In the end, the 2008 Lambeth Conference will probably be remembered most for the bishop who was not in attendance but who nonetheless threatened to break apart the world’s third-largest church.
The once-a-decade gathering of Anglican bishops and archbishops, which ended Sunday, was dominated by disputes concerning V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the worldwide Anglican church, who was consecrated five years ago in New Hampshire.
In a news conference Sunday, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, urged bishops to halt further consecrations of gay bishops, pointing a finger specifically at the United States.
He said that certain dioceses in the American church continue “to put our relations as a communion under strain, and some problems won’t be resolved while those practices continue.”
No, not a strain, the communion is torn….and what is happening in the EC will now begin to take place in the AC.