Archbishop away

Williams in showdown with US church over gay bishops
Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent
Wednesday September 19, 2007
The Guardian

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, will demand concessions from the bishops of the US Episcopal Church tomorrow at a crisis meeting aimed at staving off the most damaging split in the Church's modern history, over the issue of homosexuality.

They will be asked to give guarantees that they will not allow the election of any more openly gay bishops or authorise public blessing services for same-sex couples and will create a structure for separate episcopal oversight for conservative congregations who disagree with the Church's liberal leadership.

The continuing unity of the 77 million-strong worldwide Anglican communion, the worlds third largest Christian denomination, hangs in the balance, not in an ancient cathedral but the incongruous surroundings of a hotel in downtown New Orleans.

The archbishop is meeting the US bishops for six hours, tomorrow and Friday, at the city's marble and glass multistory Intercontinental Hotel, 10 days ahead of a communion-imposed ultimatum, forcing the Americans to row back on their Church's liberal inclusiveness towards gays.

One senior Anglican engaged in the negotiations said: The situation is very volatile. The time has come for the Episcopal Church to tell us where they stand and give unreserved commitments to the rest of the communion.

They need to respond positively and unambiguously. The time for shilly-shallying is past. This is a watershed for the future of the communion.

But with few signs of compromise, an air of fatalism and uncertainty has descended on senior officials in the Anglican communion. The strategy appears to be an attempt to minimise any split by seeking an alliance of liberal and moderate conservative US bishops behind a form of words that would strengthen previous US assurances that they will not promote more gay clergy or formally celebrate gay partnerships. They are hoping to rally support around Charles Jenkins, the Bishop of Louisiana, a leading conservative who has insisted he wants to remain within the Episcopal Church.

The position of the American presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, will also be critical in keeping the majority of American bishops together. Although the meetings will be in private, broken by one public service at which Dr Williams will preach, the bishops will be surrounded by lobbyists for both sides.

While a compromise might satisfy some in the communion, it will not be enough for African archbishops or their conservative American and English allies who are ambitious to split the church and force a realignment. Such a split would have incalculable effects across the communion with some provinces such as the Canadians and maybe the Scottish and Irish churches siding with the Americans and others, such as the Church of England, facing divided allegiances between conservatives and liberals.

In increasingly bizarre moves, African archbishops in Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya have been busily appointing American conservatives mainly men who have previously failed to secure election to American dioceses to African bishoprics in recent weeks ostensibly to minister to disaffected Africans and Americans back in US churches. There are now nearly as many American bishops belonging to the Rwandan church as Rwandans.

One primate, who knows the African church, told the Guardian: The Africans are creating their own form of Anglicanism. It is not traditional, welcoming, inclusive Anglicanism, it is saying who can join and who cannot. The Holy Spirit does not work like that, like some aircraft, looking for somewhere to land and then taking off again, because he doesn't approve of some of those in the church.

The bishops of the 112 US Episcopal dioceses know that they face permanent ostracism at least from parts of the worldwide communion, especially the more conservative evangelical provinces in the developing world which have been most censorious during the crisis, precipitated by the election of the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, four years ago.

There have been demands that the Americans should be thrown out of the communion although the mechanism for that does not exist unless they repent.

At the weekend, Archbishop Peter Akinola, the primate of Nigeria, who has led the developing world campaign against them, extended his previous demands by insisting that the Americans must undo Bishop Robinson's election.

The meeting will prove extremely uncomfortable for Dr Williams, who nominally heads the Anglican communion, though he has no powers to regulate the activities of individual provinces. As a theologian who has previously spoken in favour of a more receptive attitude towards gays, he is distrusted by some conservatives and despised by liberals who feel he has betrayed them.
Despite his assurances, in a weekend interview in the Daily Telegraph that he has been working very hard to prevent the church breaking apart, he has spent three months during the summer on sabbatical, completing a book about the 19th century Russian author Dostoevsky.

Immediately after his appearance at the New Orleans summit, Dr Williams leaves for a week-long visit to Armenia, without waiting for the formal American response next week, or making himself available for conciliation before the deadline expires.

Backstory

The Anglican communion, originally founded as the breakaway Church of England in the 16th century, now stretches across 164 countries, claiming 77 million adherents. It faces a split over homosexuality between conservatives , who claim the practice is expressly forbidden by the Bible and that active gays should not be promoted within the church, and liberals who argue that the biblical references are ambiguous and need reinterpretation if Anglicanism is to remain inclusive and welcoming to all.

The row was precipitated by the election of the openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson , in the US in 2003. There have always been plenty of privately gay bishops and archbishops. The issue has been seized on by some African and developing world church leaders, who see themselves maintaining the Church's historic faith in the face of white, western revisionism in alliance with American and some English conservatives and evangelicals who regard the issue as a means of wresting control and reasserting authority within the church.