News

Lambeth not optional for Anglican bishops
By Market Place
February 13, 2008

Archbishop Rowan Williams Archbishop Rowan Williams

The leader of the world's Anglicans has made his strongest call to date for Anglican bishops to agree to take part in this year's Lambeth Conference to search for a solution to the current international split over sexuality.

In the face of ongoing threats by church conservatives to boycott the once-a-decade conference, and before Sydney bishops made their decision not to attend, Archbishop Rowan Williams has repeated his claim that "the refusal to meet can be a refusal of the cross".

The call came late last year when Williams wrote to national Anglican church leaders summarising reactions to the US church's response to an ultimatum over the appointment of further openly-gay bishops and the official approval of same-sex unions.

(After a meeting in New Orleans last September, the US bishops stopped short of giving a precise response to the Primate's ultimatum that they ban further consecrations of openly-gap bishops.

Instead, in their communique, the bishops decided to "reconfirm" the 2006 decision by the US Church's General Convention which called on the bishops "to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion."

They gave a more direct response as the bishops "pledged ... not to authorize public rites for the blessing of same-sex unions."

However, the New Orleans communique went on to acknowledge that a minority of US bishops are already finding ways to affirm gay relationships.)

Williams admits there was "no consensus" with just over half the world's Anglican primates signaling they were ready to accept the US response, while the rest saw it as an "inadequate response to what had been requested."

"Some of the more negative assessments from primates were clearly influenced by the reported remarks of individual bishops in the (US) Episcopal Church who either declared their unwillingness to abide by the terms of the statement or argued that it did not imply any change in current policies."

Williams also notes that "some of the positive responses reflected a deep desire to put the question decisively behind us as a Communion."

In the letter the archbishop argues the case that the current international split is broader than the specific debate over sexuality, but is instead about how a global Anglican church can make decisions.

"It is too easy to make the debate a standoff between those who are 'for' and those who are 'against' the welcoming of homosexual people in the Church," Williams writes.

"The deeper question is about what we believe we are free to do, if we seek to be recognisably faithful to Scripture and the moral tradition of the wider

Church."

The issue of appointing openly-gay bishops or approving same-sex unions has tested the bonds of belonging to a global church family, he argues.

"Where one part of the family makes a decisive move that plainly implies a new understanding of Scripture that has not been received and agreed by the wider Church, it is not surprising that others find a problem in knowing how far they are still speaking the same language. 

"And because what one local church says is naturally taken as representative of what others might say, we have the painful situation of some communities being associated with views and actions which they deplore or which they simply have not considered.

"Where such a situation arises, it becomes important to clarify that the Communion as a whole is not committed to receiving the new interpretation and that there must be ways in which others can appropriately distance themselves from decisions and policies which they have not agreed."

The decision by African archbishops to intervene by appointing new bishops to oversee breakaway US congregations also draws harsh criticism.

The Archbishop of Canterbury goes on to reject criticism that the agenda for the Lambeth Conference was designed side-line real debate over sexuality issue.

"Some reactions to my original invitation have implied that meeting for prayer, mutual spiritual enrichment and development of ministry is somehow a way of avoiding difficult issues," Williams said.

"On the contrary, I would insist that only in such a context can we usefully address divisive issues," he said. "We need to engage more not less directly with each other."

"An invitation to Lambeth does not constitute a certificate of orthodoxy but simply a challenge to pray seriously together and to seek a resolution that will be as widely owned as may be.

"And this is also why I have said that the 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."

The Archbishop of Canterbury has revealed he's planning to hold "professionally facilitated conversations" between US church leaders and their harshest critics, both within the US and overseas.

The conversations will be held in the months before Lambeth.

But, he's also floated the suggestion of a ban on 'rebel' bishops and members of national churches serving on representative Anglican agencies.

"I suggest (Lambeth) will also have to consider whether in the present circumstances it is possible for provinces or individual bishops at odds with the expressed mind of the Communion to participate fully in representative

Communion agencies."

"Not everyone carrying the name of Anglican can claim to speak authentically for the identity we share as a global fellowship."

The letter ends with hope that a solution to the current international church turmoil can still be found.

"A great deal of the language that is around in the Communion at present seems to presuppose that any change from our current deadlock is impossible, that division is unavoidable and that any such division represents so radical a difference in fundamental faith that no recognition and future co-operation can be imagined. 

"I cannot accept these assumptions, and I do not believe that as Christians we should see them as beyond challenge."

On the subject of homosexuality, Dr Williams said that the agenda included a day set aside to consider "sexuality questions as they affect the ministry of bishops", part of which will be the results of the listening process asked for by the Lambeth Conference in 1998. In addition, he said, "it's inevitably going to be part of the conversations informally, day by day, as people will bring to the conference what their anxieties are, and what their hopes are. . . There will not be a resolution on the subject.