Anglican Perspectives

Unintended Consequences – TEC in Africa

In 1859 in Geelong, Australia (across the bay from Melbourne), a couple of guys were sittin’ around lookin’ for sumptin’ to do. They decided to release twenty-four rabbits into the wild and go hunting for them. Apparently, their hunting skills were on par with their analytical abilities. They did not get all 24 rabbits that had been released. That left them to breed at the rate of up to 30 little fur balls from each female each year. In case your math skills are similar to the hunting skills of those guys, I’ll fill you in. By 1920, it was estimated that the rabbit population had risen to 10 Billion! (Yes, that’s with a “B”!)

 

In 1950, a biological solution was envisioned. Mosquitoes and fleas infected with a virus called Myxoma were released hoping to infect the rabbit population. While it worked, reducing the rabbit population by more than 90%, the mosquitoes and fleas could not survive in the arid areas of Australia, which is most of it! Though the rabbit population was not as huge there as in the more hospitable climes, they were able to rebound to a population of about 300 million. With adult females bearing 30 new rabbits a year, that’s a lot of rabbits— billions again soon, destroying agricultural land and strangling other wildlife out of resources.

 

These rabbits were part of a trial version of the same program that degraded the population in Australia.

 

All this was unintended. It was just a hunting lark all those years ago. But these kinds of train wrecks are not restricted to Lepus Curpaeums. We have seen other areas where there are unintended consequences. In the 1970’s, people who seem to have been motivated by pastoral concern, wanted people to feel better about who they were, and began a process of affirming same-sex relationships. The arguments that surfaced defending the practice of blessing what people were doing were not theologically based. Neither did they address the consequences of the behavior. The attention was limited to the feelings of the people involved. The impact on others was dismissed.

 

The same thing happened when the General Convention affirmed the election of Gene Robinson in New Hampshire. I remember a passionate argument from Ian Douglas, now the Bishop of Connecticut, in which he basically said, “No one in other Provinces cares at all about whether or not a homosexual bishop is consecrated.” By focusing on part of the question and ignoring other parts of it, we see the tremendous, though negative, impact that it had on the “fabric of the Communion.” I doubt that Ian believed that there would be a melt-down, but that is not the point. There was no attention given to the consequences.

 

In the last few days, the Episcopal Church has just released a statement with five African Primates; Burundi, Central Africa, Tanzania, West Africa, and Southern Africa. It deals with how they will work together and what the character of common life should be. The problem is that it completely glosses over the depths of theological flaw that is driving the liberal agenda. I would bet my bottom dollar that there is not sufficient attention being given to the consequences of the partnership that is being articulated. I’ve spent a lot of time in each of the five African Provinces whose Primates signed on to this letter. Of course, of those, Southern Africa is the most liberal. I’m sure that the others have no intention of incorporating into their Provinces the sexual license, bizarre Christology, and unBiblical practices of TEC. The tragedy is that they think they can have friendship (and resources) from TEC without falling prey to the “down-side” of their theological trajectory. They are wrong. They have released far more than twenty-four theological rabbits in their home turf. Whether intended or not, the heresies will propagate like rabbits.

 

The Rt. Rev. Bill Atwood is Bishop of the ACNA International Diocese and a contributing author to the American Anglican Council. 

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