The Most Noxious Point of the Windsor Report Becomes Reality

When the Windsor Report came out I found myself in a very tiny minority. Certain forms of math are not my strong suit, but I kept counting the Windsor recommendations differently - No blessings; No consents; No border crossings; Listen to the lives of gay and lesbian people. Four fingers of one hand, so even the arithmetically challenged could manage. But I had to keep using my thumb, because I counted five.

Number five made me work to try and pay attention to not only its presence, but its great danger for who we are as a Communion, even as Christians. It was this: The Archbishop of Canterbury should exercise extreme caution in inviting Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, to Communion-related events. Now this has happened; the Archbishop has decided that Bishop Robinson will not be among the bishops invited to attend the 2008 Lambeth Conference.

The tactic of exile and isolation has been among strongest tools of oppression against the human spirit. We were created to be in communion, and there is a deep-seated intuition on the part of those who wish to hem in human freedom that the best way to do this is to separate us, one from another.

The groundbreaking work of Rene Girard has revealed the mechanism of scapegoating. Girard teaches that Jesus and the Hebrew prophets began loosening the chains of scapegoating. This action of isolating Bishop Robinson is retrogressive, taking us backwards to a shadowy, scary place from which we have already been delivered by Christ and the Prophets.

The isolation and exile of Bishop Robinson has implications for the Communion too, within the larger framework of scapegoating. A former Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, once said that if you touch one bishop of the Anglican Communion, you touch them all. This refers to the idea that bishops represent the unity of the Church. The bishop as a symbol of unity is usually understood at the level of a diocese, but there is a larger horizon of meaning - when we look at one bishop our spiritual vision can see all bishops everywhere, for the unity represented is most importantly the unity of the Church throughout the earth.

The isolation and exile of Bishop Robinson rebukes the bright vision of the unity of the Church, and substitutes the mechanism of the diabolic, the shattering of communion and integrity. I cannot overemphasize how important it is to meet this action on our Archbishop's part with the weapons of the spirit. I will be praying that my response and our response will be in solidarity with Bishop Robinson, mindful of our relatedness worldwide, full of shalom,  and creative, in the manner of Jesus Christ.