Ending the Cycle of Vengeance: a shorter version for CEN of 'Faith and Fellowship in Crisis'

Ending the Cycle of Vengeance

by Graham Kings

The Church of England Newspaper, 2 May 2008

Part of an address, ‘Faith and Fellowship in Crisis’, published in full on Fulcrum, given at the Pre-Lambeth Conference of the Diocese of Lichfield
University of Stafford, 26 April 2008

A friend and I were trying to meet up at Spring Harvest. We hadn’t seen each other yet, although we both knew we were there. We arranged to meet at the front of the main white pavilion. ‘I can’t see you yet, Pete. I’m just by the main entrance’. ‘So am I’, he said. We still could not find each other. Then, in a moment of inspiration, he asked: ‘You’re not in Minehead are you?’ ‘Yes.’ He replied, ‘I’m in Skegness!’ Well, at least we both thought we were at the same conference – not rival ones, one in Canterbury and another in Jordan and Jerusalem.

The splits in The Episcopal Church of the USA are in danger of becoming a cycle of vengeance and spiraling outwards. Currently, The Episcopal Church and the churches of the ‘Common Cause Partnership’, who are splitting away from it, have got themselves into a crazy situation of suing and counter-suing. This litigation is appalling.

The communiqué from the Primates’ Meeting in Dar es Salaam (February 2007) spoke, in particular, against litigation and yet the Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts-Schori, and others who read it and knew the mind of the Primates, still went ahead with it. The Bishop of Virginia, Peter Lee, was negotiating with the breakaway parishes in Virginia to bring about a settlement and agreement. Then he was overruled by the central bureaucracy of The Episcopal Church and legal cases were started, and defended, and are costing millions of dollars - which belong to God.

Where is the central Anglican voice of Scripture interpreted by tradition and reason? In the USA, it seems to me, it is the ‘Windsor Bishops’ who are conservative on issues of sexuality but are not going to split from The Episcopal Church. They have met several times at Camp Allen, facilitated by the theological work of the Anglican Communion Institute. The web site ‘Covenant’ (www.covenant-communion.com) which was launched in September 2007, is also a valuable resource in a similar tradition.

Who can cry ‘stop this madness of litigation’? For this drama, we need a Greek Chorus to comment on it and cry ‘shame’ and ‘cease’.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I saw an amazing play at the Barbican theatre in London, ‘Molora’. It is a South African version of the three Greek tragedies by Aeschylus, known as the Oresteia trilogy. A young director, Yael Farber, has recontextualised the tragedies into the setting of apartheid South Africa and subsequent events. It is very powerful, and the Chorus are the heroines.

For they are played by South African mamas who use traditional drums, a basic one- stringed instrument of a calabash and a bow, and twangy metal mouth instruments. They create a ‘soundscape’ around the action, sing in split tones and come out with deep groans – sighs too deep for words.

As they appeared, I whispered to Alison, ‘remember the Mothers Union in Kenya?’ We served in Kenya with the Church Mission Society for seven years at a theological college at Kabare, just south of Mount Kenya. The Mothers Union there, and throughout Africa, are a powerful, unstoppable movement. One day, Bishop David Gitari, who later became Archbishop of Kenya, was threatened by a Cabinet Minister for his challenging sermons advocating justice. He was ordered to turn up at the Cabinet Minister’s office. Bishop Gitari said he would be delighted to do so, and he would attend wearing his robes, together with all the Mothers Union, wearing their robes. Nothing further was heard about the matter.

These three tragedies of Aeschylus are based on a cycle of violence and vengeance. In the first play, Agamemnon, the King and leader of the Greek soldiers who captured Troy, is murdered by his wife, Klytemnestra. In the second, their son and daughter, Orestes and Elektra, plot revenge on their mother, and Orestes kills her. He is then threatened by the Furies for doing so and flees. The Furies are mythical, very scary avengers of crime, especially family murders. The third is the trial of Orestes who is accused by the Furies. When the Athenian judges have a split vote, Athene gives her casting vote to Orestes.

Now ‘Molora’, at the Barbican, weaves this tragic story into new patterns. It begins with the trial scene, but ‘not as we know it’, for this is the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, which was chaired by Desmond Tutu. Tutu does not appear in the play, but is mentioned with awe and appreciation in the programme. The mother and daughter face each other across the stage, behind desks with microphones on them and speak of what had happened.

Later we see what they were talking about when the white mother, Klytemnestra, abused her black daughter, Elektra, using apartheid-era torture methods, including holding her head under water in a bowl and keeping her head in a wet plastic bag. The arrival from exile of the black Orestes, the son, and the recognition of him by Elektra, is very moving. The plot of vengeance is frightening.

However, in ‘Molora’, amazingly the ending is changed. The cycle of violence and vengeance, according to the ancient written tragedy, is stopped. And there is hope.

There is not blood and death all over the place at the end. Orestes can’t bring himself to kill his mother and the axe dramatically does not come down on her head. When Elektra takes it up to kill her mother herself, because Orestes has bottled out, she is wrestled away by the Chorus of mamas. They carry her, still struggling, to the side of the stage and over a few minutes of singing and soothing, murmuring and caressing, calm her down.

The wrong is righted by the end being rewritten. The Chorus enters into the drama, physically, and does not just comment on it. ‘Molora’ is the Sesotho word for ‘ash’. When fire is met with fire, all that remains is ashes.

Now the Anglican Communion is caught up in a cycle of verbal and litigious violence and vengeance. It is not physical as in this trilogy, but is still heart rending and shocking. The litigation and splits that are happening in the USA, and which are being planned to extend to the Anglican Communion, need to stop.

Some of the leaders of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) have plans to set up a non-Canterbury centred Communion. This is openly being discussed on conservative web sites in the USA. Recently, the Bishop of Bungoma in Western Kenya, Dr Eliud Wabukala, was reported as saying about GAFCON, ‘Does it mean we are starting our own church? The answer is that we are going there to seek God’s will.’

It is a crucial time and some of the other leaders of the Global South Anglican movement who may be there, but are also deeply involved in the Lambeth Conference, need to persuade them against this act of vengeance. For that is what it would be. To set up a rival Anglican Communion, not centred on Canterbury, would be an act of vengeance. You have done that to me, so I will do this to you.

There is another way. It is the way of faith in the cross and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, where wrong was righted and the end was rewritten.

Rowan Williams, in his Advent Letter of 2007, referred to his earlier invitations to the Lambeth Conference and wrote that: ‘a refusal to meet can be a refusal of the cross – and so of the resurrection. We are being asked to see our handling of conflict and potential division as part of our maturing both as pastors and as disciples.’

In his video, released this week on YouTube, the Archbishop says: ‘What I would really most like to see in this year’s Lambeth Conference is the sense that this is essentially a spiritual encounter. A time when people are encountering God as they encounter one another, a time when people will feel that their life of prayer and witness is being deepened and their resources are being stretched.’

As the bishops gather this summer, may God have mercy on the Anglican Communion and may the Anglican Communion delight in God.

Canon Dr Graham Kings is vicar of St Mary Islington and theological secretary of Fulcrum. This is part of an address given at the Pre-Lambeth Conference of the Diocese of Lichfield, 26 April 2008. The full version, ‘Faith and Fellowship in Crisis’, is on the Fulcrum site.