In the coming months, the worldwide Anglican Church will likely break into several distinct communions over the issue of gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions. That's my guess based on the new realities of global Christianity that are shaping the crisis. The bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan, warned that the Archbishop of Canterbury could become "little more than the titular head of a moribund and declining British, American, and Australian sect."¹

The present Anglican conflict, vastly consequential in itself, portends the challenges Christians will face across the communions as the numerical superiority of the newer churches of Africa, Asia and Latin America makes itself felt. It will give every Christian a sense of virtual membership in a single parish-Our Lady of the Global Village. World Christianity is coming home, and Christians are about to experience the catholicity of the church in a personal way.

Last week at Lambeth Palace thirty-seven Anglican primates�the heads of national churches�met with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to address recent divisive events. The Reverend V. Gene Robinson, a divorced father of two now living with a homosexual partner, is scheduled to be consecrated as bishop of New Hampshire on November 2. The New Westminster diocese, headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, has been offering blessing ceremonies for same-sex marriages.

The Anglican primates issued a joint statement making clear "that the recent actions in New Westminster and in the Episcopal Church (USA) do not express the mind of our Communion as a whole, and these decisions jeopardize our sacramental fellowship with each other." The statement went on to say that bishop-elect Robinson's up-coming November 2 consecration "will tear the fabric of our communion at its deepest level...If his consecration proceeds, we recognize that we have reached a crucial and critical point in the life of the Anglican Communion, and we have had to conclude that the future of the communion itself will be put in jeopardy."

Prior to the Lambeth Palace meeting, the American Anglican Council, a body representing dissenting, "biblically orthodox," Episcopal churches in the United States, had asked the primates to rebuke the American church. The Council further requested that the Archbishop of Canterbury make provision for an alternate set of bishops to care for its congregations. Those participating in the council vowed to withhold funds from the national Episcopal Church if the consecration of bishop-elect Robinson went forward. They would establish their own mission agencies, educational institutions, etc.

In the last forty years Episcopalians who believe in historic Christianity have watched their denomination given over to churchmen like Bishop John Spong of Newark, who deny the faith's central tenets. Traditional Episcopalians have threatened schism many times over such issues as liturgical innovation, the ready-acceptance of divorce among the clergy, the ordination of women, and the ordination of practicing homosexuals. In the past they have always quailed and retreated.

This time they had a card up their sleeve: they knew that the global Anglican communion is far more conservative than its United Kingdom and American provinces. Practicing Anglicans in the Third World probably outnumber their Western brethren by twenty to one.

In the previous five years Third World provinces have made their numerical weight felt. In 1998 the Anglican communion's global conclave issued a statement that the practice of homosexuality was contrary to the teachings of Scripture. Asian, African, and Latin American bishops joined together to insure an unequivocal stance.

This caused apoplexy in liberal camps. Bishop Spong said the African bishops had "moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity," and so could not understand the real issues. He indicted Third World spirituality for its "religious extremism" and "Pentecostal hysteria."²

There's wonderful comedy in these sputters of illiberal rage, of course. But those of us who share the Third World's "religious extremism" need to hear in these Anglican trials a summons to the hard work and hard thinking that lies ahead.

The faith's enormous growth, from South Korea to Brazil to Nigeria, will utterly change the political, cultural, and religious conversations in North America and Europe. Christians in the Third World will increasingly shape the geopolitical dynamic, as Christian populations seek to co-exist with Islamic governments, as in Nigeria and the Sudan; with violent Hindu political movements, as in India and Sri Lanka, and even with European secularism. Millions of Third World Christians are migrating to the West. A neighborhood church could include a substantial contingent of former Igo tribesmen from Nigeria or exiles from Iran.

Global Christianity is, in many respects, an incredible inspiration. The faith I've had the privilege of encountering in several parts of the world is vibrant, courageous, and typically transcends the often -petty concerns of the West. The faith of the Third World embraces biblical authority, is unabashedly supernaturalist, and amply demonstrates the truly multicultural appeal of the gospel-its power to bring God's love to the human person in every culture and circumstance.

A couple of years ago I was in the African nation of Gabon-a place that can only be described as virulent. Malaria, phadagenic skin ulcers, parasitic dysentery, and other diseases are virtually entailed with citizenship. The Ebola outbreaks are centered there and in the neighboring Republic of Congo.

One Sunday in Gabon I attended Mass at a local parish. I'll never forget that liturgy, especially the presentation of the gifts. In America, a family is usually dragooned into service to march wearily down the aisle. By the time the presentation of the gifts took place, the church had already been rocking for close to two hours. Long before the formal beginning of the liturgy, a choir and steel drum band led the congregation in hymns with calypso and even funkier rhythms. As time went on, more and more people joined in the singing. The whole congregation had become a mighty choir when the African priests and their altar boys and girls processed in.

The priest delivered a sermon that began with dialogue, as preachers used to do in the days of the Church Fathers. He quizzed his congregation about the meaning of the day's gospel before taking off from their comments into reflections of his own. The day's gospel, fittingly enough, was about the Rich Man and poor Lazarus.

Then, at the presentation of the gifts, a flotilla of middle school girls in their school uniforms, white blouses and black skirts, marched down the middle aisle. They kept the syncopated beat of the hymn we were singing, marking their progress with a little swing step that they performed in perfect unison. They looked tremendously happy and alive. There was nothing carnal about their movements. They were dancing before the altar of the Lord, bringing gifts-their own and the congregation's-to him. Bringing us all to him.

If I could only transport my suburban Catholic friends here, I thought, this liturgy would transform us. We'd be able to see what it means to celebrate the Mass. That Gabonese parish was alive with the super-aliveness of holiness in a place that is, in many respects, a living hell.

At the same time, the Church cannot romanticize our Third World brethren, or the effect they are likely to have on us and our secular neighbors in the West. What if the Christians in Nigeria, for example, decide they can no longer abide the present, rapid spread of the Islamic code of justice, Shari'a, which severely constrains their religious activities, and makes conversion to Christianity by Muslims punishable by death. What if they decide to secede from the nation, establishing a Christian state? What will be our response? What will we say to our secular neighbors, who will no doubt be ready to chalk up such conflicts to the incomprehensibilities of religious extremism?

There are dangers to what Ronald Knox called "enthusiasm"-that "Pentecostal hysteria" Bishop Spong so much laments. The Christianity of the Third World does stress the charismatic gifts to the point that they can be seen as an end in themselves. Along with this Pentecostal emphasis, many emerging Christian churches, and Catholic movements that imitate their techniques, promote what we would call in the States a "health and wealth gospel." Whenever the Cross is removed from the center of the faith, the faith soon vanishes and secularity follows.

Global Christianity in many places is in the early stages of inculturation. The Church must discern what in these indigenous cultures may be retained as compatible with the gospel, and what must be rejected. The complicated healing ceremonies in many African churches can bring to mind the ministrations of oganga or witch-doctors in tribal ceremonies. The inclusion of ancestors in prayers by Korean Christians coming out of a Shintoist background may strike the Western observer as being something other than the communion of the saints.

Are these examples of syncretism? Or are they legitimate forms of cultural adaptation? About the year 600, Pope Gregory the Great advised his missionaries to England: "[T]he temples of the idols should on no account be destroyed. The idols are to be destroyed, but the temples themselves are to be aspersed with holy water, altars set up in them, and relics deposited there...and since they have a habit of sacrificing many oxen to demons, let some other solemnity be substituted in its place, such as a day of dedication, or the festivals of the holy martyrs whose relics are enshrined there."³ The early Church recognized that what was good in pagan worship could be baptized for Christian purposes. On the other hand, the Druids had to go.

If there's one thing I'm praying for, it's that global Christianity will impress upon Western Catholics the exigency of the "new evangelization," that the laity must take up its charge to re-Christianize the West. Otherwise Western Catholics will be stuck between our uncomprehending and, I expect, increasingly hostile neighbors, and our far-flung fellow Christians. We live in perhaps the most difficult mission field of all, as the rapid spread of Christianity everywhere else makes clear.


1 As quoted by George F. Will, "The end of Anglicanism?" The Sacramento Bee, October 16, 2003.
2 As quoted in Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom, 121
3 As quoted in Philip Jenkins, The Coming of Global Christianity, 110-111.