THERE IS no retreat from the sexuality debate, Dr Williams told the General Synod on Monday, a week after the conclusion of the Primates' Meeting in Dar es Salaam."It feels as though we are caught in a battle very few really want to be fighting; like soldiers in the trenches somewhere around 1916, trying to remember just what were the decisions that got everyone to a point where hardly anyone was owning the conflict. . ."
So it is natural to want to say: 'This is a war no one chose; there must be a simple way of halting the conflict and getting the troops home'. . . Unhappily, though, the truth is that, when conflicts have passed a certain point, simple solutions are unlikely to work, to the extent that they ignore the things that bred the conflict in the first place, and that have never been addressed."
The Archbishop expressed his frustration at the intransigence of people on each side: the "virtual fundamentalism which simply declines to reflect at all about principles of interpretation" and the "cultural snobbery, content to say that we have outgrown biblical principles".
"Whatever happened," the Archbishop lamented, "to persuasion? To the frustrating business of conducting recognisable arguments in a shared language? It is frustrating because people are so aware of the cost of a long, argumentative process. It is intolerable that injustice and bigotry are tolerated by the Church; it is intolerable that souls are put in peril by doubtful teaching and dishonest practice. Yet one of the distinctive things about the Christian Church as biblically defined is surely the presumption (Acts 15) that the default position when faced with conflict is reasoning in council and the search for a shared discernment."
The Church had been at fault, he said. "We should have done more on what it means to be a Catholic Church; we should have done more on the use of scripture." In particular, mindful of the text of Lambeth 1.10, more should have been done to "offer a safe space" for homosexual people. "Again and again, we have used the language of respect for their human dignity; again and again, we have failed to show it effectively.
Dr Williams thus commended the Primates' final communiqué as representing "a serious attempt to go beyond the surface problems and to give us some space to look at the underlying and neglected theological factors".
THE ARCHBISHOP expressed his commitment to holding the Communion together in an article in last Friday's Daily Telegraph: "Whether it can all come together remains to be seen. But the leaders of the Communion thought it worth trying - not because enforced unanimity matters more than anything, but because the relations and common work of the Communion, especially in the developing world, matter massively.
And also because the idea that there might be a worldwide Christian Church that could balance unity and consent seems worth holding on to, for the sake of the whole Christian family and even for the sake of human society itself."
THE PRESIDING BISHOP of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, gave her most candid view of the Primates' Meeting to date in a statement to staff at the Episcopal Church Centre in New York.
The low point of the meeting, she said, came when one Primate equated homosexuality with paedophilia, and another said he couldn't see why the Communion should study homosexuality if it didn't need to study murder.
She said: "I ache for the pain that this communiqué is causing to people in our own Church, who see issues of justice as absolutely central, because I share that view. I also hunger for a vision of the world where people with vastly different opinions can sit at the same table and worship at the same table, because I think that eventually that is how all of us are converted."
She warned: "I don't know if our Church is ready to say to the rest of the Communion what's been asked of us. I do know that, if we're removed from a place where we can speak to the rest of the Communion, we're going to lose the advantage of being there at the table to challenge views like that."
Answering a gay priest on the staff, she said: "I know where my heart lies, and its in a divided place," referring to her hunger to affirm the place of gay and lesbians in the Church, and a hunger to "see this body reconciled. "In my better moments, I firmly hope and pray that these things are not diametrically opposed."
THE PRIMATE of Nigeria, the Most Revd Peter Akinola, who has intervened most in the US through his organisation, the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), told journalists in Nairobi last week of the warning that had been given to the US Church. "If they agree to stop, there will be a huge celebration of the Communion. But if they choose to continue with it as a way of life, then they will be told to walk away from the Communion."
The Primate of Kenya, the Most Revd Benjamin Nzimbi, said at the same press conference: "We still say marriage is between a man and a woman as it was ordained by God. We need to stick to that. We told those Churches that were not sticking to that, to go and put things right."
In an official statement for CANA, the Rt Revd Martyn Minns, its missionary bishop in the US, describes the Primates' Meeting as "truly historic", and commends the draft Covenant: "a clear and unambiguous declaration of what we, as Christians and as Anglicans, believe".
The references in the Covenant to marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman were "almost un-Anglican in its clarity".
Whether or not the CANA parishes are reconciled with the Episcopal Church in the US depends on "both the response of the Episcopal Church and also the effectiveness of the various structural recommendations", he writes.
"In the mean time, we will continue to work to provide a lifeboat for all those who wish to embrace biblical truth and the Anglican tradition in North America. . . We are no longer a part of the Episcopal Church, and our call is to show the world a new way of living and a new way of loving."Other conservative groups have largely welcomed the contents of the communiqué. The American Anglican Council announced the setting up of a "Communiqué Compliance Office" to monitor the US Church's progress."
The meeting in Dar es Salaam moved the Episcopal Church firmly into the penalty box, which they will not emerge from without a true, 180-degree turn from the behaviour and theology that has become the norm in many parts of the US Church over the past several decades."
In the UK, Dr Philip Giddings and Canon Chris Sugden, writing on behalf of Anglican Mainstream, said they were pleased with "the clear evaluation that the Episcopal Church in the US has departed from that clear standard of teaching [about marriage and sexuality], and that the General Convention's response to the Windsor report was inadequate".
Nevertheless, they were concerned about references to "consensus" and "majority", which "define modes of agreement: they cannot be definitive terms for expressing the faith once delivered to the saints, nor for expressing the mind of the Anglican Communion and its commitment to that faith".
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