The Lambeth conference of Anglican bishops discusses “human sexuality”, the subject which divides traditionalists and liberals. The Archbishop of Canterbury hopes to draft a statement that can hold the worldwide Anglican Communion together on this issue. Clive Hanford, the person in charge of drafting this statement, says it can be done but they have to be ‘cautious’.
Note carefully the comments of Bishop Stacy Sauls of Lexington (see city Lexington, Kentucky) which once again misses the central fact that there are different kinds of differences. The Elizabethan settlement was about allowing for difference within a community with a certain bedrock underneath on which difference was not possible (the statement [never said by Augustine] of Meldenius–“In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity”– is sometimes cited in this regard). It is precisely the issue of what kind of a difference this is which is currently at issue, and moving to an Elizabeth settlement on it settles the debate about the nature of this difference in practice before the theological debate about it is settled. This is what the Windsor Report was trying to get at, and Rowan Williams just made the same argument again in his second Presidential address to this Lambeth, and TEC has still not fully reckoned with that argument–KSH.