I realize that I have used this Anglican-wars anecdote before on this website. But, hey, GetReligion is closing its doors in a few weeks and this will almost certainly be my last chance to use it here.
To be honest, this parable from the Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison of South Carolina — an evangelical Anglican scholar who is now in his mid-90s — was the perfect way to summarize the issues covered during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).
Host Todd Wilken and I were discussing two important news reports about the escalating Catholic doctrinal wars about same-sex blessings, and this pulled us back to some themes from our top stories of 2023 podcast. One of the new stories was from The New York Times (“Blessing of Same-Sex Couples Rankles Africa’s Catholics”) and the other from the Associated Press (“How to deal with same-sex unions? It’s a question fracturing major Christian denominations”).
Like I said, these were must-read reports, but there were “ghosts” in them worth exploring. This brings us to the aforementioned Allison anecdote from several decades ago:
Needless to say, [Allison] has witnessed more than his share of Anglican debates about the future of the Anglican Communion, a communion in which national churches are in rapid decline in rich, powerful lands like the United States, Canada and England, but exploding with growth in the Global South.
During one global meeting, Allison watched a symbolic collision between these two worlds. Bishops from North America and their allies were talking about moving forward, making doctrinal changes in order to embrace the cultural revolutions in their lands. They were sure that Anglicans needed to evolve, or die.
Finally, a frustrated African bishop asked three questions: “Where are your children? Where are your converts? Where are your priests?”
The big question: What does it mean when journalists say that a church or religious movement is “growing”?
Usually, this is a reference to mere membership statistics. But notice that this is not how that African bishop defined church life in his growing corner of the Anglican world.
Clearly, the number of people in pews is part of the African equation. But that bishop was asking whether most churches in the West and Global North are alive and well in terms of producing growing families, growing numbers of new believers and growing numbers of new priests.
With that in mind, let’s look at the top of the New York Times story, which was much more on point that I expected it to be. Let’s walk though this a bit:
The Vatican’s recent declaration allowing the blessing of same-sex couples caused a stir around the globe, but perhaps most of all in Africa, a rising center of the Roman Catholic Church’s future. In one statement after the next, bishops in several countries spoke of the fear and confusion the declaration has caused among their flocks, and said it was out of step with the continent’s culture and values.
I was struck by the word “fear.” Are African Catholics merely afraid that their church is poised to change 2,000 years of Christian teachings on marriage? After all, the Vatican insists that is not the reform sought by the controversial document, Fiducia supplicans.
I would argue that the “ghost” in the word “fear” is linked to the growth of Islam in Africa and the fear that any Vatican change in teachings on sexual morality will be portrayed as, yes, a rejection of the “continent’s culture and values” and, among radical Islamists, a justification for violence. Journalists need to remember that Africa is a continent with TWO rapidly growing faiths — Christianity and Islam. Think about Nigeria.
Let’s keep reading.
The bishops also harbored a deeper fear: that in a place where the church is growing faster than anywhere else in the world, and where many forms of Christianity are competing for worshipers, the declaration could slow the church’s expansion on the continent.
Bishop John Oballa of the Ngong Diocese near Nairobi said that a woman had written to him saying that a friend told her he wanted clarification on the declaration, or else he would convert to the Methodist Church.
Ah, yes, the growing Methodist churches in Africa. Highly evangelical forms of Anglicanism are growing, as well.
But there is that big word again — “growing.” The Times offered this take on that:
Home to 236 million of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, Africa accounted for more than half of the 16.2 million people who joined the church worldwide in 2021. As bishops and other church leaders on the continent deal with the fallout among their parishioners over the declaration, broader concerns have been raised about whether it could lead to a rift between Pope Francis and a region that is a demographic bright spot for Catholicism.
It is certainly important that membership totals are growing in African Catholic parishes, dioceses and national churches. But the Times needed to address the other side of that question in global Catholic life, in recent decades.
To be blunt: Catholics in Europe and America are facing two other problems linked to numbers. I would argue that journalists need to dig into two other statistics — the number of new priests and the number of baptisms of new believers, both children and converts.
Consider, for example, this recent USA Today headline: “African priests fill American pulpits as 'reverse missionaries,' revitalizing parishes.” Why are so many priests from Africa ending up in America? That’s pretty simply: African Catholics have more children, more converts and more new priests than Americans. USA Today noted:
After decades of U.S. missionaries traveling to Africa to convert and preach, the trend is reversing: Across the country, parishes now rely on the ministry of international priests, many from East Africa and Nigeria.
The Archdiocese of Chicago, one of the biggest American dioceses, is a case in point – almost two-thirds of its priests under 50 were born outside the U.S. …
Meanwhile, the number of American priests is tumbling: there are 10,000 fewer priests now than there were two decades ago.
Compare that with, let’s say, the Catholic demographics in Germany — a nation playing a major role in efforts to modernize Catholic doctrines on marriage and sexuality, in part because of the strong role that Europeans are playing as leaders in pivotal Synod on Synodality. Here are a two bites from a June report at The Pillar: “German Catholics left Church in record numbers last year.”
A record 522,821 people formally left the Catholic Church in Germany in 2022, according to new statistics.
When deaths are factored in, the Church’s membership fell by 708,285 in 2022, with only 1,447 people joining the Church for the first time and 3,753 being readmitted.
Also, there is this:
The number of priests in Germany fell from 12,280 in 2021 to 11,987 in 2022. Priestly ordinations dropped from 62 in 2021 to 45 in 2022 (comprising 33 diocesan priests and 12 members of religious orders).
I’ll end with some material from the aforementioned Associated Press story, which points to the topic of my new “On Religion” column that will hit newspapers this weekend.
Strikingly, the flare-up of debate in Catholic ranks coincides with developments in two other international Christian denominations — the global Anglican Communion and the United Methodist Church — that are fracturing over differences in LGBTQ-related policies.
Taken together, it’s a dramatic illustration of how — in a religion that stresses God’s love for humanity — divisions over marriage, sexuality, and inclusion of gays and lesbians are proving insurmountable for the foreseeable future in many sectors of Christianity.
That second paragraph reads like a press release from activist groups on the doctrinal left in these three global Christian flocks. In other words, Christians must change their ancient teachings on these sacramental issues of they are rejecting the love of God.
Right? Who would make that argument, Catholic bishops in Africa or Germany?
In that same AP story, note this on-point quote from political scientist and graphs-master Ryan Burge, a contributor here at GetReligion:
For global denominations — notably Catholics, Anglicans and United Methodists — Burge sees another source of tension: Some of their biggest growth in recent decades has been in socially conservative African countries where same-sex relationships are taboo.
“African bishops have this ammunition,” Burge said. “They say to the West, ‘We’re the ones growing. You have the money, we have the numbers.’”
Ah, yes. But what kind of “numbers” are we talking about? And do these clashing demographic trends point to doctrinal differences that are larger than LGBTQ+ controversies?
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FIRST IMAGE: File photo from Vatican News of Catholic bishops in Nigeria, as featured with a 2023 Crux feature: “Running the numbers, Africa isn’t the Catholic future – it’s the present.”