Archbishop Gregory Venables, the Primate of the Southern Cone, said he doubted whether the traditionalist and liberal wings of the 80 million-strong church could even achieve a “peaceful separation”.
He is one of the few church leaders to attend both the breakaway Gafcon summit in Jerusalem last month, at which a new church within a church was launched for orthodox Anglicans who believe the Bible teaches that homosexuality is wrong, and the ongoing Lambeth Conference in Canterbury.
A quarter of the worldwide Anglican Communion’s 880 bishops are boycotting the once-a-decade Lambeth gathering in protest at liberal American and Canadian churches which tolerate gay clergy and bless same-sex unions.
There is a way forward, though, by confronting the Episcopal Church with the two events of April 29,1996: namely, the date of an Interfaith Letter – drafted by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and signed by Presiding Bishop Browning – urging the members of Congress not to overturn President Clinton’s veto of the proposal to ban the partial-birth abortion procedure. Coincidentally, on the very same date Bishop Spong appeared before a House Subcommittee and made a forceful appeal for “assisted suicide,” which was broadcast on C-SPAN. Over the 12 years since then, the Church has formalized its membership in the Coalition, and, as far as I know, Bishop Spong’s testimony has been allowed to stand.
Whatever one’s views of abortion and “assisted suicide,” these two events are hard copy. And whatever one’s views of justice, surely the average Anglican would understand that all members of the Episcopal Church have a right to know and a need to know what has been advocated publicly in their name. Has this been done? Is this the Christian witness that Madelaine Albright or Colin Powell would offer to the world?
It is essential that the ARchbishop of Canterbury be made aware of this key date, especially in view of his Tsunami Statement (excerpt below) so that he may determine the course to follow in trying to keep the communion together.
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From The Archbishop of Canterbury’s files:
Excerpt from Article on the Asian tsunami for the Sunday Telegraph –published 2 January 2005
…religious people have learned to look at other human faces with something of the amazement and silence that God himself draws out of them. They see the immeasurable value, the preciousness, of each life. And here is one of the paradoxes. The very thing that lies closest to the heart of a religious way of life in the world, the passion about the value of each and every life, the passion that makes religious people so obstinate and inconvenient when society discusses abortion and euthanasia – this is also just what makes human disaster so appalling, so much of a challenge to the feelings. Sometimes a secular moralist may say in contemporary debates: “Nature is wasteful of life; we can’t hold to absolute views of the value of every human organism.” That is not an option for the believer. That is why for the believer the uniqueness of every sufferer in a disaster such as the present one is so especially harrowing. There are no “spare” lives.