An archbishop who puts power before principle

Rowan Williams has attempted to assuage the homophobes in his church all over the world

Poor, dear old Canon Jeffrey John. This blameless cleric has learned that his promotion within the Church of England is quite impossibly controversial. Slated until yesterday as the Bishop of Reading in waiting, Dr John has turned down the job in the face of an irate campaign led by evangelists and traditionalists in Britain, and by leading lights of the Anglican church in Africa, the Indian Ocean and Australia, all of whom are united in their rejection of an openly gay, though latterly celibate, bishop.

Worse (in some respects), he has learned that for many of his fellow countrymen, the interesting part of his tale of woe is that he has the same surname as the adopted one of a gay pop star with whom, unfortunately, he also shares a strikingly similar physiognomy. What a discovery: that some of those within your church revile and reject you simply because you present yourself honestly, as God made you, while most of those outside it can only raise any interest at all when given the opportunity to snigger for a second at the tenuous shadow of a celebrity connection.

Looking on the bright side though, the lack of real engagement in this amazing sequence of events from those outside the Church is probably something of a blessing to the Church of England. For it can safely be said that absolutely no individual involved in this sad débâcle comes out of it smelling of incense. As for the Church of England as a whole (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one), it emerges from the fray looking rather contemptible.

Least abhorrent - to the eye of a socially liberal atheist anyway - are the liberals in the Church of England, who at least are attempting to push on with an agenda for change. But how feeble they are, with their odd little accommodations and their preference against rocking the big, happy, churchy boat.

Dr John himself is a case in point. Here is a man who has been in a relationship all of his adult life, but who, for the last 10 years, has conducted that relationship asexually. What motivated this couple to end this part of their relationship? Did they, like many people involved over a very long period, decide that this was no longer a meaningful aspect of their relationship? If so, it surely would be rather opportunistic to do as the canon did, and cite this "lifestyle choice" as some kind of qualification for a post.

Or did they decide that it was time for them to move into line with the teachings of their church. The guidelines, Issues In Human Sexuality, appear to have been published not long before the couple's sexual relationship ended. Did the two of them - Dr John's partner also being an Anglican cleric - decide that the advice in this document made sense, and that as religious men they would abide by it?

If they did, then how could they? These guidelines, much quoted over the last few weeks, are a demand for hypocrisy, since they state that the clergy can be homosexual, but not practise as homosexuals. Unless the same rule of celibacy is demanded of heterosexual clergy, then this suggestion - never ratified by the Church - is just a queasy way of meeting bigotry half way. What use is this sort of discrimination to anyone, religious or otherwise? Do these two men accept that the loving relationship they had, until they decided to change its emphasis, was wrong? If so, why don't they tell us why this was the case?

Because in all the fury around this subject, any sort of rational explanation of why it is not right for homosexuals to openly lead congregations is entirely absent. The traditionalists and the evangelicals - usually pitted against each other, but as one on the subject of homosexuality within the church - are obsessed with a few lines of homophobic ranting in the Old Testament, even though for the sake of form they try to play down the fire and brimstone aspects of the matter. This doesn't seem to be very Christian of them at all. In fact, to the untrained eye, it all looks decidedly un-Christian.

As for the overseas members of the communion, they at least aren't afraid of letting rip, and openly declaring the decidedly irrational roots of their bigotry. So the Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, declares, quoting from Leviticus, that "thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination". The Archbishop of the Indian Ocean, Remi Rabenirina, doesn't even bother with quoting ancient scripture at all, opining that "homosexuality is just filthy". This at least has the dubious merit of being familiar, unvarnished homophobia, of the sort that blights - and ends - the lives of many Africans and West Indians. We know where we are with this sort of stuff, and so should the Church of England. This sort of hatred is vile, dangerous, cruel and completely unacceptable. So why is the Church of England so keen to accommodate it?

The decidedly unspiritual answer is: for the sake of power, prestige and pre-eminence. The Church of England is less worried about the fact that the organisation is so riven with contradiction that it is unable to function than it is about the fact that unless it keeps itself together somehow, disestablishment and irrelevance will be its fate.

Certainly this must be the issue at the forefront of the mind of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who is a friend of Dr John and is known to think that Issues in Human Sexuality is a fudge. As head of the Church though, he seems willing to push all of this to one side and attempt to assuage the homophobes in his church all over the world. He has put a humanitarian gloss on all of this, and says, with reference to his imminent trip to West Africa: "Some of our local issues are there too, of course, but so are most of the greatest wounds of our age, afflicting millions - violent conflict, epidemic disease, instability and poverty".

"Our local issues", as the Archbishop puts it, are, of course, those same issues as have forced the canon to stand down. And far from being an issue local to Britain, the issue of Christianity and homosexuality is an even more urgent one in West Africa than it is here. The discrimination faced by homosexuals in Britain is as nothing in comparison to that faced by gays and lesbians in West Africa and across the continent.

In most West African countries homosexuality is illegal and in Mauritania it is punishable by death. This seems to me another of the "great wounds of our age", and if the Church of England is not going to use its Christian influence in West Africa to challenge such inhumanity, then it really should be asking what it is doing there.

After all, it has manifestly failed so far to tackle "violent conflict, epidemic disease, instability and poverty". Perhaps changing the way people feel about each other is something the Church could more usefully address than these other, more complex matters that are not only about the thoughts and beliefs we hold in our minds.

But changing hearts and minds is something that the Church of England appears to wish to undertake only with the utmost caution. The best that can be said for it is that it is at least as cautious in welcoming the unsavoury elements it tolerates within its communion. It is well known that Church of England congregations are melting away, except for evangelical worshippers, who are increasing in numbers. Likewise, recruitment is much healthier in Africa than in England.

How any liberal can remain in an establishment whose only attraction seems to be its hysterical illiberality is a mystery. Except for the assumption that these guys prefer being big fish, in their big nasty pond, to being little fish in a tranquil little pond full of beliefs they could sign up to. Fishers of men, indeed.

d.orr@independent.co.uk