Anglican Church in a 'mess' over gay bishop row
Pastor Dale Morgan
Anglican Church in a 'mess' over gay bishop row
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By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:13am BST 29/05/2007
A senior Anglican conservative witheringly described the state of the
worldwide Church as "a mess" and "awful" yesterday as the Archbishop of
Canterbury prepared to take a three-month break.
The criticism will come as a blow to Dr Rowan Williams, who last week
attempted to placate the Church's conservative wing by snubbing the
Church's first openly gay bishop.
Dr Williams announced that Bishop Gene Robinson will not be invited to
next year's Lambeth Conference, the 10-yearly gathering of all the
Church's 850-plus bishops in Canterbury.
But conservative leaders remain unimpressed. At least a handful of them
- who represent a huge swathe of the 70-million strong Church - are
still proposing to boycott the conference.
The Primate of the Southern Cone in South America, Archbishop Gregory
Venables, told The Daily Telegraph: "It is a mess. Unless there is a
major shift there are going to be significant absences from Lambeth."
The conservative "Global South" primates, who are mostly from Africa and
Asia, are furious because they believe Dr Williams has been unduly
lenient with the liberal leadership of the American branch of Anglicanism.
Many of them had expected that all the liberal American bishops would be
excluded from the Lambeth Conference unless they reversed their
unilateral pro-gay agenda.
The US bishops were given until September 30 by the Anglican primates to
declare a moratorium on the consecration of gay bishops and same-sex
blessings and to approve a "parallel" Church scheme for American
conservatives.
So far the Americans have rejected the scheme and seem unlikely to
fulfil the other requests. Dr Williams, who begins his extended leave on
Friday, appeared to offer them unconditional invitations to the Lambeth
Conference last week.
Archbishop Venables, who is a leading member of the Global South group's
steering committee, said: "The fact that Gene Robinson isn't going to be
at Lambeth is important. But the gesture towards the liberal American
bishops is far, far more significant."
He said that although the statement issued by Lambeth Palace last week
did contain a veiled threat suggesting that Dr Williams might still
withdraw the invitations he had extended to the Americans, in reality it
would be almost impossible.
The chairman of the Global South group, the Primate of Nigeria,
Archbishop Peter Akinola, warned he may boycott Lambeth.
Archbishop Akinola was enraged that Bishop Martyn Minns, who leads a
conservative group in America, was also excluded from the conference by
Dr Williams last week.
The Archbishop, who consecrated the British-born Bishop Minns into the
Nigerian Anglican Church, said in a statement: "The withholding of an
invitation to a Nigerian bishop, elected and consecrated by other
Nigerian bishops, will be viewed as withholding invitations to the
entire House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria."