Williams Tells US Church to Get a Move on With Reforms

By Pat Ashworth
(Notes by American Anglican Council)
March 9, 2007

The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for generosity and graciousness in the aftermath of the Primates’ Meeting in Tanzania (News, 23 February).

In a letter to all the Primates, released on Monday, he acknowledges that the meeting in February had been “far from an easy few days”, but suggests that it was marked by honest conversation and a direct facing of the Communion’s tensions.

He also sets out the immediate steps needed to implement decisions made in Tanzania. Against the background of the 30 September deadline imposed on the Episcopal Church in the United States, these would include the swift setting up of a pastoral council to work with the Presiding Bishop, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori. This will appoint a Primatial Vicar to oversee dissenting congregations. (*See note (1) below.)

The proposals should be taken with “all seriousness and dispatch”, the Archbishop says. “Once a sufficiently strong scheme is in place within the Episcopal Church, then this should be sufficient for all dissenting congregations and dioceses to find their home within it.” Dr Williams says that nominations for two Primates to serve on the Council should reach him by 16 March. (*See note (2) below.) They will, he suggests, need skills in canon law, administration, and mediation, as well as pastoral insight and availability.

Dr Williams affirms the “shared conviction” of the Windsor report as the way ahead; the Anglican Covenant as “the clearest way for our mutual trust and interdependent life to be renewed in the longer term”; and Lambeth 1.10 as the “standard of teaching on matters of sexual morality for the Communion”.

While acknowledging that the Primates can offer the Episcopal Church only advice and suggestions, he emphasises: “We cannot wait for another General Convention for further clarification [on the issues of human sexuality].” A readiness by the leadership of the Episcopal Church “to live by that same formal standard of teaching on these matters which applies elsewhere in the Communion is perhaps the first and most important step in the way forward”.

What the Primates have done, says Dr Williams, is to “indicate very clearly those steps which would enable all those provinces currently in a state of broken or impaired communion with the Episcopal Church to see significant movement towards healing and reconciliation, and towards the sort of unity by which the gospel may most fittingly be proclaimed”.

In a live webcast after the meeting, Dr Jefferts Schori said of the interventions by foreign bishops: “Whatever you may think of these acts, it behoves us as Christians to believe they acted in good faith, until we are confronted by evidence to the contrary. They are seeking to offer pastoral care to the minority among us who disagree vehemently with the direction and decisions of recent General Conventions.”

Dr Jefferts Schori encouraged the Church to see the Primatial Vicar proposal “in its most gracious container. The expectation is that the interventions will cease once the processes are functioning.” She indicated: “We are called to pause and not to go backward. I think we have been clear about affirming the equal dignity of all human beings. I see no desire of any in our Church to retreat from that position.”

The Episcopal Church’s executive council made a strong statement of inclusion last weekend: “We wish clearly to affirm that our position as a Church is to welcome all persons, particularly those perceived to be least among us. We wish to reaffirm to our lesbian and gay members that they remain a welcome and integral part of the Episcopal Church.”

Anglican women gathered at the 51st session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women reiterated their unequivocal commitment to remaining in communion with one another.

Individual bishops continue to speak about inclusion. The Bishop of New Jersey, the Rt Revd George Councell, told his diocesan convention: “We are called to minister in New Jersey. New Jersey is not Tanzania. New Jersey is not Nigeria. New Jersey is not any of the 29 countries in the African continent where homosexuality is a criminal offence. We minister in a radically different context.”

The Bishop of Florida, the Rt Revd John Howard, reflected on the contrast of polity, and on structural misunderstanding in the Communion. “Some of these provinces have all-powerful Primates who hire and fire bishops and priests as they wish, and who dictate from above the philosophical and theological tenets by which their followers must abide.”

It was, he said, “unhelpful for ultimatums with deadlines to be issued to our Church from abroad. . . For a heavy hand to be lifted over us from across the seas, for a spiritual stop-watch to be activated, can produce no long-term good.”

Changing Attitude Scotland added a new dimension to the debate in pointing out that, on the day the Tanzania communiqué was issued, the Church of Sweden had agreed rites of same-sex blessing.

“The Church of Sweden is in full communion with the Scottish Episcopal Church. Through its own synodical processes, the Church of Sweden has now agreed a text for the blessing of gay people,” a statement said on Tuesday.

“We note that there has been no condemnation of the actions of the Swedish Church from the Anglican Primates during this extensive process, nor from any of the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church. We are glad that this is so, and recognise that this illustrates very clearly that the actions of the Primates towards the Episcopal Church in the US are primarily political rather than theological.”

Leanne Larmondin, web manager for the Anglican Church of Canada, has described news that the Archbishop of Canterbury is to join the Canadian House of Bishops at their April meeting as “all the more surprising, because many had believed Archbishop Williams to be taking great pains to appease the Church in the Global South and some of the more combative conservatives in Canada and the Episcopal Church”.

*AAC Note: There are two errors of fact in the story:

(1) The Communiqué says the bishops supporting the Camp Allen principles (i.e. the "Windsor Bishops") - NOT the Pastoral Council - will nominate the Primatial Vicar "in consultation with the [Pastoral] Council and with the consent of the Presiding Bishop."

(2) The Communiqué says the chair of the Pastoral Council will be a primate chosen by the Archbishop of Canterbury, but it does not specify that the other members be primates. Specifically, the document said, "This Council shall consist of up to five members: two nominated by the Primates, two by the Presiding Bishop, and a Primate of a Province of the Anglican Communion nominated by the Archbishop of Canterbury to chair the Council."

This article comes from the Church Times
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