The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said yesterday that the breakup of the Anglican Communion would mark an unacceptable “failure” and that he believes compromise is possible between opposing factions over gay rights.
After a tense morning of meetings at which an Egyptian bishop said some Anglicans now view the Episcopal Church as “a different religion,” Williams acknowledged “temperatures are very high” in the 77-million member global Anglican Communion. But he sought to tamp down talk of an imminent schism, saying that “despite what has been claimed, there is no ultimatum” facing the Episcopal Church, even though a group of Anglican leaders has asked that the American bishops promise to put a halt to some of their support for gay rights by Sept. 30.
“I think it would be rather an admission of defeat if we said that we were incapable of working together on the issues that divide us,” Williams said at a briefing. “Whether we’ll get to that point, I don’t know. I have to say, ‘God forbid,’ and mean it.”
Conservatives in the Episcopal Church, and elsewhere in the Anglican Communion, have been furious with the Episcopal bishops over their decision in 2003 to approve an openly gay priest, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire, a move that they say violates the Bible. Summarizing the mood, a Ghanaian laywoman yesterday told the bishops that in her country, homosexuality is viewed as “an abomination.”
But Williams yesterday urged unhappy conservative Episcopalians to try to stay in the church; he told a blogger from a Virginia parish that has affiliated with the Anglican Church of Nigeria: “I’d be rather slower than I think some of your friends have been to look for solutions elsewhere.”
The Egyptian bishop certainly had it right-many. and not just Anglicans–regard the Episcopal Church as a “different religion”–and not necessarily even Christian. If you go down the list of orthodox Christian teachings and Traditions the Episcopal Church has trashed and tossed aside, one can certainly raise the question of whether the Episcopal Church can even be considered a Christian body any longer.
#2 Offensive maybe but true none the less.