A group of senior bishops in the Church of England have come to the defence of the Archbishop of Canterbury after leaked correspondence this week revealed his support for same-sex relationships.The correspondence, dating from 2000 and 2001, when Rowan Williams was Archbishop of Wales, sparked a flurry of protests from conservative groups, with one claiming that his position as Archbishop was ‘untenable.’
But in a letter to The Times newspaper this morning, the group of 16 bishops say that the publication of the letters amounted to a “gross misrepresentation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
They say that reporting of the correspondence may have given the impression that Dr Williams had made a fresh statement. “One can only wonder at the motives behind releasing, and highlighting, these letters at this precise moment – and at the way in which some churchmen are seeking to make capital of them as though they were ‘news’.”
But they also questioned the interpretation of the letter as suggesting that gay sex was equivalent to marriage. In his first letter to Dr Barbara Pitt, Dr Williams concluded that same-sex relationships “might ... reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage’.”
The Bishops say that this proposal (which many of their number do not agree with) is “far more cautious in content, and tentative in tone,” than the reporting of it suggested.
They point out that in the second letter Dr Williams stresses that same-sex relationships are not the same as marriage, ‘because marriage has other dimensions to do with children and society’.
But responding to accusation of hypocrisy, that the Archbishop believes one thing privately but advocates another publicly, they quote Dr Williams as saying “that there is a difference between ‘thinking aloud’ as a theologian and the task of a bishop (let alone an Archbishop) to uphold the church’s teaching.”
The contents of the letters, when they were released this week sparked protests from liberals in the USA, who took it as evidence that Dr Williams’ thinking was precisely the same as theirs. They were unhappy that, at Lambeth, the Archbishop blamed liberals in north America for sparking the current crisis.
The Bishops declared their support for the ‘magnificent leadership’ of the Archbishop: “He has our full and unqualified support in his magnificent leadership both of the Church of England and of the Anglican Communion as we seek to obey God’s call to take the gospel to the whole world,” they wrote.
The bishops who signed the letter included: the Rt Rev Dr Tom Wright (Bishop of Durham),
the Rt Rev David Urquhart (Bishop of Birmingham),
the Rt Rev Nicholas Reade (Bishop of Blackburn),
the Rt Rev David James (Bishop of Bradford),
the Rt Rev Graham Dow (Bishop of Carlisle),
the Rt Rev John Gladwin (Bishop of Chelmsford),
the Rt Rev Geoffrey Rowell (Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe),
the Rt Rev Anthony Priddis (Bishop of Hereford),
the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill (Bishop of Lichfield),
the Rt Rev Graham James (Bishop of Norwich),
the Rt Rev John Pritchard (Bishop of Oxford),
the Rt Rev Kenneth Stevenson (Bishop of Portsmouth),
the Rt Rev John Packer (Bishop of Ripon and Leeds),
the Rt Rev George Cassidy (Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham),
the Rt Rev Nigel Stock (Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich),
the Rt Rev Stephen Platten (Bishop of Wakefield),
the Rt Rev John Stroyan (Bishop of Warwick),
the Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt (Bishop of Winchester),
and the Rt Rev John Inge (Bishop of Worcester )
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