Thank you very much for this excellent analysis. Off on a sidetrack, I've been thinking a lot about colonialism lately in a queer context, prompted by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
I haven't synthesized my thinking yet, but it occurs to me that Welby's recent and continued insistence on morally condemning queer people springs from his impulse to honor colonialism, to prop up a vestige of British colonial power — the worldwide Anglican Communion.
When Welby disinvited the same-sex married partners of Canadian and U.S. Anglican bishops from the Lambeth conference (a shockingly un-Christian act), he did so explicitly because he was afraid the Communion would splinter.
When he proclaimed at the Lambeth conference that gay people sin when we have sex, and that that doctrine cannot change, he again appeared to be motivated by fear of what might happen to the Communion if he said otherwise. (He wasn't very coy about that in certain public statements.)
Just a few days ago when he announced that he would not personally conduct same-sex couple blessing ceremonies (already a second-class substitute for marriage), he was frank: he doesn't want to offend leaders of the Communion in the global south.
American and Canadian Anglicans find this attitude shocking. And as residents of former colonies, they're not impressed that their church's senior leader is basing his decisions on propping up a colonial institution, rather than on Christian principles and theology.
This is interesting, because it's easy to take a different line, to say that Welby is respecting leaders of national churches in former colonies in the global south. But in my opinion, that assertion is facile and not to the point.
I think Welby is far more concerned with maintaining a global organization and basking in the prestige of that, in the British colonial prestige of it, than in showing respect or being a good Christian leader.
Why should Welby care if the national Anglican church in Sudan (whose leaders strongly advocate for imprisoning queer people) leaves the Communion?
My position is that if he were not vested in propping up colonial institutions, he wouldn't care. American and Canadian Anglicans don't care, after all, probably because they don't have skin in the colonial game. They don't feel pride in having a leadership role in former colonies.
I would suggest that the Church of England's fairly astonishing disrespect of queer people stems from ongoing colonial impulses.
Something to think about, anyway.
