The Implications of Episcopalian Schism

George Will comments today on a religious story that may say as much about globalization as it does about religion:

The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh recently became the second diocese (the first was in Fresno, Calif.) to secede from the U.S. Episcopal Church since, but not entirely because of, the 2003 ordination in New Hampshire of an openly gay bishop -- Gene Robinson, a classmate of Duncan's at General Theological Seminary in New York in the 1970s. Before the Robinson controversy, other Episcopalians, from South Carolina to Southern California, had disassociated from the Episcopal Church and put themselves under the authority of conservative Anglican bishops who serve where the church is flourishing -- often in sub-Saharan Africa, where a majority of Anglicans live.

As Will goes on to note, "Today, the typical Anglican is a middle-aged African woman."

What does it mean that some of the most conservative dioceses of a mainstream U.S. denomination are turning to Africa and Latin America for leadership? If more dioceses follow those of Pittsburgh and Fresno to break with Canterbury and associate instead with Abuja, will it affect U.S. ties with the developing world in other ways? It seems difficult to believe that there would be no shifts in attention or culture in churches that at least nominally take their cues from lands that, not too long ago, were considered missionary territory.

Protestant missionaries long defined much of the relationship between the US and Africa, China, and other parts of the non-European world. Missionaries far outnumbered diplomats and traders, far outpaced them in depth of engagement in and knowledge of these distant lands. Because of their ability to raise funds and shape elections, they also drove a good deal of US policy, though this role is often forgotten today.

Now, however, African Anglicans are standing up and asserting their own leadership, refusing to go along with doctrinal shifts on sexuality and marriage that they see as incompatible with Scripture. Rather than accept guidance from Canterbury, they are instead claiming the faith as their own and asserting their rights to define it. As the archbishop of Uganda wrote last year:

But however we come to understand the current crisis in Anglicanism, this much is apparent: The younger churches of Anglican Christianity will shape what it means to be Anglican. The long season of British hegemony is over.

The dioceses leaving the Episcopal communion are emphatically conservative - stereotypically unlikely to be concerned with the problems of the developing world. And it certainly is an unexpected example of globalization - globalization, after all, is usually seen as a close relative of progress, but in this case it is a reactionary movement against increasingly liberal mainstream values that is driving the process. But if more churches leave the Episcopal communion and look further abroad that England in search of spiritual leadership, those dynamics may start to subtly change.