Although today is billed as global Anglicanism’s high-noon shootout over homosexuality, the issue likely will get sidestepped again, exasperating both conservative and liberal Canadians who belong to the world’s third-largest Christian church and are fed up with the dispute.<\/p>\n
More than 600 Anglican bishops assembled for the decennial Lambeth Conference in the ancient English cathedral city of Canterbury are to meet in indabas – a Zulu word for “purposeful gatherings” – to talk all day about homosexuality, which has threatened the church with imminent schism over the past five years.<\/p>\n
But they are to pass no resolutions, make no declarations.<\/p>\n
Rather they are to be limited to “reflections” on a proposal from the church’s spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, to create a “pastoral forum” for the 77-million-member church, the mandate of which would be to keep the homosexual debate frozen in place and prohibited from going anywhere.<\/p>\n