Alternative ways

It’s been argued in parts 1 & 2 that the Anglican Communion (AC) is not fit for purpose in the twenty-first century. The present protracted upheavals over radically differing views and practices regarding sexuality and marriage are better seen as symptoms of a deeper and wider gulf. It includes very different principles for reading and applying Scripture, but is fundamentally cultural. As such, in the view of this writer, there’s little prospect of harmonising the approaches under a single hierarchical structure such as the AC. Are there then other more functional ways of being Anglican at an international level? One place at least to begin might be to consider some approaches of other Christian traditions.

        Lutheran

Among other branches of Protestantism, Lutheranism is arguably the closest tradition to Anglicanism. Lutheran denominations across the world are commonly governed synodically at regional or national level. They vary widely in forms of ordained ministry. Some, much like Anglicans, observe the historic threefold order of bishop, presbyter and deacon, including apostolic succession of bishops. Beyond those, most have an office of bishop in some form, though commonly as a temporary elected office and often not formally titled “bishop”. Quite a few have an office of deacon, though not necessarily as an ordained order.

Although, as for Anglicans, there’s commonly a single major Lutheran denomination in most countries, it’s not at all uncommon for there to be smaller parallel Lutheran jurisdictions, if not widely known. Where this is the case, the various churches will typically be affiliated with one or more separate global Lutheran bodies.

One feature of particular note, by way of contrast with Anglican norms, is the existence of multiple separate global Lutheran networks. The largest of these is the Lutheran World Federation. Others are the International Lutheran Council, the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, and the Global Confessional & Missional Lutheran Forum. (And there’s a further list of unaffiliated individual Lutheran churches as well).

What’s plain with all of these global networks is their largely consultative nature and flat structure. None of the leaders of any network is accorded any authority or seniority over member churches, nor any authority to speak for “Lutherans” collectively.

        Presbyterian

Some would argue that Anglicanism is a kind of halfway house between Lutheranism and Calvinism. The Reformation in Scotland, as distinct from neighbouring England, took eventual shape in a church polity more closely aligned with Calvin and the continental reformers. Hence the Christian stream best known in the Anglosphere as Presbyterian.

Presbyterians are most plainly distinctive from Anglicans (and Lutherans) in rejecting the office of bishop, in favour of rule by a body of elders (or presbyters) in each local church, with oversight from a regional eldership. Ordained ministers are among the elders.

Somewhat similarly to Lutheran associations, several global Presbyterian / Reformed bodies exist, with member (usually national) churches affiliated with one or more such bodies. Again much like international Lutheran networks, these bodies are also largely consultative and in no real sense authoritative or publicly representative.

One striking feature of Presbyterianism particularly in Britain and the US, and to a lesser extent others such as Australia, is a frankly mind-boggling history of splits and mergers over centuries as well as in current times. A notable consequence is often a multiplicity of separate Presbyterian denominations. Australia for instance has nine. If that sounds a lot, try the US, where the number appears to be 42. 

Why mention this? Well it isn’t to urge a similar Anglican smorgasbord. Division on such a scale is hardly to be celebrated. However for Anglicans it may serve to highlight that multiple parallel jurisdictions with a common tradition - including a recognisable label  - is not an uncommon phenomenon globally. Anglicans, especially in Australia, are not used to the idea. But it’s far from unknown across the body of Christ.

        Non-Communion Anglican

Though not widely known in Australia or Britain, there have been multiple parallel Anglican denominations in many countries for quite some time, most created in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. Australia and Britain have been no exception, though not to the same extent as several others. Lest there be any ambiguity, this means a large number of international, national or regional / state denominations identifying as Anglican (or Episcopal), with bishops in the apostolic succession, observing Anglican doctrine and order, and not part of the AC. Or in other words, not in communion with Canterbury.

The site Anglicans Online tries to track these churches, listed under the heading “Not in the Communion”. It’s a complex list with some overlap. On a raw count it currently numbers about 148. Between them all they cover much of the globe. The single country with the highest proportion of them is the United States (about 35). Assuming currency of information, there appear presently to be five in Australia.

        Baptist

In respect of church government, the Baptist tradition is congregational in form. In that sense it might be thought out of place in a study like this one. There is technically no authority over the local congregation that’s external to it. Certainly no episcopal structure, nor even individual bishops, and also no regional collective presbyteral oversight such as in Reformed or Presbyterian traditions. 

But one characteristic that appeals to this writer in this broad context (structural associations between churches of a common tradition), perhaps a less well-known one, is the place classically accorded to individual or shared conscience, among Baptists at a local level.

What brought this to my greater awareness was a recent controversy within an Australian state-level Baptist church association. The subject of controversy was the same one now most prominently and visibly dividing the AC, sexuality and marriage. But what was further controversial in this Baptist case was, to many Baptists, the un-Baptist way it was addressed. Not only did the state association adopt a public position on marriage and sexuality (itself considered by many an un-Baptist approach to a moral question), but churches and ministers were disaffiliated from the association on that basis. In other words, personal and local church conscience was not given the weight it properly deserves in classical Baptist thinking. As I reflected a few months ago, it was observing this Baptist case unfolding, and listening to a number of Baptist friends in the midst of it, that set me to pondering how attention to personal or congregational conscience might, could, or even perhaps should, be freshly considered within Anglican communities.

        Continued alliances

Observably the AC is not travelling well as a body united globally around a common set of doctrines and disciplines, at present most notably with approaches to sexuality and marriage. And as I’ve argued, the prospects of that situation changing in the foreseeable future are bleak, thanks in the main to substantial cultural and theological differences predominating between Anglican communities of the Global North and South respectively. It’s therefore the view of this writer that, in contemporary colloquial idiom, the AC is well past its use-by date, not fit for purpose in the 21st century, and due a decent burial. And Anglicans are good at burials.

This opinion is offered of course recognising that such a ’nuclear’ option stands in marked contrast with the views and aspirations of most constituent parts of the AC. This notably includes the Gafcon movement or network, whose leaders have very recently published a nuclear option of their own, declaring by public communique that “The Future Has Arrived”, in a reordering of the AC as the Global Anglican Communion, ‘divorced’ from Canterbury, restoring the Communion to its original design as they in best conscience understand. This is not the place for an analysis of the communique or its intention. But one might note the critical assumption undergirding it: that a uniquely authentic global body with a global leader is of the very essence of Anglicanism. 

Might we Anglicans rather consider other ways of being in communion, by observing and learning from other branches of Christ’s body? The one conceivable way the bleak dissolution just proposed might be avoided could be the adoption of a conscience-affirming form of association, such as our Baptist sisters and brothers have held; traditionally at least. So this would mean those globally scattered Anglican provinces currently comprising the AC resolving to remain in association not on the basis of an entirely uniform set of disciplines, but rather resting on the historic doctrines now affirmed by Anglicans, the Book of Common Prayer and derivative authorised liturgies, the historic threefold orders of ministry, and mutual respect for varying convictions of conscience in moral order as each member province listens to Scripture.

If nothing else, such an approach might be much in keeping with the 2024 Nairobi-Cairo Proposals of the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order, which significantly Archbishop of Canterbury-designate Bp Sarah Mullally has commended for consideration by all members of the AC. Proposal 1 includes the phrase “common counsel in conference” as part of a revised definition of the AC.

Is such a vision conceivable and realistic? It could be a very refreshing thought. But does it sound Anglican enough? That’s the point at which it starts to look doubtful. Doubtful I suggest, ultimately because we’re an episcopal tradition. (And commitment to episcopal order might be nearly the only point of nearly universal Anglican agreement). Whether the emphasis is the reformed theme of the bishop as teacher and guardian of orthodoxy, or the patristic identification of the bishop as centre of unity and Father in God (the latter central to Anglo-Catholic spirituality), episcopal church order is inherently centralist and conformist in ethos. Authority vested in a central overseer who sets and administers common standards, under whom and to which all should conform. It’s simply difficult to conceive of such an ecclesiology accommodating variations driven by personal or local conscience, and literally on a global scale.

So if not a monolithic episcopal communion, and not conscience based either, then what? One of the particular ways of journeying together Anglicanism and Anglicans are noted for, is synodical government and decision making. Might not that provide a template for a new way of holding values and traditions in common, in a way that’s consultative, dynamic and adaptable? Is that not what the 21st century almost demands?

In other words devolve a straining monolith into a plurality of groupings with a consultative character, each of which finds sufficient in common internally to work comfortably and functionally together, and with the freedom to realign and for provinces to belong to more than one grouping. It does mean relinquishing a kind of “trademark” mentality beloved of Anglicans in AC provinces, a belief that only “we” can use the label “Anglican” (or “Episcopal”). An understandable assumption, perhaps. But hardly real when there are already about 150 Anglican jurisdictions around the world. That horse bolted long ago. If our mostly-episcopal Lutheran sisters and brothers can work with their “brand” as an adjective used by many rather than a noun belonging to one, why can we Anglicans not do the same?

In fact groupings are already a reality within the Communion. And with the cultural-theological gulf between North and South more likely to widen than narrow, it’s surely inevitable that there’ll be more. A united fellowship is a glorious ideal. But the world has entered an age where the dynamic is replacing the institutional. Other Christian communities are living there comfortably, if not perfectly. Maybe we Anglicans should join them as together we all await the promised glorious unity of the thousands upon thousands, in unending song, around the sea of glass, before the Lamb’s throne.

    North & South

The international body known as the Anglican Communion (AC) was created by the first Lambeth Conference of Bishops in 1867. In round figures that makes it 150 years old. As such it is a modern movement within the centuries-long story of the historic church of the English people, which is variously reckoned to date to the English Reformation of the 16th & 17th centuries, the arrival in Britain of Augustine of Canterbury in AD597, or even as early as the 3rd century through Celtic missions. And even within the modern era, there were Anglican dioceses, led by bishops generally appointed from London, well established decades before 1867, in various parts of the world including of course Australia.

All of that to observe that the AC is very far from being of the essence of Anglican Christianity, whether in Britain or beyond. It is neither the beginning of nor essential to collegiality between bishops or their common “lineage” back to the English church.

Related, if rarely mentioned, is the association of Anglicanism’s global reach with English colonialism. The AC is said to be the world’s 3rd (or possibly 4th) largest global Christian “communion”, after the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy. That numerical spread and size owes more than anything to the “glories” and shames (such as settler colonialism) of the British Empire. It’s notable for instance that it was only 3 years ago that the then Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby publicly voiced regret and apology for the complicity in slave ownership in the histories of both his own family and the Church he then led.

The colonialist association owes largely to the too common virtual enmeshment of the earliest CofE missionary societies (particularly the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and the Church Missionary Society) with Britain’s Imperial project. To add a personal note - I personally seriously pursued overseas missionary service 4 decades ago (though it didn’t eventuate) and have esteemed Christian world mission most of my life, dear as it all is to my proudly evangelical heart. And yet it’s impossible to deny or forget that my own Christian faith, my decades of ordained ministry, and the wider church family I belong to, are founded upon the moral morass of British Imperial conquest and expansion.

In a day when the unflattering truths of historic dispossession and decimation of once proud sovereign peoples are being brought into the light, foundations on which Australia among other western nations has been built, and with a growing awareness among some that churches meet on stolen land - the retention of a hierarchical (albeit mostly symbolic) global church body under English headship, seems to this writer both anachronistic and morally tone deaf.

But today’s challenges to the AC’s cohesion go well beyond mere symbols of a colonial past. The greater challenges are cultural and theological. For many decades the lion’s share of numerical growth in the AC has occurred in those parts of the world now collectively styled the Global South (rather than the two-thirds world), in contrast with those of the Global North (once the West) where decline is more the pattern. Illustratively, it’s been strikingly clear since at least the 1998 Lambeth Conference that the greater number of Anglican bishops (and thus of the dioceses and churches they lead) are not of Anglo-European ethnic extraction.

Christian communities of the ’South’ exist in radically different socio-cultural contexts from those of the ’North’, in turn reflective of quite varying histories, thought worlds, and engagements with their respective societies. 

A more thorough sociological analysis of North and South lies well beyond a piece like this one, not to mention this writer. But I’d like to suggest two somewhat related points of general contrast between the cultural and theological worlds of Anglican Christians of the North versus those of the South. 

The first I’ll call competing Anglican benchmarks. That is to say views on what constitutes the essence of an Anglican church identity. The two benchmarks I’ll suggest are (i) the authority (or primacy) of Scripture in a broadly evangelical sense, together with adherence to the historic (English Reformation) formularies,¹ and (ii) being in communion with Canterbury. It might be observed that one is primarily doctrinal or foundational, the other primarily dynamic or incarnational. Observably, the former predominates in the South, the latter in the North.

The second is competing hermeneutics; or simply approaches to Scripture and culture. Or put another way - how the Bible is applied in contemporary contexts. Again, while acknowledging the shortcomings of binary descriptors, I have in view the predominantly “conservative” South and the “progressive” majority North. My aim here is to describe very concisely the two broad hermeneutics found within the AC, objectively, fairly and in ways their respective adherents would affirm. I welcome suggestions for improvement to that end.

The Conservative / South Hermeneutic:        
Scripture read, interpreted and applied in traditional ways, emphasising its original meaning as God’s unchanging and authoritative word, standing as the ultimate authority culture must reckon with; rejecting the counter charge of fundamentalism.

The Progressive / North Hermeneutic:        
Scripture read, interpreted and applied progressively (or dynamically), in dialogue with culture, emphasising Scripture’s evolving relevance; rejecting the counter charge of supplanting Scripture with the prevailing cultural zeitgeist.

~~~~~~

The cultural and theological differences explored here are in my view the real obstacle to the viability of a global Anglican Communion under a single head, titular or otherwise. They represent a divide much more profound than the familiar western tension between “orthodox” and “liberal”. The North / South gulf isn’t reparable either by one group repenting and returning, or by the other “catching up”. Neither of those remedies enjoined by one side or the other is at all likely to occur anywhere in the foreseeable future. Either would require a dizzying worldview shift. The gulf could almost be called epochal. Churches in the ‘North’ (or ‘West’) are engaging a culture that’s evolved and is evolving on a trajectory very different from the ‘South’. Even conservative churches of the North are engaging their surrounding cultures in ways mostly inconceivable in the South, particularly around moral questions (e.g. gay rights).

All of that and more, in this writer’s perception, is down to profound differences in cultural milieu. Not to suggest that cultures and Christian thought in the South are not evolving. But in the main, they do so in different ways, seemingly more slowly, and not necessarily in the same direction.

Part 3 (the final piece in this series) will consider some pertinent Anglican distinctives, draw some comparisons with other Christian communities, and propose some alternative ways of being Anglican globally for the twenty-first century.

¹ The ‘formularies’ are those documents held to be foundational to Anglican belief and practice. With some variations in what’s included, the most significant in common would be the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal, the 39 Articles of Religion, and the Books of Homilies.

The Anglican Communion has had its internal challenges over a long time. But it’s enjoyed a particularly rocky journey (or is that a choppy See?) through the current century. Whilst Primates of the Communion and others are wrestling with redefining (or is that ‘reinventing’?) the global body, in this writer’s view it’s well past time to consider the more nuclear option. Is it time to disinvent it? Has it had its day? I’d suggest it has. Is it fit for purpose in the 21st century? On balance, I want to suggest not. 

    Justin Welby, Lambeth and human sexuality

The Communion is led by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Whoever takes up that role, accepts the task of holding together in some form of unity a large monolith with increasingly divergent views among its member provinces and their bishops. Justin Welby held that office for about a decade, retiring slightly prematurely almost a year ago, admitting grave failures in his management of sex abuse cases on his watch. (That in itself is a weighty subject, occasioning grief and demanding repentance; but even so, not the subject for addressing here). In that time the See proved especially choppy for him. Now with the announcement of Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally as his successor, it’s hard to imagine any smoother sailing for her.

We might call Welby's time in office the Welby decade. Not in any sense that his stewardship was or remains of greater significance than those of any of his predecessors, nor more definitive of the future. Rather simply that it was a particularly fraught, in some senses defining, and certainly unprecedented period in the life of the Communion, much bigger than Canterbury.

My own view, which I’ve expressed many times, is that Welby’s greatest “sin” was simply being the mug in Augustine’s chair at a time of largely unavoidable and protracted intra-Communion conflict. I have some views on how well he managed what lay before him, but that also lies outside the present purpose.

My interest in the Welby decade is in the way it has brought to a head a range of defining challenges which have afflicted the Communion for decades, without ever previously being seriously addressed, at least to this writer’s awareness. Another frog, another saucepan?

This is to more than imply that sexuality is not the fundamental issue. More on that later. But it has been the sorest point of the Welby decade, through which it has graphically exposed and deepened fissures in the Communion. Fairly or not, it has defined ++Justin’s stewardship of his office, for which he had and has an abundance of critics. Acknowledging the many flaws of binary labelling, the familiar “conservative” and “progressive” might suffice for now.

For conservatives:
++Justin had caved in to a revisionist moral agenda, leading the Communion into heterodoxy & heteropraxis. He had crossed at least two doctrinal or moral Rubicons. 

The first was announcing to the Lambeth Conference of bishops in 2022 that the Communion now recognises two deeply held convictions on marriage - one being the position spelled out plainly by the Lambeth Conference of 1998 that same-sex marriage and “homosexual practice” are incompatible with Scripture, the other being that of welcoming same sex marriage “after careful theological reflection”.

The second crossing was in his affirmation, as Primate of the Church of England, that the CofE should provide for the blessing of same sex relationships, though not the solemnising of same-sex marriages. To many that demarked definitively his renunciation of the authority of Scripture.

For progressives:
++Justin’s failure was no less deeply moral. To them he had overseen an abusive and homophobic system, highlighted for instance by the snubbing of same-sex spouses at the Lambeth conference.

~~~~~~

If there exists a way to reconcile the two camps in a full mutually satisfying communion, I’ve plainly missed it. Or to put it more plainly, in the view of this writer such a hope is a fool’s errand. These are not reconcilable positions. Indeed in some senses, each is the other’s antithesis.

All of that is why now is a good time to ask difficult questions about co-existence in a global Anglican Communion. Parts II and III will consider a little pertinent history of the Communion (if in layman’s terms), reflect on what really divides the global fellowship now, and propose how other branches of Christ’s church might hint at a future for ours.

The immediate subject at hand was the departure of recently former opposition leader Peter Dutton from Australian federal politics, at the hand of the very voters who'd put him in. That event itself and the naturally accompanying thoughts about the man by those of us in the conversation. And though not spoken, Senator Jacinta Price was implicitly also in view for me, and possibly others too, given her association with Dutton and her very recent career moves in switching party post election.

The one-word label I'll use for the phenomenon I'm thinking of is dehumanisation. The message: Don't let your participation in the political process, as a voter-consumer, dehumanise you in the way you observe and experience dehumanisation of and by elected politicians. The context of the conversation was the question whether Dutton deserves any sadness or sympathy at all for having suddenly lost his seat and thus his political career (quite apart from his opposition party leadership). Opinions in the conversation varied on that, including a suggestion that he was exclusively in it for self. My actual comment in part was  

... See, I think that's just a bit too black and white cynical. Don't get me wrong; ... I'm anything but [Dutton's] defender. But even so it concerns me if / when our participation in the ... process ... leads us to return the disfavour of dehumanising them. That becomes a particularly egregious irony that stands to diminish us all. Trying to step back from the fray, I find it hard to believe that anyone but perhaps the extremest narcissist (one does come to mind) could really enter politics - let alone stay there for a large slab of their productive life - and not possess even a sliver of humanity that wants to do good.

So what I'm reflecting on is the polarising nature of our fundamentally adversarial democratic political system. I agree with Churchill's famous line that "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. In other words I take it as the system of governing with the fewest and least fatal flaws, meaning I'll live with its adversarial nature (generally two major opposing elected parties). But then a toxic risk of participating in the form of public debate and opinion sharing is that we become as adversarial and extreme about it as the politicians themselves. We (often unconsciously) join even the most zealous or aggressive of them in crediting politicians of the other side with no redeeming human features at all, only the basest of motives, strictly dart-board material, just ... the worst.

Today I remind myself, as we enter this new parliamentary term, to be the best rather than worst version of me, by resisting politics' pull into the bear pit, standing instead for human respect even, nay especially, as a follower of Jesus, finding cause to look for and then respect humanity in those politicians whose policies least attract me.

On that note, back to Dutton and Price themselves. The policies they've advanced, and that the latter no doubt will continue to advance as an aspiring federal leader, are among the most toxic for the country I love and most especially our First Nations peoples. And yet ... And yet it seems to me that buried beneath those inhuman policies, both of them have wanted good for Australian indigenous communities, particularly in the form of facilitating real change in the reduction of rates of domestic violence. Dutton, personally charming or not, was a detective in a domestic violence police unit, which surely produced some social good. He has mentioned that as a policy concern in his political life. Price, at least early in her adult life has sought good in Northern Territory aboriginal communities for safer homes, and when not (alas too often) waging a rightwing culture war now talks about little else. 

Do their concepts of social goodness align with mine? No they do not. But they do want to do and achieve human good, in their terms. That is their humanity.

May our politicians, those we're drawn to and those we're not, rise to the best humanity they can be. And may we help them do that by staying out of the bear pit ourselves.

I'm not a Baptist, so I reflect as a concerned outsider, hearing voices of division and variously either loss or a sense of right, according to perspective. I'm not moved here at least to canvas the cause, its application or its rightness. (Though I have views). Instead I'm thinking on a wider canvas about how the Baptist journey speaks to me of my own evolution of conscience and that of the Christian community I belong to.

It's been one interesting journey among others for me over the space of the past maybe 15 years, listening to Baptist friends and acquaintances, mainly on Facebook (the only social media I use consistently) reflecting on Baptist history and the character of the 'movement'. (And this Anglican has had to catch onto that term, in preference say to 'denomination' or indeed even 'church', in the corporate institutional sense). That journey of slow appreciation has given me as the Anglican I am quite a bit to ponder on the nature of being a denomination; nay movement. All very good stuff. This seems as good a time as any to elaborate.

I married a Baptist who joined me, becoming Anglican, and in time as thoroughly as I am. That was still the era when Anglican cultural myopia had not yet grasped that it's possible to have been fully initiated through baptism into Christ's church without the necessity for a bishop to 'complete' the job. Especially where there was no bishop and the absence unmissed. And so she had to be confirmed, her baptism even on personal profession not enough. The idea would repulse me now, but it was fine then. 

She was from a strong rural Baptist family of a couple of generations' depth, and more than a couple before that in broader English nonconformity prior to emigration. The picture of "Baptist" that all gave me was basically Methodist with more water. Just one of the range of congregationalist protestant evangelical churches that all looked much the same as eachother to me.

Then we went to Bible College, moving as a young married couple from our family base in the Canberra region, to Victoria. The college had been established by Anglicans, but expressly multi denominational from the start, unequivocally evangelical and relatively conservative. Over the decades following, as far as membership of the board, teaching staff and student body, it had become dominantly Baptist. So I, my Anglican tag firmly affixed, was swimming in fairly Baptisty waters, for which I'll ask forgiveness of the pun, just once. 

That meant to me a generic style of doing church, again as before much like several other protestant denominations, non liturgical, evangelical to the core, and marked by strong vibrant multiplying churches (nearly all the 'big' and alive Melbourne churches I could have named at the time, apart from a handful of Anglican ones). The only thing distinctive? "Believer's Baptism", as Baptists have titled the baptismal approach of their tradition. Baptism into Christ and his church on once-only mature personal profession of faith. 

Looking back now, unconsciously at the time on my part, I think I had acquired a culturally American picture of 'Australian Baptist'. Billy Graham, plus Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), add gum leaves, stir well.

I gradually came to learn that there were Baptist churches around that weren't like much of the above, marked by characteristics like smaller congregations, not middle class, majoring on social justice and even liturgy and contemplation (quelle horreur!). Kind of Anglican wannabes as it looked to me, some tending high church at that. But I just assumed they were a loony fringe of unknown origin, which really was how my Baptist friends at college seemed to regard them too.

What I learned nothing of in those years when Baptist Christians and ministries were prominent in my world by association (and have continued to be), whether by marriage, shared koinonia or local ministry, was the British (much more than American) history of Baptist and Anabaptist Christianity, and it's shaping of an Australian incarnation. I did grasp that Baptist churches were governed congregationally, which of course, in addition to baptismal practice, distinguished them from my long and deep allegiance to Anglican expression. But I missed entirely another distinctive, which I sense matters even more to my Baptist peers than say congregationalism. And that is the weight of conscience. Even 'weight' may not capture it. Perhaps almost 'gravitas'? It matters. A lot. It matters for individual Christians within a congregation. It matters for gathered congregations within an association.

And therein is my stepping off point for a particular line of personal reflection, as an Anglican (which I shall remain very contentedly) and importantly in this context, an evangelical one. First to say is I'm seeing something I'd never noticed about the way a Christian movement or church might define and manage itself, out of its particular institutional history. 

What initially puzzled, even slightly shocked, me as my mostly evangelical Baptist friends were engaging the present NSW/ACT controversy, was their evident strength of feeling against the very idea of a Baptist association adopting a formal public position on a moral subject such as sexuality generally or same sex marriage in particular, let alone the further step of mandating that position as a condition of a member local church remaining in the tent. (Note: Obviously in NSW/ACT there's a sizeable, even majority, proportion of that demographic who think differently. But I seem not to know or recognise so many of them). That puzzled me because instinctively I've taken it for granted that a church / movement would naturally define itself in such ways among others - be they traditional or progressive - so everyone knows where they stand; and that no sensible person would bother joining, or ideally remaining, if that weren't their own considered position. Simple, right? It must be both simple and right, because not only do Anglicans do it that way; so do other Reformed streams such as Presbyterian, and the Lutheran family too, and even Uniting if a bit differently. So why wouldn't Baptists?

This NSW/ACT Baptist hoo-flung dung has all played out before my eyes in parallel with my lot - the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Church of Australia, the synods of the Dioceses of Melbourne then Canberra & Goulburn, the other 21 Australian dioceses I haven't been in, and assorted more local Anglican networks, doing the same about the same. The difference is we've done it properly with statements, signatures, blood sworn allegiances, and for some of us orthodox and orthoprax lines drawn in the ecclesiastical sand (or the cathedral nave?) and stepped across in one-way traffic.

Why? As I reflect on the Baptist process that starts to look a rather legitimate question, even if it took 66 years to become so. My best answering hypothesis now is our history - a more or less linear progression from post-Constantinian Christian cultural ascendancy, through mediaeval popes and bishops, emerging reformers, into an irreversible Reformation, western Christendom, church-state enmeshments and decouplings, the Enlightenment, scholarship, published and assented confessions of faith. That history package has built an ecclesiology of conformity, and a kind of conformity that in the main seems winsome and godly, at least to me. I like it that when I was ordained 39 years ago (a year for each article in fact) I declared and signed assent to Anglican doctrine and order as set forth in the foundation documents of the Church of England, catholic and reformed, including the 1662 liturgical standard of the Book of Common Prayer. I like it that every ministry licence since granted me has been conditional on my willing oath of 'canonical' (conforming with church law) obedience to my bishop. That's conformity. I like it. And I readily understand it as it's meant to be understood, that is as a ground of security, freedom and accountability for ministry.

All of that I rejoice in. I can't really imagine what it would feel like from the inside to be a Baptist by an equivalent weight of conviction. Perhaps not hugely different if hypothetically I were among the NSW/ACT Baptist assembly majority whose vote has prevailed in removing two churches. If it were an Anglican diocese making the same deliberation, it would be ultimately the bishop's call. And according with my understanding of biblical orthodoxy as an evangelical, episcopal discipline even as far as withdrawal of clergy licenses might seem the right if regrettable one. 

But what if I and the congregation I'm a part of had not been formed by the historical trajectory that has created Anglicanism, or for that matter by one of several other post-reformation confessional protestant traditions? What if I and my church were built on an early seenteenth century Baptist tradition preferencing conscience, ultimately over conformity? What if, like many (not all) of my Baptist friends there were little or no felt conflict between holding what has been an orthodox theology of sexuality and marriage, built on an evangelical approach to the Bible, and holding sacrosanct other theologies and pastoral practices within the same faith family?

I don't see myself jumping ship into deep water, nor even close. Anglican is me. Still and lasting. But I do wonder if we might be better together with less blood on the cathedral floor.

Mate, you've done awesome good for yourself, your family, your party and your country. You deserve to take pride, at least for now, and I hope you take some time to breathe that in and feel it. 

You're possibly the premier example of a long slow, come from behind, Steve Bradbury winner in Australian public life in our shared lifetime. Congratulations! 

I massively underestimated you for a decade. As such I represent Australia and possibly the world. Everyone underestimated you. Big time. Incidentally, hats off to your friend and federal treasurer, Jim Chalmers for that crystal clear one-sentence analysis of you and your leadership of the party and this year's campaign. Albo the most underestimated politician. That says it.

Looking back now I'm awed by your story of patience, conviction, tenacity and staying on the long road even when it kept revealing more unseen crests and potholes. I'd have given up too soon. You didn't. And that patience has been rewarded in abundance at last. 

The first memory I have of you appearing on my political radar as someone to take notice of was during your party's (and the nation's) Rudd-Gillard crisis in 2010. I liked Kevin (an old friend in real life) and felt aggrieved by his party's treatment of him, and you stepped forward for a moral principle, naming a wrong done and calling your colleagues to focus. That call wasn't entirely heeded. But that's another story not for here, and opinions will differ. Either way you marked yourself as loyal to a tee, and that got a private hat-tip from me. You also marked yourself as a solid, dependable, transparent team player, one to be depended upon, a what you see is what you get kind of bloke.

All of that package of character you still have. But it isn't the profile I at least would naturally have rated as Prime Minister material. Not then. I'd be interested in knowing whether you sensed that in yourself at the time. But I didn't remotely. I had you as salt of the earth team player - the kind we need plenty of and plenty more; but nothing more.

Yet that wasn't how you stayed. Come 2013 your hat was in the ring for party leader in opposition for goodness sake. I thought that was a bit troppo to be honest, and wondered what might be in the water in Grayndler. But then again I'd have still picked you over Bill Shorten, given that stark choice. Bill's grown on me big time since, but mainly, ironically, after he announced his retirement from politics. But at that time I thought he was well cast by the ABC as the terrier in "At home with Julia". Sorry, I digress.

Despite my then doubts about you, I think it's a shame the party machine backed Bill over you as leader. Six wasted years, to be blunt. But you proved yourself the same loyal rock on Bill's team as you had on Kevin's and Julia's. And again that stands out from the pack in those years of changing prime ministers or opposition leaders with toothbrushes. You were still not Lodge material to me, nor even close. Were you then sensing more was definitely ahead? Were your colleagues? If so, I didn't notice.

Nothing of major note from me for the years between there and 2019. But when you finally became party leader in opposition, the party having lost the unloseable election, I was glad. You were still a workman-like good bloke, principled and dependable. But I think that would be around the time, for me, you started to show signs of being not just good for Australia but also someone Australia could follow. And from there, your party deserved the narrow 2022 election win, and you the keys to the Lodge. But that said, at that stage, I thought of you as a bit too timid for the ranks of "statesman"; and so I hoped you'd keep the top seat safe and warm for the mythical Labor statesman of unknown identity who'd emerge from the shadows to take the baton.

Now to 2023. And this is the one monumental blotch your copybook carries for me, and I'm going to be honest. The Voice referendum. I loved your clarion 2022 election night victory speech where you solemly committed your government to implementing the wishes of Australia's First Nations people through the Uluru Statement from the Heart, starting with a referendum for a Voice to Parliament. That was at least bordering on statesmanship for me. 

But - and I can't think of a kind way to say this, I'm sorry - it was a balls up fail from there, mate. This is all my opinion, granted. And others may disagree, evenly violently. But to me you'd have done better by our First Nations people by not putting the referendum at all than by putting it and then leading the process so abysmally. I'm sorry, but you failed our indigenous grievously in that. Your #1 failure in my assessment was a naive and catastrophic failure to read the national room .. No wait; the global room. I'm talking about the frightening power misinformation has acquired in such a very short time, to become a political power in its own right. Your political opponents didn't get a lot "right" in that term (as your victory now makes plain); but for their ends they walloped you in straight sets with an "exemplary" misinformation campaign. You handled it with all the finesse of a bunny in the headlights, muttering repeated motherhood mantras about Australian character or something.

After that I felt thoroughly disillusioned, and to be again brutally honest, at that time, I came to the view that a one-term Prime Ministership and government looked both predictable and just. 

So there it is. Again I'm sorry for the arterial spray with meat cleaver communication style. But ... In an odd way all that provides a foundation for this last stretch so far. And it clearly is "so far". 

Albo, you stand tall now. On appearances at least, you have years of productive and inspiring leadership yet ahead of you. And it's only 18 months after the referendum failure. That's extraordinary. And to top it you seem to have a team behind you with none of the throat-slitting instincts that rendered both the previous Labor government and the intervening Coalition one infested swamps of atrophy and death. Granted it might have become my pure blindness by now; but 3 days ago you still looked to me not a lot more than a safe solid Aussie who'd keep us totally safe while semi-awake. The polls probably conned me in that direction. I expected you to be PM, but a meek one, leading a meek government, in a meek parliament for three more grinding years.

But the present Australia unwrapped way before time at just 8:30pm on election night is a stunner. I'm still blinking. We have in you, after that long truncated, at times barely moving race, Steve Bradbury-like in outcome but hardly in verve, a commanding national leader with a very full trust balance. (So you can probably have a failure or two and still hold us). You exude an innate understanding of the Australian psyche, and you may even have built some of it in the best you call us to be. Statesmanship is of course in the eye of the beholder to a fair degree. And you may not be viewed that way by the nation as a whole just yet. But for the record mate, you looked every inch the Statesman to me the other night. So I'll be paying more attention and following to boot.

With that laid out, I want to return to the part I was blunt on. But this time in a very different vein. I'm so glad you gave just enough space in the final week of the campaign to the still to be done work of reconciliation. My #1 plea to you as you face your second (at least!) term as Prime Minister, is please put our First Nations people back at the top and centre of the national conversation, where they should have remained throughout the last term, not just until 2023. Please use the abiding authority you now have granted you by us all to bring a legislated Voice to Parliament to pass, and then chart a course to follow with Makarata and Treaty. Albo, that's on you. Don't fluff it mate.

Sincerely, from my heart

And yet my writing, especially of late, and still more especially on the subject of Christians and transgender, has been replete with first person pronouns and phrasing. Why so? It’s not that I’m directly, personally impacted by Christian or evangelical attitudes to non-binary gender or to members of the trans community. I’m a straight, married cisgender male. And my immediate family members likewise. So the subject isn’t personal in that sense. Yet it is in two other senses, both of which I’ve at least touched on previously. One is my concern that my own Christian tribe (evangelical) is if anything hardening rather softening toward transgender and trans people. The other is that quite a bit of what I’m observing or arguing on the subject differs in part from where I once was, and some not that long ago. In other words my own grasp, appreciation, thinking and doing, are evolving. And that’s nothing if not personal.

The trans ‘cult’?
In referring to Bp Mariann Budde’s almost legendary sermon, I noted briefly in my last piece a conservative Christian allusion to a "gender ideology [or cult]”¹. It was the factual and visceral nature of Christian references to this supposed phenomenon in commentary on the sermon and on Budde herself that most concerned and astounded me. She was, allegedly, validating and promoting a dangerous and prevalent gender ideology. It's not that the concept of a cult or ideology is at all new to me. I've encountered it many times, mainly among Christians, over the space of about 15 years. But I don't think I had fully grasped how entrenched and deeply held it has clearly become. 

Since the Budde sermon, I've noted it in numerous social media threads involving people I don't know. But it's become especially intense and even alarming with people I do know. For quite a number of my more conservative friends the “cult" has evidently long since passed from social theory to presumed fact. So significant numbers of evangelical Christians are in no doubt, it seems, of an orchestrated global movement, through which numbers of children are being actively indoctrinated by adults into a radical worldview of gender fluidity, their own gender itself in question, all rendering them ready targets for some form of gender transition they would not naturally have sought. The theory doesn't necessarily stop there either. As with other rightwing conspiracy theories, it's commonly also alleged that the same "movement" involves the sexualisation, grooming and abuse of children. And some or all of this is assumed reality behind innumerable Christian conversations.

Going on some of my recent social media experiences, so certain is conservative Christian belief in the “cult” that anyone questioning the cult's existence, such as by asking for evidence, earns a label such as "trans apologist". For instance in a single recent thread I was so labelled by two people, and 'unfriended' by a third. 

There's more I might recount in this vain, but what's much more important to consider is the implications of this phenomenon for Christian mission right now. As I've previously highlighted one of my core motivations in taking up this subject is that we the evangelical community today might not repeat with the trans community the shunning and othering we inflicted on lesbians and gays for at least a century. The matter has been on my heart, and in my blog, since well before 2025. And so the prejudice and ignorance revealed in many Christian responses to the Bp Budde sermon were not even part of what I had planned to comment on. Indeed my Part 1 was published before some of the online interactions I've mentioned here. 

A conspiracy theory by any other name
As I now reflect on the relative prevalence among Christians of the "gender cult" conspiracy theory (yes I'm calling it that, and without reservation), the task of reshaping evangelical responses to trans people becomes yet more daunting, with yet more layers to traverse. The "cult" conspiracy theory provides a ready escape from even believing that trans (or non-binary gender) people exist, should a person wish to carry it that far. Thanks to the "cult", there needn't be any people who experience persistent gender dysphoria and may choose to transition of their own volition. Instead many or all of them are victims of deception and abuse by others. And so the targets for engagement are the alleged cult practitioners, whose certain yet secret crimes have never been exposed and whom no one has yet met. It also means that those I'm allegedly an "apologist" for are not people who transition, but rather cult perpetrators of indoctrination and criminal abuse.

What about detransitioners?

What subscription to the “cult” theory further allows is a selective exercise of Christian grace, somewhat akin to the casuistically constrained "love" I addressed in part 1. A demographic that's come to receive much attention among subscribers to the cult theory is "detransitioners". These are people who've come to regret gender transition and wish to return to their original gender identity. A meme I saw recently made much of this phenomenon. Whilst rightly emphasising the need for pastoral grace and assurance of God's mercy to be shown such folk, embracing them in church fellowships, it went on to project a coming 'flood' of such people seeking solace from the pain of failed transitions, victims of their own sin against God's creative design. That perspective allows Christians to go on believing that gender transition is sin, that it causes only harm to those who undertake it, that "detransitioning" (or a desire for it) is, if not inevitable then to be expected, and that Christian love, grace and inclusion are for the ones who 'repent'. 

Now let's be clear. There should be no doubt that there are "detransitioners", or in other words that there are people who undergo gender transition - social, hormonal and/or surgical - and later regret doing so and seek to reverse the change. "Buyer's remorse", as it's sometimes called, is a phenomenon in many sectors of life, including for instance long established and common surgical treatments. Gender transition regret happens to real people, and they do deserve all the care, love and inclusion God's people can give them. However there is no evidence that such cases constitute a significant proportion² of all of those who experience gender dysphoria and pursue gender transition in some form. So Christians and churches would be very unwise to expect the proposed 'flood' of detransitioners. Far more grace and inclusion (perhaps in flood proportions?) should be anticipated for the very satisfied majority of trans people who, far from expressing regret, testify to an unprecedented (for them) peace, liberation and wholeness. Among them are not a few followers of Jesus who, reading the same Bible, do not believe they have sinned and do call Jesus "Lord". Church, this demographic is for mission, not for war; these are the ones especially to embrace and to love.

Trans considerations for sceptical Christians

I want to offer some thoughts in particular for evangelical or conservative Christians to whom my observations so far are not welcome or persuasive. Perhaps the “gender cult” remains for you an unavoidable explanation for what you're observing? Here are some matters I encourage you to reflect on:

• Do you have practical evidence of the cult's activities? For instance do you know or know of a child who is being, or has been, indoctrinated or manipulated into gender transition? Or one who has been groomed or abused by a person or group teaching a gender ideology? Or an adult who reports such experiences during their childhood? 
• And if not — having in mind the global extent of the alleged cult, and the length of time over which gender dysphoria, transgender treatments and trans people have featured in public consciousness, how realistically likely is it that the alleged cult's activities would have entirely evaded prosecution or detection to date?
• If you have no objective evidence of the “cult”, is it responsible and honest to refer to it as fact? (Consider biblical wisdom, e.g. Prov 18:17; Prov 25:18 )
• The inclusion of child abuse in the activities of the alleged cult might be a red flag, given its regular appearance in political conspiracy theories (e.g. QAnon, Pizzagate) 
• Try an internet search on criteria such as gender, trans, cult, ideology and conspiracy theory. Such a search will yield an extensive corpus of documentary material identifying the gender cult / ideology as a widely documented conspiracy theory with roots going back decades or more 
• Listen to the personal story and/or biblical reflection of at least one trans Christian 

On the last consideration, future writing plans include at least one such story. In the meantime I welcome feedback, questions and challenges. These could be posted on my Facebook timeline or through the Disqus comment spaces on my blog. Please be mindful that trans or non-binary gender people do exist, that they've always lived among us, that they reflect on their gender identity in a variety of ways, that most of them are not political activists, and that some of them are your brothers or sisters in Christ.

The church's latest social war I

The church's latest social war Il

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¹ The two-word phrase appears in a range of forms. The first word is variously “gender”, “transgender” or “trans”; the second either “ideology” or “cult”. In this post I’ll use “gender cult” or simply “cult”.  

² It's still relatively early days for gender therapy, meaning a shortage of longitudinal data; and so for that and other reasons the rate of regret is well short of settled. However such research as is available suggests a very low rate of regret, possibly as low as 1 or 2 percent, and almost certainly a single-figure percentage.

For those Christians convinced that ministries of oversight and teaching are by God’s design reserved to men, the bishop’s gender alone, regardless of anything else, has been a profound sore point and the focus of criticism, as it is always in various contexts. Aside from that given, two themes have been dominant as I’ve observed it. One I fully expected, the other has somewhat surprised me - at least in its intensity.  The former is the charge of political bias. The Episcopal Church, the American denomination (an Anglican Communion province) in which Budde is a bishop, is commonly presumed to be aligned with left or progressive politics. For quite a few Christian critics Budde’s sermon generally, and her plea to President Trump in particular, were but one more evidence of that political alignment. As the criticism went, the bishop was promoting leftist talking points rather than Jesus. Other Christians have been expressing the counter confidence that Budde’s message placed her firmly in the biblical covenant and prophetic justice tradition of defending the marginalised. 

Lest there be any doubt, the latter is my assessment. But my major motif in this series is more directly the second of the two themes I’ve just alluded to, namely transgender, the Christian conversation I believe must be had now for the gospel’s sake. My sense of the urgency of this conversation, especially among evangelicals, has only been heightened by the potency of reaction to a single word in Budde’s sermon, ‘transgender’, and its coupling with the noun ‘children’. It’s insisted by many conservative Christians that this is indicative of a ‘gender ideology’ to which the bishop subscribes and which she was intentionally promoting in her sermon. I’ll return to that claim in more detail in a later piece on this subject.

Male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27)
In opening the subject of Christians and transgender about 10 days ago, I ended with a concise biblical and theological reflection on what it means, and even more what it doesn’t, to love one’s neighbour, child or adult, who testifies to gender dysphoria in some form and may be considering, or has undertaken, gender transition. 

That reflection was in a way preparatory for the one I want to outline here. This time I’ll be a little more thorough hermeneutically, though still mindful of my modest scholarly ‘pay grade’. A more thorough exegesis is for another time, and maybe another writer. In part 1 I introduced a newly written and published so-called Christian “creed” for “Sexual Integrity”, including a single paragraph proscribing, as against God’s design, any attempt to alter a person’s gender. This is not to say there’s anything novel in that kind of statement. Indeed something along those lines has become a commonplace as evangelicals have responded to all talk of gender non-conformity. 

Yet the more I listen to people, Christian and not, who experience gender dysphoria, the more perplexing I find such credal assertions. The Church’s credal tradition has been about core gospel truths, such as the divinity of Christ, not sexual (or any other) ethics. And the biblical underpinnings of Christian credal confessions have drawn on the breadth of the Scriptural witness. In contrast the “creed” of immutable binary gender seems to rest on a single verse (v27) of the first Creation narrative, Genesis 1. (If there are other biblical foundations to the statement, I’ve not been made aware them). 

On that one verse, so it appears, it’s proclaimed as a matter of doctrine not only that both women and men share in the imago dei (the image of God), but also that:
• there are only two genders in human Creation;
• every human is ‘biologically’ either male or female;
• the genitalia of every newborn child is determinative of the gender God created them to be (so every child born is either a ‘biological male’ or a ‘biological female’);
• the child’s evident ‘gender’ at birth is God’s last word on the subject (i.e. it’s immutable);
• any suggestion, let alone action, to the contrary is sin, being rebellion against God’s creative design.

I want to highlight in this the language of biology. A common phrase employed by evangelicals who reject any place for gender transition is ‘biological (fe)male’. A person’s gender identified at birth is fixed by God, meaning that come what may that’s the gender they fundamentally are; because ‘biology’. 

What I find especially perplexing is the insistence on the ‘biology’ of gender, as a biblical hermeneutic, on the part of bible students and scholars who I know are not creation literalists. From many conversations I’ve had, and evangelical sermons I’ve heard, it’s plain that the majority of evangelical theology graduates today (and the colleges where they studied) would read and expound the Creation accounts (Genesis 1,2), according to literary genre, as theological texts and not as history or science in any post-enlightenment sense. Thus most would not subscribe to a literal 6-day or young-earth creation.

And yet we would pluck out a single verse from a chapter we agree is not a source of atmospheric or geological science, and in effect insist that that verse is a primary source of biological science; a complex field in which few bible students are trained. And then we must contend with the published insights of actual current genetic science, which are not readily harmonised with the authoritative ‘biology’ we claim to draw from the Bible. One starting place for this might be a short piece from about 2019, in which biology professor Dr Rebecca Helm introduced the complex interplay between biological, chromosomal, genetic, hormonal and cellular sex. The piece has been re-shared many times on social media and other platforms. Here is but one instance.

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My thoughts for future pieces on this theme include more on the widely believed ‘(trans)gender ideology’, and some human stories of gender dysphoria and transition. And more may emerge as this vexed and polarised Christian subject continues to evolve along with my own awareness. In closing this post I’ll point very briefly to a burden I’ve carried for some time now. I desperately don’t want the errors the evangelical community, myself included, made for decades in treating gays, lesbians and bisexuals as the enemy, to be repeated with the transgender community. And that’s why this all matters.

The church's latest social war I

The church's latest social war III

The second characteristic in common, as I observe it, is a cultural one. Or for literary effect I might call it cultural purism. I mean pastors who minister in Christian denominations with a long history of being at arms length from civic life. That's not a criticism of any kind. History has simply made it so.

I mean that their church buildings, and therefore their liturgical and pulpit ministries, generally aren't at the head of the list when civic authorities are planning state occasions that involve a religious service. There's a whole branch of western cultural history that accounts for that general reality. British imperial history, just for one. (A mixed blessing, need one say?)

It all adds up to a very different ministry context and a very different set of criteria for planning and delivery. Not one that lends itself to doctrinal purism. The preacher isn't addressing a Christian congregation who've come to hear a restating of the gospel, a biblical exposition, or an exhortation to Christian living. Rather they have an eclectic audience with a range of vague expectations or none. Preachers who try a gospel invitation on their captive audience don't get another gig.

I suspect my theological framework would place me at odds with Bp Budde on several levels. But I don't care. It was a state occasion, that day at the National Cathedral in Washington. And the world saw and heard something truly rare: a Christian leader gently but plainly advocating to the most powerful man in the world on behalf of some of the world's most powerless. That's the word and the work of a prophet. And a bishop too.