff

“Akinola and Bonhoeffer” Great Googly-moogly! D.C., I nominate this as the most jarringly oxymoronic title yet to appear in your blog. It’s got “deafening silence” and “jumbo shrimp” beat by a mile, and may be right up there with “corporate ethics” ;->

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