Archbishop Jensen, who said he had recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of his conversion at a Billy Graham crusade, told his audience that this was a “solemn time” for Anglicans, as the Anglican Communion was facing a crisis over the authority of Scripture. Dr Jensen said that the Anglican Communion was “a very significant body of Christians” in today’s world and that anything that divided it was bad. The Communion enabled a sharing of resources, the delivery of aid and important networking across the globe.
However, he said that the 2003 consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson, a practising gay man, had deeply torn the Communion. Bishop Robinson’s consecration, he added, had been the culmination of years of liberal teaching and had taken place despite the guidance of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, the view of which had been “set aside” by the US Episcopal Church.
Since 2003, there had been attempts to “put the Communion together again”, but a fundamental issue concerned the “locus of authority”. By contrast, however, he said that the policy of liberals in the Communion was to delay decisions because they thought people would eventually agree with them.