Beyond compromise

From the Guardian (U.K.):

. . . For years [the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams] has used his considerable charm to try to hold [the Anglican Communion] together. But the simmering row over homosexuality has made this increasingly difficult. And two developments in the past fortnight make brutally plain that the communion is already falling apart.

Last week primates from the developing world - led by the conservative Nigerian bishop Peter Akinola - issued a demand that the Lambeth conference planned for next year should be postponed until the disputes dividing the affiliation have been decisively settled. Their aggressive stance cuts to the heart of the communion, since the Lambeth conference, held once every 10 years, is one of the only institutional expressions of this loose allegiance of churches. Then, on Thursday, another conservative archbishop -this time based in Latin America - suggested he was ready to adopt breakaway dioceses from within the US. In making the offer Bishop Gregory Venables launched a direct attack on the American Episcopal church, which has been trying to stem a flow of conservative defectors since New Hampshire elected the openly gay Gene Robinson as a bishop in 2003. By definition, in an "episcopal" church individual bishops hold sway in specific areas. If another bishop is competing for worshippers then he is running a different and parallel church. . .

Dr Williams is a liberal who is instinctively supportive of gay people. His desire to hold the communion together, however, has already led him to support a moratorium on the consecration of gay bishops and to suggest that Anglican churches should not recognise same-sex unions through public rites. These concessions have not, however, checked the communion's unravelling. The fence on which Dr Williams has been sitting has collapsed. It is time for him to preach what he believes.

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