Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in a long-awaited message to the global Anglican Communion he heads, said Friday there was no consensus among Anglican leaders on whether the Episcopal Church had met demands that it stop consecrating openly gay bishops and authorizing same-sex blessings.
In an Advent letter released Friday, Williams said just more than half of the fellowship’s top bishops and archbishops had responded positively to recent pledges from the Episcopal Church to roll back its relatively liberal positions on homosexuality and the Bible.
But for the rest of the Anglican leaders surveyed around the world, the promises made by Episcopal bishops were “inadequate,” the archbishop wrote. In a September meeting in New Orleans, the bishops pledged to “exercise restraint” in consecrating openly gay bishops and said they would not authorize official blessings for same-sex couples.
Williams, who is struggling to keep his fractious global fellowship from splintering, said he planned to ask professional mediators to help guide discussions between the Episcopal Church’s leadership and conservative dissidents in the United States and abroad.
“We have no consensus . . . ,” Williams wrote in the letter largely devoted to the crisis affecting the communion. “All of us will be seriously wounded and diminished if our communion fractures any further.”
As TEC’s leaders have no intention to comply with the Windsor Report and the Dar Communique, the wounding and fracturing will certainly continue. Each individual must decide how much wounding he or she can tolerate. But don’t be discouraged if you are committed to staying in the Anglican Communion. Christ’s banner, to which you may rally, still waves on high ground! It’s called realignment.