I cannot be the only person trying to puzzle a way through the divisions that exist in the Anglican Communion at present. As I have said several times before, the main topic of the debate, issues around sexuality, is a deeply contentious one, one that I draw back from involvement in. This is partly because I do not believe that I have anything to add to the passion and complexity of the issues in this debate. The other more important reason is that I see the fundamental issue as going far deeper than our opinions and beliefs about human sexuality. In simple terms I see the current divisions within Anglicanism as being closely bound up with the culture wars being fought and paid for by enormously powerful and wealthy conservative forces in the States. These right-wing interests hope to take control of society on behalf of a religiously infused nationalism in America and across the world. Liberal thinking in politics or religion is a threat to that bid for power.
Our Anglican debates are probably a mere side-show within this larger picture, but these lobby groups have stirred up enormous passion in these discussions about sexuality. Thirty years ago, the LGBT debate was a non-issue. It certainly was nowhere thought to be a defining measure of who was or who was not a Christian. One reading of Anglican history suggests that the deliberate ramping up of this issue was orchestrated by a group of well-funded conservative Anglicans. They met in Kuala Lumpur in February 1997. They seem to have made a deliberate decision to put the same sex issue to the fore and ensure that it was a key item for discussion at Lambeth 1998. A hitherto minor point of disagreement was thus weaponised and turned into a means of uniting Anglican conservatives together in their bid to become the dominant faction in the Communion.
The current thinking by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York seems to be a wish that the different factions in the Anglican Communion and the Church of England might move towards a situation of gracious stalemate. They seem to be currently saying, ‘we cannot agree on this matter. At least let us agree to disagree and get on with other more important things like helping the world to avoid destroying itself and enable people to find God, especially the young’. Most of us would agree with such a sentiment and wonder why, instead of the costly and debilitating effort involved in fighting this culture war, the contenders cannot agree to a truce. But, as we know, there seems little sign that the successors of those who plotted at Kuala Lumpur are ready to pull back. The war does not seem destined to stop without one side surrendering and allowing the other to obtain power over the whole. If the debate is ultimately about power rather than sex, then we cannot expect it to be easily resolved.
As I indicated at the beginning, I do not propose to weigh up the arguments on either side of the divide. I have clear sympathy for those who wish the Anglican Communion not to be taken over and controlled by the same right-wing ideologies that have been on show in America under Trump. My concern in this blog is to try to unearth the causes as to why the two sides debating seem to be unable at times even to share a common discourse. For this we need to go back a stage in terms of human psychology. Before anyone is able to argue for truth, reality and freedom in a debate, they have a unique personal history and development. Reason is built on pre-reason. Before reason and proper functioning rationality emerged in each of us, there were a cluster of child-centred passions, desires, frustrations and the hope for instant gratification. Out of this chaos of an unformed personality, there eventually appeared the rational person with thought-out convictions. The connection between the rational adult and the irrational feelings of the child may, however, be closer that we might want to admit.
Every time we utter an opinion which we believe to be a rationally thought out and coherent point of view, we need to ask ourself. To what extent are we ever truly independent in our ideas? How far do the things we say and think reflect the jumble of emotions and feelings we have had as well as the people to whom we have been exposed over the decades right back to infancy?
I want to continue our reflection on the way we come to support a well thought-out and rational opinion on difficult issues, like the gay question, by looking at the work of Abraham Maslow. Maslow explained in an illuminating way how human beings are motivated to behave in certain ways because of a ‘hierarchy of needs’. These range from the physiological (food, warmth and rest) to social needs and others reflecting the human capacity for self-transcendence. I want to suggest that strongly held beliefs and opinions reflect and are intertwined with these various needs that inevitably influence day to day human functioning. Let me explain.
At the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid are some needs that have to be met for our physical survival. If our parents had not provided for these basic needs, we would have died. There is then another cluster of needs that provide for our social development. A child left without interaction, touch and mental stimulus may survive in a physical sense, but, like many Romanian orphans, he/she will be stunted and handicapped, mentally and emotionally. Beyond touch and proper stimulus is the need for attachment and sense of safety. Depriving any child of these things will probably create, then and into adulthood, compensatory behaviours. These represent a desperate need to receive what is their birth-right. Feeling safe and properly attached to others are among the experiences that everyone needs and deserves, enabling him/her to grow up as a balanced human being.
The need to feel safe is one of the basic requirements for all human beings. Maslow’s theory predicts that every child and every adult will reach out to seek safety when they sense its absence. When very young we looked to parents to provide for our safety but as we got older, we had increasingly to take responsibility for our own safety needs. Wise parents are constantly reassuring their offspring that they are safe. There are rituals for doing this, like night-time ‘tucking children up’. This can be enormously helpful in learning to deal with childhood fears, like that of darkness. When fears are overcome the child will possess a secure platform from which to explore the world. As adults, we also find that there is an instinctive mechanism inside us which sets up a certain tension and anxiety whenever we feel unsafe. We then strain with our whole being to remove that uncertainty and fear. Prayers and rituals of protection can play a large in the religious observance of many.
Among other Maslow needs identified in the hierarchy, is belonging. As with safety, this word points to a major element in religious language and practice. To belong, to be part of something bigger than ourselves, is what makes the religious quest attractive. It also resonates with and runs alongside our need to be safe. People in church environments are taught to seek and receive ‘salvation’. This is the promise of God-given safety which will carry us through this life and into the stage beyond death. Identifying the way that the beliefs and convictions that we hold resonate with the needs identified by Maslow is a useful thing to do. Having identified primal and pre-rational facets in our religious observance, it becomes easier to understand how religious arguments do not normally reflect pure logic and reason. Belonging and being safe are among the primal needs which belong to both our religious and social identities. They exist long before we articulate religious beliefs or argue doctrinal positions with others
One idea that has come to the fore once again, particularly in view of the impasse between the various factions on the LGBT issue, is the Indaba idea from Africa. This requires all parties in a disagreement to sit with each other to explore, at a deep level, what is really going on in a debate or conflict. I am no expert in the Indaba process, but it seems that it could be done in a way that draws on this Maslow insight about primal needs. I have suggested that it is an interweaving of rational and pre-rational processes that together has created our strongly held convictions. Getting in touch with the primal needs that Maslow identifies in every human being, clearly takes time. We might in the process learn to understand ourselves and others better. Common sense tells us that neglect of social needs in a small child might lead to a fascination with hell, salvation and eternal punishment. Also, we suspect that an expressed need to dominate and control, which is so pervasive in some areas of church life, may come from a failure to have had other social needs met in an individual’s past. Clearly the exploration of these layers of need in each of us would require huge amounts of time, combined with trust and a readiness to explore our deeper vulnerabilities. That would be Indaba++. But we desperately need new initiatives to replace the non-comprehending failures of communication exemplified in the recent videos from Christian Concern and CEEC. The Church of England is on a trajectory to fragmentation and even destruction because human beings have hidden behind contradictory and irreconcilable propositions. There is a crisis, and we need to do something urgently to resolve it. This will include examining our vulnerabilities and seeing how unmet needs may have created serious blockages in our ability to understand and embrace the reality of another human being and their opinions.
There is an assumption here that we should press for unity. It would be a bit like asking Lancashire to unite with Yorkshire. It’s never going to happen.
People define themselves, frequently their identity, by difference.
I had to call the fire brigade out to some woods I was walking through in the summer. Someone had started a fire. The firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze, fortunately before it could spread in the tinder dry brush. As they did I got chatting with the lead guy who had a northern accent. I have the minor hobby of trying to discern the exact area an accent comes from and I guessed at Newcastle. Wrong, he said, Gateshead. My clumsy guesswork could have really offended him, being wrong by 2 miles but with the river Tyne in the way. Such distances and devides have a distinct materiality. But he reassured me he supported Newcastle United. Phew, a major diplomatic incident was averted.
It’s similar with the Anglican divisions. A liberal is never going to become a conservative. There is some movement the other way of course, but don’t hold your breath. I wouldn’t attempt to convert someone away from their narrow views despite the sometimes relentless pressure to become more rigid from the other extreme. Neither approach really works.
If there is ever individual change, it usually occurs in quanta. Something breaks. Sometimes many things break. For example, seeing the way LGBTQ+ people have been treated in society for example with Alan Turing, or Vicky Beeching in the church, have been two of many significant “quantum breaks” which have enabled me to change the fixed, rigid and I’m sad to say, derogatory views I once held pre-loaded from a conservative upbringing. I repent of those views. And incidentally I can now satisfy myself scripturally for the views I currently hold in this regard.
Rigid, narrow views are almost invariably held from a psychologically defensive position. That said, a liberal’s inability to define almost anything they believe in is hardly a ringing endorsement for being one.
“See how they love one another.” If your church treats you well, then maybe you’ll stay. If it discriminates against or otherwise hurts you, I guess you’ll probably not stay.
In each of a diverse collection of church types, there are usually a few Christ-like characters who share a unique unity across the spectrum. I miss them.
At the top of Maslow’s pyramid of needs is “self actualisation”. Once lower needs are satisfied , he argues, we tend to want to develop ourselves to higher levels of achievement and more challenging goals. It is definitely worth exploring this model as it is reflected in church leadership and hierarchy.
A parish priest may think she can do better for herself and rise up the Church’s hierarchy. These days she can make Bishop. But to get there requires a lot of things of her, for example time and energy as well as ability and political savvy. Exercising these things may make a person very uncomfortable, losing contact with family and friends and finding political enemies which can damage the satisfactions achieved at the lower levels Maslow described. The desire for self actualisation can be thus fractured and never fully recovered.
One way to achieve “advancement” is to bypass the normal hierarchy and to become preeminent in a faction of the Church such as a conservative enclave. Indeed, like other factions they have their own autonomous unofficial pecking order with a small elite of “in”, “sound” leaders. It’s not a perfect system but it is bolstered by wealth which gives them power.
It can always become unstuck of course, if a leader “falls”. So there is considerable pressure to maintain the extremes of view, the wealth inflow, and police thought and behaviour to stamp out dissidents.
To advance in this system you have to do all the right things (such as attend Iwerne), say all the right things (toe the party line) and avoid all the “wrong” things such as any wavering on sexual issues.
Any church we study will have a section of its community wishing to self actualise. Many will be frustrated that they aren’t getting the advancement they hoped for and this is where dissent sets in.
From wannabe priests turned down for ordination, to worn out larynxes pushed off the singing rota, disaffection abounds. Latent talent sometimes has nowhere to go, but rarely stays silent. Sometimes promotions are nepotistic or otherwise unfair, but this only makes division worse.
Occasionally you will find a good leader who understands her charge’s desire for personal growth. She’s rare.
At higher levels I.e. at church faction level we see an unhealthy equilibrium. Apparent doctrinal differences are often more of a front for maintaining territorial security. The conservatives can’t give up their hardline because they utilise their rigid system to satisfy the unquestioning obedience of their security-seeking following.
The liberals can’t get rid of the conservatives because they need their quota money.
Self actualisation isn’t a binary state, and once achieved, on the one hand more is wanted, but on the other hand, one doesn’t want to lose what one already has. Those forces are at work in our churches and the behaviours we see can be tracked up and down Maslow’s hierarchy.
Do we know for sure that Kuala Lumpur 97 was such an exercise of ecclesiastical real politik?
I will be posting on this on Modern Church – the South South Encounter in Kuala Lumpur was organised by the Anglican Communion as the second meeting to enable provinces in the South to get to know one another so they could shape their mission without interference. The prime interests were in engaging in non-western cultures and the crushing debt faced by many countries. Diocese such as Haiti, Taiwan and Colombia – all in the Episcopal Church of the USA were present. A small group studied marriage and sexuality with an emphasis on polygamy and in the final statement that group put in a clause that mentioned Homosexuality as a horrendous sin along with rape and child abuse. The famous Kuala Lumpur Statement was not discussed at the Encounter and researchers have – to my knowledge drawn a blank over its providence. The authors of LLF suggest it was the work of an alliance between Western conservatives – who were around the fringes of the Encounter – and some African and Asian leaders – especially those from Singapore, where the statement was endorsed. It is associated with the Encounter by Global South Anglican – an entity that emerged around 2003 when Archbishop Akinola (the Chair of the South South Encounters) withdrew invitations to 35 provinces (including dioceses such as Haiti in what is now TEC and provinces such as Mexico and Brazil) removed a the Nigerian Director of Mission at the ACO from organisational leadership and sent out limited invitations for a meeting in 2005 to those who were favourable to the cause and included the Diocesans of Pittsburgh, Sydney, and Newfoundland and Labrador (an interesting understanding of Global South).
The drive for one faction to gain ascendancy over another is, of course, not only unchristian but a sign of spiritual immaturity and arrested spiritual development. Someone spiritually mature would not concern themselves about such matters and take differences for granted both in the various legitimate ways of understanding the Bible and the various expressions of church. Inevitably such people are not ambitious and too often are bypassed and not raised to higher positions of leadership. The safeguarding scandals and murmuring against Bishops and Archbishops is a result of the appointment system which further aggrandizes those totally unsuitable to be spiritual leaders. Leaders of various factions in the church also seem to emerge for the wrong reasons. This makes it difficult and problematic to negotiate differences whichever methods are used. Adversaries would need to agree to mediation which is implemented by those more spiritually mature. These are the people the current leaders have thrust aside in order to gain prominence.
Spiritual maturity should, in theory, be a prerequisite for appointments, certainly Christian behaviour. I was shocked to attend my first parochial church council meeting as a young adult. I naively thought God and Jesus would be at the front of the discussion, informing our every decision. I was wrong. When I suggested different, they looked at me as if I were mad.
Over the decades I’ve had to come to terms with this: the higher up the leadership you’re involved with, the less Christian it becomes and the more earthly.
Indeed I’ve been studying dysfunctional or down right wrong organisational behaviour for a good few years now, originally from a secular perspective, but I found repeated examples in church organisations, frequently worse.
To Perry. No we don’t know exactly what was going on in the 90s leading up to Lambeth 98. I am following the suggestions of Stephen Bates who sees a full scale attack on Anglicanism by these right wing factions in America. I used the expression ‘one reading of the evidence’ to suggest that there may be other interpretations. A Church at War is a good read but may be biased.
Thanks. I must try and get hold of this book,though as you say it may be biased.
Sometimes as children the physical tucking up in bed is not enough to feel safe because within them there is a relationship with the spiritual realities and it is there that a peace and a deep safety can be honed. The more spiritually mature the leader, the less threatened they will be with different factions.
Thanks Stephen – super piece.
We have found Edward De Bono’s six hats a useful tool in situations that might end in conflict. (Google it). An example this week was that an electric radiator was left on overnight. When the moment arose, I said “White hat information – no criticism. Between us we left this heater on overnight, and it cost £1-80 in electricity.” (The white hat is for information. Feelings are red hat). The other two appreciated this approach. We formed a joint plan to prevent a repeat.
On divisions, when George Carey took over, I heard someone say his role was like a man standing in Antarctic water trying to hold together several ice flows that were keen to float away from each other. Chilling work!
I think the rumblings of changing times were seen in the 50s and gathered political clout in the 60s with Roy Jenkins as Home Secretary who was credited with starting a cultural revolution with wide-ranging changes in the law, ending theatre censorship, relaxation of obscene publications, relaxing divorce laws, legalising abortion, homosexuality and more. His sexual proclivities in including his gay relationship with Tony Crosland and dalliances with other women outside of his marriage to Jennifer Morris only came to be seen later.
John Campbell said in his biography of him that his urbane hedonism put him at odds with ordinary British people. That was probably true but it also gave rise to the rather slow awakening of the Church that not everything in the new liberal garden was lovely that began to be seen in the 70s in the likes of Mary Whitehouse and the Festival of Light.
Many in the Church are now signed up to the culture we now see around us but not all and the divisions which could be prophesied back in the 50s are about us now.
My own senses still remain traditional and orthodox but that is not what I want to say in this piece. I feel that division is coming and it is inexorable. “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” is the Biblical word.
Trying to force some sort of ecclesiastical lump is never going to work, it will be inherently unstable but I would want to suggest that the story of the split in Israel into the two parts of Judah and Ephraim has something to say to us. Rehoboam had his army drawn up for battle aiming to bring his opponents under Jeroboam to heel when the prophet of God came and said God’s Word is to ‘leave it’. Do not fight against your brothers. The message was “Let them go …. and more importantly THIS IS OF GOD”. This separation is ‘of God’. This ecclesiastical body WILL fracture, neither side is going to win and the hope that one side will persuade the other side is a pipe dream.
Fracturing is happening all around us in the world and the Church will share in it. Reality calls.
Leslie, interesting thought. Thank you.
Thank you for this wonderful insight. We who guided Continuing Indaba looked very hard at biblical methodologies of conflict transformation from the perspectives of numerous non-Western cultural perceptions. I have shared this link with the researchers who followed our every move – especially Paula Nesbit who authored the text you have here. Thank you.
Stephen – please be in contact if you wish – you have my email