THE Bishop of Ripon and Leeds has joined the growing chorus of prelates urging their Episcopal colleagues not to boycott next year’s Lambeth Conference.

Speaking during his annual Advent Address at Ripon Cathedral today, the Rt Rev John Packer said bishops threatening to withdraw from the ten-yearly gathering on issues of principle were ”˜misguided and missing the point’.

He said the whole point of the conference was for Anglican bishops to discuss divisions and differences, since its inception in 1867 by one of his predecessors, Charles Longley, the first Bishop of Ripon and Leeds.

Prelates including the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, and the Archbishop of Nigeria, the Most Rev Peter Akinola, may boycott the conference over the gay row which is plaguing the worldwide Commuion.

Bishop Packer gave his unequivocal support to the Conference and said both he and his suffragan, the Bishop of Knaresborough, the Rt Rev James Bell, would be in attendance.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, today presided at a ‘secret’ eucharist for the Clergy Consultation, as we reported that he would back in September. He gave a talk on ‘present realities and future possibilities for lesbians and gay men in the church.’ The venue, originally at St Peter’s Eaton Square, was switched to another location in London to avoid media attention after new of the meeting emerged first on the Church Society website.

The Clergy Consultation, which has between 250 and 450 members at any one time, was set up in 1976 by three Anglican priests, Malcolm Johnson, Peter Ellers and Douglas Rhymes. Changing Attitude has an interesting paper setting out a theology of sexual ethics around which members of the consultation work today. Many consultation members are married, one with six children, and are faithful to their partners. The organisation helps them cope with staying faithful to what they regard as a Christian lifestyle while dealing with a sexuality that sometimes does not emerge until later in life. Some members but by no means all are ‘out’ as openly gay but it is not difficult to understand why, in today’s Church, most prefer to remain ‘in’.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, views his taking part in the meeting and celebrating the eucharist as part of the ‘listening process’ outlined in Lambeth 1.10. A spokeswoman said: ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury is committed to the listening process which was agreed at the Lambeth Conference as part of the discussions on human sexuality. That means listening to and engaging with gay and lesbian clergy in a pastorally sensitive setting. That is what he is doing.’

Read it all.

I will consider posting comments on this article submitted first by email to Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is preparing to target individual bishops whose pro-gay policies threaten to derail his efforts to avert schism, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.

In a high-risk strategy, Dr Rowan Williams may even snub them by withdrawing their invitations to next year’s Lambeth Conference.

He has told friends he will challenge any bishop he believes is coming to the conference with an agenda “very much at odds” with his attempts to maintain unity in the worldwide Church.

Dr Williams sent invitations in May to most of the Anglican Church’s 880 bishops around the world for the once-a-decade showcase gathering in Canterbury.

He withheld invitations from only a handful of particularly divisive figures, including Bishop Gene Robinson, who became Anglicanism’s first openly gay bishop in 2003.

But he has now indicated that he is prepared to scrutinise controversial bishops he had already invited if there is evidence that they are unwilling to compromise their views.

Read it all.

It has been affirmed that the Lambeth Conference is definitely going ahead and that prior to the Lambeth Conference there will be a mini-Lambeth in each diocese, where hospitality will be offered throughout the UK dioceses to the arriving bishops from overseas. Many bishops of course from overseas have indicated that for many reasons they cannot currently accept the invitation to Lambeth. This has to do with the impossibility for them to have fellowship with those who have blatantly defied the counsels of the Lambeth Conference and the wishes of the Communion over the last 10 years. Some have mentioned their concern at the possibility of being subject to protests over their orthodox stances.

Read it all.

By a vote of 299-79, clergy and lay delegates voted to approve an amended resolution calling for the 2008 Lambeth Conference to be postponed “until the listening process is more complete.”

This resolution was submitted by Bishop Suffragan Nedi Rivera after convention began. The wording of the resolution will comprise the text of a letter sent to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori over the signature of bishops Greg Rickel and Rivera. This letter is to serve as the input requested by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who asked for advice from the House of Bishops on how to respond to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has asked the primates for their advice as he weighs a decision on the House of Bishops “response ”˜to questions and concerns raised by our Anglican Communion partners’.”

The text approved by the convention said, “We are leery about using the occasion of the [2008 Lambeth] Conference to present a Covenant that is exclusionary, that centralizes authority, or that adds to the core doctrine of our faith. The cost of holding the Lambeth Conference under the present circumstances is disproportionate to its benefits, and the good we can do elsewhere in the mission of the church.”

Read it all.

According to Akinola, Nigerian bishops had not “fully decided” on whether they would attend.

“At present, the Anglican Church is so divided. There is so much distrust and disrespect. Even basic courtesies are lacking among the bishops.

“What kind of communion do you have when you have bishops from all over the world coming together and you cannot even have fellowship or share the Lord’s Supper?” he asked.

“What we are doing now is to tell the authorities in Lambeth Palace (Archbishop of Canterbury) the conditions that must be met if we are to attend.

Read it all.

Almost hidden from view in the middle of a huddle of bishops all laying their hands on him, Gene Robinson emerged as the Bishop of New Hampshire. ”˜’It’s not about me; it’s about so many other people who find themselves at the margins,” he said at the time.

Exactly four years on from the historic day he now stands firmly at the centre of life in the Episcopal Church, but is also the axis around which the Anglican Communion continues to spin out of control. If the whirl of rapture and condemnation that met his consecration may have calmed, slowly but surely the warring factions are sounding the drums.

Reform has indicated that it is preparing to look to overseas bishops for leadership, and the potential election of the communion’s first [partnered] lesbian bishop looms on the horizon. And the battle will be played out in Kent ”” the garden of England ”” at next year’s Lambeth Conference.

As long as everyone shows up that is. The Bishop of Rochester has become the latest bishop to warn that he will boycott the conference and last month the Council of Anglican Primates in Africa called
for it to be postponed.

That won’t happen: the Archbishop said as much in New Orleans, but when it goes ahead and the Americans turn up, there remains one carrot that should tempt the traditionalists along ”” the
Anglican Covenant. All the provinces will have given their responses to the draft document by the
end of the year, and a revised text will be submitted at the conference.

Liberals have responded to this like a wriggling baby strapped in a high-chair, which one would have thought would be enough to convince the traditionalists to stop throwing their toys out of the pram. One prelate who was at last month’s House of Bishops said that the meeting was very tense, with old divisions resurfacing over whether they should be signing up to a draft, and particularly given
that they will not get to see it before it is submitted.

Much of the paper’s language would not be to their liking. It talks about ”˜the positive function of the exercise of discipline,’ and ”˜repentance,’ and ”˜properly authorized schemes of pastoral oversight.’

“The indications now are that many see it as a contract, a means of ensuring a uniform view on human sexuality enforceable by the threat of exclusion from the Communion if one does not conform,” the Most Rev Barry Morgan, the Archbishop of Wales, has said. Crucially, however, the bishops’ paper
also acknowledges that the Covenant’s current proposal for the Primates to offer direction is not just unlikely, but “unlawful” ”” according to the Church of England’s lawyers.

So, in the battle to balance the autonomy of individual provinces and the catholic spirit of the Anglican Church with the need for a more federal style of communion that is armed with powers of discipline, there is no doubt as to which side the scales come down on.

“The original intention of a covenant to affirm the bonds of affection, was good,” said Dr Morgan.

In reality, that is exactly what it will be. To get 38 provinces to sign up to a Covenant that is anything more than a warm, friendly statement of chumminess is as likely as getting the European countries
to agree to a common language for the EU. But, in the meantime, it keeps everyone talking, makes the traditionalists think they’re being listened to and just about keeps the liberals in check with the threat of having to stand on the naughty step if they misbehave again. More importantly, it gives Rowan a little
bit of breathing room, but it’s a chance for him to remind the country why his appointment was initially met with suchenthusiasm.

There have been glimpses of his ability to capture the news agenda: in 2004 he debated religion with Philip Pullman and more recently he has gone on the offensive against atheists such as Richard
Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and led the calls for a reform of abortion law.

But there has been far too little connection with popular culture.

There are signs that the Church is trying and in some areas it is succeeding ””its campaigns to increase the number of church weddings and Back to Church Sunday are two notable examples. And in addressing Halloween it has picked a relevant topic, but sadly it has ended up embarrassingly misguided. The Bishop of Bolton, the Rt Rev David Gillett, has done well in getting supermarkets
to take seriously his concerns about stocking alternatives to horror masks, but to say that it is leading kids to become obsessed with the Occult makes it sound like an alarmist killjoy. And if you’re going to criticise something you need to have something equally as exciting to offer.

But what has the Church come up with? Wholesome “Lite-night” parties, substituting quizzes and sing-songs for horror stories and trick-or-treating, not to forget the bishops handing out apples carrying a sticker inviting people to visit a website and make “Halloween Treat” donations. It doesn’t take a Professor of child psychology to work out what young people are more likely to opt for.

If the Church is to speak to modern culture successfully it needs to find a voice that provides a genuine alternative to the mixture of fun and fear offered outside of its walls.

–Jonathan Wynne-Jones is the Religious Correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph; this article appears in the November 2nd, 2007, edition of the Church of England Newspaper on page 24

Received with thanks from the diocese of Utah–KSH.

October 27, 2007

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
The Episcopal Church Center
815 Second Avenue
New York NY 10017-4503

Dear Katharine:

With reference to your letter of October 17 inviting us to comment on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent and urgent request of you, The Episcopal Diocese of Utah””Bishop, Deputation, Diocesan Council, Standing Committee and Diocesan Convention””make the following recommendation in the “next steps” part of the request:

We urge you to ask the Archbishop to cancel the Lambeth Conference for 2008.

EXPLANATION:
”¢ The Communion is in such disarray over who recognizes whom, and the participation of “irregularly consecrated” bishops, that little good can come from the fragmented gatherings sure to take place at the Conference, and even attendance at common worship is unlikely.
”¢ We are unclear about the “other issues” being raised around the Communion, although the Archbishop suggests they are “very specific.” Within the constitution and canons of our church we have responded faithfully and courteously to the demands of others, even though questioning their authority to set the conditions of our continued participation in the Communion.
Ӣ We are leery about using the occasion of the Conference to present a Covenant that is exclusionary, that centralizes authority, or that adds to the core doctrine of our faith.
Ӣ The cost of holding the Lambeth Conference under the present circumstances is disproportionate to its benefits, and to the good we can do elsewhere in the mission of the church.
Ӣ Given the disarray we referred to above, we think that a Lambeth Conference in the near future would be disastrous to our public image around the world.

We send you our love and prayers, rejoicing in your strong and grace-filled leadership in these challenging times.

Faithfully,

Carolyn Tanner Irish (The Rt. Rev.)
10th Bishop of Utah

CTI/mkw

Since 1867 it’s been the Archbishop’s personal bash. Does it have to be a Big Boys Business meeting for it to be worth my while? I am just not self-regarding enough to mind. If Rowan wants a Vatican Council Theme Party, fine. If he wants to partay by showing us his Simpsons Videos, fine. It’s his party, not mine. There is a self-important little prat in me who feels business meetings matter more than parties. Jesus disagrees. The Sanhedrin has business meetings on Thursday nights. Jesus has a meal with his friends. This is a matter of substance as well as style. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer says how grievous and unkind a thing it is, when a man hath prepared a rich feast, decked his table with all kind of provision, so that there lacketh nothing but the guests to sit down; and yet they who are called (without any cause) most unthankfully refuse to come.

Read it all (Hat tip: SS).

“Boycott is not a word that I used. The problem is that the Lambeth conference has been for 150 years where Bishops gather together to teach. That is the main reason for it – to exercise their office as teachers of the faith for the worldwide communion.

We have been told this time that this is not what it will do. So the question arises what is it for and will it be worthwhile since it is a hugely costly exercise. I am very happy to talk with people at any time that is mutually convenient. The Lambeth Conference is not just such an occasion. It is a meeting of bishops for particular purposes. There are churches and bishops who were requested, there were pleas to them by everyone from every quarter, not to do what the whole communion had said was contrary to God’s purpose. They went ahead and did it. Now the intention is to have those bishops at the Lambeth Conference and the person consecrated also. Under such circumstances, and as matters stand, I could not go. I do not want to single out Gene Robinson

Read it all.

A senior Church of England conservative has intensified the storm over homosexuals in the clergy by warning he will boycott next summer’s Lambeth Conference if liberal American bishops are invited.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, said he would find it difficult to attend a Church council alongside those who consecrated or approved the appointment of Anglicanism’s first openly gay bishop.

His comments are fresh evidence of the divisions within the Church of England over the issues and will exacerbate the difficulties facing the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in maintaining unity.

Read it all.

For those of you like this poor elf who missed Anglican TV’s live stream of today’s press conference with Rowan Williams, despair not. Baby Blue has come to the rescue. Here’s the link: http://babybluecafe.blogspot.com/2007/09/press-conference-with-archbishop-of.html

The proposed Anglican Communion Covenant is the one way for us to uphold our common heritage of faith while at the same time holding each other accountable to those teachings that have defined our life together and also guide us into the future. It has already received enthusiastic support from the majority of the Communion. Therefore we propose the following action plan:

As a matter of utmost urgency, call a special session of the Primates Meeting to:

a) Receive the responses made by The Episcopal Church to the Dromantine and Dar es Salaam Communiqués and determine their adequacy.

b) Arrive at a consensus for the application of the Windsor Process especially in Provinces whose self-understanding is at odds with the predominant mind of the Communion.

c) Set in motion an agreed process to finalize the Anglican Covenant Proposal and set a timetable for its ratification by individual provinces. This cannot be done at the Lambeth Conference because it is simply too large and, we all know, the Anglican Covenant requires individual provincial endorsement and signature.

Postpone current plans for the Lambeth Conference (as has been done before). This will:

a) Allow the current tensions to subside and leave room for the hard work of reconciliation that is a prerequisite for the fellowship we all desire.

b) Confirm that those invited to the Lambeth Conference have already endorsed the Anglican Covenant and so are able to come together as witnesses to our common faith.

Read it carefully and read it all.

The problem for Anglicans is that they cannot agree on how to interpret the Bible, and therefore they arrive at very different views on a number of moral issues.

For conservative Anglicans, the Bible is clearly opposed to homosexuality. Liberals say that Jesus was silent on the issue.

What is clear is that the debate over sexuality is not going to be over soon, but in the meantime African Anglicans are seizing the initiative and creating new branches of their churches inside the United States.

Read it all.

The Anglican Archbishop however challenged the 121 dioceses in the Church of Nigeria to intensify efforts on winning souls, embark on projects that will have direct bearing for the increase of the present members of the Anglican church in Nigeria from the present 20 million to 50 million out of the present 150 million of the Nigeria Population.

He also appealed to the mother dioceses of the newly created missionary dioceses not to abandon their spiritual babies but to lend helping hands in nursing them to maturity.

On the Convocation of Anglicans in the North America (CANA), Archbishop Akinola commended Bishop Martyn Minns for his doggedness in seeing that CANA continues to grow despite the enormous resources being committed by the America’s Episcopal Church (TEC) to crush CANA. He stressed that Church of Nigeria will gladly turn CANA over to the Communion once the condition that led to its creation have been reversed by TEC.

On Lambeth Conference, Akinola said Nigeria is not a problem of the Communion rather those who breaks the rules and the bonds of affection with impunity must repent and ensure that the broken communion be restored for the Church of Nigeria to be in the next Lambeth Conference.

Read it all and read this also.

“Some provinces [country branches] are saying they will not attend a meeting where decisions are agreed upon but are not implemented,” Nzimbi told Cybercast News Service in an interview. “We agreed [at the last Lambeth, in 1998] that we should delay the consecration of gay bishops but the American church went ahead and did it.”

He said the reason given by those thinking about or planning to stay away is that the homosexuality issue has splintered the unity that bound the Anglican Communion together. “Our unity is based on common faith in Jesus Christ but gay priesthood has broken that so we may have nothing in common.”

Nzimbi did not name the countries or regions that may refuse to attend.

He said the Anglican Church in Kenya would make its decision by December. He did feel, however, that participating and having dialogue would be better than declining to attend altogether.

Church leaders opposed to the ordination of homosexuals would be eager to meet with like-minded bishops at the conference and decide the way forward on the issue, he added.

“The main issue is interpretation of the Bible. The Anglican Church needs revival because of many issues [in dispute], but consecration of gay bishops was the breaking point,” Nzimbi said.

Read it all.

I’m not convinced about either the need for more mitres, or about the timing of all these consecrations. I’m not greatly sympathetic however to the official Anglican Communion response that the consecrations create ”˜increased confusion’. The confusion came with the consecration of Gene Robinson, and the subsequent inability of the Episcopal Church’s leadership to respond adequately to the clear voice of the Anglican Communion, and also to find a way to accommodate parishes and clergy who could no longer identify with their own diocesan bishops. Some kind of alternative oversight scheme should surely have been worked out which responded to the need of those congregations. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Episcopal Church desires nothing more than conformity to its own mores and canons at the expense of theological and ecclesiological diversity.

Equally problematic however is the expectation of West Indies Archbishop, Drexel Gomez, that these consecrations could lead “towards a creation of a viable, stable and orthodox Anglican presence in the United States.”

Read it all.

As has been reported by the press, the Episcopal bishops last spring were given three requests and a deadline by the global Anglican primates. They were asked to stop consecrating actively gay bishops (meaning no more Gene Robinsons), to stop formal blessings of same-sex unions, and to provide space for those who dissent from the regnant liberal theology of the Episcopal Church. The deadline was September 30, so the upcoming meeting will in effect signal definitively whether or not the American church will decide to remain in step with the Anglican Communion or instead detach itself and go its own way.

Williams’ stance at the meeting will inevitably signal whose side he is on. The majority of the Episcopal Church’s bishops do not want to comply with the primates’ requests, as they signaled vociferously last spring. The question is: If they refuse, what if anything will happen to them? Will the American bishops get to come to Lambeth and participate in the other global conferences of Anglicanism no matter what they do, or will refusal mean that they’ll have to sit at home?

It’s an important question, because sitting at home would mean that the American church would no longer have any say in the decision-making bodies of Anglicanism. In effect, it would mean that the Episcopal Church would no longer be a fully constituent part of the Anglican Communion””which, especially when viewed in light of Anglicanism’s history, would be a striking change. Many American bishops who otherwise would support Gene Robinson would at the least be given pause by such a momentous choice.

Of course, it is just this choice that the Americans want to avoid, as, most likely, does Rowan Williams. In many ways Williams is close theological kin to the American church, and it will be extraordinarily difficult for him to prosecute this sort of separation.

But as wrenching as it may be for him, it is probably the only way to keep the majority of Anglicanism together.

Not doing it will likely set off a domino-like series of effects. In essence, the decision-making authority of Anglicanism’s central instruments will collapse””if the agreement hammered out by the global primates last spring in Tanzania is seen to have no bite, future meetings will become toothless and ineffectual.

Read it all.

The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee has issued advice that the British Government, through Tony Blair in his new role, ought to be talking to Hamas. It is quite a risk. After all, Hamas has been responsible for encouraging suicide-bomb attacks against Israel. None the less: “We recommend that he engage with Hamas in order to facilitate reconciliation amongst Palestinians.”

This is the right thing to do, for it is just this sort of risky talk, often clandestine, that led to peace in Northern Ireland. No peace will ever come without a willingness to sit around a table and talk.

This is why the refusal of a number of Anglican bishops to accept the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation to the Lambeth Conference looks so childish and lacking in moral imagination (Press, 27 July). From Sydney to Nigeria to Winchester, there have been bishops toying with the idea that they might refuse to sit down and talk to other bishops. This is an out-and-out scandal, and has nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality.

It is a scandal because church leaders might talk the talk about peace, but some just don’t walk the walk when it involves themselves.

Read it all.

Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu has appealed to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to invite all bishops to the 2008 Lambeth Conference, “even those irregularly consecrated or actively gay.”

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s plea came in a letter to the present Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane, in which he also called on all Anglican bishops to be “more welcoming and inclusive of one another.”

“Our Communion has always been characterized by its comprehensiveness, its inclusiveness, its catholicity,” he said. “…we are really family, held together not so much by law as by bonds of affection. There is no family that is unanimous on every single subject.”

The Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of Anglican Communion bishops, is due to be held July 16-August 4, 2008 at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. About 880 invitations have been sent out to serving diocesan, suffragan and assisting bishops.

Read it all.

There is talk this week of a deadline ignored and an Archbishop undermined. Yet when Dr Williams wrote to the Primates in July, he said no more than: “It would be a great help if these replies were received by 31 July 2007.” As we have said (Leader comment, 25 May), the US bishops have been invited in the full knowledge that their decision in September might well be to defy the Primates’ strictures. Nobody seriously believes that Dr Williams will withdraw their invitation, though that will not stop some from pressing him to do so.

Read it all.

A Bishop has roundly accused newspapers and television of “machinations and mischief” over next year’s Lambeth Conference. The charge is levelled by the
Bishop of Wakefield, the Rt Rev Stephen Platten, in the latest issue of Awake, the newspaper of theWakefield diocese. Controversial issues ”” including gay bishops ”” threaten the unity of the Anglican Communion and make the Lambeth Conference pointless, sections of the media have claimed.

But the Lambeth Conference ”” the first took place in 1867 ””sprang from “dispute, disagreement and division,” Bishop Platten suggests. He says: “John Colenso, vicar of the tiny Norfolk village of Forncett St Mary, was made Bishop of Natal, South Africa. Colenso was a clever man ”” but no diplomat.
“He had been well educated and understood something of the emerging critical study of theology. He proceeded to preach and teach about this, and great controversy followed. “So much fuss ensued that Bishop Robert Gray of Cape Town decided that he must go. Colenso dug his heels in, and loyalties divided.
It was this dispute, effectively, which led Charles Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury, to convene the first Lambeth Conference.”
Now, newspapers “and other media” have, says Bishop Platten, tried to turn the Lambeth Conference on its head, saying that controversy makes it pointless ”” or even unnecessary. “But controversy was where Lambeth Conferences began” says the bishop, who declares:

“Despite the machinations and mischief of the media, we should rejoice at the preparations for the 2008 Lambeth Conference. Communion worldwide is not only
desirable”” it is essential.” Bishop Platten claims: “Last year’s experience with the drought in Mara proved the point. Our communion in Christ with our brothers and sisters averted a terrifying human catastrophe; we have grown together over 20 years.”

The bishop concedes that Anglicans won’t always agree “on every moral issue” ”” and suggests that that “is the nature of a multicultural world.” But we shall
“all benefit by talking and listening to each other about our different views and cultures,” he claims.

–This article appears in the Church of England Newspaper, August 17th, 2007, edition, page 3

Only a couple of hundred of the 880 Anglican bishops invited to next year’s Lambeth Conference, one of the most critical gatherings in the Church’s history, have replied by the deadline set by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr Rowan Williams hopes that the conference, which is held every 10 years at Canterbury, can be the starting point for rebuilding the Church, which has been torn apart over the issue of homosexuality.

The failure of so many to respond is fresh evidence of the disintegration of the 70 million-strong worldwide Communion, and will come as a further blow to the authority of Dr Williams.

Read it all.

John Sentamu: I think, for myself, that the 1998 resolution was very clear on where the church stood, and it actually invited everybody to engage in the listening process to gay and lesbian people. I still think it was not a good thing for the Episcopal church, while we are still in conversation, to proceed the consecration of Jim Robinson. I happen to think they actually pre-empted the conversation and the discussion. Now what I don’t think should happen now [is] that the whole question of gay and lesbian people — when we said we should listen to their experiences — should now become the kind of dominant theological factor for the whole of the communion. Because really the communion, at the heart of it, has got to do a number of things. While on one hand upholding Christian teaching, [it] must also be very loving and kind towards gay and lesbian people because that’s part of the resolution. And it must also continue to listen. And I’m not so sure, when some people speak as if the debate has been concluded, or we cannot engage with this, you’re being very faithful to the resolution.

Secondly, the Windsor Report has made it very clear that the four instruments of unity — that is, Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Primates Meeting — should be the kind of instrument that actually allows all of us to talk. So those who now say, for example, that they don’t want to come to the Lambeth Conference in 2008 because there may be people from ECUSA , well all I want to say is that church history has always taught us that churches have always disagreed. I mean, over the nature of Christ, the salvation of Christ, there were bitter, bitter, bitter disagreements in the early church, but everybody turned up at those ecumenical councils to resolve their differences. So my view would be, if you’re finding this quite difficult, please do not stop the dialogue and the conversation.

Stephen Crittenden: Well indeed, you’ve warned — just in the last few days –warned the conservative bishops of the global south that if they don’t come to Lambeth, they’d effectively be severing themselves from the rest of the communion. That’s a bit tough, isn’t it?

John Sentamu: Well, the Lambeth Conference is an invitation from the Archbishop of Canterbury to all bishops of the Anglican communion to come to Lambeth and talk of matters of common concern. Now if there is already a fracture within the communion, I would have thought everybody would want to turn up in order to work out how we as a communion are going to go forward. Secondly, the Primates Meeting in Tanzania set out a fairly clear way ahead in its communiqué, as well as the whole question of the covenant. Now if we’re going to continue to talk about the covenant at Lambeth Conference, and some people absent themselves from this, what is it that actually they think they’re going to be achieving? You see, again I want to challenge them in terms of the debate about the nature of Christ and the salvation of Christ — no church in the seven Ecumenical Councils absented themselves from it, because they were trying to represent the faith as they saw it. And only by people meeting around the table and having a conversation are you likely to find some kind of thing. I think the thing I was reacting to was a question that some people were planning an alternative Lambeth Conference, and my view was there can be no alternative Lambeth Conference, because the Lambeth Conference is always at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury in line with the four instruments of unity. And I cannot see an alternative, actually, for another Lambeth Conference. I mean that’s the logic for it.

Read it all.

SYDNEY’s Anglican Archbishop, Peter Jensen, and his five assistant bishops have rebuffed the worldwide leader of the Anglican Church in his attempts to heal the bitter division in the international church over gay bishops and same-sex unions.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, had issued invitations to 800 Anglican bishops to attend a conference of Anglican primates next year in Britain.

But Dr Jensen and his bishops have delayed responding to the invitation, issued personally by Dr Williams, saying they hesitated to sit at the same table as those who supported the consecration of gay bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions.

Progressive Anglicans have accused Dr Jensen of seeking to embarrass the head of the Church of England.

Read it all.

Sydney Anglicans has a story online about the Sydney bishops’ letter to ++Rowan, which Kendall posted below. Here’s an excerpt.

The Sydney bishops’ letter also reveals that the delay is aimed at communicating to Archbishop Williams their hesitations, “in joining with those who have consecrated Bishop Gene Robinson, and with others who have allowed the blessing of same-sex unions”.

“Given the significance of these events,” the Sydney bishops said, “we feel we cannot give an answer to your kind invitation until later in the year.”

Kirker claims ”˜racist’

Meanwhile, Dr Jensen’s media officer Margaret Rodgers has dismissed as ”˜shameful’ and ”˜racist’ claims by an English gay leader that the Primate of Nigeria will appoint a flying bishop for UK conservatives as part of plan directed by the Archbishop of Sydney.

The Rev Richard Kirker from the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement said, “It has been clear for some time that under the guidance of Peter Jensen (Archbishop of Sydney)” that the Nigerian Church “has been distancing itself from the Church of England and particularly of the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury”.

Margaret Rodgers said Kirker’s comments were a slight against Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola whose leadership was ”˜greatly admired in the Diocese of Sydney’.

“This statement is patently untrue and it has no basis in fact,” she said. “It is deeply shameful for it has at its base an inherent racism that fails to acknowledge the Biblical commitment and insights of this particular African Primate. No one guides and advises Archbishop Akinola what to do except the Lord of the Bible.

“Kirker’s statement appears to be akin to the ”˜chicken dinner’ slurs that were used by some liberal churchmen in their attempt to offset the biblical understandings of African bishops at the time of the 1998 Lambeth Conference,” she said.

Full story here.

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“This is a fight we are engaged in and we will see it through to the end. We are determined to see that the Anglican Communion ends up on the right side of the debate” over homosexual practice.

So West Indies Archbishop Drexel Gomez declared outside Washington, D.C. Saturday, drawing a standing ovation from a sizeable gathering of orthodox believers during a day-long Festival of Faith at St. Luke’s Church, Bladensburg, Maryland. The event also featured retired Quincy (IL) Episcopal Bishop Donald Parsons.

Gomez assailed opponents for characterizing fidelity to the consistent witness of scripture on homosexual practice as homophobia, bigotry, and fundamentalism. He said that he and co-religionist Anglican leaders would keep the Communion in line with the 2,000-year consensus of Christianity on same-sex relations, holding that the issue relates to “God’s ordering of life.” It is therefore – contrary the recent declaration by the Anglican Church of Canada – a matter of “core doctrine.”

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From the Irish Gazette:

Following the debate on the Anglican covenant process at the meeting of the Church of England General Synod earlier this month in York, the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt, told the Gazette that if the bishops of The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States do not meet the demands of the Dar es Salaam Primates’ Meeting required by next September’s deadline, and if the bishops of the Global South decline to attend next year’s Lambeth Conference, as many as six in ten Church of England bishops could be considering their own positions about attending the ten-yearly episcopal gathering.

However, Bishop Scott- Joynt added that such bishops would feel “constrained” by their loyalty to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who personally invites the bishops.

Bishop Scott-Joynt also said that if the US bishops were not attending and the Global South bishops were, his estimated four in ten minority among the English bishops would be facing similar considerations to those of the majority in the opposite situation.

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Six out of ten senior Church of England bishops could boycott next year’s Lambeth Conference of more than 800 Anglican bishops and archbishops from around the world because of the row over gays.

Such a boycott would be unprecedented in the history of the Anglican Church and would be an indication of how deep the divisions go, in England as well as in the rest of the communion.

The fifth most senior bishop in the mother church of the Anglican Communion warns today that a majority of English diocesan bishops could consider a boycott if the US does not row back on its pro-gay agenda.

A UK boycott would confirm the gravity of the splits within even the Church of England, traditionally the model for Anglicanism’s “via media”. It would effectively spell the end of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s dream of maintaining unity.

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Update: there is more here.