Bishop Ssenyonjo was deposed because of his consecration of a Ugandan priest “under discipline,” a Ugandan spokesman said. “One of the co-consecrators was another deposed Uganda Bishop, the former bishop of North Mbale. He had been deposed because he took a second wife. So, Ssenyonjo was not deposed because of his association with Integrity.”

On July 11 the Church of Uganda released a statement saying it had been assured by Lambeth Palace that Bishop Ssenyonjo “will not be seated with Bishops at the Lambeth Conference and will not participate in the deliberations during the Conference.”

The statement was released after a Kampala newspaper New Vision reported on July 7 that Ssenyonjo, the second bishop of West Buganda, would be the sole Ugandan bishop attending the Lambeth Conference.

The church’s provincial secretary, Canon Aaron Mwesigye, said, “We can only conclude that Christopher Ssenyonjo was invited by one of the gay lobby groups to be part of their demonstrations. He would, after all, need a letter of invitation from someone to get a UK visa.”

However, the “Official Programme & Event Guide” for the Lambeth Conference listed the self-select session on the official conference agenda, and Bishop Ssenyonjo was granted access to the bishops-only area of the conference on the tightly policed campus, prompting queries from the Church of Uganda.

Read it all.

Read it all.

The suggested ”Pastoral Forum” is more problematic. It’s to be chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury and serve as an advisory group to the various Provinces when there are internal disputes and difficulties which affect the whole Communion. Such schemes have been tried (or at least floated) in recent years and have always failed. I’m not sure why this one will have any greater chance of success.

I believe we should ask everyone to do the best they can to honor the spirit of the Windsor Report while the Covenant process continues and ”˜cut each other some slack’ until that time. All of us are working hard to maintain Communion while responding faithfully and fairly to our local contexts. That’s what Anglicanism is supposed to do and be, it seems to me.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s decision to have this a “non-legislative” Conference was a very wise one. If we were “voting” on such matters this week, we would leave here as divided and wounded as we were in 1998. As it is, we will discuss all the ”˜hard issues,’ give our input, and leave the matter for cooler heads to digest and deal with through the “Covenant Design Group” and the “Windsor Continuation Group.”

As always, any final decision will have to come through our separate Provincial structures (in our case, General Convention) for a vote by all the people of God, not just bishops and Primates! Thank God for a Communion which is “episcopally-led” but finally “synodically-governed!”

Read it all.

Talk about relevant–it helps to laugh (hat tip: JS).

The other thing I have been musing on today is how different people approach a conference like this – especially when they are used to running things and cannot control this one. I attended a conference in Wittenberg, Germany, last year when the German Church (EKD) addressed its ten year reform programme under the title ‘Church of Freedom’ (Kirche der Freiheit). The ‘Impulspapier’ divided the church’s task into twelve elements that then formed the content of the conference. At the first plenary session a longstanding, more traditional bishop stood up and took the document apart. He claimed that the Church is not the ‘Church of Freedom’, but the Church of Jesus Christ. This clever statement then enabled several people to dismiss the report and the whole process. They had found the gap – the error – and therefore were absolved from any responsibility to engage with it.

I am reminded of this not because I think this a German problem, but because I think this is how powerful people behave when they don’t like being powerless. I think there are bishops here who are behaving like this and find endless fault in everything. I would like to go on a conference organised by them and show them what it is like to have people identify (oh so cleverly) all the other ways in which it could have been done.

I think this process has been remarkable….
If others haven’t engaged with it and gained from it, that’s too bad. But it is only by engaging with it that you stand any chance of getting any gain from it. Furthermore, I am fully committed to getting stuck into whatever we come out with at the end of this conference – whether that be something good or something a bit hopeless. The Church has gone through two millennia of ups and downs and threats and challenges and now is no different. After all, the Church is not the kingdom of God – we are called to be a sign of the Kingdom and that impacts (drives?) not only what we believe but how we live together.

This is significant in the light of this afternoon’s second ‘hearing’. Of 27 speakers, 23 were westerners (American, English, Irish, Canadian and Australian[)]. Of those 23, 15 were from TEC and they ran the gamut of TEC complexions. Once again, they spoke with passion and clarity, but what was not said about their province was as significant as what they did say. What I think was most significant about this was that the Americans cannot say that their voice has not been listened to and heard. (The other speakers were from Sudan, South India and Egypt.)

Read it all (timestamp of entry is Monday 28 July 2008 – 06:24pm)

Bishop Clive Handford, WCG chair and former primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East, clarified that “retrospective” did not imply that Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire, would have to resign.

“We are not anywhere intending to imply that Bishop Gene Robinson should resign. We are aware that (he) was elected bishop according to the processes of The Episcopal Church, whatever we may think of that,” said Bishop Handford.

Bishop Michael Ingham, whose diocese ”“ New Westminster ”“voted to allow same-sex blessings in 2002, reacted strongly to the WCG’s proposals, describing it as “an old-world institutional response to a new-world reality in which people are being set free from hatred and violence.”

In a statement, Bishop Ingham called the WCG document ”“ copies of which were distributed to bishops for discussion ”“ “punitive in tone, setting out penalties and the like, instead of inviting us into deeper communion with one another through mutual understanding in the body of Christ.” He added that the suggestion of a pastoral forum “institutionalizes external incursions into the life of our churches.”

Read it all.

[A] different way of trying to solve the problem maybe, but Preliminary Observations Part Three continues to misdescribe what the Communion’s problem is, and therefore gets us no nearer to a solution.

The basic assumption was the same in the Windsor Report, the Nassau Draft and the St. Andrews Draft. They all describe the threats to the Communion as being the blessings of same-sex unions, the consecration of openly gay bishops and to a lesser extent cross-border interventions. To call for a moratorium on all three, as though they all caused disunity, is to fly in the face of reality. Cross-border interventions undermine institutional unity by creating competing jurisdictions. New Westminster’s same sex blessings and New Hampshire’s consecration of a gay bishop do not.

The ethics of homosexuality is cause for disagreement, not disunity.

Read it all (a pdf).

The Pastoral Forum to be headed by Dr Rowan Williams is a last-ditch attempt to bring rebel Anglican provinces into line and prevent a total split in the 80 million-strong Communion.

It is designed to provide a rapid response to crises, by offering guidance either to liberal churches that break guidelines by ordaining gay clergy or blessing same-sex unions, and also traditionalist churches that cross borders to ordain bishops in other provinces. A halt to all these practices has been demanded.

The forum will allow parishes that have defected from their national churches to be looked after in a “holding bay” until they can be returned to their previous home.

But it will also have the power to “diminish the standing” of rebel churches, which could mean their heads being thrown off the Primates Meeting of worldwide Anglican leaders, or being barred from the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of bishops that is taking place in Canterbury this week.

Read it all.

Check it out (hat tip: JS)

Although the idea of a forum is still in its infancy it is unlikely to appeal to conservatives or liberals. One US Episcopal Church insider was heard referring to it as “dead in the water”.

A US bishop, the Right Rev Sergio Carranza-Gomez of Los Angeles, said: “If it’s really a pastoral thing that will advise and uphold the authority of the body [national church] then it will be OK, but we don’t want to have tribunals or a group that enforces doctrine. If it’s something that will punish or discipline then I don’t think it will work.”

The Right Rev Henry Scriven, a conservative evangelical assistant bishop in Pittsburgh, said: “We’re a bit beyond extra committees that don’t do anything.

Read it all.

A group of senior Anglican clergy has told the Lambeth Conference that liberal churches must end the ordination of gay bishops and stop blessing same-sex relationships if the Communion is to arrest its slide towards a permanent split.

The working party given the task of finding possible solutions to the rift told the 650 bishops meeting in Canterbury that traditionalist churches in Africa must also stop setting up parallel church bodies in the United States as homes for congregations splitting away from the American Church because of the dispute.

The group, headed by the former Archbishop of the Middle East Clive Handford, said in the long term some sort of statement of shared beliefs and an agreement to abide by them would be necessary.

But in the short term, a ban on gay bishops and blessings was needed to prevent “irreparable damage” to the Communion.

Read it all.

TEC bishops Catherine Roskam, Suffragan, New York and Kirk Smith, Arizona, spoke first about the theme of the day: the Bishop and Interfaith dialogue. Both noted that they have a new respect for the bishops here who live in multi-cultural and multi-faith worlds and really need to dialogue so that all may live peaceably together and get along. Both described their efforts at dialogue as much less serious business.

Moving on to the third session today from the Windsor Continuation Group, both said that they would prefer to see the statements made in a positive and much less negative wording. Bishop Smith said that affirming their relationships as bishops in a positive way would be more acceptable; because it sounds like if you don’t accept this thesis and/or the Covenant, you can’t be part of the group.

Read it all.

(ENS) Reaction to the proposals was swift. “There is no willingness to give us a middle ground, to find the via media,” Bishop Sergio Carranza, assistant bishop of Los Angeles, said in an interview. “They are blaming the Episcopal Church and the Canadian church for all the problems.”

Arizona Bishop Kirk Smith, one of the day’s Episcopal Church media briefers, said that the church will discuss the proposals over the next few days.

Speaking personally, he said he “would have liked to have seen something initially a little more positive and less punitive.”

“Our time together has given me wonderful feelings about the communion, strengthened friendships around the world and I’d like to see us at the end of the conference come up with a common statement affirming what we stand for in a positive way and less a statement that if you don’t accept certain things you can’t be part of the group,” he added.

Diocese of Pittsburgh Assistant Bishop Henry Scriven told ENS that if the pastoral forum “delivers what it promised and does what it says it’s going to do, from our point of view, that would be very helpful.”

Read it all.

Read it all.

We can all feel the Archbishop as the big poppa as an instrument of unity (1); his performance at this Conference has been flawless giving him rock star favor. But at the end of the day there is the balance of the Lambeth Conference itself (2), the Primates (3), and the heretofore neglected, and lay represented, Anglican Consultative Council (4).

The Tablet reporter was correct for despite this recital of the instruments of unity (all 4 of them) there seemed to be an immobility in recent years when it came to responses to the blessing of gay and lesbian unions, the ordination of practicing homosexuals, and unwanted incursions from other other bishops. This is a bare bones critique of the Windsor Report. Moreover, we have two bunches of the Faithful, side by side, who read the bible differently. So, was another instrument needed, sort of an code of conduct which could mobilize an ecclesial swat team quickly?

That’s why everyone is breathy around two undeviating compass azimuths during this last week. Will they intersect? The first is the growing feeling that we like being a worldwide family but the second, from another direction, is that there will be an agreement which tells us how to behave and when we are bad. To make it worse, there may be some we don’t know or elect who tell us so and determine our future.

Read it all.

I read and study my bible habitually, prayerfully and hard, learning both from the insights the Holy Spirit provides me and from the long tradition of piety and scholarship within which I am continually formed and reformed. My personal conclusion is that what St Paul and the Old Testament are condemning are not faithful, loving and stable same sex relationships as we see them today but rather matters of cultic sex, sex as the expression of a particular power relationship, and promiscuity. The other main argument, that God didn’t create Adam and Adam, collapses into a narrow form of Thomism (in which every “thing” can have only one good and natural purpose) that is explicitly rejected in the Prayer Book (and its revisions) marriage service and therefore cannot be claimed as Anglican.

Nonetheless, if I ever thought this issue could be “adiaphora” (something a local church can determine without needing to heed others) I no longer do. The consecration of a bishop in an active same sex relationship has certainly helped some Christians in North America to feel more fully accepted by the church, official liturgies and blessings for such partnerships have done the same for the couples involved and their friends. But the price is being paid elsewhere, particularly in places where Christians are on the defensive or in a minority in relation to Islam, and are often seen as slack on topics such as the consumption of alcohol. In countries like these male homosexual activities are often still criminal. There is no way they can tackle these issues at present in their contexts nor could they defend themselves by saying that “it’s not us, it’s just the Americans”. Indeed the very fact that it is the USA (in many parts of the world I doubt Canada is adequately distinguished) leading that plays into the anti-imperialism and hatred of America that is so strong across the globe. Invasion by American cultural values is no more popular than invasion by its troops.

As a C of E bishop I recognise that were I to insist on carrying out the consequences of my own views on this subject rather than upholding what Synod and the House of Bishops have agreed then I would have to resign. But my Anglican ecclesiology and catholic spirituality teach me to be obedient to the collegial will, properly expressed, not least because I might well be wrong. Equally, I believe that any individual church that claims to be Anglican needs to have a polity which gives full weight to the whole communion. It’s here where I find I am looking over the next few days to my American brothers and sisters for reassurance.

Read it all.

With regard to those dioceses and congregations which have left their original provinces and joined themselves to others, the Group recommends that the Pastoral Forum “develop a scheme in which existing ad hoc jurisdictions could be held `in trust’ in preparation for their reconciliation within their proper Provinces”. Such a scheme might reflect the way religious orders relate to the wider Church, or the way an extended family cares for children from a dysfunctional nuclear family, or the way escrow accounts hold monies in trust for their original owners.

In his prepared remarks, Bp. Hanford explained that the groups which had pulled apart might be placed in a “holding-bay” not dependent on any other Province, but linked to the Pastoral Forum. In response to questions, he explained that this provision is meant to deal only with those who are already out, not for further withdrawals. Asked if this might take the form of provincial oversight from Canterbury, Bp. Hanford stated that this possibility “will doubtless be considered”.

“Ways of halting litigation must be explored”, the Group asserts, “and perhaps the escrow concept could even be extended to have some applicability here”. In response to a question about whether this meant those who had pulled out might get their property back, Bp. Hanford replied that this “would require working out”.

In response to a question about the fairness of providing a safe space for conservatives, but not for lesbian and gay people like the Nigerian man recently given asylum, Bp. Hanford said that he heard what was being said, but noted that this is a preliminary report, and drew attention to the final section. Reaffirm Commitments

Finally, the WCG calls upon the bishops to “reaffirm the commitments expressed” in two statements. The first is Lambeth 1998’s call for “all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals, violence within marriage and any trivialisation and commercialisation of sex”. The second is the Primates’ statement at Dromantine that “the victimisation or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us. We assure homosexual people that they are children of God, loved and valued by him, and deserving of the best we can give of pastoral care and friendship”.

Read it all.

LGBT Anglicans are back on the chopping block based on the work of the Windsor Continuation Group. While we recognize that this is a long-term process, sadly, what was continued today was the process of institutionalizing bigotry and marginalizing the LGBT baptized. Acceptance of these recommendations would result in de facto sacramental apartheid.

“We applaud the strong testimony in today’s hearings from TEC bishops who are committed to be pastoral to all the sheep in their flock, not just the straight ones. We call on them to take that witness to their Indaba groups. We ask them to remember the 1976 commitment of the Episcopal Church to ‘full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church’ for the LGBT baptized.

“It is a sad thing indeed that the message today’s report sends out from the Anglican Communion to the world is that homosexuals getting married in California are of more concern to the church than are homosexuals being mugged in Nigeria.

“As Integrity continues to offer our witness here at Lambeth Conference, we demonstrate our deep commitment to our ongoing relationship with the rest of the global Anglican Communion. At the same time, we will witness to our conviction that the vocations and relationships of the LGBT baptized are not for sale as bargaining chips in this game of global Anglican politics. At the end of the day, too high a price to pay for institutional unity.”

Another perspective on today’s developments.

Watching the press conference today it was clear that the organizers of Lambeth think that they can solve the Communion’s problems by creating yet another of their Little Englands (despite the fact they’ve been warned that the Colonial Days Are Over) – an England where everyone is polite, every one remembers their manners, everyone remembers what Nanny taught them in the Nursery, everyone remembers their station and the rules and are gentlemen and ladies and quite accommodating to English sensibilities, and everyone remembers the British are in charge. After all, what is the sense of being Anglican if one doesn’t want to emulate the English! All will be well, all will be solved, let us create a safe space, a Little England and shut out all that dreadful unpleasantness that causes the Locals to riot.

It’s almost endearing. Almost. The problem is – we Americans are revolutionaries. We can’t help it. It’s in our blood – we were never disappointed by despots storming the Bastille and chopping heads off aristocrats and their flunkies. We manage to retain elements of our English forebears who reminded us that manners are helpful and order is necessary, but that is more to be tolerated than embraced. We put cowboys in the Oval. We do stuff and ask questions later.

Watching the Press Conference today was like watching the Old Guard trying to contain a revolution. But revolutions are like tornadoes – and this is an ecclesiastical tornado. Tornadoes are neither contained nor controlled. You learn to watch for them, to learn the signs of their approach – and when they come, you either you find shelter quickly or you run fast.

Read it all.

Listen to it all.

Here is the full text it needs to be studied carefully.

Read it all.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Sunday for most of us was a lovely day of worship at Canterbury Cathedral, at which the Dean preached, and Archbishop Rowan celebrated. That was followed by a superb barbecue on the lawn (lamb, chicken, sausage; actually, the best meal in our time here!) In the afternoon there was a Civic Reception in the ruins of the Abbey that was build by St. Augustine (he didn’t lay the stones, himself, but he oversaw its construction) in the early years of the seventh century. The Dean told us in his sermon that some of the pages of the Bible given to Augustine by Gregory the Great in 597 are still intact! I would love to have seen them, but I believe they are in the archives at Cambridge University.

Today’s Indaba subject was “The Bishop, Christian Witness, and Other Faiths.” During the session a DRAFT of the Statement to be issued at the end of the Conference was handed out. Though we still have a week to go, it gives us a much better sense of how it is envisioned that everything will “fit” together.

Perhaps a comparison with Lambeth 1998 would be helpful. Ten years ago we were given a reading list, along with scholarly papers prepared for us to study before coming to the Conference. Most of the Bishops were then divided into four main sub-sections, where we worked on Reports on broad major subjects. The only thing from that Conference that is much remembered is “Resolution 1:10,” which declared homosexuality to be “incompatible with holy scripture.” It was, and ever has been, the most controversial thing to come out of any Lambeth Conference.

But, interestingly enough, the REPORT from the sub-section on Human Sexuality, composed by Bishops from across the entire spectrum of opinion, and from every sector of the globe, was UNANIMOUSLY agreed to by all the members of the sub-section that worked on it. It outlined four major positions that faithful Christians take (or took, as of that moment) regarding their understanding of sexuality, and it was very carefully balanced and nuanced.
Archbishop George Carey invested a great deal of personal effort to keep sexuality from being the defining issue of the Conference (“If it becomes that,” he said, “we will have failed.”) We failed.

The “Global South” largely felt that the “Progressive West” was demanding a new understanding of sexuality, and it struck back with a vengeance. The Resolution was amended and amended, each time becoming more strident, and when the vote was taken it was 526 in favor, 70 against, with 45 abstentions. I think it is fair to say that each “side” believed it had been ambushed by the other.

To a significant extent, the American and Canadian churches have ignored the Resolution (it was five years to the day after passing it that our General Convention confirmed the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire!), and we have been trying to figure out how to resolve the contradictions involved in all of this ever since.

This time around, the Bible Study discussions flow into the Indaba groups, and they are somewhat related to the various Plenary sessions, as well. But, rather than scholarly and/or committee reports, what we will issue as a Statement of the Conference will be largely composed of a kind of composite “snapshot” of what the world’s Anglican Bishops believe regarding a wide variety of topics and issues as of summer 2008.

If an opinion is voiced once or twice in an Indaba group it probably will not make it into the “snapshot.” But if it comes up half a dozen or more times, in as many different groups, it almost certainly will.

As I reported earlier, all of this is in the category of “building relationships,” and getting to know each other in prayer, Bible Study, and “sharing.” It is also, clearly, laying a foundation for addressing (again!) the major remaining issues of the Conference: sexuality and the development of an Anglican Covenant.

This afternoon we had the second major “Hearing” on what is being envisioned by the “Windsor Continuation Group” as to “how we get from here to there” (“there” being the restoration of trust, fellowship, and communion). I need to quote to you at length from what we were given.

PLEASE NOTE: whether this survives at all, let alone in anything recognizably like what I am about to type, is anything but certain. There remains a great deal of objection to even having a Covenant, let alone to some of the specifics.

Nevertheless, here is what was handed out:

* The Windsor Report sets out requests for three moratoria in relation to the public Rites of Blessing of same-sex unions, the consecration to the episcopate of those living in partnered gay relationships and the cessation of cross border interventions.
* There have been different interpretations of the sense in which “moratorium” was used in the Windsor Report. Our understanding is that moratorium refers to both future actions and is also retrospective: that is that it requires the cessation of activity. This necessarily applies to practices that may have already been authorized as well as proposed for authorization in the future.
* The request for moratorium applies in this way to the complete cessation of (a) the celebration of blessings for same-sex unions, (b) consecrations of those living in openly gay relationships, and (c) all cross border interventions and inter-provincial claims of jurisdiction.
* The three moratoria have been requested several times: Windsor (2004); Dromantine (2005); Dar es Salaam (2007) and the requests have been less than wholeheartedly embraced on all sides.
* The failure to respond presents us with a situation where if the three moratoria are not observed, the communion is likely to fracture. The patterns of action currently embraced with the continued blessings of same-sex unions and of interventions could lead to irreparable damage.
* The call for the three moratoria on these issues relates to their controversial nature. This poses the serious question of what response should be made to those who act contrary to the moratorium during the Covenant process and who should make a response.

The WCG goes on to propose the swift formation of a “Pastoral Forum” – noting that it is essentially the same thing as a number of previously proposed bodies, a “Council of Advice” (Windsor), a “Panel of Reference” (Dromantine), a “Pastoral Council” (Dar es Salaam), and the Statement from the American House of Bishops (September 2007) acknowledging a “useful role for communion wide consultation with respect to the pastoral needs of those seeking alternative oversight.”

The WCG proposes that the President of the Forum should be the Archbishop of Canterbury, who would also appoint its episcopal chair, and its members, including members of the Instruments of Communion and a constituency “representative of the breadth of the life of the Communion as a whole.”

It says the Forum should be empowered to act quickly and decisively, especially through the ministry of its Chair, who would work closely with the ABC in the exercise of his ministry.

“The Forum would be responsible for addressing those anomalies of pastoral care arising in the communion against the recommendations of the Windsor Report. It could also offer guidance on what response and any diminishment of standing within the communion might be appropriate where any of the three moratoria are broken.”

I found this sentence particularly heartening: “We are encouraged by the planned setting up of the Communion Partners initiative in The Episcopal Church as a means of sustaining those who feel at odds with developments taking place in their own Province but who wish to be loyal to, and to maintain, their fellowship within TEC and within the Anglican Communion.”

And, finally: “The proliferation of ad hoc episcopal and archepiscopal ministries cannot be maintained within a global Communion. We recommend that the Pastoral Forum develop a scheme in which existing ad hoc jurisdictions could be held ‘in trust’ in preparation for their reconciliation within their proper Provinces.”

Will any of this actually be put into place? Will any of it matter? Only time will tell. But, two weeks into our time in England, things are becoming interesting.

With warmest regards in our Lord,

–(The Right Rev.) John W. Howe is Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida

My initial take on the report is cautiously positive, understanding four principles of note.

First, we have been here before. We have been here with Windsor and with Dar. And those two documents recommendations were simply not fulfilled ultimately.

Second, documents are different from action. We can be even ecstatic over a document, but that does not mean that any action will be taken. I suppose it all depends on whether the Archbishop of Canterbury is willing for those words to be implemented.

Read it all.

A new pastoral forum is to be set up to bring rebel provinces into line in the Anglican Communion.

The 650 bishops meeting at the Lambeth Conference in Kent debated proposals today for a body headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that would prevent any more consecrations of gay bishops or same-sex blessings.

The forum will also clamp down on “cross-border interventions” such as those where conservative bishops from Africa have consecrated bishops to pastor congregations in the United States.

The document says the forum is needed because repeated requests for moratoria on gay consecrations, same-sex blessings and cross-border interventions have not been heeded.

Read it all.

Here is the link.

CT: Some conservatives were anxious in coming to Lambeth and some here have actually said they don’t feel any hope towards the future of the Anglican Communion. Do you share those feelings?

TW: I always tell my staff at home to distinguish between feelings and thinking because your feelings will come and go if you are tired or in a meeting perhaps and then you will feel like all hope is lost. You have to go back and pray and think.

The situation is still extremely complex. The Archbishop of Canterbury said when he invited us all that if you accept this invitation you are accepting to work with the Windsor Report and the Covenant process. The Archbishop reiterated that on Sunday afternoon and has reiterated it publicly several times.

If the Windsor Report is properly followed through and if the Covenant process actually gets somewhere where it is designed to get then things can happen which will give hope to a lot of people who are at present in danger of losing hope. I say that in general terms because I am not in charge of the process, I’m not on the group for taking forward either of those things. So I am not entirely sure what will happen with either of them and to put it devoutly I am not sure how the Holy Spirit will lead those who are working on those things.

CT: So you are open to the Covenant?

TW: Yes, sure. We have to be. In the last few Lambeths, many people believed they were working in a parliamentary style process with big sessions and big debates that would polarise people instantly and that isn’t necessarily the right way of doing Christian decision making. So the Archbishop has taken the risk ”“ and it is a risk – of abandoning that model and saying let’s pray together, work together and be together in all sorts of contexts and we will see what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church in the midst of that.

Read it all.

A new Pastoral Forum is to be set up to bring rebel provinces into line in the Anglican Communion. The bishops at Lambeth are presently discussing the third ‘observations’ document of the Windsor Continuation Group that sets out why the forum is needed. It says this is necessary because repeated requests for moratoria on gay consecrations, same-sex blessings and cross-border interventions have not been heeded. I’ve been given an advance copy of the document. It says: ‘The failure to respond presents us with a situation where if the three moratoria are not observed, the Communion is likely to fracture.’

The document proposes the forum as a “key mechanism to achieve reconciliation”.

Read it all.

Follow along closely.