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Archbishop of Canterbury asks for repentance over gay bishop

-27/02/05

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has declared that the US Episcopal Church (ECUSA) and the Anglican Church in Canada should do more than apologise for, respectively, ordaining a practising gay man as Bishop of New Hampshire and blessing same-sex relationships in church. They need to repent of these actions, he says.

Dr Williams was speaking on BBC Radio 4 this morning, in the aftermath of a protracted exchange over authority, faithfulness and sexuality at the week-long global Anglican primates meeting in Newry, near Belfast.

The Anglican Communion claims 78 million members worldwide, the majority now outside the West. Dr Williams is their titular head. The worldwide Church is threatened with massive division over the issue of authorising lesbian and gay relationships and ministries, which a majority of its members claim flies in the face of biblical teaching.

Dr Williams has in the past expressed the alternative view that acceptance and affirmation of gay people is compatible with orthodox, traditional Christianity. But he believes even more strongly in holding together the argumentative Communion for the sake of common witness to the gospel.

This conviction about unity through church order would appear to be behind Dr Williamsí hardening stance. The wrong committed by ECUSA and the Anglican Church in his eyes would seem to be that they have caused grave offence to other Anglicans by failing to uphold traditional teaching about sexuality. But the Archbishop is not ruling out a change in that teaching at some point in the future, and has argued before now that such change should come.

However he feels that in the meantime unity must come above precipitate action. Dr Williams therefore gave the strongest hint possible that senior figures from the American and Canadian churches would be excluded from the 2008 Lambeth Conference of worldwide Anglican bishops if they do not ërepentí.

Whether the North Americans accepting that they have committed the ësiní of occasioning division would be enough to appease the conservative churches that have cut themselves off from them is, in any case, unclear.

One seasoned observer of the Anglican scene told Ekklesia that anti-gay hardliners want nothing less than a full recantation and rebuttal of the affirmative position towards homosexuality. This would be more than could be reasonably expected of fellow Christians holding a conscientious and theologically reasoned opposing view, he suggested.

The demand for a complete rebuttal would, in any case, put Dr Williams in an unfeasible position, since his published opinions on sexuality (though not church order) are close to those he has now asked to repent.

Some primates and bishops also refuse to celebrate the Eucharist with their presiding Archbishop, and it is believed that Reform and other pressure groups will not be satisfied until he has been forced to comply wholly with their views or removed from office.

Ironically, Dr Williams is viewed by a large majority of Anglican theologians to be a stout and able defender of orthodoxy in a changing, sceptical and religiously plural world.

They hold that the heatedness and recalcitrance of the argument is due both to the financial and lobbying power of hardline conservatives, and also the lack of adequate time and resources for deeper theological debate across the Communion.

Some conservative primates have been willing to admit for the first time this week that homosexuality is not just ëa Western problemí, as they have previously characterised it.

But they appear unwilling to reappraise their understanding of biblical interpretation, to listen respectfully to the witness of lesbian and gay Christians, or to recognise their opponents as faithful (if differing) Christians.

Meanwhile the general secretary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian movement in the UK, the Rev Richard Kirker, has said it is astonishing that so much argument should be provoked by the comparatively ëboring and mundaneí matter of gay people in the church.

And the prominent British commentator and former head of the Industrial Society, Will Hutton, declared in todayís Observer newspaper that Archbishop Williams is failing moderate Anglicans by refusing to stand up for the broad centre and by being brow-beaten by hardliners.