Canterbury Speaks

Arch-Bishop Williams has spoken regarding the debate in the Anglican communion over homosexuality, marriage, and ordination. This strikes me as right. What do some of you Anglicans or Anglo-ecclesio-philes think?

WASHINGTON BUREAU: Terry Mattingly's religion column for 6/28/06.

Thousands of Episcopalians believe the Sacrament of Marriage should
be modernized to include same-sex unions.

Thousands of others across America disagree.

Many regional dioceses have become battlegrounds, with liberal
parishes clashing with conservative parishes. At the national level,
some bishops have tried, with little success, to convince their
church hierarchy to repent after its 2003 consecration of the openly
gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. This war has rocked the
70-million-member Anglican Communion, where traditionalists hold a
majority among the world's bishops.

So everyone has been waiting for a sign from the throne of St.
Augustine. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has been pulled in
both directions, although his progressive views on sexuality are well
known.

"What is the current tension in the Anglican Communion actually
about? Plenty of people are confident that they know the answer,"
wrote Williams, in a letter this week to the Anglican primates. "It's
about gay bishops, or possibly women bishops. The American Church is
in favor and others are against -- and the Church of England is not
sure (as usual)."

But this is a conflict inside a global, sacramental communion, he
stressed. It cannot be debated in political terms.

Anglicans can even appreciate the role homosexuals have played in
church life, he said, yet believe that this "doesn't settle the
question of whether the Christian Church has the freedom, on the
basis of the Bible, and its historic teachings, to bless homosexual
partnerships as a clear expression of God's will. That is disputed
among Christians, and, as a bare matter of fact, only a small
minority would answer yes to the question."

Thus, Williams believes it's time for Anglicans to write a covenant
that would bind the communion together on crucial points of ancient
Christian doctrine and practice. Liberal churches that declined to
sign would become "associate" members of the communion and remain
linked by bonds of history and friendship -- but not "constituent"
members at the legal and sacramental levels.

Anglicanism would split, along lines defined by the global majority.

"Some actions -- and sacramental actions in particular -- just do
have the effect of putting a Church outside or even across the
central stream of the life they have shared with other Churches,"
wrote Williams. "It isn't a question of throwing people into outer
darkness, but of recognizing that actions have consequences -- and
that actions believed in good faith to be 'prophetic' in their
radicalism are likely to have costly consequences."

What would this look like in practice? The relationship, said the
archbishop, would not be "unlike that between the Church of England
and the Methodist Church," which broke away from Anglicanism in 1791.

The Episcopal Church posted the Williams letter on its website,
without initial comment. However, activists on both sides quickly
linked Canterbury's sobering epistle with the decision during their
recent General Convention to change the church's name from the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America to the
Episcopal Church -- period. This underlined the fact that it already
includes small jurisdictions in the Caribbean, Latin America and
Europe. Might it soon include Canada, New Zealand, Scotland other
churches that reject a doctrinal covenant?

Money will be an issue as Anglican leaders write their covenant.

The older, richer churches control massive endowments, pensions,
seminaries, properties and the ecclesiastical structures in their
lands. They control the resources of the past and will use them to
defend what they believe is the theology of the future.

However, traditionalists in the Third World and in some giant
American parishes are thriving in the here and now. They believe they
can use the resources of the present to defend the theology of the
past.

It's crucial that Williams repeatedly stressed that changes are
coming no matter what, said Father David Roseberry, rector of the
4,500-member Christ Church in Plano, Texas. This week, the parish
announced that it would leave the Episcopal Church, while striving to
remain in the Anglican Communion.

"I'm impressed that Rowan Williams is not willing to sacrifice the
doctrine, discipline and worship of Anglicanism in order to accept
the doctrine, discipline and worship of the modern Episcopal Church,"
said Roseberry. "In fact, it appears that he is sacrificing his own
personal views in order to preserve the unity of the church. This is
exactly what we believe a bishop should do."