AMERICAN Anglicans at the centre of the row over gay unions have spoken of their ‘scepticism’ at the outcome of the Lambeth Conference.Brian Turley, 51, twice a Fulbright Scholar, former Professor at the University of West Virginia and now priest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has accused Dr Rowan Williams of being ‘elastic’ with the Gospel, and of replacing the demands of love with ‘tolerance of anything’.
“What you are left with is endless conversation,” he said, speaking from his parish, the Church of the Holy Spirit.
“Christians don’t share tolerance as a core value. Increasingly we are falling into a situation where we are adopting this doctrine of tolerance which is falling well short of where Christ wants us.”
Turley, who attended the Gafcon group meeting in Jerusalem said however that he did not believe there would be schism. And he added that Dr Williams was a man of integrity who was constrained by ‘his culture’.
“Anglicanism is going to survive but differently. The Gafcon group, because of demographics and growth is going to become Anglicanism.
“There’s good in that but problems as well. It would be better if the moderates would align with the orthodox conservative wing of the church, but Anglicanism is by definition a broad church.
“I don’t think a formal split is occurring. I do think the Global South is going to continue on its way and the rest of the church will have to show it is ready to align with it.”
Turley’s views are interesting, partly because his congregation has had to raise nearly $1million for a new building after the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, deposed their bishop, Bill Cox, and took action against those remaining loyal to him.
Former civil rights activist Cox, 87, the oldest man in the history of the American House of Bishops, was one of two bishops ceremonially ‘deposed’ – or stripped of office – three months ago, despite his age and the fact that his wife has Alzheimer’s.
His faithful congregations were thrown out of their churches, and he suffered financially.
Worse, according to Turley, is that Jefferts Schori in her deposition speech to the House of Bishops asked the bishops assembled ‘to continue to reach out’ in pastoral care to both the Rt Rev John-David Schofield and Cox.
"Abandoning the Communion of this Church does not mean we abandon a person as a member of the Body of Christ," Jefferts Schori said.
Cox told British-based Lapido Media that there has been no single contact, or even telephone call, to confirm his welfare.
“As a matter of fact I haven’t heard anything from her or any of her friends. Nonetheless, I have not had any kind of disparaging conversation about her with anybody. I have not even spoken ill against the two bishops who brought charges against me. I have just let it go because I know where my faith is and I have stated that.”
Cox was ‘deposed’ on March 12 this year for crossing diocesan lines in ordaining two priests and a deacon in Kansas at the request of the Bishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi.
The Church of Uganda dates its founding from the martyrdoms in 1886 of 32 young men, including 10 Anglicans, who because of their faith, refused to submit to the sexual demands of the Kabaka, or tribal ruler – and were burnt to death as a result. It welcomes those ‘outcasts’ elsewhere in the Anglican Communion who refuse to accept gay marriage but still wish to be ordained.
Said Cox: “My understanding of what Jesus did was always, Go to the outcasts.”
He has been consistent over the years in that. In 1965 as an idealistic young parish priest in Maryland, he swam against the dangerous cultural tide by merging two congregations, one black, one white, during the civil rights uprisings, without losing a single family.
Describing his deposition as ‘the low point’ of his life, he is now ‘covered’ by the Archbishop of the Southern Cone, Greg Venables, and designated honorary bishop of the diocese of Argentina.
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