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Give ear to one another
Peter McGeary asks whether the listening process exists in the Anglican Churches
The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality: A resource to enable listening and dialogue
SPCK £14.99 (978-0-281-05963-8) Church Times Bookshop £13.50 “HERE we go again,” I groaned inwardly as I was handed the padded envelope that had this book in it. A good friend and I had been chatting recently about all this. We were at university together, and have both reached a more reflective stage in our ministries — that awful stage when what has gone around is indeed coming around. We tried to count up the number of reports, books, articles, and the like that have come our way on the subject of homosexuality and the Church. We lost count. Do we really need yet another book? Perhaps we do. Philip Groves is the Facilitator of the Listening Process on Human Sexuality in the Anglican Communion, and has gathered together a wide range of contributions from diverse parts of the Anglican world in direct response to the declared intentions of the 1998 Lambeth Conference. This is an area in which many people think they know what other people think; so a broad authorship is helpful. The format itself is of dialogue and listening: after a helpful introduction, each chapter is co-written by people from very different theological and geo-graphical perspectives; and initial contributions are then responded to. In addition to exhaustive analyses of the contexts of scripture, tradition, and culture, there are reflec-tions that have been drawn from the world of science; explorations of the nature of human identity; and helpful chapters on the art (or science?) of listening and talking to one another properly. There is material here to annoy everybody — good! I can think of few areas of contemporary ecclesiastical discourse more constrained by cultural relativity, prejudice, and hidden assumptions — on both sides. We cannot help this, up to a point, but at least we need to be made aware of the pitfalls that can hinder a proper understanding of another’s point of view. I wish this book and its contents well. I think there should always be space for serious reflection on serious matters. The style is systematic and slow, and that is no bad thing: the subject-matter has been the victim of too much hype and hysteria; and a more prosaic approach is, perhaps, timely. Whether serious reflection can take place in a contemporary Anglican context is open to question, however. Some have argued that a listening process does not, and cannot, exist; and the synthetic certainties that are bellowed from both sides on this (and other) issues would seem to support that view. Listening is never helped by shouting. Perhaps it is too late for con-versation. I hope I am wrong about this, but at the time of writing the signs are not good. This year is the centenary of the birth of the composer Olivier Messiaen, whose music is peppered with the tunes of countless birds. I am told that much of his birdsong music could not now be written, because the tunes are no longer sung: mainly because of the noise that human beings have created, the birds cannot hear one another; so they cannot learn their songs from one another. The variety of their song is being diminished, because they learn by listening, and if they cannot hear they cannot learn. Can Christians learn anew to be properly quiet, and so properly to hear one another . . . and even the music of God? The Revd Peter McGeary is Vicar of St Mary’s, Cable Street, in east London, and a Priest-Vicar of Westminster Abbey. To order this book, email the details to Church Times Bookshop (please mention "Church Times Bookshop Price") |
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