Bishop [Michael] Hough said he returned to Australia a “Rowanite”, convinced by the message and approach to managing the church taken by Archbishop Williams.<\/p>\n
“Rowan was pilloried, attacked and mocked – but he got on with being the Archbishop of Canterbury,” Bishop Hough said.<\/p>\n
He said the approach taken at the conference to ensure all bishops had a chance to speak was to divide the 800 bishops – about 300 bishops boycotted the conference – into groups of about 40.<\/p>\n
This was, Bishop Hough said, an African model of reaching consensus called Indaba.<\/p>\n
“The term that Rowan used were `the bonds of affection that bind us’,” Bihsop Hough said.<\/p>\n
“If we can’t build on those then what are we doing here?”<\/p>\n
“Rowan said God’s watching us, the world’s watching us. If we don’t handle our heritage with integrity then we fail in God’s eyes.<\/p>\n
“If we don’t handle conflict then we have failed in the world’s eyes.”<\/p>\n